The Tomb

psychologically sensitive few, which lie outside its common experience. Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal, that all things reappear as they do only by virtue of the delicate individual physical and mental media through which we are made conscious of them. But the prosaic materialism of the majority condemns

his madness. The flashes of supersight which penetrate the common veil of obvious empiricism, so I should probably say right here, Chuck, that it.

near my ancestral home. I do not think that what I read in these books or saw in these fields and groves was exactly what other boys read and saw there. But of this I must say little, since detailed speech would but confirm those cruel slanders upon my intellect, which I sometimes overhear from the whispers of the stealthy attendants around me. It is sufficient for me to relate events without analyzing causes. I have said that I dwelt apart from the visible world, but I have not said that

I dwelt alone. This no human creature may do for lacking the fellowship of the living, he inevitably draws upon the companionship of the things that are not or are no longer living. Close by my home there lies a singular wooded hollow, in.

I will tell only of the lone tomb in the darkest of the hillside thickets, the deserted tomb of the Hides, an old and exalted family whose last direct ascendant had been laid within the black recesses many decades before my birth.

chains and padlocks. According to a gruesome fashion of a half a century ago, the abode of the race whose scions are inurned had once crowned the declivity which holds the tomb, but had long since fallen victims to the flames which sprang up from a disastrous stroke of lightning

of the midnight storm which destroyed this gloomy mansion. The older inhabitants of the region sometimes speak and hushed and uneasy voices alluding to what they call divine wrath, in a manner that, in later years vaguely increased the always strong fascination which I felt for the forest darkened sepulcher. One man only had perished in the fire when the last of the hides was buried. In this place of

shade and stillness. The sad urnful of ashes had come from a distant land to which the family had repaired. When the mansion burned down. No one remains to lay flowers before the granite portal, and few care to brave the depressing shadows which seem to linger strangely about the water worn stone. I shall never forget the afternoon when I first stumbled upon the half hidden House of the Dead.

It was in midsummer, when the alchemy of nature transmutes the Sylvan landscape to one vivid and almost homogeneous mass of green. When the senses are well nigh intoxicated with the surging seas of moist verdure and the subtly indefinable odors of the soil and the vegetation in such surroundings, the mind loses its perspective. Time and space become trivial and unreal, and echoes of a forgotten, prehistoric pass beat

insistently upon the enthralled consciousness. All day I had been wandering through the mystic groves of the Hollow, thinking thoughts I need not discuss, and conversing with things I need not name. In years a child of ten, I had seen and heard many wonders unknown to the throng, and was oddly aged in certain respects. When, upon forcing my way between two savage clumps of briars, I suddenly encountered the entrance of the vault. I had no knowledge of

what I had discovered. The dark blocks of granite, the door so curiously ajar, and the funeral carvings above the arch aroused in me. No associations of mournful or terrible character of graves and tombs. I knew and imagined much, but had, on account of my peculiar temperament, been kept

from all personal contact with churchyards and cemeteries. The strange stone house on the Woodland slope was to me only a source of interest and speculation, and its cold, damp interior into which I vainly peered through the aperture so tantalizingly left, contained for me no hint of death or decay. But in that instant of curiosity was borne the madly unreasoning desire which has brought me to this hell of confinement.

Spurred on by a voice which must have come from the hideous soul of the forest, I resolved to enter the beckoning gloom in spite of the ponderous change which barred my passage in the waning light of day, I alternately rattled the rusty impediments with a view to throwing wide the stone door, an essay to squeeze my slight form through the space already provided. But neither plan met

with success. At first curious, I was not frantic, and when in the thickening twilight I returned to my home, I had sworn to the hundred gods of the grove that at any cost I would someday force an entrance to the black, chilly depths that seemed calling out to me. The physician with the iron gray beard who comes each day to my room once told a visitor that this decision marked the beginnings of a pitiful monomania. But I will leave final judgment to my readers when they shall have learnt all.

My rather original ideas regarding life and death had caused me to associate the cold clay with the breathing body in a vague fashion, and I felt that the sinister family of the burned down mansion was in some way represented within the stone space I sought to explore. Mumbled tales of the weird rights and godless revels of bygone years in the ancient hall gave to me a new and potent interest in the tomb, before whose doors I would sit for long hours at a time each day.

Once I thrust a candle within the nearly closed entrance, but could see nothing save a flight of damp stone steps leading downward. The odor of the place repelled yet bewitched me. I felt I had known it before, in a past remote beyond all recollection, beyond even my tendency of the body I now possess. The year after I first beheld the tomb, I stumbled upon a worm eaten translation of Plutarch's lives in the book filled attic of

my home. Reading the Life of Theseus, I was much impressed by that passage telling of the great stone beneath which the boyish hero was to find his tokens of destiny whenever he should become old enough to lift its enormous weight. This legend had the effect of dispelling my keenest impatience to enter the vault, for it made me feel that the time was not yet ripe. Later, I told myself I should grow to a strength and ingenuity which might enable me to unfasten the heavily chained door

with ease. But until till then, I would do better by conforming to what seemed the will of fate. Accordingly, my watches by the dank portal became less persistent, and much of my time was spent in other, though equally strange pursuits. I would sometimes rise very quietly in the night, stealing out to walk in those churchyards and places of burial from which I had been kept by my parents. What I did there I may not say, for I am not now sure of the reality of certain things.

But I know that on the day after such a nocturnal ramble I would often astonish those about me with my knowledge of topics almost forgotten.

to powder. In a moment of childish imagination, I vowed not only that the undertaker, Goodman Simpson, had stolen the silver buckled shoes, silken hose, and satin small clothes of the deceased before burial, but that the Squire himself not fully inanimate, had turned twice in his mound covered coffin on the day of internment, So what's going on here? So basically, the kid is resolved, like theseus, that his

destiny still awaits him. He's not ready for it yet, so instead he's kind of going around, hanging around churchyard's burial places, and he's coming back the next day with weird knowledge, Chuck like knowledge. No living human should.

slimy stone steps into the dark. I now formed the habit of listening very intently at the slightly open portal, choosing my favorite hours of midnight stillness for the odd vigil. By the time I came of age, I had made a small clearing in the thicket before the mold stained facade of the hillside, allowing the surrounding vegetation to encircle and overhang the space like the walls and roof of

Sylvan Bower. This bower was my temple Josh, the fastened door my shrine, and here I would lie outstretched on the mossy ground, thinking strange thoughts and dreaming of strange dreams. The night of the First Revelation was a sultry one. I must have fallen asleep from fatigue, for it was with a distinct sense of awakening that I heard the voices of those tones and accents. I hesitate to speak

of their quality. I will not speak, but I may say that they presented certain uncanny differences in vocabulary, pronunciation, of mode, and utterance. Every shade of the New England dialect, from the uncouth syllables of the Puritan colonists to the precise rhetoric of fifty years ago, seemed represented in that shadowy colloquy, though it was only later that I noticed the fact. At the time, indeed, my attention was distracted from this matter by another phenomenon, a phenomenon so fleeting

that I could not take oath upon its reality. I barely fancied that as I awoke, a light had been hurriedly extinguished within the sunken sepulcher. I do not think I was either astounded or panic stricken, but I know that I was greatly and permanently changed. That night, upon returning home, I went with much directness to a rotting chest in the attic, wherein I found the key, which next day unlocked with ease the barrier I had so

long stormed in vain. The dude has a key in his attic to this tomb, and he went directly to it.

at home in the musty charnel house air. Looking about me, I beheld many marble slabs bearing coffins, or the remains of coffins. Some of these were sealed and intact, but others had nearly vanished, leaving the silver handles and plates isolated amidst certain curious heaps of whitish dust. Upon one plate I read the name Sir Jeffrey Hyde, who had come from Sussex in sixteen forty and died here a

few years later. And a conspicuous alcove was one fairly well preserved and untenanted casket, adorned with a single name, which brought to me both a smile and a shudder. An odd impulse caused me to climb upon the broad slab, extinguish my candle, and lie down within the vacant box.

Despite my lifelong seclusion. My former silent tongue waxed voluble with the easy grace of a Chesterfield, with a godless cynicism of a Rochester. I know you get that, Chuck. I displayed a peculiar erudition, utterly unlike the fantastic Monkish lore over which I had poured in my youth, and covered the fly leaves of my books with facile, impromptu epigrams which brought up suggestions of gay prior and the

sprightliest of Augustine wits and rhymsters. One morning at breakfast, I came close to de z by declaiming impalpably licorice accents, an effusion of eighteenth century Bacchanalian mirth, a bit of Georgian playfulness never recorded in a book. So basically what he's saying is he sounds like he's drunk in the mornings, even though he's like a very sober, solitary, kind of a reclusive kid, but he's starting to kind of change into a party boy.

ruined cellar of the mansion that had burned down. Remember that, Oh yeah, that's above the tomb, and in fancy I would picture the structure as it had been in its prime. On one occasion, I startled a villager by leading him confidently to a shallow sub seller, of whose existence I seemed to know, in spite of the fact that it had been unseen and forgotten for many generations. At last

came that which I had long feared. My parents, alarmed at the altered manner and appearance of their only son, commenced to exert over my movements, a kindly espionage which threatened to result in disaster. I had told no one of my visits to the tomb, having guarded my secret purpose with religious zeals since childhood. But now I was forced to exercise care in threading the mazes of the wooded hollow, that I might throw off a possible pursuer.

My key to the vault I kept suspended from a cord about my neck, its presence known only to me. I never carried out of the sepulcher any of the things I came upon whilst within its walls. I like that word, sepulcher. You've got twice, that was my first one.

crevice where the padlocked portal stood. Ajar By what miracle had the watcher thus deluded? I was now convinced that a supernatural agency protected me. Made bold by this heaven since circumstance, I began to resume perfect openness in going to the vault, confident that no one would witness my entrance. For a week, I tasted to the full the joys of that charnal conviviality, which I must not describe. When the thing happened and I was borne away to this accursed abode of sorrow and monotony.

a thing I had always vaguely expected. The mansion, gone for a century, once more reared its stately height to the raptured vision, every window ablaze with a splendor of many candles. Up the long drive rolled the beaches of the Boston gentry, whilst on foot came a numerous assemblage of powdered exquisites from the neighboring mansions. With this throng I mingled, though I knew I belong with the hosts rather than the guests. Inside the hall were music, laughter,

and wine on every hand. Several faces I reckoned eyes, though I should have known them better, had they been shriveled or eaten away by death and decomposition. Amidst a wild and reckless throng. I was the wildest and most abandoned. Gay blasphemy poured in torrents from my lips and in my shocking sallies. I heeded no law of God, man or nature. Suddenly a peal of thunder resonant even above the din of the Swinish revelry clave the very roof,

and laid a hush fear upon the boisterous company. Red tongues of flame and searing gust of heat and gulf the house, and the roisterers struck with terror. The descent of a calamity, which seemed to transcend the bounds of un guided nature, fled shrieking into the night. I alone remained josh riveted to my seat by a groveling fear which I had never felt before. And then a second horror took possession of my soul. Burnt alive, the ashes my body dispersed by the four winds. I might never

lie in the tomb of the hides. Was not my coffin prepared for me? Had I not a right arrest till eternity amongst the descendants of Sir Jeoffrey Hyde, I I would claim my heritage of death, even though my soul would go seeking through the ages for another corporeal tenement to represent it on that vacant slab and the alcove of the vault. Jervis Hide should never share the sad fate of Palarinus.

captors to treat me as gently as they could. A blackened circle on the floor of the ruined cellar told of a violent stroke from the heavens, and from this spot a group of curious villagers with lanterns were prying a small box of antique workmanship, which the thunderbolt had brought to light, ceasing my futile and now objectless writhing. I watched the spectators as they viewed the treasure trove,

and was permitted to share in their discoveries. The box, whose fastenings were broken by the stroke which unearthed it contained many papers and objects of value, but I had eyes for one thing alone. It was the porcelain miniature of a young man in a smartly curled bag wig and bore the initials J H. The face was such that as I gazed, I might as well have been studying my mirror.

pitying smiles. My father, who visits me frequently, declares that at no time did I pass the chained portal, and swears that the rusted padlock had not been touched for fifty years.

lost in the struggle on that night of horrors. The strange things of the past which I learned during the nocturnal meetings with the dead, he dismisses as the fruits of my lifelong and omnivorous browsing amongst the ancient volumes of the family library. Had it not been for my old servant, Hiram. I should have by this time become quite convinced of my madness. But Hiram, loyal to the last, has held faith in me and has done that which impels me to make public at least part of my story.

A week ago he burst open the lock which changed the door of the tomb perpetually Ajar, and descended with a lantern into the murky depths. On a slab in an alcove, he found an old but empty coffin, whose tarnished plate bears the single word jervis. In that coffin and in that vault, they have promised me I shall be buried.