Extraordinary Tales

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1

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

as under there was a long

tumultuous shouting sound,

like the voice of

a thousand waters

and the deep and

dank tarn at my feet

closed sullenly and silently

over the fragments

of the House of Usher.

Bravo!

In your own words he became

a victim of the very terrors

he had anticipated.

Much like you.

Don't you wish you were dead?

Why should I? I want to live.

I have more stories to tell.

Your time is up in your world.

You have nothing to lose,

no one to love.

Stop feeling guilty

for other people's death.

Virginia died in spite

of your care or your love.

Your mother succumbed

to my power

leaving you helplessly alone.

I was so young when she died...

I was denied even the

memory of her face.

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