Extraordinary Tales

Well...

if it isn't my good friend, The Poet.

I can't say I'm surprised to find you here.

Whose grave are you visiting today?

Who's there?

Weeping at the same grave over again?

Why didn't you choose any of the others?

Ligeia, Annabel?

Or perhaps Berenice?

So sure Virginia was going to be the pick

for today's tortured journey.

There's no denying your affection for her.

What was that poem of yours?

"It was many and many a year ago

"That a maiden there lived whom you may know

"And this maiden she lived with no other thought...

"Than to love and be loved by me."

What am I doing?

I recite poetry with a statue!

I must be drunk.

Or mad.

Or both.

I am hallucinating.

Should I answer this one with another of your stanzas?

"All that we see or seem

"ls but a dream within a dream..."

Still you have no clue to who I am.

I am your shadow, your soul.

The object of your obsession.

Are you mad?

My obsession?

Recognize me now, Poe?

Are you feeling lonely?

Longing again for the departed?

Silence!

I came here for solitude.

Not loneliness.

Always obsessed with the dead.

A great subject for your writings.

It is not obsession

but rather inspiration which drives my writing.

I wouldn't define it that way.

Remember Roderick Usher?

His compulsive obsession for his departed sister Madeline

caused such a nervous agitation

that it lead him to an early demise.

It was brotherly love, not obsession.

Obsession, superstition,

unrequited love.

Who do you want to convince?

It was a magical place that filled my childhood

with visions to stir the imagination.

And now, during the whole

of a dull, dark, and soundless day

in the autumn of another year,

I was alone, passing through

a singularly dreary tract of country;

and at length found myself

within reach of the melancholy House of Usher.

I know not how it was; but with my first glimpse

of the house after so long,

an unexpected sense of insufferable gloom

pervaded my spirit.

What was it?

What unnerved me so

in the contemplation of the House of Usher?

Its proprietor, Roderick Usher,

had been one of my boon companions in boyhood;

but many years had elapsed since our last meeting.

His letter, however,

had lately reached me in a distant part

of the country.

I scanned more narrowly

the real aspect of the building.

Its principal feature

seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity.

The writer spoke of acute bodily illness,

of a mental disorder which oppressed him,

and brought an earnest desire to see me,

as his best, and indeed his only

personal friend, in an attempt

to alleviate some of his malady;

and I, accordingly,

obeyed forthwith

what I still considered a very singular

and haunting summons.

I gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe.

Frederick!

My dear friend,

I have after all this time

been waiting for your arrival!

I at first thought it to be

an overdone cordiality.

It was with difficulty that I could bring myself

to admit the identity of the man being before me

with the companion of my early boyhood.

He entered into what he conceived to be

the nature of his malady.

The most insipid food was alone endurable.

The odors of all flowers proved oppressive;

his eyes were tortured by even a faint light.

And there were but peculiar sounds

which inspired him with horror.

I began to question my worthiness

of being present for my friend,

who now existed in a world of which I held no key.

I shall perish!

I dread the events of the future!

I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive

when I must abandon

life and reason together,

in some struggle

with the grim phantasm...

...fear.

But what do you fear, Roderick?

I must know what is it that torments

your every moment.

I admit that

much of the peculiar gloom which afflicts me could be traced

to a severe and long continued illness.

I speak of my tenderly beloved sister, Madeline.

My sole companion for so many long years,

my last

and only relative on earth.

Roderick spoke with such bitterness,

which made me shudder.

And yet, I could tell

of his complete devotion towards his sister.

Madeline...

Her decease

will leave me as the last

of the ancient race of the Ushers.

His voice trembled

as he recounted how even in her youth, Madeline would fear

the outside world.

Roderick loved his sister for her purity,

but the foreboding doom was forever present.

The Usher's life of loneliness will mean there will be no heir.

But on the closing in of the evening of my arrival

at the house,

she succumbed to the prostrating power

of the destroyer.

She is dead!

Madeline has died!

She has left me!

At the request of Roderick Usher,

I personally aided him

in the arrangements for the temporary entombment.

And now,

some days of bitter grief having elapsed,

an observable change

came over the features of the mental disorder of my friend.

At times, again, I was obliged to resolve all

into the mere inexplicable vagaries of madness.

For I beheld him gazing upon vacancy

for long hours,

in an attitude of the profoundest attention,

as if listening to some imaginary sound.

It was no wonder

that his terrifying condition was creeping upon me,

the wild influence of his fantastic

yet impressive superstitions.

And you have not seen it?

Then you shall!

You must!

You must behold this!

I hear it, and have heard it.

We have put her

living

in the tomb!

I now tell you

that I heard

her first feeble movements

in the hollow coffin.

I heard them many, many days ago.

Yet I dared not,

I dared not speak!

The rending of her coffin,

and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison,

and her struggles

within the coppered

archway of the vault!

Be calm.

It is the storm that draws breath,

playing tricks on us both!

Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste?

Have I not heard her footsteps on the stairs?

Do I not distinguish that heavy

and horrible

beating

of her heart?

Madman!

MADMAN!

I tell you that she now stands without the door!

The vision before me will stay burnt

into my very soul and haunt me

to the end of my days.

Where I gazed,

the House once stood.

I saw the mighty walls rushing