American Gothic: a Creative Exploration

AMERICAN GOTHIC: A CREATIVE EXPLORATION

Thesis

Submitted to

The College of Arts and Sciences of the

UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

The Degree of

Master of Arts in English

Aaron Trevor Goode

UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON

Dayton, Ohio

May 2019

AMERICAN GOTHIC: A CREATIVE EXPLORATION

Name: Goode, Aaron Trevor

APPROVED BY:

______Bryan Bardine, Ph.D. Committee Chair Professor

______Christopher Burnside, MFA Committee Member Professor

______Stephen Wilhoit, PhD. Committee Member Professor

Aaron Trevor Goode

2019

iii

ABSTRACT

AMERICAN GOTHIC: A CREATIVE EXPLORATION

Name: Goode, Aaron Trevor University of Dayton

Advisor: Bryan Bardine

This work endeavors to explore the various movements of American Gothic by presenting an original narrative that represents key facets of each movement. Various authors and subgenres are mentioned throughout via text boxes containing annotative notes. These annotations are intended to enhance reader understanding of the American

Gothic genre by familiarizing them with the stylistic conventions common to key authors and famous works of the genre. The story itself is broken up into seven sections, each distinct with regard to style and content while maintaining a cohesive narrative with a unified plot. As the readers progress through the plot, they will also progress chronologically through the history of American Gothic. from the earliest work of

Charles Brockden Brown up to the Postmodern style of Mark Danielewski.

Dedicated to My Wife

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would first like to thank my advisor, Dr. Bardine, for his openness to this unconventional project, as well as for the opportunity to discuss metal and attend shows with his students. I would also like to thank Mr. Burnside and Dr. Wilhoit for their critical feedback and advice in this undertaking.

I also owe gratitude to the people who read my work and offered their thoughts in a non-official capacity: Rebekah, Chris, Michael, and Jacob. Many thanks.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………....ii

DEDICATION…………………………………………………………………………….v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………………vi

PART I…………………………………………………………………………………….1

PART II……………………………………………………………………………………7

PART III………………………………………………………………………………....14

PART IV…………………………………………………………………………………18

PART V………………………………………………………………………………….24

PART VI…………………………………………………………………………………29

PART VII………………………………………………………………………………...35

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PART I

As I resolve to write this, I fully feel the crushing burden of my choices and actions suffocating me like a body of stones forcing the air from my lungs. My intent is not to justify myself, nor is it to offer any excuses for what I have done. Looking at this white surface, I lay down across it and grimace as my skin begins to shift and writhe over my muscle and bone. There’s something in my skin. With a sharp, rending pain, a rupture near my eye breaks open, and an inky black worm pushes through the wound, wriggling out of my flesh and dropping wetly onto the floor. With a fiendish precision, the worm begins to roll and rub its body against the surface, leaving the dark effusions of its skin as stains on the fabric. As the worm continues to move, I watch as the black stains begin to form words, and the words begin to tell my story…

For Sarah, the Mother of my Child

I never knew the name of the Scotsman; I His obsession with “The only knew him as I will refer to him here. He died Scotsman” reflects the common incorporation of Europe as a long before I came into being, and the memory of source of corruption. Not far removed from the American him had faded from all repositories except the Revolution, the earliest American Gothic, Weiland, by dustiest and most dismissible of records kept in Charles Brockden Brown, is an excellent example of how this the city archives. These records, I found when I popular sentiment was represented in the Gothic of the had coaxed them from the amiable woman whose time. job it was to watch over the largely unremarkable history of this town, contained

neither his origins nor his purposes. I can only assume they were the same lofty and misguided goals that have predestined my own path almost 100 years later.

As an author, my dream was to explore some important branches of the constitution of man, and, as a Gothic author, to demonstrate the pervading corruption and depravity of the human soul. I believe the Scotsman understood this truth. The records, although scantly detailed, indicated some manner of perversion and subversion in his activities that shocked the townsfolk; truly, when he died, and the police were forced to enter his house and retrieve his body, they instead burned the structure to the ground with his body inside rather than allow the press or curious bystanders to see what was within.

The contents of the house were never elaborated on, and neither was the cause of the

Scotsman’s death.

It was this event, the burning of the house The narrator’s obsession with uncovering the nature of and the intentional amnesia regarding its contents, mankind reflects a statement by Brown in the beginning of that drew me to the location. I had been struggling Weiland, which reads “His purpose is neither selfish nor for years to produce a work, a novel, that would temporary, but aims at the illustration of some important engrave my name in the history of Gothic literature branches of the moral constitution of man.” alongside my idols: Poe, Lovecraft, Hawthorne,

James… To this end, I had foregone college, believing the influence of academia would dilute the truth I sought to convey. I had worked only enough to feed myself, often being fired for poor performance or absenteeism. I counted this as a benefit, as surely an occupation would only detract from the attention my masterwork demanded. My family had long ago broken off contact with me, or I with them, out of disappointment and frustration.

All the attempts I had made at securing “The puritan consciousness itself, although waning in this publication for my manuscript were met with period, had establish a profoundly ‘Gothic’ rejection after rejection, on grounds that I imagination of good and evil, and the perilous human grudgingly admitted were justified. The work experience.”- Allan Lloyd Smith was lacking. My ingenious explorations of the miasmic depths of the human soul were at best derivative of my literary ancestors, and at worst a self-aggrandizing sermon more befitting Jonathan Edwards’s pulpit.

While my repeated failures as an author created a sense of inadequacy and insecurity within me, they also served to increase my desperation. In my poor financial and emotional state, I became more obsessed, not less, with crafting my ultimate Gothic work. The fever that possessed me and drove me to this end would not allow me any other occupation. I was convinced in my soul that what I lacked was the appropriately

Gothic setting that would ignite my imagination to new and original peaks of terror and wonder—something truly sublime. I knew that no simple cemetery or decrepit house on a hill would suffice. I needed a scene that went beyond the surface level aesthetics of fear. I also knew that locations that had been the scenes of gruesome crimes would be beneath my aims. Simple murders or suicides were far too commonplace to inspire the level of writing I required. With this conviction, I began the intensive research necessary to uncover a place that had witnessed things sacrilegious, violent, occult in the truest sense.

It was this belief that led me, after months of research in libraries and newspaper archives, to find the fragmented memories of the Scotsman.

The newspapers were painfully vague as to who he was and what he’d done to warrant such a drastic response by the police, but they were very specific as to where his

The importance of setting in all house had stood. With some direction from the forms of Gothic, American and others, cannot be overstated. woman in the city archives, whose services I Commonly accepted as the first Gothic work, Horace Walpoles The had come to rely on, I was able to make my Castle of Otranto was created out of a mental state Walpole induced in way to the exact spot where the house had himself by constructing and curating an architecturally Gothic space and stood. To reach the point described, I had to filling it with “arcane collectibles.” walk just beyond the city limits, where town gave way to fields and farmhouses, and roads became more a means of separating different crops than a means of transportation. After a few hours, I finally found it in a corner of a field, bordered by trees growing through a fence line. Of course, every field had a corner, and most of them were delineated by fences and trees or both. But somehow, whether by infernal impression or my own intense desire to have not walked so far for nothing, I knew this was the site. To my disappointment, the site was marked by an acre of corn, soon to be the object of a late harvest. I cannot entirely credit my intuition, for, as if overtaken by some blight, the corn in this area was withered and stunted, standing in contrast with the healthy stalks and ears just past where the immolated house had stood.

With nothing but my obsession and what small sum I had gathered by selling nearly everything I owned, I approached the farmhouse that seemed most likely to contain the owner of the field. It was a small house; the modesty of it spoke of a family whose pride was in their farm and whose aspirations likely did not extend beyond their property. I remember the disdain I felt for their smallness, their simplicity. I was going to produce a masterwork of literature that would change the way human nature was understood—they were going to produce corn. I had to walk through the cornfield to

reach the house, and that walk allowed me to become quite contemptuous by the time I knocked on the door. After a moment of waiting, I was met by a young man who looked at me suspiciously, standing in his doorway and obstructing the view of two small children, a boy and a girl, who were trying to see the stranger on the porch. His clothing, simple yet clean, reflected his home, and his tanned face reflected the browning cornfield behind me.

Naturally, he was confused and upset by the man appearing from nowhere and demanding to buy a portion of his family’s land for some secret and vaguely threatening motive. He was unimpressed by my attempts to explain to him the history of the spot and why I wanted it; he was already aware of the history. In fact, it was because of this history that his great- grandfather had been able to purchase the land very cheaply at auction. The man was unaware of, and unconcerned with, any details concerning the

Scotsman or the house. He only knew that a wicked man had lived and died on the property where his crops lived and died now. My frustration with his smallness and immovability mounted. I restated my offer more forcefully and was asked to leave. When

I refused and began cursing him for obstructing my work, he resorted to violence and threw me backwards off his porch. With my back in the dirt and my head spinning, I vaguely heard him tell me never to come back and that I would be much worse off if he saw me on his property again.

When I regained my breath, I drew myself up and began the walk back to town, cursing him and his family and plotting as to how I might acquire the land. By this time, the ground where the house had stood had become my obsession, perhaps even more so than the creation of my novel. I still cannot say what fueled my desire; it must have been

something beyond myself. I had never before or since felt the same capacity for hatred that I felt for that innocent man and his family. My passion frightened and excited me. On some level, I felt that this must surely be the proper place to elicit such a strong response from my soul.

The sun set as I walked, and I was guided by the lights of the town in the distance.

The road I walked along crossed over a small creek, and as I stepped onto the bridge I heard a noise from down by the creek. It was a shuffling and splashing distinct from the backdrop of nocturnal noises that had filled my walk until that point. Looking down over the rail, I saw the pitiful form of a man washing himself and drinking form the creek. He squatted on the bank in his rags and did not look up at me, though he must have known I was watching him. As he washed his face and wiped down his filthy clothing, I began to formulate my plan.

PART II

It was a cold and foggy day when the obstinate man and his family finished loading their belongings into the trailer and cast despondent eyes on the land that had once been theirs. The haggard and pale faces, shrunken with hunger and grief told the story of poisoned wells, burned crops, and sleepless nights tormented by an anonymous voice that hurled obscenities at them from inscrutably dark shadows around their home.

Two months of this treatment had destroyed their livelihood and damaged their minds, leaving them destitute and emotionally scarred

Of course, after my initial attempt to buy The narrator’s development of the property honestly had gone so badly, I was a narcissistic sociopathy reflects the same characteristic the natural primary suspect for the ongoing so commonly found in Poe’s works, such as “The Tall-Tale police investigation. I even spent a few nights in Heart” or “The Black Cat.” jail so that the police could ascertain whether I was the one denying the family the wholesome sleep they so desperately needed. I slept very soundly in the cell, watched over by the dutiful sheriff. The desperation of the family assured me that my accomplice had been exceedingly effective in his nocturnal tortures, and the family would not be long in their habitation of the land so vitally important to my masterpiece.

When the stubborn man finally determined to abandon his family’s land and take them far from the area, I was the only interested party at the auction. I purchased the land for pennies on the acre, gouging the man once more for his small-minded refusal of my goodwill. With the land purchased so cheaply, I was able to then sell the majority of the

fields, as well as the house, for a modest sum while keeping only the decaying patch of ground that had first attracted my attention.

Works in this period also With the land finally obtained, I was finally commonly featured a female or romantic element that either able to make use of the plans for the Scotsmen’s served as a factor in the main characters madness, or as a house that I had obtained from the city archive. I tragic victim thereof. Consider “The Fall of the House of had also begun seeing the clerk, whose name was Usher” or “Lenore.” Sarah, after becoming close with her and finding that she might offer me access to documents not generally available to the public. Sarah was so happy to find someone else who seemed to share her passion for local history that she was eager to share anything I required, and we became familiar over long conversations concerning the town and my writing. Our relationship was not purely exploitative, though, as I had found her companionship genuinely enjoyable, and I found

I missed it when I occasionally traveled to surrounding counties in search of more information. Sarah offered me a reprieve from my singular focus on my work that was energizing in a way I had not expected.

It was also nice to have The construction of one’s own home is someone share my excitement as the a key part of the “American Dream” and something that American Gothic construction began on the Scotsman’s, writers have twisted to horrifying effect over the course of the genre’s and soon to be my, home. I had existence. This perversion of a social value is something common to most struggled initially to find a builder who Gothic forms. was willing to abandon the traditional designs and logical construction of typical houses.

The Scotsman’s house defied convention in many subtle ways, requiring excruciatingly close attention to the spacing of joists and studs, the exact angles of room corners and the

slope of the floor. The ceilings had to be installed so as to create a subtle peak in the center of each room, imperceptible to the human eye. The builder I had finally contracted said that the house would not be fit for human habitation, that only the devil himself could stand to live in such a place. The poor man grew increasingly agitated as the work progressed, and he would often complain to me that he had been plagued by nightmares and an intense paranoia since beginning construction. The man said he had been too afraid to return to his home, and that his health was declining. I placated him as best I could, offering to allow him to stay with me until the house was completed. He said he had made other arrangements and seemed reluctant to speak more on the matter. I took great care to keep these details from Sarah, who had indicated some hope of us sharing the house when it was completed.

Although the increasing agitation and irregularity of the builder did concern me, I visited the site daily to find that work was moving very quickly and seemed to be following the plans in even the smallest aspects. In fact, it was ahead of schedule, something I had not anticipated given the very specific requirements placed on the structure. As the house continued to take shape over the summer months, completion was in sight almost one year exactly from the moment I had first stood on the ground. My excitement was uncontainable, and I could think of little else day and night. Only Sarah could distract me for a moment from the house and my upcoming novel to be written therein.

When I received word that the house was completed, I went with Sarah early the next morning to inspect the finished product. We arrived just after dawn to find the house situated perfectly in the corner of the field, and the builder’s supplies and tools gone.

Truly, it looked as though the house had stood there for 100 years, not since the night before. With some confusion, we approached the small front porch, still looking around for signs to indicate the recent construction, but none were found. Even the railing had a layer of dust that seemingly could not have gathered over night, and the boards looked worn as though by years of use. Sarah began to speak as we stepped onto the porch, but she stopped short. I still do not know what it was she thought, or what stopped her from voicing it.

The heavy, dark door of the house was closed. The hinges creaked as I pushed it open, although they should have been new. The house seemed to sigh as the door opened, exhaling a musty odor that reeked of decay and human filth. Confused at this, I motioned for Sarah to remain outside while I went in to investigate the smell. This was the altruistic motivation for having her wait outside. The other reason was that I wanted to first experience the house alone before allowing anyone else inside.

Looking around, I saw everything just as I had envisioned it. The floor seemed to slope away from me as I stepped inside, as did the ceiling, creating the effect of a room that extended beyond the boundaries set by the walls. I struggled to walk across the floor at first, always feeling as though at any moment it would drop me into some nether realm beneath the house. Each step that connected with board rather than abyss was a welcome surprise, and my confidence in movement built gradually as I continued. The walls met at angles approximating 90 degrees, but I knew from the way they strained my eyes and mind that they were all slightly off, varying according to the plans set out by the

Scotsman a century before. I nearly expected to find him inhabiting the space as if he had never gone.

The wood floors were stained a dark color The heightened awareness of minute details of the home that created an illusion of depth within each board stems from the extreme sensitivity of the narrator of that added to the endless quality of the room. The “The Tell-Tale Heart” to similar sensory inputs that grain of each board seemed almost to swirl and ultimately led to his committing murder. interact with the boards adjoining it, and it was difficult to tell where one stopped and another began. Looking from the living room into the small kitchen, it seemed as though I could walk for days and never reach it. However,

I reached the kitchen in a few steps and found the stench diminished. The kitchen had only the barest essentials: a wash basin and wood stove with a cook top. No tables or chairs were present, for I had read that the Scotsman’s house was devoid of such normal, trivial amenities.

Returning to the living room, I turned to the stairway, which, per the Scotsman’s specifications, spiraled out of sight almost immediately, preventing a line of sight to the upstairs. Walking up the stairs was as disorienting as the rest of the house. Each step seemed to slope away from me at varying pitches, making me unsure of whether my next step would carry me up the stairs or send me tumbling back down. The steps were hard to identify, being made of the same wood with the same swirling grain that made them seem more like a protrusion of the downstairs flooring than a separate structure.

Despite the difficulty, I managed to reach the top of the stairs and found, just as I had hoped, that there were only two rooms. One was a small bedroom that, upon first inspection, seemed to carry less of the illusionary quality of the rest of the house. A small cot placed against the inside wall was the only object within the room, and the cot looked as though it had recently been slept in. I realize now that it was likely the builder who had

been staying in the room, but that explanation did not come to me until much later, so consumed was I with the house. So, although I found the state of the cot puzzling, I was too distracted to reflect long on it. The stench upstairs was unbearable, and I used my shirt to cover my nose as best I could. The door to the only other room on that level was closed tightly, and I thought at first that it must be locked. However, with much force I was able to gain entry to the room, and I promptly turned back to the hall and vomited.

The room was just as it should have been: circular, with paneling and floorboards that seemed to spiral into a central point beneath the dark, thick glass of the single skylight. The room had no windows or opening other than the door, which had been closed so tightly as to seal the room. Of course, the room hadn’t been sealed so well as to prevent the escape of the odor which, I had just seen, arose from the horror lying on the floor in the center of the room, beneath the dark panes of the skylight. As I began to leave, I felt a rustling, almost as if a breeze had blown past me and into the house. As I’ve mentioned, the room was unventilated, so I attributed it to pressurized gases produced by the decaying matter within.

When I had composed myself and returned to Sarah, she was determined to see for herself what was inside. I was forced to restrain her and, after she had resigned herself to never seeing what had so shaken me, we returned to town and contacted the sheriff.

When he and his men contacted us after the scene had been inspected, we were told it was a suicide, though unlike any the officers had ever seen. The builder had sealed himself in the upper room and lay down in the center of the floor before disemboweling himself with his pocket knife. He had made the abdominal incision, and then he had cut his own throat, bleeding out and choking to death simultaneously. The coroner had

apparently been unable to identify a time of death because, although the man had contacted me just the night before to say the house had been completed, his body seemed as if it had deteriorated far more than was to be expected for someone who had been dead only a night.

Of course, the sheriff was suspicious of me, as I had been implicated in the unpleasantness with the family who had owned the land prior, but Sarah provided me with an alibi and the nature and angle of the crude slashes across the man’s abdomen indicated to the coroner that they had been self-inflicted. What was obviously the most baffling aspect of the death being that he chose to first slice open his stomach, then to cut his throat. It was as though he had undergone a self-administered Cesarean section. This ensured that he would have suffered immeasurably before finally ending his life.

Sarah was understandably devastated by this and would refuse to set foot in the house for weeks. In that time, I went ahead and moved my few possessions in and began writing.

PART III

I had been so obsessed with obtaining the The narrator’s obsession with land and rebuilding the Scotsman’s dwelling for the architecture of the home reflects Lovecraft’s so long that I had nearly forgotten the higher preoccupation with strange geometry as a means of purpose that had driven me to such extremes. In accessing other-dimensional beings. fact, when the police had finally taken care of their investigation into the builder’s suicide and the extensive cleanup had been completed, I spent a great deal of time simply sitting in the room where the tragedy had occurred, looking at the faint, bloody outline on the floor. I remember marveling at how the moonlight shone so peculiarly in that room, dispersed as it was through that dark glass. The light seemed to sift through the glass in part, allowing only enough illumination to move in the room without knocking into things. The light seemed to not shine into the room so much as it dripped. It was as though the glass made the light to slip and slide over the surfaces, which only added to the optical illusions produced by the singular woods and stains used. I realize now that I had never asked where that glass was obtained; I had simply taken for granted that the builder would complete the house to the required specifications.

That small mystery, however, was nearly forgotten as I admired the way the diffused light made the spiraling floorboards seem to spin endlessly into some unknown center beneath that bloodstain. If there had been a vortex in the center of the floor that swirled the light about before draining it into oblivion, I might have better understood

why the floor looked as it did. The walls were of a wood paneling that was stained the same dark shade as the floor which made it difficult to see where the floor ended and the wall began. It created the feeling of being swallowed by some sort of void. At the center of the void was the bloodstain.

I brought my desk into the room, naturally assuming that the violence that had occurred within would only add to my dismal reverie and inspire even greater extremes of Gothic terror and wonder. The realization that I had upon sitting at the desk to begin writing was a devastating one: I had no such inspiration. In my obsession with the house,

I had neglected to complete any sort of planning or drafting over the past year, trusting instead that the innate properties of the house would provide all of the impetus required to produce my novel. But then, with the blank page in front of me and the oppressive atmosphere of the house crushing my optimism, I realized that I had nothing to say.

I paced the room frantically, first walking back and forth, then walking in shrinking and expanding circles matching the pattern of the floor. I began to write three times, and three times I tore the wasted sheet into pieces and burned them. My masterwork required perfection. The house required perfection. I realized then that my true fear had become to write a work that was unworthy of the setting in which it was born. I could not bear the thought of the past year’s effort and toil having been for nothing, and I went out to sit on the porch and contemplate my project. As I sat dejectedly on the stoop, a heavy rain began to fall. The quiet roar of the deluge drowned out nearly all sound, and the dark clouds obscured a sun that had already nearly set. I sat in the darkness, listening to the rain until I slowly became aware of footsteps drawing closer, and smelled the stench of body odor and alcohol.

I looked up to see the means by which I had managed to drive the honest farmer from his ancestral home. With halting steps, the tramp whose aid had allowed me to convince the suspicious sheriff that I was uninvolved in the family’s misfortunes made his way toward the house. He had come back per the terms of our agreement, to claim the payment that I had promised him upon the obtainment of the land and completion of the house. Standing in the driving rain with seemingly no regard for his health or his appearance, the tramp made for a pitiful, yet resolute, figure. He was obviously very drunk and demanding that I pay him immediately the sum he had been promised.

Unfortunately, in my eagerness to have the house completed as quickly and accurately as possible, I had spent the tramp’s portion of the proceeds of the land sale and had nothing to give him. I told him to come back when he was sober and then we could work out an arrangement. In an attempt to placate him, I offered him half of the revenue from the sales of the book I would write.

Naturally, he was neither satisfied by that promise, nor was he in a condition to be reasoned with. He came closer, getting face to face with me and spouting foul breath and obscenities in my face. I pushed him to the ground and told him to leave and never come back. He clumsily rose to his feet, slipping and falling again in the mud before finally managing to stand. The tramp shouted at me not to lay another finger on him, then he dropped his voice and threatened to go to the police. I thought I had misheard him at first; his voice was nearly eclipsed by the rain. He then stepped closer and reiterated his threat.

I remember the feeling of my blood turning to ice, and I saw everything I had spent a year acquiring disappear from existence in a moment— all for the sake of a filthy,

alcoholic tramp with no aspirations, no worth to speak of. In that moment, I knew I could not allow the selfishness of this individual to hinder my work.

So, I invited him inside to dry off and discuss a new arrangement. He continued to argue, demanding immediate compensation, but the idea of getting out of the rain was appealing enough to penetrate his anger and stupor. He took a series of faltering steps onto the porch, falling back into the mud once before successfully gaining the front door.

As I have described, the house was not easy to negotiate for even the clearest-minded person, and this drunken tramp almost immediately fell to the floor. He rolled onto his side, cursing me and the floor, and then seemed to pass out. I nudged him with my shoe, reluctant to touch the disgusting creature unconscious before me. When he was unresponsive, I stood over him, pondering what to do about him. I looked to the kitchen, and my eyes fell on a knife block I had no recollection of owning.

It was as if time slowed, each rain-drop sounding as a cannon fired against the roof and the windows. I remember feeling a rustling or a draft, likely because the idiot drunkard had not closed the front door. I walked back toward the tramp asleep on the living room floor, unsure of my exact intentions. I first closed the door, though that did not stop the almost whisper I heard and felt moving softly around me. As I began going through motions that seemed scarcely of my own accord, my thoughts were first of Sarah, then of my writing, and then finally of the house. Only the house, my most treasured possession, could conceal my crime. I remember speaking to the house as I worked, apologizing for the mess and promising to scrub the odd floorboards when I was finished.

PART IV

Strangely, it was after the incident with the tramp that I felt at peace with my novel. I was convinced, by myself or something The narrator’s behavior toward beyond myself, that I had created an appropriate the body of the tramp here reflects William Faulkner’s “A setting for writing. All that I had lacked was an Rose for Emily.” By doing this, the narrator models the actions appropriate focal point. To create my muse, I found of Miss Emily when she carefully arranged a corpse in the tramp was as helpful in death as he had been in her bed and slept next to it. life. I arranged him in the upper room, just as I had found the builder. With the conduit of my creativity constructed, I turned my desk to face the spectacle I had created. As I spent long, nocturnal hours gazing over my work, observing the intriguing ways the moonlight bathed the desiccated corpse of the tramp, I began to write what I was certain would be my masterpiece. I felt I had gained new insight into the depravity of mankind, the hideousness and corruption, that I had not known before.

This revelation provided the fuel that kept me going on little food and water for three weeks of intensive writing. I scarcely slept, often choosing to write clear through the night and into the morning before napping for a few hours. I was inspired to complete my work in a way that defied logical explanation. The words that came to me during that period I can barely remember now. I recall an almost automatic quality to the writing; the words going onto the page in combinations and orders that barely registered in my mind before I would rush onto the next line. It was as though the words were given to me and I had only to record them.

Through it all, I felt the continuous whispering in the house. The rustle that I had mistaken for ventilation initially had grown into an undeniable presence in the house. I felt it continuously. The sound seemed to come from the boards, from the strangely angled corners of the room, or from points always just out of sight. I constantly felt as though I might turn a corner to find an unknown occupant staring back at me. Many times, I felt as if I were on the verge of understanding the words that seemed to endlessly echo in my ears, but I would always lose my grip and think of the writing, or of Sarah. It was when I thought of Sarah that I felt the thick essence of the house dissipate slightly, but these moments were short-lived as the insistence of the whispers and the vitality of my work demanded that I return to the page.

In that time, I allowed what little contact I had with the world to fall away, primarily by not contacting Sarah. We had fought for the first time when she had refused to step foot inside the house following the builder’s suicide. When I had made clear to her that I still fully intended to live and work in the house, she had stopped contacting me, and I her. While I missed her terribly, I found those feelings easily suppressed while

I was writing. The pressure I felt emanating from the house seemed to make those feelings harder to experience. It was only when I occasionally had to leave the house for supplies and research that I felt the pang of her absence.

It was on one of these small sojourns that I noticed the distance other people in the town kept from me. Their faces subtly contorted as they would take care to give me space on the sidewalk. I knew that I had neglected my hygiene in the frenzy of writing that had defined my existence for weeks, but it seemed an extreme response. I once saw a mother put her arms around her children and guide them away from me as I approached

them. I pitied their smallness, their inability to understand or appreciate the genius whose work would define their own existences to them. Truly, these responses perplexed me, and it was only when I inadvertently found myself next to Sarah in the library that I found out what the true issue was. She wrinkled her nose before she even saw me and looked shocked upon turning around. Sarah told me that I “smelled like death,” and that I had no decency to go out in public reeking as I did. Her expression of pity, mixed with anger, still haunts me. She offered to bring me to her house to bathe and wash my clothes, but I could not bear to be gone from my work any longer, even to spend time in her dear company.

Of course, it was then that I realized I had grown numb to the stench of the tramps rapidly deteriorating form. My clothing, and even my skin, had absorbed the odor and carried the smell of decay and rot wherever I went. I apologized profusely to Sarah and quickly left the library. The shame I felt burning The narrator is here experiencing the same issue my face stung as I hurried back to the house, that nearly exposed Emily. The stench of death attracts fear and keeping a great distance between myself and the curiosity from the people of the small town in which these others on the street. I do not believe that I was characters live. frantic then, but I had determined that my writing was to a point now that I could likely continue without the use of my muse. Perhaps it was the distance from the house and the contact with Sarah that had afforded me the clarity of thought to have that realization.

Regardless, disposing of the body would be necessary if I was to pass unnoticed in the town, and absolutely vital if I were ever to reconnect with Sarah. With these things in mind, I returned to the house with a singular purpose, as well as a newly purchased shovel and lye soap.

To my horror, I arrived to find the door wide open. The house seemed to gape at me, either laughing at my intentions or aghast at some unknown sin. Strangely, I remember that there were no indications in the dirt around the house of any footprints or tracks. Leaving the lye soap outside and wielding the shovel in front of me, I gingerly stepped onto the porch and peered into the doorway. At that moment, I was convinced that I had been found out, and that the sheriff must have been upstairs completely misunderstanding the necessity of what I had done and what I still needed to do. I had a vision of my life ending, as I would be dragged away in chains and never allowed to complete my work. In hindsight, I wish fervently that had been the case. I struggled to maintain any sort of composure as I tread carefully into the living room and side-stepped to observe the kitchen, which was empty.

Somehow, I had known there would be no one downstairs. Anyone who would

The fresh awareness the have ventured into the house with the intent to narrator has concerning the stench in the house reflects the investigate would have gone upstairs immediately. response of the police that opened Ms. Emily’s home after I had just become freshly aware of the stench of her death, as well as that of the unfortunate family attempting to death pervading the house, and it became many deliver a weeks-old corpse to its final resting place in As I Lay times more potent as I began my ascent up the Dying. stairway. Once again, I was forced to cover my nose and mouth in order to breath without gagging, but it was a largely ineffective measure. As I began moving up the steps, I did note that the house was silent. There was no rustling or whispering, which was something that I had not experienced in all my time in the house. Still brandishing the shovel, I mounted the top of the stairs and looked toward the room.

With little surprise, but with ever-increasing fear, I saw the door to the room was open, and only darkness beyond. I listened intently and still heard nothing. The silence was quickly becoming the object of my fear even more so than the possibility of my arrest. I took the first step, and the second, and so on until I had my back to the wall next to the doorway. I tried to steady my breathing as I prepared to peek around the corner.

Finding no resolve to do so, I simply gasped for air as I rapidly turned into the room with shovel held aloft, ready to come down on the head of any intruder.

To my surprise, and my relief, I found the room was empty. There was no sheriff, there was no thief, no nosy passerby. I set the shovel down against the wall and walked to my desk, collapsing into my chair. I crossed my arms on the desk and rested my head there a while before looking up. It was when I finally looked up that my relief turned to a more exquisite terror than any I had previously felt. I believe I gasped audibly, but I cannot be sure.

The tramp’s body, my muse, was gone from the center of the room. There was not even the indication of a bloodstain or the mold that outlined his position. I am still not sure whether, in my hysteria, I was more upset at the disappearance of the corpse or the loss of the muse I had determined not long before to dispose of myself. I desperately tried to remember whether it had been there when I walked into the room. I realized that I had been so intent on finding a living person that I had neglected to ascertain whether the subject of my work was intact. I remember looking frantically about the room, as if the barren walls might somehow be concealing him, but of course I found nothing. I stumbled into the hallway, numb with fear, and walked unsteadily to the stairs.

Whether I slipped or mistook a step I still don’t know, but I recall distinctly the feeling of weightlessness as I fell to the bottom of the stairs. It was as if I had been, not pushed, but rather swept up and then dashed to floor of the living room. My head was struck violently against the floor and I lost consciousness for a length of time that is still difficult to quantify. I know that it was dark when I fell, and dark when I awoke with hard floorboards beneath me and a painful swelling on the back of my skull. Curiously, I felt exceptionally clear-headed. Even with the pain, I felt a singularity of purpose and being. I knew that I must return to the upstairs room, and that I must continue my writing. I felt a breeze blow over me, and I shut the front door— something I had neglected to do in my earlier panic.

PART V

When I stood outside the door to the room, I realized I had not closed it.

However, the door was shut tightly, almost defiantly. It was as it had been when I had discovered the builder’s body. I threw myself into the door repeatedly, finally managing to force it open, sending myself stumbling into the room in the process. Strangely, the first I became aware of was that the stench had returned, even more overwhelming than it had been before. Then I felt my arm and shoulder connect with something soft, something standing. I attempted to throw my weight to the side to avoid running bodily into the figure, and I fell to the floor alongside it. I looked up into the face gazing disinterestedly down at me and screamed.

It was, or had been, the face of the tramp. I knew it well, for I had watched it rot in front of my writing desk for weeks. I couldn’t comprehend what I saw as my eyes raced from the jagged gash across his belly that spilled his entrails down to his knees to the maggots that would become visible for a moment before disappearing again into the moldering flesh. I found I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, could barely think. I could see the exposed bone of his ribs and forearms The graphic detail included here marks a shift toward a glisten beneath the skylight. My eyes traced a path modern style that relies on the inclusion of such detail to up the filthy shirt to the roughly cut throat which create a sense of disgust to supplement pre-existing feelings had long ago stopped bleeding but now offered a of dread. Consider Stephen King and Clive Barker for place for more maggots to display their pale, examples of such gratuitous description.

writhing bodies. I still cannot remember what the eyes looked like. I know that they were inhuman in their perception and malevolence.

Looking into those eyes, I felt the smallness of my plans and aspirations. My writing and my existence withered beneath their utter lack of humanity, and I knew in that moment that my life was not my own any longer, if indeed it ever had been. I closed my eyes, finally breaking away from that gaze. I believe that I moaned then and rolled onto my stomach, though I can’t be sure. I may have passed in and out of consciousness as that figure stood silently over me, diminishing my psyche and my ego until I would have sacrificed anything to become one of the maggots rather than the pathetic creature to which I had been reduced.

The thing spoke to me. It called me by name and told me to stand. It said that the

Scotsman had stood his ground, and I must do the same. Shaking and ashamed, I pushed myself up and stood with my back to the thing, though I did not yet open my eyes. I slowly turned to face the voice that seemed to echo in my mind rather than my ears. I nearly fainted again as I felt the presence draw nearer to me, or I to it. I could not be sure of anything at that point. I retched and struggled to remain standing when I felt a hand placed on either side of my head. I felt the hard bones of a few fingers scrape against my skin, and, even worse, I felt and smelled the decaying flesh of the hands press into my face and slough off the hands as they slid back over my ears and gripped the back of my head. I felt the maggots erupt from beneath the skin of the hands to roll into my hair and down my neck, seeking desperately for dead flesh in which to hide themselves. I believe my legs went out from under me then, but I was held aloft by the putrefied hands gripping my head tightly. The skeletal thumbs pressed into my eyes, pushing into my eye

sockets. As the pressure increased, I felt I might scream if I had been capable of making any sound beyond the whimpering emanating from some primal, animal part of myself that was desperately urging me to flee; unfortunately, that was not something I could do.

I feel as though I might be sick again as I recall the feeling of those bony

The new understanding of the extremities digging into my eyes and beyond. shallowness and temporality of his ego allows the narrator a Worse than the physical sensation of being blinded glimpse into the futility and pettiness of human existence was the feeling of powerlessness and violation I that Thomas Ligotti communicates through his experienced at the mercy of this being that was works. beyond my understanding. The quaintness of what I had considered my superiority to my fellow men, my obsession with the darkness of life, was worse than laughable when faced with this embodiment of evil I felt gouging into my skull. I could almost laugh now.

As the fingers pressed farther in, into my brain I felt certain, I experienced an onslaught of terror and pain I cannot describe. However, that thing continued speaking into my mind, things I cannot repeat here. My withholding of that message is not born of a sense of propriety or charity, but rather because I do not believe the wealth of vocabulary the English language boasts would be sufficient to describe what I heard— or what I saw. As the voice droned on, I was given a vision of the world that was to be, the one that Scotsmen had endeavored to bring into being. I also saw what he had done to himself to prevent that world from existing. It was then that I screamed.

All at once, the vision and the voice were gone. I felt as though a tremendous weight had been lifted, and I realized then that I could still see. However, it was as though I were some sort of specter or projection witnessing the events unfolding in the

upper room and not a participant in them. I was shocked to see myself standing alone in the room, and the body of the tramp laying just as it had for weeks beneath the skylight. I still felt the hands gripping my skull so tightly that I did then try to scream again, only to realize that silence erupted from my throat. I could merely watch myself, silent and helpless, as my body stood like a statue over the corpse of the tramp.

It was then, to my horror, that my face turned up to look at the astral form I had become. My eyes were as the tramp’s eyes had been, inhuman and evil incarnate. Evil is not an adequate term. The eyes were malevolent, but their malevolence was of the sort one feels toward a pestering fly or an ant. I believe it was the utter disinterest that shook me to the center of my being. Nothing else has ever forced me to face so completely the insignificance of my own existence. I tried to shout and found I still had no voice and was forced to watch impotently as my body turned and walked from the room, closing the door tightly behind. I tried desperately to move, to escape that room, but it was as though

I existed in a form that possessed no means of locomotion, no voice, only eyes and ears to observe whatever horrors to which the presence that had stolen my body chose to subject me.

I am unsure how long I was in the room. Left alone with the once again inanimate and decaying body of the tramp, I was grateful for the small mercy that I did not have the ability to smell. This was a fleeting cognition, however, as my mind tried and failed to process my circumstances. Some part of me felt certain that I was still unconscious at the foot of the stairs, or perhaps the fall had broken my neck and I had been banished to the hell that I had so pathetically tried to embody in my work. These voices of rationality,

such as they were, could not overshadow my growing conviction that I had unleashed something terrible into the world.

PART VI

I awoke shivering on the cot. It seemed unnaturally cold in the house, and my first thought was that the stove must have gone out. I sat up on the cot, wondering how I had

managed to reach the bed after my fall. Touching The amnesia the narrator experiences regarding the the back of my head, I felt only a slight pain, as months prior to his waking on the cot are reminiscent of the though the bruise had already nearly faded. film In the Mouth of Madness by great American horror Looking around, I realized that there was more director John Carpenter. The confusion and discomfort felt by furniture in the room, a dresser and nightstand. the narrator parallel the terrible experience of the There were strange articles of clothing scattered unfortunate insurance investigator in that film. around, and I stared dumbly at a blouse that looked somewhat familiar. My chill had passed, and I became preoccupied with a blooming headache that seemed to stem from my eyes and reach around to the back of my skull. I massaged my temples and tried to cut through the fog that enveloped my mind.

I took a halting step toward the door, kicking aside the women’s clothing that had somehow come to be in my bedroom. I looked around once more and noticed the mirror that was attached atop the dresser. For some reason, I felt a hesitancy about approaching the mirror. It was as though I would be committing some terrible act to look on myself, so I returned my attention to the headache that threatened to overcome my senses. I felt that perhaps I was dehydrated, and with that realization came a terrible thirst and hunger for which I could not account. I groaned and put a hand to the door to go downstairs.

It was then that the memories returned to me, and I fell to the floor beneath their weight. I gasped for air, feeling as though I would suffocate in the room. I reached upward desperately, fumbling at the handle until I managed to open it and spill into the hallway. Groaning loudly and trying to pull myself toward the stairs, I was desperate to flee the house before the tramp, or whatever had inhabited his corpse, overtook me. I had made pitifully little progress when I heard rapid steps coming up the stairs. I moaned and tried to change direction, to get into the room and hide behind the door, as futile as that seemed. I had clenched my eyes shut and was determined to resist as best I could when a voice I had nearly forgotten cried out my name. The unnatural or mysterious In the next moment, Sarah had grabbed pregnancy of a women involved in occult practices is often used me beneath the arms and helped me to my feet, as a sort of inversion of the immaculate conception of Jesus and then supported me as she guided me back to described in the Bible, and so is a common trope in American the bedroom. Recoiling at, but pitifully relying Gothic. on, her touch, I realized I had no idea why she was in the house, or whether I had really dreamed the events of the day before. I was too shaken to articulate any of the questions screaming through my mind, and I felt faint from the strain of it all. Sarah sat me down on the cot and made me lie back. I was still gasping for air and attempting to form sentences that came out as unintelligible, monosyllabic bursts. She sat at the edge of the cot and put a hand to my forehead and winced, and then she told me I must stay in bed and that she would bring water and something to eat. When she stood to leave I was able to take in the full view of her, and I was horrified at the revelation.

Sarah was many months pregnant. Indeed, she looked as though she could go into labor at any moment. I tried in vain to call to her, but my voice refused to serve me. My

mind burned with the intensity of my terror and disbelief. I realized then that I had not fallen the day before, or even many days before. I had no recollection of the last several months, and it appeared that in that time Sarah had become pregnant and determined to move into this god-forsaken house with me. I could not fathom how any of these things had come to be, and I cried out in frustration at my inability to remember anything from the evident months prior.

It was at that moment that Sarah returned with water and a small bowl of soup.

She helped me sit up to drink, brushing my hair back out of my eyes. She said that I needed to rest so that I could recover from the spell that had overtaken me. By her account, I had been in and out of consciousness for about a week, with a terrible fever and hallucinations. I had no recollection of any of that time, no more than I could recall the months leading up to the episode. The last thing I could remember was the terrible night in the room with the indescribable presence that had animated the rotting corpse of the tramp. The memory drenched me with the guilt I had either suppressed or been incapable of feeling for the period in which my work had overshadowed all other concerns in my life.

Remembering the body of the tramp brought me fresh anxiety, as I had no indication as to whether Sarah had discovered my diabolical muse or if there had been a police investigation. I reasoned that the fact that I was in the house rather than a cell likely meant the police had not been involved, and the care Sarah was taking of me meant that she had probably not discovered the corpse. These conclusions relaxed me somewhat, and I knew that I had no choice but to uncover what had happened in the

months when my mind had been absent. To this end, I asked Sarah how long she had lived in the house.

She seemed surprised by the question, and perhaps a little hurt. She said that she had moved in when she had become pregnant. My last memory of Sarah had been when she accosted me for the stench of death I carried into the library, so I could not fathom what would have drawn her back to me, particularly if she was pregnant with another man’s child. When the implication of that line of thought struck me, I reacted strongly. I grabbed Sarah’s arm so tightly that she winced and tried to pull away from me. I held her in place and looked into her eyes. My fear must have been evident, because she stopped struggling and her expression turned from anger to concern. In a very low voice, I demanded to know whose child she carried. At this question she burst out in tears, tore her arm from me, and rushed out of the room.

I called out after her, still demanding to know. My fears continued to multiply, as did my guilt at having hurt her. Having been without this emotion for so long, I was becoming exquisitely aware of my deep and catastrophically evident flaws. I dragged myself out of the cot and to a tentative standing position, half-falling into the doorway, bracing myself against the wall as I hoarsely shouted Sarah’s name. From this position, I could see the door to my accursed writing room. It was shut, but I had no way of knowing if it had remained shut these long months, or if Sarah had been repeatedly exposed to the vile presence that seemed to inhabit the space. Leaning on the wall for support, I made my way to the door, placing a hand against the dark wood that seemed to exacerbate the chill I felt. I pressed against it and was surprised when it swung open easily, and no foul stench washed out to shock my senses. I took a step into the room and stared

dumbfounded at the things which were present and felt even more stupefied by the thing which wasn’t.

The body of the tramp was gone, as were all indications of it ever having polluted the floor with its rotten matter. It seemed to me that even the bloodstain from the builder’s suicidal display was gone, leaving only the unknowable swirling grain of the boards to look on. I saw my desk had not moved, but still faced the center of the room as if waiting expectantly for a new muse to be provided. I walked to the desk slowly, feeling as though at any moment I would waken form this dream back to the nightmare of the living death in the thing’s eyes. The desk and my chair seemed unchanged, but my writing supplies were all missing. The only thing sitting atop the desk was a manuscript, about three inches thick and bound with twine. I recognized the paper as my own, as was the handwriting gracing the top page. It read, “For Sarah, the Mother of My Child.”

I snatched up the manuscript, unsure of what I intended to do. I felt that I must destroy it, but I could not say why. The In this moment, the story is reflective of a possession and confirmation of my fear concerning Sarah was too impregnation story akin to Rosemary’s Baby, or even “The much to bear. With the papers in hand, I collapsed Dunwich Horror,” to return to Lovecraft. This type of horror into my chair. Trembling, I undid the twine that can also be seen in films like Alien or The Thing— stories in bound the pages of the work. I began to read, which a physical violation takes place leading to the birth of cautiously at first, and then faster and faster. The some manner of abomination, be it human or other. writing was mine. It was in my hand and style, but the story was one of which I had never conceived. It told a twisted tale of a man who sacrificed the woman he loved in exchange for power from a long-forgotten and infernal being. I frantically turned the pages, trying to deny the reality of the words before me.

The thing had taken control of the man’s body to impregnate the woman with the seed of mankind’s ruin and the rebirth of the world in torment and chaos.

I threw the manuscript across the room, scattering the pages over the floor. I sat at the desk breathing heavily, utterly devastated and trying to understand. The soft footsteps in the hallway drew my attention, and I saw Sarah looking tentatively in through the doorway, her face streaked with tears. She said nothing but rested her hands lightly atop her swollen belly. I felt tears begin tracing lines down my own face as I looked at the woman who thought she was carrying my child. Standing and walking to her, I embraced her weakly. She sighed and leaned into the embrace, and I felt her stomach press against me. It sent tremors of fear and rage through my body, imagining what the thing had done, was continuing to do, to Sarah. I guided her away from the room, my arm around her shoulders.

We walked back toward the bedroom supporting each other. I stopped her at the top of the stairs, kissed her, and, looking down at the staircase, told her how sorry I was.

PART VII When the doctor arrived to check on me, he was shocked to find Sarah dead at the bottom of the stairs, her neck broken. She had called on him to come see about my condition, but, in that moment, he worked quickly to try to deliver and save the baby.

Mercifully, I had fallen unconscious after pushing Sarah down the stairs, whether from exhaustion or grief I cannot say. I was spared witnessing the birth of the monstrosity, the abomination that must have torn the doctor limb from limb, like a paper doll, and discarded his remains unceremoniously about the lower room…

I can see the rift opening in the edge of our reality…

When I was forced back into consciousness by the sheriff’s hard hand across my face, I strained to hold my eyes open in the harsh glare of the fluorescent lights. I tried to shield my eyes with my arm but found I could not raise it. The garment I had been wrapped in held both my arms tightly to my sides. I realized I was lying on the floor, but the floor seemed to be cushioned, not the cold concrete I remembered from my night in the jailhouse. The sheriff was highly agitated, trying to… get me to tell him something…

The boundaries of the known universe collapse inward. As the seams give way, the fabric begins to fray, destroying any hope of restoration…

He demanded to know where the baby was, what I had done with it. I could only remember the doctor’s mutilated body, and I told him so. The sheriff glared at me, and he repeated the question. I pushed my face across the soft surface beneath me, trying to

attain at least a kneeling position. I managed it and looked down at where I had been to see a dark stain smeared across the floor, but I couldn’t feel that I was bleeding…

A point forms in the tear. It begins microscopically, a space between atoms, then expands and pushes in, stretching beyond the ability of the mind to contain it. Straining against unknown eons of idleness, a formless presence emerges…

The sheriff left in a rage, and I had a moment to examine my surroundings. With growing confusion and horror, I realized that both the floor and the walls were padded, and that the only window was in the door the sheriff had just closed. I struggled to stand and hobble to the dirty pane. I heard something like an echo, coming from far away…

The presence presses into the universe, ever-growing, obliterating space and time, destroying matter and energy in its relentless advance. The Earth sits helpless, held aloft in front of the force like a treat dangled before a ravenous and tempestuous child.

Enveloping the Earth, the entity seizes reality for itself and life is reborn in its likeness…

The harder I tried to remember what had happened, the more fragmented the memories seemed. My mind was, is, being reformed, and my identity is escaping from my failing grasp. Falling back to the floor, I listen to the echo becoming more distinct…

The old forms of being are disintegrating as an older form overcomes them, washing the world in chaos and fire, quenching its thirst with the blood of billions lost in the unknowable vastness of the presence. The human beings that had considered the

Earth to be theirs, to exist for their benefit, destroy each other in violence and perversion as the insatiable presence reveals their truest selves…

The echo has become a scream. It seems to come from within me, but it also sounds like Sarah. It sounds like the doctor. It sounds like the tramp. The builder…

Faced with a revelation of the deepest nature, mankind attempts to hide from the deadly light. When they find there is nowhere they can conceal themselves from their own self-awareness, they erupt into even greater heights of violence, lashing out at themselves, the world they created, and the alien thing that had brought down the entire charade. The presence feels no remorse, nor enjoyment, for their suffering. It simply exists, enfolding them in truth while they scream and end their own lives…

No one will come for me. I am alone, and now I realize…

When mankind finally lay still, the final death throes finished and the last of the blood drained from their contorted bodies, the presence remained. It had rebirthed the world in its eternal image: the perfect truth, the stillness. With its appetite satisfied, the entity began to recede, to draw back toward the point where it had penetrated this reality in wonder and terror. Reality had begun to mend itself, to attempt the restoration of order. The presence would return to its dormancy, an existence defined by the oscillation of sleep and waking. It had woken and fed, and now it would sleep… and dream…

In the end, the unfortunate demise of our narrator is highly typical of that experienced by many American Gothic “heroes”; madness and death resulting from unchecked ambition and pursuit of personal goals without regard for humanity. In this particular instance, his internment in a mental health facility offers him a chance to reflect on his actions of late and allowed him the opportunity to relate this story.