The Black Cat
FOR the
most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect
nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very
senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not -and very surely do I not
dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburthen my soul. My immediate purpose is to place before
the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household
events. In their consequences, these events have terrified -have tortured -have
destroyed me. Yet I will not attempt to expound them. To me, they have
presented little but Horror -to many they will seem less terrible than barroques. Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found
which will reduce my phantasm to the common-place -some intellect more calm,
more logical, and far less excitable than my own, which will perceive, in the
circumstances I detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of
very natural causes and effects.
From my
infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition. My
tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the jest of my
companions. I was especially fond of animals, and was indulged by my parents
with a great variety of pets. With these I spent most of my time, and never was
so happy as when feeding and caressing them. This
peculiar of character grew with my growth, and in my manhood, I derived from it
one of my principal sources of pleasure. To those who have cherished an affection for a faithful and sagacious dog, I need hardly
be at the trouble of explaining the nature or the intensity of the
gratification thus derivable. There is something in the unselfish and
self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who
has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity
of mere
I
married early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not uncongenial
with my own. Observing my partiality for domestic pets, she lost no opportunity
of procuring those of the most agreeable kind. We had birds, gold fish, a fine
dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat.
This
latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and
sagacious to an astonishing degree. In speaking of his intelligence, my wife,
who at heart was not a little tinctured with superstition, made frequent
allusion to the ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats as
witches in disguise. Not that she was ever serious upon this point -and I
mention the matter at all for no better reason than that it happens, just now,
to be remembered.
Pluto
-this was the cat's name -was my favorite pet and
playmate. I alone fed him, and he attended me wherever I went about the house.
It was even with difficulty that I could prevent him from following me through
the streets.
Our
friendship lasted, in this manner, for several years, during which my general
temperament and character -through the instrumentality of the Fiend
Intemperance -had (I blush to confess it) experienced a radical alteration for
the worse. I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of
the feelings of others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my At
length, I even offered her personal violence. My pets, of course, were made to
feel the change in my disposition. I not only neglected, but ill-used them. For
Pluto, however, I still retained sufficient regard to restrain me from
maltreating him, as I made no scruple of maltreating the rabbits, the monkey,
or even the dog, when by accident, or through affection, they came in my way.
But my disease grew upon me -for what disease is like Alcohol! -and at length
even Pluto, who was now becoming old, and consequently somewhat peevish -even
Pluto began to experience the effects of my ill temper.
One
night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my haunts about town, I
fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I seized him; when, in his fright at
my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with his teeth. The fury
of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul
seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish
malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame. I took from my
waistcoat-pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat,
and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket! I blush, I burn, I
shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity.
When
reason returned with the morning -when I had slept off the fumes of the night's
debauch -I experienced a sentiment half of horror, half of remorse, for the
crime of which I had been guilty; but it was, at best, a feeble and equivocal
feeling, and the soul remained untouched. I again plunged into excess, and soon
drowned in wine all memory of the deed.
In the
meantime the cat slowly recovered. The socket of the lost eye presented, it is
true, a frightful appearance, but he no longer appeared to suffer any pain. He
went about the house as usual, but, as might be expected, fled in extreme
terror at my approach. I had so much of my old heart left, as to be at first
grieved by this evident dislike on the part of a creature which had once so
loved me. But this feeling soon gave place to irritation. And then came, as if
to my final and irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of perversness.
Of this spirit philosophy takes no account. Yet I am not more
sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the
primitive impulses of the human heart -one of the indivisible primary
faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of
On the
night of the day on which this cruel deed was done, I was aroused from sleep by
the cry of fire. The curtains of my bed were in flames. The whole house was
blazing. It was with great difficulty that my wife, a servant, and myself, made
our escape from the conflagration. The destruction was complete. My entire
worldly wealth was swallowed up, and I resigned myself thenceforward to
despair.
I am
above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect,
between the disaster and the atrocity. But I am detailing a chain of facts -and
wish not to leave even a possible link imperfect. On the day succeeding the
fire, I visited the ruins. The walls, with one exception, had fallen in. This
exception was found in a compartment wall, not very thick, which stood about
the middle of the house, and against which had rested the head of my bed. The
plastering had here, in great measure, resisted the action of the fire -a fact
which I attributed to its having been recently spread. About this wall a dense
crowd were collected, and many persons seemed to be examining a particular
portion of it with every minute and eager attention. The words
"strange!" "singular!" and other similar expressions,
excited my curiosity. I approached and saw, as if graven in bas relief upon the
white surface, the figure of a gigantic cat. The impression was given with an
accuracy truly marvellous. There was a rope about the animal's neck.
When I
first beheld this apparition -for I could scarcely regard it as less -my wonder
and my terror were extreme. But at length reflection came to my aid. The cat, I
remembered, had been hung in a garden adjacent to the house. Upon the alarm of
fire, this garden had been immediately filled by the crowd -by some one of whom
the animal must have been cut from the tree and thrown, through an open window,
into my chamber. This had probably been done with the view of arousing me from
sleep. The falling of other walls had compressed the victim of my cruelty into
the substance of the freshly-spread plaster; the lime of which, had then with
the flames, and the ammonia from the carcass, accomplished the portraiture as I
saw it.
Although
I thus readily accounted to my reason, if not altogether to my conscience, for
the startling fact 'just detailed, it did not the less fall to make a deep
impression upon my fancy. For months I could not rid myself of the phantasm of
the cat; and, during this period, there came back into my spirit a
half-sentiment that seemed, but was not, remorse. I went so far as to regret
the loss of the animal, and to look about me, among the vile haunts which I now
habitually frequented, for another pet of the same species, and of somewhat
similar appearance, with which to supply its place.
One
night as I sat, half stupefied, in a den of more than infamy, my attention was
suddenly drawn to some black object, reposing upon the head of one of the
immense hogsheads of Gin, or of Rum, which constituted the chief furniture of
the apartment. I had been looking steadily at the top of this hogshead for some
minutes, and what now caused me surprise was the fact that I had not sooner
perceived the object thereupon. I approached it, and touched it with my hand.
It was a black cat -a very large one -fully as large as Pluto, and closely resembling
him in every respect but one. Pluto had not a white hair upon any portion of
his body; but this cat had a large, although indefinite splotch of white,
covering nearly the whole region of the breast.
Upon my
touching him, he immediately arose, purred loudly, rubbed against my hand, and
appeared delighted with my notice. This, then, was the very creature of which I
was in search. I at once offered to purchase it of the landlord; but this
person made no claim to it -knew nothing of it -had never seen it before.
I
continued my caresses, and, when I prepared to go home, the animal evinced a
disposition to accompany me. I permitted it to do so; occasionally stooping and
patting it as I proceeded. When it reached the house it domesticated itself at
once, and became immediately a great favorite with my
wife.
For my
own part, I soon found a dislike to it arising within me. This was just the
reverse of what I had anticipated; but I know not how or why it was -its
evident fondness for myself rather disgusted and annoyed. By slow degrees,
these feelings of disgust and annoyance rose into the bitterness of hatred. I
avoided the creature; a certain sense of shame, and the remembrance of my
former deed of cruelty, preventing me from physically abusing it. I did not,
for some weeks, strike, or otherwise violently ill use it; but gradually -very
gradually -I came to look upon it with unutterable loathing, and to flee
silently from its odious presence, as from the breath of a pestilence.
What
added, no doubt, to my hatred of the beast, was the discovery, on the morning
after I brought it home, that, like Pluto, it also had been deprived of one of
its eyes. This circumstance, however, only endeared it to my wife, who, as I
have already said, possessed, in a high degree, that humanity of feeling which
had once been my distinguishing trait, and the source of many of my simplest
and purest pleasures.
With my
aversion to this cat, however, its partiality for myself seemed to increase. It
followed my footsteps with a pertinacity which it would be difficult to make
the reader comprehend. Whenever I sat, it would crouch beneath my chair, or
spring upon my knees, covering me with its loathsome caresses. If I arose to
walk it would get between my feet and thus nearly throw me down, or, fastening
its long and sharp claws in my dress, clamber, in this manner, to my breast. At
such times, although I longed to destroy it with a blow, I was yet withheld
from so doing, partly it at by a memory of my former crime, but chiefly -let me
confess it at once -by absolute dread of the beast.
This
dread was not exactly a dread of physical evil-and yet I should be at a loss
how otherwise to define it. I am almost ashamed to own -yes, even in this
felon's cell, I am almost ashamed to own -that the terror and horror with which
the animal inspired me, had been heightened by one of the merest chimaeras it
would be possible to conceive. My wife had called my attention, more than once,
to the character of the mark of white hair, of which I have spoken, and which
constituted the sole visible difference between the strange beast and the one I
had y si destroyed. The reader will remember that
this mark, although large, had been originally very indefinite; but, by slow
degrees -degrees nearly imperceptible, and which for a long time my Reason
struggled to reject as fanciful -it had, at length, assumed a rigorous
distinctness of outline. It was now the representation of an object that I
shudder to name -and for this, above all, I loathed, and dreaded, and would
have rid myself of the monster had I dared -it was now, I say, the image of a
hideous -of a ghastly thing -of the GALLOWS! -oh, mournful and terrible engine
of Horror and of Crime -of Agony and of Death!
And now
was I indeed wretched beyond the wretchedness of mere Humanity. And a brute
beast -whose fellow I had contemptuously destroyed -a brute beast to work out
for me -for me a man, fashioned in the image of the High God -so much of
insufferable wo! Alas! neither by day nor by night
knew I the blessing of Rest any more! During the former the creature left me no
moment alone; and, in the latter, I started, hourly, from dreams of unutterable
fear, to find the hot breath of the thing upon my face, and its vast weight -an
incarnate Night-Mare that I had no power to shake off -incumbent eternally upon
my heart!
Beneath
the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble remnant of the good within
me succumbed. Evil thoughts became my sole intimates -the darkest and most evil
of thoughts. The moodiness of my usual temper increased to hatred of all things
and of all mankind; while, from the sudden, frequent, and ungovernable
outbursts of a fury to which I now blindly abandoned myself, my uncomplaining
wife, alas! was the most usual and the most patient of sufferers.
One day
she accompanied me, upon some household errand, into the cellar of the old
building which our poverty compelled us to inhabit. The cat followed me down
the steep stairs, and, nearly throwing me headlong, exasperated me to madness.
Uplifting an axe, and forgetting, in my wrath, the childish dread which had
hitherto stayed my hand, I aimed a blow at the animal which, of course, would
have proved instantly fatal had it descended as I wished. But this blow was
arrested by the hand of my wife. Goaded, by the interference, into a rage more
than demoniacal, I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her
brain. She fell dead upon the spot, without a groan.
This
hideous murder accomplished, I set myself forthwith, and with entire
deliberation, to the task of concealing the body. I knew that I could not
remove it from the house, either by day or by night, without the risk of being
observed by the neighbors. Many projects entered my
mind. At one period I thought of cutting the corpse into minute fragments, and
destroying them by fire. At another, I resolved to dig a grave for it in the
floor of the cellar. Again, I deliberated about casting it in the well in the
yard -about packing it in a box, as if merchandize, with the usual
arrangements, and so getting a porter to take it from the house. Finally I hit
upon what I considered a far better expedient than either of these. I
determined to wall it up in the cellar -as the monks of the middle ages are
recorded to have walled up their victims.
For a
purpose such as this the cellar was well adapted. Its walls were loosely
constructed, and had lately been plastered throughout with a rough plaster,
which the dampness of the atmosphere had prevented from hardening. Moreover, in
one of the walls was a projection, caused by a false chimney, or fireplace,
that had been filled up, and made to resemble the rest of the cellar. I made no
doubt that I could readily displace the at this point, insert the corpse, and
wall the whole up as before, so that no eye could detect anything suspicious.
And in
this calculation I was not deceived. By means of a crow-bar I easily dislodged
the bricks, and, having carefully deposited the body against the inner wall, I
propped it in that position, while, with little trouble, I re-laid the whole
structure as it originally stood. Having procured mortar, sand, and hair, with
every possible precaution, I prepared a plaster could not every poss be distinguished from the old, and with this I very
carefully went over the new brick-work. When I had finished, I felt satisfied
that all was right. The wall did not present the slightest appearance of having
been disturbed. The rubbish on the floor was picked up with the minutest care. I looked around triumphantly, and said to
myself -"Here at least, then, my labor has not
been in vain."
My next
step was to look for the beast which had been the cause of so much
wretchedness; for I had, at length, firmly resolved to put it to death. Had I been
able to meet with it, at the moment, there could have been no doubt of its
fate; but it appeared that the crafty animal had been alarmed at the violence
of my previous anger, and forebore to present itself
in my present mood. It is impossible to describe, or to imagine, the deep, the
blissful sense of relief which the absence of the detested creature occasioned
in my bosom. It did not make its appearance during the night -and thus for one
night at least, since its introduction into the house, I soundly and tranquilly
slept; aye, slept even with the burden of murder upon my soul!
The
second and the third day passed, and still my tormentor came not. Once again I
breathed as a free-man. The monster, in terror, had fled the premises forever!
I should behold it no more! My happiness was supreme! The guilt of my dark deed
disturbed me but little. Some few inquiries had been made, but these had been
readily answered. Even a search had been instituted -but of course nothing was
to be discovered. I looked upon my future felicity as secured.
Upon the
fourth day of the assassination, a party of the police came, very unexpectedly,
into the house, and proceeded again to make rigorous investigation of the
premises. Secure, however, in the inscrutability of my place of concealment, I
felt no embarrassment whatever. The officers bade me accompany them in their
search. They left no nook or corner unexplored. At length, for the third or
fourth time, they descended into the cellar. I quivered not in a muscle. My
heart beat calmly as that of one who slumbers in innocence. I walked the cellar
from end to end. I folded my arms upon my bosom, and roamed easily to and fro.
The police were thoroughly satisfied and prepared to depart. The glee at my
heart was too strong to be restrained. I burned to say if but one word, by way
of triumph, and to render doubly sure their assurance of my guiltlessness.
"Gentlemen,"
I said at last, as the party ascended the steps, "I delight to have
allayed your suspicions. I wish you all health, and a little more courtesy. By
the bye, gentlemen, this -this is a very well constructed house." (In the
rabid desire to say something easily, I scarcely knew what I uttered at all.)
-"I may say an excellently well constructed house. These walls -are you
going, gentlemen? -these walls are solidly put together"; and here,
through the mere phrenzy of bravado, I rapped
heavily, with a cane which I held in my hand, upon that very portion of the
brick-work behind which stood the corpse of the wife of my bosom.
But may
God shield and deliver me from the fangs of the Arch-Fiend! No sooner had the
reverberation of my blows sunk into silence than I was answered by a voice from
within the tomb! -by a cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a
child, and then quickly swelling into one long, loud, and continuous scream,
utterly anomalous and inhuman -a howl -a wailing shriek, half of horror and
half of triumph, such as might have arisen only out of hell, conjointly from
the throats of the damned in their agony and of the demons that exult in the
damnation.
Of my
own thoughts it is folly to speak. Swooning, I staggered to the opposite wall.
For one instant the party upon the stairs remained motionless, through
extremity of terror and of awe. In the next, a dozen stout arms were tolling at
the wall. It fell bodily. The corpse, already greatly decayed and clotted with
gore, stood erect before the eyes of the spectators. Upon its head, with red
extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had
seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the
hangman. I had walled the monster up within the tomb!