August Malmström, Portrait of the Eighty-Eight Fairies, 1865
1. Statement of Joel Hetman, Jr.
I am the most unfortunate of men. Rich, respected, fairly well educatedand of sound health -- with many other advantages usually valued bythose having them and coveted by those who have them not -- I sometimesthink that I should be less unhappy if they had been denied me, for thenthe contrast between my outer and my inner life would not be continuallydemanding a painful attention. In the stress of privation and the needof effort I might sometimes forget the sombre secret ever baffling theconjecture that it compels.I am the only child of Joel and Julia Hetman. The one was awell-to-do country gentleman, the other a beautiful and accomplishedwoman to whom he was passionately attached with what I now know to havebeen a jealous and exacting devotion. The family home was a few milesfrom Nashville, Tennessee, a large, irregularly built dwelling of noparticular order of architecture, a little way off the road, in a parkof trees and shrubbery.At the time of which I write I was nineteen years old, a student atYale. One day I received a telegram from my father of such urgency thatin compliance with its unexplained demand I left at once for home. Atthe railway station in Nashville a distant relative awaited me toapprise me of the reason for my recall: my mother had been barbarouslymurdered -- why and by whom none could conjecture, but the circumstanceswere these.My father had gone to Nashville, intending to return the nextafternoon. Something prevented his accomplishing the business in hand,so he returned on the same night, arriving just before the dawn. In histestimony before the coroner he explained that having no latchkey andnot caring to disturb the sleeping servants, he had, with no clearlydefined intention, gone round to the rear of the house. As he turned anangle of the building, he heard a sound as of a door gently closed, andsaw in the darkness, indistinctly, the figure of a man, which instantlydisappeared among the trees of the lawn. A hasty pursuit and briefsearch of the grounds in the belief that the trespasser was some onesecretly visiting a servant proving fruitless, he entered at theunlocked door and mounted the stairs to my mother's chamber. Its doorwas open, and stepping into black darkness he fell headlong over someheavy object on the floor. I may spare myself the details; it was mypoor mother, dead of strangulation by human hands!Nothing had been taken from the house, the servants had heard nosound, and excepting those terrible finger-marks upon the dead woman'sthroat -- dear God! that I might forget them! -- no trace of theassassin was ever found.I gave up my studies and remained with my father, who, naturally,was greatly changed. Always of a sedate, taciturn disposition, he nowfell into so deep a dejection that nothing could hold his attention, yetanything -- a footfall, the sudden closing of a door -- aroused in him afitful interest; one might have called it an apprehension. At any smallsurprise of the senses he would start visibly and sometimes turn pale,then relapse into a melancholy apathy deeper than before. I suppose hewas what is called a 'nervous wreck.' As to me, I was younger then thannow -- there is much in that. Youth is Gilead, in which is balm forevery wound. Ah, that I might again dwell in that enchanted land!Unacquainted with grief, I knew not how to appraise my bereavement; Icould not rightly estimate the strength of the stroke.One night, a few months after the dreadful event, my father and Iwalked home from the city. The full moon was about three hours above theeastern horizon; the entire countryside had the solemn stillness of asummer night; our footfalls and the ceaseless song of the katydids werethe only sound, aloof. Black shadows of bordering trees lay athwart theroad, which, in the short reaches between, gleamed a ghostly white. Aswe approached the gate to our dwelling, whose front was in shadow, andin which no light shone, my father suddenly stopped and clutched my arm,saying, hardly above his breath:'God! God! what is that?''I hear nothing,' I replied.'But see -- see!' he said, pointing along the road, directly ahead.I said: 'Nothing is there. Come, father, let us go in -- you are ill.'He had released my arm and was standing rigid and motionless in thecentre of the illuminated roadway, staring like one bereft of sense. Hisface in the moonlight showed a pallor and fixity inexpressiblydistressing. I pulled gently at his sleeve, but he had forgotten myexistence. Presently he began to retire backward, step by step, neverfor an instant removing his eyes from what he saw, or thought he saw. Iturned half round to follow, but stood irresolute. I do not recall anyfeeling of fear, unless a sudden chill was its physical manifestation.It seemed as if an icy wind had touched my face and enfolded my bodyfrom head to foot; I could feel the stir of it in my hair.At that moment my attention was drawn to a light that suddenlystreamed from an upper window of the house: one of the servants,awakened by what mysterious premonition of evil who can say, and inobedience to an impulse that she was never able to name, had lit a lamp.When I turned to look for my father he was gone, and in all the yearsthat have passed no whisper of his fate has come across the borderlandof conjecture from the realm of the unknown.
2. Statement of Caspar GrattanTo-day I am said to live, to-morrow, here in this room, will lie asenseless shape of clay that all too long was I. If anyone lift thecloth from the face of that unpleasant thing it will be in gratificationof a mere morbid curiosity. Some, doubtless, will go further andinquire, 'Who was he?' In this writing I supply the only answer that Iam able to make -- Caspar Grattan. Surely, that should be enough. Thename has served my small need for more than twenty years of a life ofunknown length. True, I gave it to myself, but lacking another I had theright. In this world one must have a name; it prevents confusion, evenwhen it does not establish identity. Some, though, are known by numbers,which also seem inadequate distinctions.One day, for illustration, I was passing along a street of a city,far from here, when I met two men in uniform, one of whom, half pausingand looking curiously into my face, said to his companion, 'That manlooks like 767.' Something in the number seemed familiar and horrible.Moved by an uncontrollable impulse, I sprang into a side street and ranuntil I fell exhausted in a country lane.I have never forgotten that number, and always it comes to memoryattended by gibbering obscenity, peals of joyless laughter, the clang ofiron doors. So I say a name, even if self-bestowed, is better than anumber. In the register of the potter's field I shall soon have both.What wealth!Of him who shall find this paper I must beg a little consideration.It is not the history of my life; the knowledge to write that is deniedme. This is only a record of broken and apparently unrelated memories,some of them as distinct and sequent as brilliant beads upon a thread,others remote and strange, having the character of crimson dreams withinterspaces blank and black -- witch-fires glowing still and red in agreat desolation.Standing upon the shore of eternity, I turn for a last looklandward over the course by which I came. There are twenty years offootprints fairly distinct, the impressions of bleeding feet. They leadthrough poverty and pain, devious and unsure, as of one staggeringbeneath a burden --Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow.Ah, the poet's prophecy of Me -- how admirable, how dreadfullyadmirable!Backward beyond the beginning of this via dolorosa -- this epic ofsuffering with episodes of sin -- I see nothing clearly; it comes out ofa cloud. I know that it spans only twenty years, yet I am an old man.One does not remember one's birth -- one has to be told. But withme it was different; life came to me full-handed and dowered me with allmy faculties and powers. Of a previous existence I know no more thanothers, for all have stammering intimations that may be memories and maybe dreams. I know only that my first consciousness was of maturity inbody and mind -- a consciousness accepted without surprise orconjecture. I merely found myself walking in a forest, half-clad,footsore, unutterably weary and hungry. Seeing a farmhouse, I approachedand asked for food, which was given me by one who inquired my name. Idid not know, yet knew that all had names. Greatly embarrassed, Iretreated, and night coming on, lay down in the forest and slept.The next day I entered a large town which I shall not name. Norshall I recount further incidents of the life that is now to end -- alife of wandering, always and everywhere haunted by an overmasteringsense of crime in punishment of wrong and of terror in punishment ofcrime. Let me see if I can reduce it to narrative.I seem once to have lived near a great city, a prosperous planter,married to a woman whom I loved and distrusted. We had, it sometimesseems, one child, a youth of brilliant parts and promise. He is at alltimes a vague figure, never clearly drawn, frequently altogether out ofthe picture.One luckless evening it occurred to me to test my wife's fidelityin a vulgar, commonplace way familiar to everyone who has acquaintancewith the literature of fact and fiction. I went to the city, telling mywife that I should be absent until the following afternoon. But Ireturned before daybreak and went to the rear of the house, purposing toenter by a door with which I had secretly so tampered that it would seemto lock, yet not actually fasten. As I approached it, I heard it gentlyopen and close, and saw a man steal away into the darkness. With murderin my heart, I sprang after him, but he had vanished without even thebad luck of identification. Sometimes now I cannot even persuade myselfthat it was a human being.Crazed with jealousy and rage, blind and bestial with all theelemental passions of insulted manhood, I entered the house and sprangup the stairs to the door of my wife's chamber. It was closed, buthaving tampered with its lock also, I easily entered, and despite theblack darkness soon stood by the side of her bed. My groping hands toldme that although disarranged it was unoccupied.'She is below,' I thought, 'and terrified by my entrance has evadedme in the darkness of the hall.' With the purpose of seeking her Iturned to leave the room, but took a wrong direction -- the right one!My foot struck her, cowering in a corner of the room. Instantly my handswere at her throat, stifling a shriek, my knees were upon her strugglingbody; and there in the darkness, without a word of accusation orreproach, I strangled her till she died! There ends the dream. I haverelated it in the past tense, but the present would be the fitter form,for again and again the sombre tragedy re-enacts itself in myconsciousness -- over and over I lay the plan, I suffer theconfirmation, I redress the wrong. Then all is blank; and afterward therains beat against the grimy windowpanes, or the snows fall upon myscant attire, the wheels rattle in the squalid streets where my lifelies in poverty and mean employment. If there is ever sunshine I do notrecall it; if there are birds they do not sing.There is another dream, another vision of the night. I stand amongthe shadows in a moonlit road. I am aware of another presence, but whoseI cannot rightly determine. In the shadow of a great dwelling I catchthe gleam of white garments; then the figure of a woman confronts me inthe road -- my murdered wife! There is death in the face; there aremarks upon the throat. The eyes are fixed on mine with an infinitegravity which is not reproach, nor hate, nor menace, nor anything lessterrible than recognition. Before this awful apparition I retreat interror -- a terror that is upon me as I write. I can no longer rightlyshape the words. See! they --Now I am calm, but truly there is no more to tell: the incidentends where it began -- in darkness and in doubt.Yes, I am again in control of myself: 'the captain of my soul.' Butthat is not respite; it is another stage and phase of expiation. Mypenance, constant in degree, is mutable in kind: one of its variants istranquillity. After all, it is only a life-sentence. 'To Hell for life'-- that is a foolish penalty: the culprit chooses the duration of hispunishment. To-day my term expires.To each and all, the peace that was not mine.
3. Statement of the Late Julia Hetman, through the Medium BayrollesI had retired early and fallen almost immediately into a peaceful sleep,from which I awoke with that indefinable sense of peril which is, Ithink, a common experience in that other, earlier life. Of its unmeaningcharacter, too, I was entirely persuaded, yet that did not banish it. Myhusband, Joel Hetman, was away from home; the servants slept in anotherpart of the house. But these were familiar conditions; they had neverbefore distressed me. Nevertheless, the strange terror grew soinsupportable that conquering my reluctance to move I sat up and lit thelamp at my bedside. Contrary to my expectation this gave me no relief;the light seemed rather an added danger, for I reflected that it wouldshine out under the door, disclosing my presence to whatever evil thingmight lurk outside. You that are still in the flesh, subject to horrorsof the imagination, think what a monstrous fear that must be which seeksin darkness security from malevolent existences of the night. That is tospring to close quarters with an unseen enemy -- the strategy of despair!Extinguishing the lamp I pulled the bedclothing about my head andlay trembling and silent, unable to shriek, forgetful to pray. In thispitiable state I must have lain for what you call hours -- with us thereare no hours, there is no time.At last it came -- a soft, irregular sound of footfalls on thestairs! They were slow, hesitant, uncertain, as of something that didnot see its way; to my disordered reason all the more terrifying forthat, as the approach of some blind and mindless malevolence to which isno appeal. I even thought that I must have left the hall lamp burningand the groping of this creature proved it a monster of the night. Thiswas foolish and inconsistent with my previous dread of the light, butwhat would you have? Fear has no brains; it is an idiot. The dismalwitness that it bears and the cowardly counsel that it whispers areunrelated. We know this well, we who have passed into the Realm ofTerror, who skulk in eternal dusk among the scenes of our former lives,invisible even to ourselves, and one another, yet hiding forlorn inlonely places; yearning for speech with our loved ones, yet dumb, and asfearful of them as they of us. Sometimes the disability is removed, thelaw suspended: by the deathless power of love or hate we break the spell-- we are seen by those whom we would warn, console, or punish. Whatform we seem to them to bear we know not; we know only that we terrifyeven those whom we most wish to comfort, and from whom we most cravetenderness and sympathy.Forgive, I pray you, this inconsequent digression by what was oncea woman. You who consult us in this imperfect way -- you do notunderstand. You ask foolish questions about things unknown and thingsforbidden. Much that we know and could impart in our speech ismeaningless in yours. We must communicate with you through a stammeringintelligence in that small fraction of our language that you yourselvescan speak. You think that we are of another world. No, we have knowledgeof no world but yours, though for us it holds no sunlight, no warmth, nomusic, no laughter, no song of birds, nor any companionship. O God! whata thing it is to be a ghost, cowering and shivering in an altered world,a prey to apprehension and despair!No, I did not die of fright: the Thing turned and went away. Iheard it go down the stairs, hurriedly, I thought, as if itself insudden fear. Then I rose to call for help. Hardly had my shaking handfound the door-knob when -- merciful heaven! -- I heard it returning.Its footfalls as it remounted the stairs were rapid, heavy and loud;they shook the house. I fled to an angle of the wall and crouched uponthe floor. I tried to pray. I tried to call the name of my dear husband.Then I heard the door thrown open. There was an interval ofunconsciousness, and when I revived I felt a strangling clutch upon mythroat -- felt my arms feebly beating against something that bore mebackward -- felt my tongue thrusting itself from between my teeth! Andthen I passed into this life.No, I have no knowledge of what it was. The sum of what we knew atdeath is the measure of what we know afterward of all that went before.Of this existence we know many things, but no new light falls upon anypage of that; in memory is written all of it that we can read. Here areno heights of truth overlooking the confused landscape of that dubitabledomain. We still dwell in the Valley of the Shadow, lurk in its desolateplaces, peering from brambles and thickets at its mad, maligninhabitants. How should we have new knowledge of that fading past?What I am about to relate happened on a night. We know when it isnight, for then you retire to your houses and we can venture from ourplaces of concealment to move unafraid about our old homes, to look inat the windows, even to enter and gaze upon your faces as you sleep. Ihad lingered long near the dwelling where I had been so cruelly changedto what I am, as we do while any that we love or hate remain. Vainly Ihad sought some method of manifestation, some way to make my continuedexistence and my great love and poignant pity understood by my husbandand son. Always if they slept they would wake, or if in my desperation Idared approach them when they were awake, would turn toward me theterrible eyes of the living, frightening me by the glances that I soughtfrom the purpose that I held.On this night I had searched for them without success, fearing tofind them; they were nowhere in the house, nor about the moonlit dawn.For, although the sun is lost to us for ever, the moon, full-orbed orslender, remains to us. Sometimes it shines by night, sometimes by day,but always it rises and sets, as in that other life.I left the lawn and moved in the white light and silence along theroad, aimless and sorrowing. Suddenly I heard the voice of my poorhusband in exclamations of astonishment, with that of my son inreassurance and dissuasion; and there by the shadow of a group of treesthey stood -- near, so near! Their faces were toward me, the eyes of theelder man fixed upon mine. He saw me -- at last, at last, he saw me! Inthe consciousness of that, my terror fled as a cruel dream. Thedeath-spell was broken: Love had conquered Law! Mad with exultation Ishouted -- I must have shouted,' He sees, he sees: he will understand!'Then, controlling myself, I moved forward, smiling and consciouslybeautiful, to offer myself to his arms, to comfort him with endearments,and, with my son's hand in mine, to speak words that should restore thebroken bonds between the living and the dead.Alas! alas! his face went white with fear, his eyes were as thoseof a hunted animal. He backed away from me, as I advanced, and at lastturned and fled into the wood -- whither, it is not given to me to know.To my poor boy, left doubly desolate, I have never been able toimpart a sense of my presence. Soon he, too, must pass to this LifeInvisible and be lost to me for ever.
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