The Tell-Tale House of Usher

The beginning of this tale starts rightly in Egypt during the Napoleonic campaign there at the turn of the century. The great actor Napoleon saw Egypt as the proper stage for his portrayal of Alexander the Great and he lusted after it as any diva does the lime-light and floor-boards of La Scala in Milan. Strategically, he saw a march from Alexandria to Suez as moving in the right direction to thwart the British navy, to break its vessels, thereby blood-letting the heart of the empire and snatching its greatest prize – India!

  Human life meant nothing to this vainglorious man and his high esteem among the French is a topic I never broach with them. Allegiance to flag and faith was always provisional for the stubby little “emperor” and why a Frenchman would so passionately embrace him as opposed to any Italian or Corsican, I can’t say.

  Among the hordes of camp followers needed to supply a modern army of conquest – the guns, the butter, the whores – there were those retained to magnify the glory (and glory Napoleon meant to have with such vast sweep and power that the bluster would fill the sails of his fleet and propel it back to France,) of the undertaking – namely artists, botanists, biologists, engineers, mathematicians, etc. and one linguist, M. Alexandre Seullinard. His studies in Coptic, his broad surveys of the Semitic and Cushitic languages left him as able as any man then living to understand the spoken language of the Middle Kingdom and it was to him I would write of our urgent need of his skills.

  And why had we this need? As so many needs are, ours was ignited by alcohol. It caught fire in the dregs of a superb bottle of cognac one late night after cards at Ushers'. The liquor had made us, four young men and the three most emancipated young women of Boston, merry and mischievous, no one more so than Roderick, who always seemed to magnify the mood by a factor of ten. In addition to Roddy, Madeleine and I, we were Archibald McKennon, Benjamin Parr, Lucretia Tudor and Annabel Lee. We chattered away lazily, our backs on the rugs of the floor and our feet on the chairs, or our legs swinging on the arms of couches and our backs propped against our companions and somehow the talk came to focus on the contents of my father's warehouse, which had become something of a growing fascination among our set since my return from New Orleans (with much general speculation having started years earlier.) As I recalled for them the inventory and the exact placement of each object within, patience was cast aside that night and the group was all insistence that with all haste I must take all of them – what a singular beast a crowd soon becomes – immediately to the location for their close inspection of the goods. The warehouse was out in Milton some ten miles away from Franklin Place. It had once been the property of a wealthy merchant back in colonial days, a Loyalist who was tarred and feathered and accidentally (so it was claimed) murdered by the patriots of all the surrounding towns and whose ghost is said to haunt the site still.

  The mention of a ghost sent everyone out of their supine positions and up into their coats and cloaks with giddy hysterics; I was merely dragged along in their wake as they made for the stables to ready a coach for travel. Madeleine, ever wise even in her cups, alone of the group elected to stay in exactly the same position she had occupied for nearly an hour and begged off making the trip. As I was dragged by my right arm from the parlor I gazed longingly at this young woman sitting entranced on a couch of French Empire style, it's lion paws clawing at the rugs and the glow from the fire giving its silk upholstery some animation, so that the effect of the scene was of a Hindoo princess in the embrace of a becalmed tiger, stroking its pelt as she looked deep into the flames with those glistening jewels that were her eyes. Here was the greater mystery for me – the greatest mystery I would ever know. Madeleine would always entice me far more than the trinkets of my father's collection ever could.

  The ride through city streets out to the periphery on such a mild Spring morn during the earliest, darkest hours of the day was exhilarating, thanks to Roderick in the driver's seat. His wildness was of a piece with the horses - manes flying, eyes red and watering, the reins in his hands the nerves through which he communicated his will. If one were to look into the eyes of the two beasts pulling us careening into the dark one might wonder if they were running towards our destination or away from Roderick. That might then lead one, as it did me, to wonder – from whom or what was Roderick running?

  Our arrival in Milton occasioned no party of greeting, which the alcohol and great speed of our carriage had led us to half expect. Our party wanted a reward for its victory over the monotony of existence and would find it among the treasures to be discovered. The absence of celebrants reminded us that every triumph over ennui was always and ever temporary.

  I bade my companions wait in the carriage so that I might not compromise the security of my father's property. We had developed a system of leaving the keys to the warehouse in a locked safe, which I was now making for. The hiding place of the safe was the second layer in the defense of the dusty treasures within, the first being a Mr. Hopp, caretaker of several buildings devoted to storage. He was aroused by our carriage and looked askance as I explained our harmless little adventure. He retorted with the observations, quite perceptive ones, that my father would not approve of such an excursion that aimed to disturb the family dust and that, alas, there was nothing he could do if I, my father's heir and trusted aid, was bent on disturbance. He made further observations on the ungodliness of the hour and the surliness of his mood. He need hardly have mentioned either.

  I returned to the carriage with the several keys that would open the several doors that we had to pass through to enter the storage room proper. Many of the items were still in their boxes so that the immediate effect of entering the room was not so gratifying.

  For me to be in that room again after so many years was like stepping back into my father's heartbreak. These objects were neglected as a result of the failure of my father’s vision, or rather, I should say, the failure of that of the good people of Boston. His vision was bold and far-sighted. He saw a great institution run by the city and dedicated to the fine arts and the great civilizations for the betterment of the citizens, using as model the collection of the Louvre Palace. To that end he began collecting objects of significance, sending agents across Europe and the Americas searching for them.

  It was a grand effort, but most who took to the idea did so with thoughts of feeding high culture to a sow, plumping it for market, then holding their hats at its posterior as it excreted specie of gold. The excrement of Culture is Money – or is it the other way round? The high mind rarely has its ear to the ground and it was money, the wrong kind, that pained my father's pure heart; no circus barker was he and rather than compromise his vision, he locked his collection away that it might pass this low point of American civilization and await a future generation more enlightened.

  We were hardly that generation, drunk and on the prowl for cheap thrills in the wee hours. As we lit more lamps and began to move about, the light caught glimpses of strange objects and the excitement rose. We located the shrunken heads, one of which bore an uncanny resemblance to a local Episcopalian minister and we opened a crate containing an Archaic Greek marble of a youth with his blank oriental eyes and sensuous mouth, that looked like no one any of us had ever met or even glimpsed but like someone we would have wanted to observe in the flesh at his games with discus or javelin.

  Above all else though, it was the Egyptian mummy that had raised a stir from the group when I had given my recitation of the store house inventory a mere two hours before. Within twenty minutes of arriving, we found our way to it, a series of boxes within boxes, and four canopic jars containing the previously interred's viscera, all beautifully decorated with hieroglyphs and pictographs. They had been indecipherable once but now those mysteries have begun to reveal themselves. Mr. Seullinard had done full sketches of all that had been painted and carved on the surface of the objects protecting the mummy and when at last, years later, the Rosetta stone began to set this ancient writing free, he had written us with a rough translation. We had then gone
to the warehouse and opened the case containing the mummy and said hello to Hatotep, for such was the name of the leather and bone artifact, formerly know as a human being, which lay within.

  "Let's bring him back for a drink – the poor fellow must be dry as a bone. Roddy, you still have that port I bought you for Christmas; why don't we break it open for our friend here?"

  "Oh, we must, absolutely. He shall be toasted and fawned over at Chez Usher."

  "No," I said, aware that Roddy and I were now in a test of will and he would always prevail in such a match. "We can't just run off into the night with the mummy."

  "Of course we can, Eddie."

  "Roderick, please. I can't take this off the premises."

  "Well, you can't do it alone but we've four others here with us, so it should be easy as pie."

  "Roddy, don't be difficult."

  "I want it Edmund." He stared at me with such intensity that I felt him boring into my brain, poking about in it until he found just what he wanted and then I felt such a pressure in a particular area deep within the grey matter.

  "You're hurting me, Roddy."

  "I'm