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