Original Gothic Story

The light from the sun had long been snuffed out by the time Ed and George clambered into the basement level of the local high school. Their flashlights cast eerie shadows over the wooden crates and dusty shelves.  Ed repressed a shudder, he was thirty-eight dammit, a dark basement shouldn’t shake him.  The two men crept cautiously forward, the dead eyes of long since forgotten mannequins following their every movement as they progressed across the dark, dank basement.

            “What are we even lookin’ for Ed?” George asked wiping the dust off of a mirror with his ratty blue custodian overalls.

            “Margerie said it’s in a crate- says fragile en’ everything and she saw it somewhere by the old student masks.  This time it was George’s turn to repress a shudder, he hated those darn masks.  He always dreaded cleaning the art room when the students made ‘em, for he could feel their eyes on the back of his head.  They passed into the science section of the basement depicted by green tape, as if to keep the old English department textbooks from encroaching upon their space.  The lights from their torches cast eerie shadows on the walls and the men moved forward nervously.  Leaving the land of green tape they emerged into a corner danker than the rest, Ed’s flashlight flickered and he grumbled. Cursing the useless batteries he set his torch on a dusty shelf containing brushes displacing a family of spiders as he did so.  George’s flashlight sputtered and joined Ed’s on the shelf.  George shoved his hands in his coveralls to stop them from shaking as he looked at Ed, “Well come on, don’t be a baby.”

 George nodded, his movements stiff and skittish.  They saw it then, a crate of wood lying on the floor.  Looking at the box all of the hairs on George’s arms stood on end.

“Why she want this creepy thing anything anyway?  Sure don’t match any of the homecoming themes, “ George said.

“Someone bought it from the school.  Paid a hefty price too, from what I heard,” 

George shrugged at this and the men carried on staring down at the box.  The lid was sealed with a dozen bike locks wrapped around the crate.

“Good thing we cam prepared,” Ed joked.  George knew this was to hide his uneasiness giving a shaky laugh himself. 

They unlocked the first bike lock.  It fell to the floor with a thud sending up a cloud of dust in its wake.  The other bike locks followed joining their companions on the floor.  With the aid of a crowbar the walls of the crate fell displaying what was inside; it was an old large metal box.  Engraved upon it was “The Property of Wilson C. Laurie.”  Below, the words “Do not open.  Keep closed.”  

“Well, go on,” Ed urged.

George’s fingers slid under the lid and he gingerly opened the box.

***

“Bring them through the foyer.  Yes right this way.  Do watch out for that marble bust Marcus, or you’ll be paying it off on poker night you clumsy son of gone.”

Marcus laughed joyously at his friend’s banter.  As he heaved the dolly rough the foyer Marcus scoped out the place.  There was a curved grand staircase made of what seemed to be iron and thick velvet curtains blocking out the afternoon’s rays.  Marcus tried to tell him the blood color would put off guests but Victor had liked them. 

“They were here before I was Marcus.  Who am I to displace them from their home?”  Besides they are more of a maroon anyway.”

Marcus thought the place was eerie, but Victor was enthralled.  He helped Marcus guide the dolly into the grand sitting room filled with velvet Victorian couches hidden beneath painter’s cloths and laboriously the two unpacked the box from Elysian High School.

Victor scatted the foam peanuts with delicate fingers.

“Oh my,” he breathed.  Victor ran his fingertips gingerly over the large circular stones; the profiles of ancient men looking almost accusingly back at him.  He had been looking for those for quite some time.  Then, last month a friend of a friend had put him in contact with someone at the school who had insisted that they were in the basement of the local high school having been purchased by the art teacher there, who had locked them away in the basement.  Probably to prevent theft, Victor surmised.

“Alright Marcus.  Let’s get those on the wall.”

Victor scrambled in his kitchen struggling to remember which cabinets he had deemed suitable for the mugs, letting out a quiet “Eureka” when he found the proper one.  He grabbed two and carefully filled with steaming Columbian dark brew.  He had just put the mugs on the table when he heard his door open.

“Oy, Marcus.  You bring the Journal?”

“Has Stacy’s mom got it goin’ on?  Of course I brought the paper.  The local as well.  Some janitors at the local high school ran into some back luck.”

“How so?” Victor inquired.

“Well one, some guy named Ed, was hit by a drunk driver and the other, George looks like someone gave him some bad directions; he was in a bad part of town when they found him.”

Marcus looked up to see Victor standing silently.  He knew his friend well enough to know when something was unsettling him.  He raised his eyebrows in a question.

“I knew them.  Well, not knew them,” he intoned at Marcus’ inquisitive look.  “They retrieved those for me,” he said motioning towards the circular men adorning the walls.

“Well the rumor is that Ed might have injured a kid whilst drunk himself.  No one had ever put much stock in it, but I guess it is sort of karmic justice eh?”

“Yeah.” Victor said distractedly, his eyes flickering over to those old marble men and their judging eyes.  “It would be…”

***

The moonlight streamed through a gap in the velvet curtains illuminating Marcus’ face as he and Victor slept on the long Victorian couches.  Marcus stirred in his sleep and Victor cracked open and eye mentally cursing his best friend for waking him.  Victor rolled over to go back to sleep.   They had been up late watching Lost re-runs and had passed out.  Victor turned sharply at the sound of his door opening.  He threw off his blanket and sprang to his feet.  The door was swung open letting in the night breeze.  Victor stepped out and saw Marcus who was walking as if in a daze.  He stepped off of the curb.

“Marcus!”

Victor ran to his friend, but it was too late.  Marcus had stepped out into the street.  Time seemed to slow as Victor ran to his friend.  Marcus had stepped into the street, his head turning slowly as if in water as the headlights of the truck shone on his dazed face seconds before it hit him.

***

Once when Victor was eight he fell out of a tree and broke his arm.  The doctors had called it a compound fracture; the bone had pierced through his skin.  He had stared at it, the pain blocked by a layer of numbness.  That was how Victor felt now.  He sat on the back of an ambulance, sirens screaming and police lights flowing around him.

“Hello Mr. Sinclair.  I’m Detective Lidstrom.  I know it’s been a wary rough night, but can you explain what happened?”

Victor recounted the events of the evening.  No he hadn’t been acting strangely.  No he hadn’t been depressed of late.  Victor continued, “It’s odd; when Marcus was really young he had a younger brother.  His mom left them home alone one day and Marcus fell asleep and his brother wandered out into the street and got hit by a car.  It wasn’t Marcus’ fault, but he always felt responsible.”

Victor’s eyes slid to his house where those circular busts resided.  The same busts Ed and George had helped fish out…just before they were killed.  In a daze Victor slid from his perch on the rear of the ambulance and stumbled into his foyer.  He lifted his eyes to those of the marble figurines running his hand around the twelve gavels that were engraved at the bottom of each one.  He lifted his eyes and met the eyes of the men. 

“Judge me if you will, but I have done no wrong.” 

Victor turned and left the room, the eyes of the men following him.

***

Victor’s fingers flew across the keys as he typed into the search engine.  He found several links and clicked the first one.  It included an old black and white picture of a man and the stones.  “This must be their creator,” he mused.  His name was Samuel Rhadamanthys.  He enlarged the pictures of the stones noting the smooth bottoms; the gavels must have been a later addition.  He clicked on several other links.  The stones had passed through several owners.  Continuing his research he typed in “Stones of Rhadamanthys, odd deaths”.  Victor’s blood ran cold as the page filled with articles from local papers recounting odd deaths following those who purchased the stones.  Bad luck seemed to seep out of them tainting whoever laid eyes on them.  His mind made up he went to his basement to fetch a wooden box.

***

According to the last will and testament of Victor Sinclair…”I hereby bequeath all my possessions to my nephew, a giver with a heart, Jason Myers.  Having made this decision in sound mind, I know you shall do well.”  The man finished the reading. 

            “Now your uncle had a storage unit in his will as well.  If I recall, it contained some marble busts.  Would you like to keep them in storage, or might I suggest; the local yacht club is having an auction and those would fetch a fair price.”

            “Yes that sounds suitable.  I do not like the thought of them collecting dust in some storage unit.  It’s a wonder my uncle hadn’t displayed them,” he mused.

***

            “Careful now gentleman.  The school paid quite a price for those busts.”

            The superintendent had been at an auction and he had seen these marvelous circular busts that would look simply marvelous adorning South’s Cleminson Hall. 

            “Now look at that.” He said, admiring the way they fit perfectly against the pale walls.

            “Splendid works they are indeed,” the principal intoned.  “Though I must admit those eyes are a bit unsettling.”

            The superintendent laughed.  “Why yes, it’s almost as if they see into your soul.”

Edgar Allan Poe Essay on Death

Death is lifes greatest mystery.  We know not what lies behind the veil, if intact there is anything to see. All cultures marvel at the idea of death.  The ancient Greeks knew exactly how the process worked and where one went where they died, when the fates cut your thread your time was up. Poe uses similar tactics in his stories,  he is clearly an author obsessed with the idea of death and uses the concept in intriguing, and terrifying ways.  Poe expresses his opinions on death and the clock that is counting down on all.  Edgar Allen Poe recognizes that we all must answer deaths call, and when our time is deemed up there is nothing one can do.

An author plays the act of God and when Poe sentences someone to the grave they are succumb to the power of the fates.  One cannot outrun death and one cannot hide from it Poe tells us.  In "The Masque of Red Death" the infamous Prince Prospero attempts such a feat.  The prince incited his friends to stay at his abode, they would lock the doors, celebrate, and the plague would not penetrate the castles defenses.  "With such precautions the couriers might bid defiance to contagion." Pestilence, however was not so easily deterred, "He had come like a thief in the night.  And one by one dropped the revealers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel..." The Red death is not one easily outrun however and the partygoers met their fate. (Poe, Edgar Allan. Masque of Red Death) No matter how we may try to outrun death it finds us in the end.  Even when the Prince took precautions specific to the fate he feared would become him, he still eventually succumbed and was taken by death.  Even walls of stone cannot keep the reaper grim from onesr doorstep when onesr time is come.

        

In relation, whence ones counter up, and onesr name called one cannot thwart death.  In the “Masque of Red Death” the prince knew of the danger, yet, he did not have a handed down sentence, In Poe’s story “The Pit and the Pendulum” the narrator has been sentenced to his fate.  A fate worse than death.  “And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave.” The narrator at the mercy of a swinging pendulum, razor sharp, and each swing brings the blade closer to the heart of the narrator.  To Poe this is the real torture, not death, but the understanding of it, being consumed with the knowledge that he will die and there is nothing the man can do as he watches each passing second bring the merciless pendulum forward.  Miraculously, in time of great desperation the man escapes from the ties that bind him to the floor, believing he has escaped death.  “the Inquisitorial vengeance had been hurried by my two fold escape… I shrank back—but the closing walls pressed me resistlessly onward.  At length for my seared and writhing body there was no longer an inch…”  (Poe, Edgar Allan. The Pit and The Pendulum) Even when the narrator knew death was upon him he was not able to throw the cloaked man.  The man manages  to escape one prison, only to survive to see an one even more vindictive than the last. The character still was taken by death, for when one looks death in the face one cannot escape, no matter how elaborate the plan, death will reap one in the end. 

In conjuncture, if one is not destined by the fates to die, Poe tells us, it shall not come to pass. In Poe’s short story “The Premature Burial”  the narrator is consumed with the fear of being buried alive.  At the time this was a well founded fear, especially for one, such as the narrator, with catalepsy, a condition where one occasionally falls into a death like trance.  The horror intruded its way upon his every thought, “I was lost in reveries of death, and the idea of premature burial held continual possession of my brain.” The author at one point believes himself to be in fact, buried alive.  When he discovers the contrary he embarks to change his ways, to live, without this fear that plagues him so.  “I took vigorous exercise.  I breathed the free air of heaven.  I thought upon other subjects than death…I became a new man…”  (Poe, Edgar Allan. The Premature Burial) the narrator realized that death would come for him and whence it did he could not avoid the skeletal hands of the reaper.  The man took it upon himself to live whilst he still did.  Poe expresses, again, through this character that we cannot prevent our passing once one is called to the veil, so one should live till their fullest for when the reaper comes we must abide.

         In the story “Bernice” Poe uses many Greek references and analogies.  He refers to Halcyon days, a reference to a Greek tale of love and loss, and he mentions Gods of Rome and Greece as well in this horrific tale.  “For as Jove during the winter season…”  This references to one of Zeus’ roman names, he refers to the Greek Underworld agriculture as well, “…trembled only to the touch of the flower called Asphodel.”  These instances in Poe suggest to us that he was highly literate, as well as his high level of diction.  Poe was indeed fascinated by death and notes that so were other cultures, and among the Greeks especially; a peaceful passing was tantamount to peace after life.  Poe’s feelings on fate and the call of death match that of the ancient Greeks.  They believed that once Atropos, one of the three fates, cut your thread your time was up and Thantos appeared before you. (The Greek god of death)  Poe’s views are of similar sentiment and one can see his connections and annotations to the Greek belief and those of his own through his writings.

        

Among recurrent references Poe often used heavy symbolism in his works, and his most symbolic work was “The Fall of the House of Usher”. Symbolism provides insight into the authors mind and gives deeper meaning to the authors’ words.  In the Fall of The House of Usher there are heavy symbolic ties between the House itself and the family that calls it home. “I looked upon the scene before me…upon the few rank sedges—and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees—with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation… there was an iciness, a sinking sickening of the heart…” Poe describes the family in direct correlation to the descriptions of the houses occupants,  “…lips somewhat thin and pallid…the now ghastly pallor of the skin...” The descriptions go hand in hand for as the shadow of death encompasses and rots away at the souls inside it rots the house and its surrounding area.  “… my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder..”  Death snatches the house’s occupants and as it sneaks away with their souls the house itself collapses.  Poe is showing us through his symbolism and ties of the house to it family that when death comes creeping our even our foundation shall soon rot and falter.  When death calls upon one even mortar and wood bend and break under deaths crushing command. 

        

         When our time is up, our thread cut, the last bit of sand fallen, we must succumb to death.  We all follow to this call in the end.  It is the one common road we all share and Edgar Allan Poe expressed this to entrap readers and scare them into realizing that when death comes for them there is nothing you can do.  Poe used this tactic seemingly effortlessly and quite eloquently weaving stories of terror and demise that chill our blood and send shivers down ones spine.  We are all subject to this fear and Poe seized this knowledge and exploited it. Using his creative prowess with the written word Poe weaves stories that terrorize and enthrall effortlessly and with much skill.  Edgar Allan Poe, in his stories expresses the view that we all answer to death, and our fate and day to die is out of ones hands, to all but death himself.

Bibliography

• Wikipedia- search engine
• Summaries of The Pit and the Pendulum and The Premature Burial
• Poestories.com
• The Fall of the house of Usher
• Bernice
• The Pit and the Pendulum
• The Red Masque of Death
• The Premature Burial

• Google.com- search engine
• Dictionary.com
• For definitions of words in the Poe novels 

Mandy Darwin and the Morning Star

            
             The wall paper was blue.  Blue and peeling.  There was a water stain on the ceiling in the likeness of the late President Bush and there was a stain of suspicious origin on the satin sheets.  It was certainly not in the realm of what most considered luxury but to her, these were minute details, not even enough to be considered the proverbial icing on the cake for all she could hear was the pounding of her heart in her ears, a base drum of terror reminding her that she had little time left to continue her story; and what a story it was.  The ink was smeared with her sweat and tears but the letters were legible just the same.  The story these words told was as gruesome and abysmal as their authors fast approaching fate.  Mandy Darwin turns the page of the old yellow notebook, on covered with stickers from princesses from a time of innocence long ago, and putting her pen to paper she beings to write. 
           It all started with a letter.  That damn invitation.  It was made with big bold type and had an orange and red border with little colored balloons on the edges.  Large black letters proclaimed of a twentieth high school reunion.  The kind of letter that instigates vivid memories.  Ones that Mandy would much rather repress and keep locked deep in her psyche.  Memories of being always second to Emily Sherrington, always the secretary, never the class president, for that spot was home to Emily's charming smile.  She vowed this however, not this reunion, this time Mandy Darwin would show the class of Alabama high who was queen. Days passed and the letter in its paisley print beige envelope sat unresponded to,  Mandy spent many a days perched on her kitchen stool sipping at her Columbian vanilla coffee and typing furiously onto her laptop deliberating on the perfect way to show that she was indeed the most successful women to graduate from Alabama’s own Asphodel high.  Oddly enough the solution presented it self with a bang and a bit of bad lack.  Riding along the main road at night was not something Mandy found herself doing often but her boss, a man she considered to be a useless sod, had demanded it.  Her car rumbled down the main road until it came across a pothole left behind from the freeze thaw effect of the thawing ice from last winter.  Mandy felt the air leave her tire in a whoosh.  Cursing under her breathe she maneuvered her vehicle onto the shoulder.  She stepped out of her car words that would leave her momma blushing tumbling out of her lips as she braced her self against the harsh wind of the night.  The wind whipped her dark hair around as her manicured fingertips brushed over the now flattened rubber.  Wincing as she subtracted the cost of this repair from her monthly shopping expenditures in her head she straightened up and turned her coat collar up against the wind.  Hearing a whistle she spun around, brown eyes darting franticly into the night, wild tales of axe murderers and rapists ran through her mind as she backed slowly to her car.  She looked about her, her eyes finally adjusted and she saw that she stood at the intersection of the main road.  The old light swung in the wind above her car, a light that had ceased working some years ago but ted the towns repairman refused to come to the intersection of the main and Morningstar to repair it so it remained dark and docile.  Something across the road caught Mandy’s eye.  It was a man standing at the edge of the intersection swathed in darkness. She swallowed a rising scream and scrambled back to the door of her of her escalade pulling franticly at the door handle it wouldn’t open she did scream then though no sound came out, blind terror clogging her throat.  She pulled on the door handle and saw that the doors had all locked.  Tears were spilling down her cheeks and she turned around certain she was facing her death.  The man was still standing where he had been before she turned and as she watched he stepped into the intersection slowly and deliberately and she felt her throat tighten with terror. Had anyone been there to hear it she would have not been able to scream.  She was frozen with the terror even while her brain screamed to run she could not as if under a spell of fright she watched as the stranger stepped ever so slowly forward and stopped midway in the intersection.  Right under old Mr. Toms light.  The light, the same that had not lit in thirty some years, did light then, though not in green, maize, and red as expected.  The three lights shown red and cast ghastly shadows upon the mans face.  He was young. and devishly handsome.  Dark brown locks and aristocratic cheekbones that spoke of carefully selected bloodlines.  Mandy’s sensed were intensified by her fear and she could hear the soft rustling almost that of a swan above the winds howl which had grown strangely silent since the mans appearance.  Frozen still she watched as he appeared the beauty that of an angel and  a voice just as sweet as he spoke in soft lyrical words.  His voice was whiskey on rocks, sweet sweet sin.  He wove a tale for her of sweet promises.  He offered her all she wanted, the position in her office, a handsome man, and how she didn’t know but somehow he knew she wanted these things for her party.  She told him he was crazy and the man laughed.  He told her that’s what his siblings had often said, he had not offered up his name.  She asked him how he knew this, he had to be omniscient, was he a holy man, perhaps god.  The man laughed, deep and low, he warned her to not confuse him with one of his brothers he told her he was not Michael nor his father. She did not know what to make of this strange man and merely stayed silent.  It will cost you, these words resonated in her ears and her mothers voice that told her never to deal with handsome men sounded in her ears though it was drowned out by the visions of herself at the reunion chatting up Emily with a beautiful man on her arm.  he told her she would have ten wondrous years and then he would come.  She saw herself being admired and envied by her classmates and then looking the man in his golden cat shaped eyes she nodded a yes slipping out from her lips.  The man smiled his devilish smile and nodded as he turned to leave she called after him asking for his name.  He merely replied 'they call me the dawn star' and then he was gone.  Mandy turned back to her car, her tire was inflated. Her doors were unlocked.
                    Mandy dropped the pen and put her head in her hands. she started rocking back and forth wishing, pleading the damn barking would stop.  She knew they were getting closer.  One thing that the man in black did not tell her was the cruel irony of the damned.  Her hair which she would spend hours on had not been brushed and her chic Calvin Cline pant suit was exchanged for a pair of ratty old sweats.  Everything that she cared about in her life lay in tatters before her much as her quickly unraveling mind. Picking up the pen she started again.
                   Mandy licked the envelope of the return envelope closed after checking in the 'plus one' box.  The next morning after she met the man in black a muscular man appeared literally at her door step.  He was training for a duathilon and his bike chain had broken, might he use her phone? Three weeks later she had a rock the size of Rhode Island on her boney left hand.  The party came and went along with her promotion.  She gloated  and rejoiced and did not remember much of the evening after her fifth celebratory mojito after hearing of Emily’s divorce and finical ruin.  Nine years of bliss and narcissism came and went for Mandy.  Then her luck ran out.  Her husband’s bike chain broke in the tour de France and he was run over by the following cyclist.  The company she had so miraculously become CEO of was sued for tax fraud and now she was left with nothing except the fifty dollars she had shoved at the hotel manager before locking the bolt on her door.
               Mandy sat shaking.  She could hear the hounds. She knew they were coming for her.  Her head spun toward the door as she heard a ferocious scratching as if a large dog was scratching upon it.  Hell hounds.  Neither seen nor heard but for those that they were sent for.  She curled in the corner, rocking back and forth the howls ringing in her ears they wouldn’t stop, why wouldn’t they just be silent she asked.  Her hands gripped her hair, once so perfectly style enough to rip it out at the root as the growling continued with frenzy.  the moon shone through the window even through the shade.  She looked around the shabby room, recalling how she had once been gloating to Emily over her and her husbands Paris honeymoon.  The door then burst open and they came in huge hounds the color of sleek black, these children of cebreus with three heads and the tale of a serpent sauntered up to hear and then the largest came before her and halted.  It blew its rank breath on her face the terror had taken hold and she sat unable to move or scream she had only the ability to whisper please.. and then the hounds howled and they were upon her.