The Moonlit Road

1. Statement of Commander Joel, II

I am the most unfortunate of men. Wealthy, respected, fairly well educated and soundly healthy - with most other interests usually noble in people who have them and what everyone wants in people who have them not - -I sometimes think that I should be less unhappy if they were to deny me, for then the difference between my external and my internal life would not constantly demand more painful attention. In the absence of pressure and the need for effort I may sometimes forget the dark secret that once hindered speculation about its compulsion.

I am the only child of Joel and Julia, Commander. The one was a well-to-do country gentleman, the other a beautiful and accomplished woman to whom he was passionately attached with what I now know to have been jealous and demanding love. The family home is one of a few from Nashville, Tennessee, a large, irregularly built residence in no particular order of architecture, a small approach off the road, in a park of trees and shrubs.

At the time I wrote I was nineteen years old, a student at Yale. One day I was generally acknowledged by a telegram from my father who was so urgent that in the course of meeting its unexplained claims I was immediately left for home. At the train station in Nashville distant relatives waited for me to inform me of the reason for my cancellation: my mother had been brutally murdered -- why and by whom no one could speculate, but the circumstances were these.

My father had gone to Nashville, with plans to return that afternoon. Something prevented him from finishing his business in hand, so he was sent back that same night, arriving just before dawn. In his evidence before the coroner he explained that without the latch key and not caring to disturb the sleeping servant, he had, with no clearly defined intention, detoured to the back of the house. Likewise as he turned at an angle to the building, he heard a sound as the door gradually closed, and saw in the dark, unidentified, the figure of a man, who immediately disappeared among the trees and grass. A hasty pursuit and brief search for the reasons for believing that the aggressor was secretly some was fruitless. A visit to a servant for verification proved fruitless, and he entered the stair-room which opened the door and unfolded to my mother. Its door was open, and stepping into the black darkness he dropped his head forward above some heavy object on the floor. I can spare the details of myself; it was my poor mother, strangled by dead human hands!

<2>

Nothing was taken from the house, the servants did not listen To the sound, and except those terrible marks on the dead woman's throat--Dear God! I might have forgotten them!--no trace had ever been found of the assassin.

My father and I gave up my studies and remained, naturally, very changed. Always calm and taciturn in temperament, he had now sunk so deeply into a discouragement that nothing could hold his attention, yet anything--a footstep, the sudden closing of a door--awakened in him a fitful interest; a possibility There is the view that it is understood. At any little surprise he would begin to see and turn the fence sometimes, then relapse into a melancholy indifference deeper than before. I presumed what he was calling a 'nervous wreck. 'About me, I was younger then than now - there's more to that. The young man is Gilead, the balm for every wound. Oh, that I might dwell in that enchanted land again! Unacquainted with heartbreak, I know not how to rate my loss; I cannot rightly estimate the power of a stroke.

One night, several months after the horrific incident, my father and I were walking home from the city. The full moon was about three hours above the eastern horizon; the whole country place had the solemn stillness of a summer night; the sound of our feet and the weaver's incessant song were the only sounds, distant. The black image of a border of trees twisted across the road, and in that short stretch, a ghostly white man flickered between.

As we approached the door to our dwelling, whose front was in the image, and in which no light shone, my father suddenly stopped and grasped my arm, recounting, barely over his breath:

'God! God! What is that?'

'I heard nothing,' I replied.

'But see -- see!' he said, pointing along the road, directly forward.

I said: 'Nothing is there. Come, Father, let us enter -- you are sick. '

He had released my arm and was still stiff and motionless in the center of the illuminated lane, staring like a deprived sensation. His face in the moonlight showed one pale and fixed to a degree of pain that could not be expressed in words. I gradually pulled in his sleeve, but he had forgotten my presence. Presently he began backward to seclusion, step by step, never for an instant removing his eyes from what he saw, or the thought he saw. I turned half round to follow, but stood undecided. I do not remove any sense of fear, unless a sudden cold is its physical manifestation. It seemed as if an icy wind had deranged my face and enveloped my body from head to toe; I could feel its stirring in my hair.

<3>

At this moment my attention was languished to a light that suddenly streamed out from the upper window of that house: one of the servants, awakened by what mysterious foretelling of evil who can say , and in obedience to an impulse she could never quite get a name for, there was a light shining on it. As I turned to my father's look he had disappeared, and for all the years there had been no whispering of his fate had come to the unknown from across the presumed frontiers of the kingdom.

2. Statement of Caspar Grattan

To-day I mean living, to-morrow, in this room, will lie senseless shapes earth all too Long is I. If anyone lifts the cloth from the face of something unpleasant it will satisfy a small lake of unsound curiosity. Some, no doubt, will go a step further and ask, 'Who is he?' In this writing I offer the only answer I can produce -- Caspar Grattan. Of course, that should be enough. The name has served my little needs for a very unknown length of twenty years. True, I gave it to myself, but lacking otherwise I had the right. In this world one must have a name; it avoids confusion even when it does not establish an identity. A few, though, are known to have been numbered, which also seems to be an insufficient distinction.

One day, for example, I was passing along a street of the city, far from here, when I met two men in uniforms, one of whom, half paused and curious Looking into my face, he said to his friend, 'The man looks like 767.' Something in the number seemed familiar and scary. Acting on an uncontrollable impulse to move, I jumped into a side street and ran until I dropped exhausted in a country lane.

I have never forgotten that number, and always it reaches the memory attended by the babbling of obscene nonsense, the rumbling of unhappy laughter, the clanking of iron doors. Therefore I say that a name, even a self-awarded one, is better than a number. In the register for Potter's Field I will have both soon. What a fortune!

He who will come to me must ask for this piece of paper of little consideration. It is not a history of my life; writing that knowledge denies me. It is only a record of broken and apparently unrelated memories, some of them as clear as brilliant beads and one on the other, others distant and strange, with the personality of crimson dreams with empty spaces and black-- Witches - white-hot stills of fire and red in a barren desolation.

<4>

Standing on the shore for eternity, I spin for a final look on the course I pass landward. There are twenty-year footprints very clear, impressions of bleeding feet.

They lead through poverty and pain, circuitous and uncertain, as teetering under the burden --

Remote, friendless, melancholy, slow.

O, my prophecy of the poet--how admirable, how terrible to be admired!

Backward beyond that which begins by dolorosa this--the epic of the Passion in Interlude Sin -- I clearly saw nothing; it came out of the clouds. I know it's only twenty years away, and still I'm an old man.

One cannot remember a birth -- one must be told. But with me it was different; life came to me all-passed and dowered me with all my faculties and powers. I know of only one other, for all the stuttering could be a memory, and could be a hint of a dream. All I know is that my first consciousness was a maturity of body and mind -- a consciousness generally admitted without surprise or speculation. I only found myself walking in the forest, half-dressed, with injured feet, inexpressibly tired and hungry. Seeing a farmhouse, I approached and asked for food, and someone asked me my name. I didn't know, yet knew that all had names. Very embarrassed, I retreated, and night came on, upon which the laymen came down in the forest and slept.

The next day I entered a large town which I will not name. Nor shall I recount the further events of life which is now to an end -- life lingering, always and everywhere under an overwhelming sense of guilt in punishment often to the horror of the punishment of mistakes and crimes. Let me see if I can make this into a narrative.

I seemed to have been living near a great city, a prosperous planter, married to a woman whom I loved and distrusted. We have, it sometimes seems, a child, a brilliant part of youth and promise. He always had a vague figure, never clearly haggard, and often all came out of that photo.

One unfortunate evening it suddenly occurred to me to test my wife's fidelity in the vulgar, common way familiar to everyone who has an acquaintance in the literature of fact and fiction. I went to the city, in effect that I should be absent from my wife until the coming afternoon. But I was sent back before dawn and went to the back of the house, attempting to enter through a door which I had secretly so tampered with that it would appear to be locked, yet not actually fastened. As I approached it, I heard it gradually open and close, and saw a man stealing away into the darkness. With murder in my heart, I jumped after him, but he had the bad luck of disappearing without even acknowledgment. Sometimes now I can't even convince myself that it's a human being.

<5>

Mad with jealousy and furious, blind and bestial with all the elements of intense emotion to insult adulthood, I entered the house and my wife jumped up at the door Stair room. It was closed, but there was an intervention with its lock too, I entered easily, and despite the black darkness quickly stood by her side of the bed. My exploring hand told me that while disturbing it was free.

'She's down there,' I thought, 'and frightened by my entrance there escaped me in the dark aspects of the hall. ' With the intention of seeking her I turned to leave the room, but took a wrong direction -- the right one! I struck her with my foot, cowering in a corner of the room. Immediately my hands were at her throat, with a dull thud, my knees were over her straining body; and there in the darkness, without a word of accusation or reproach, I strangled She til she dies! Ends the dream there. I have related it in the past tense, but the gift would have taken form, for again and again the bleak tragedy reworked itself in my consciousness -- again and again I wrenched the plan, I suffered the confirmation, I compensated the Wrong. Then all is space; and then the rain beats against the filthy windowpanes, or the snow falls on my inadequate clothing, the wheels rattle in the dirty streets where my life lies in poverty and poor employment.

If there was ever sunshine I did not cancel it; if there were ever birds they did not sing.

There is another dream, another vision at night. I stand in the middle of the image on a moonlit road. I know there are others coming up, but whose I can't decide exactly. In the image of the rod's abode I catch the faint glimmer of white clothing; then the figure of a woman faces me in the road -- my murdered wife! There is death in the face; there is the sign above the throat. The Eyes Are Fixed on Mine with Infinite Gravity is not reproachful, nor hateful, nor threatening, nor anything less terrible than recognition. This first scary haunted house ever terrorized me -- a horror that struck me as I write. I can no longer form words correctly. See! Them --

Now I'm calm, but there's really no more to tell: the end of the event where it began -- in darkness and doubt.

<6>

Yes, I control myself again: 'Captain of my soul. ' But deferment is not; it is another stage and state of atonement. My confession, a constant of degree, is mutable in type: one of its variants is tranquillity. After all, it's just a life sentence. 'To hell to live'--that is the punishment of folly: the sinner chooses the period of his punishment. To - the day my term expires.

To each and all, peace which is not mine.

3. Statement of the Late Commander Julia, via Media Bayrolles

I had retired early and fallen almost immediately into a peaceful sleep, from which I awaken with an indefinable feeling of danger which is, I suppose, a common experience in other, earlier lives. Its meaningless character, too, I advise entirely, still does not expel it. My husband, Commander Joel, was not at home; the servants slept in another part of the house. But these were familiar situations; they had never troubled me before. However, a strange terror enlarged so unbearably that my reluctance to move overcame me as I sat and turned up the lamp beside my bed. Contrary to this I provided no relief from my expectations; the light rather seemed an added danger, for me to reflect it would shine outside under the door, revealing my presence to whatever evil might be lurking outside. Still in the flesh of you, the subject is the horror of the imagination, thinking what a great fear it must be that one seeks safety in the darkness from the malignant presence of the night. That spring to the end of the quarter with an unseen enemy--a desperate tactic!

Putting out the lights I pulled on the bedclothing with my head and mortal trembling and silence, unable to reach Sharp noises, forgetful prayers. In this poor state I must have lay why you called for hours -- with us, no hours, no time.

Finally, it came -- the soft, imperfect sound of footsteps on the stairs! They were slow, hesitant, uncertain, as something that had no way of seeing it; to my confusion The reason was all the more horrifying, as that approaching some blind and careless malice to whom there was no appeal. I even thought I must have left the foyer light overheated and this one explorer proved it a monster of the night. It feels silly and inconsistent to me to fear that light earlier, but what do you have? Fear has no intelligence; is an idiot. The gloomy witness which it bears and the cowardly deliberation it whispers have nothing to do with it. We know this well, that we who have been admitted into the realm of terror, hiding within the eternal twilight of our presence in previous lives, invisible even to ourselves, and each other, still hide alone in the loneliness place; longing for speech with our loved ones, still dumb, and as lest they treat us as they do. Sometimes powerlessness is left, laws suspended: no death force is loved or hated and we rest that spell -- we are seen by those we would warn, console, or punish.

In what form we seem them to bear we know not; we know only those to whom we flatten terror to whom we most hope for consolation, and from whom we most long for tenderness and sympathy.

<7>

Forgive me, I pray you, for this unreasonable digression by a woman who once made something of it. You who ask us for advice on this flawed method -- you don't understand. You raise foolish questions about things unknown and things forbidden. Much that we know and can teach in our lectures is meaningless to you. We must communicate with you through stuttering intelligence in the small fraction of our language that you yourselves can speak. You think we have another world. No, we have no world with knowledge except yours, though for us it holds no daylight, no warmth, no music, no laughter, no song of the birds, nor any fellowship. O God! It would be a ghost of a thing, cowering and trembling in a changing world, a prey to understanding and despair!

No, I do not fear a die: things turned and walked away. I heard it descending the stairs, hastily, I thought, as if it were itself in sudden terror. Then I rose to call for help. Barely had my shaking hand found the doorknob snapping -- merciful heaven! -- I heard it returned. Its footsteps were swift, heavy and loud as it was rode up the stairs again; they shook the house. I escaped to an angle against the wall and crouched on the floor. I experimented with prayer. I experimented with calling my dear husband by his name. Then I heard the door being left open. There was an unconscious gap, and when I came to I felt a strangulation clutching at my throat -- felt my arms struck me weakly against something that disgusted me backwards -- felt My tongue inserted itself between my teeth! Then I was allowed to enter this life.

No, I have no knowledge of what it is. The total of what we know before death is a measure of what we then know about all that goes before. This being, we know most things, but no new light falls on any page that; in memory it is written all that we can read. Here is not any height of fact overlooking the landscape of that doubtful realm of confusion. We still inhabit the valley of the image, lurking in its desolate places, peering from the thorns and flourishing in its mad, noxious inhabitants. How should we have new knowledge of the fashionable past?

<8>

I was about to make a related stumble one night. We know when it is night, for then you retire to your house and we can venture from our place to hide away to move without being afraid of things about our motherland, to look at the windows, or even to enter and gaze in your On the face as you sleep. I have stayed long around the house where I have been so cruel to change what I am, as we do for a while any so that we love or hate to remain. In vain I have looked for some way to show, some way to make my continued existence and my great love and deep regret known to my husband and son. Always if they slept they would keep vigil, or if in my depression I dared to approach them when they were awake, would turn to my terrible eyes that life, frightening me by a glance from which I sought .

Tonight, without success, I searched for them, afraid to find them; they were nowhere in the house, nor about the moonlit dawn. For, although the sun is lost to us forever, the moon, all-round or slim, remains to us. Sometimes it shines by night, sometimes by day, but always it rises and sets, as in other lives.

I left the grass and moved in the white light and silence along the road, aimless and sad. Suddenly I heard the voice of my poor husband in an exclamation of astonishment, with that of my son who reassured and dissuaded; and by the image of a group of trees there they stood--near, so near! Their faces It was to me, that the eyes of the older man were fixed upon the mine.

He saw me -- at the end, at the end, he saw me! In consciousness, my terror escaped as a cruel dream. The death-spell is broken: love has conquering law! Mad with the ecstasy of my cry--I must have cried, 'He sees, he sees: He will know!' Then, controlling myself, I move towards front, smiling and consciously beautiful, to offer myself to his arms, to comfort him with dearness, and, with my son's hand in mine, to say words that should reset the broken bonds of that life between and the deceased.

<9>

Alas! Alas! His face turned white with fear, and his eyes were like those of a hunting animal. He dodged me, as I advanced, and at the last turn and escaped into the wood -- till then, it had no idea of ??me.

To my poor boy, the left was twice desolate, and I had never been able to convey a sense of my presence. Soon he, too, must pass into this life invisible and lost forever to me.