I smiled,-for what had I to fear? I bade the gentlemen welcome. The shriek, I said, was my own in a dream. The old man, I mentioned, was absent in the country. I took my visitors all over the house. I bade them search-search well. I led them, at length, to his chamber. I showed them his treasures, secure, undisturbed. In the enthusiasm of my confidence, I brought chairs into the room, and desired them here to rest from their fatigues, while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim.
The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them. I was singularly at ease. They sat, and while I answered cheerily, they chatted of familiar things. But, ere long, I felt myself getting pale and wished them gone. My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears: but still they sat and still chatted. The ringing became more distinct:-it continued and became more distinct: I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling: but it continued and gained definiteness-until, at length, I found that the noise was not within my ears.
No doubt I now grew very pale;-but I talked more fluently, and with a heightened voice. Yet the sound increased-and what could I do? It was a low dull, quick sound-much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath-and yet the officers heard it not. I talked more quickly-more vehemently; but the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about trifles, in a high key and with violent gesticulations, but the noise steadily increased. Why would they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men-but the noise steadily increased. Oh God! what could I do? I foamed- I raved-I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder-louder-louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God!-no, no! They heard!-they suspected!-they knew!-they were making a mockery of my horror!-this I thought, and this I think. But any thing was better than this agony! Any thing was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die!-and now- again!-hark! louder! louder! louder! louder!
“Villains!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed!- tear up the planks! here, here!-it is the beating of his hideous heart!”
The Genius of “The Tell-Tale Heart” BY STEPHEN KING
When I do public appearances, I’m often-no, always-asked what scares me. The answer is almost everything, from express elevators in very tall buildings to the idea of a zealot loose with a suitcase nuke in one of the great cities of the world. But if the question is refined to “What works of fiction have scared you?” two always leap immediately to mind: Lord of the Flies by William Golding and “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe.
Most people know that Poe invented the modern detective story (Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes is in many ways the same detective as Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin), but few are aware that he also created the first work of criminal sociopathy in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” a story originally published in 1843. Many great crime writers of the twentieth century, from Jim Thompson and John D. MacDonald to Thomas Harris (who in Hannibal Lecter may have created the greatest sociopath of them all), are the children of Poe.
The details of the story are still gruesome enough to produce nightmares (the cutting up of the victim’s body, for instance, or the old man’s one dying shriek), but the terror that lingers-and the story’s genius-lies in the superficially reasonable voice of the narrator. He is never named, and that is fitting, because we have no idea how he picked his victim, or what drove him to the crime. Oh, we know what he says: it was the old man’s gruesomely veiled eye. But of course, Jeffrey Dahmer said he wanted to create zombies, and the Son of Sam at one point claimed his dog told him to do it. We understand, I think, that psychopaths offer such wacky motivations because they are as helpless as the rest of us to explain their terrible acts.
This is, above all, a persuasive story of lunacy, and Poe never offers any real explanations. Nor has to. The narrator’s cheerful laughter (“A tub had caught… all [the blood]-ha! ha!”) tells us all we need to know. Here is a creature who looks like a man but who really belongs to another species. That’s scary. What elevates this story beyond merely scary and into the realm of genius, though, is that Poe foresaw the darkness of generations far beyond his own.
Ours, for instance.
Stephen King was born in Portland, Maine, in 1947, the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. He made his first professional short- story sale in 1967 to Startling Mystery Stories. In the fall of 1973, he began teaching high school English classes at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and work on novels. In the spring of 1973, Doubleday & Company accepted the novel Carrie for publication, and the book’s success provided him with the means to leave teaching and write fulltime. He has since published more than forty books and become one of the world’s most successful writers. Stephen lives in Maine and Florida with his wife, novelist Tabitha King. They are regular contributors to a number of charities, including many libraries, and have been honored locally for their philanthropic activities.
The First Time BY STEVE HAMILTON
I read my first Poe story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” in 1974. I was thirteen years old. I read that story, then another, working my way through an old hardback anthology while sitting on a hard plastic chair in the most miserable place in the world.
That place was Highland Junior High School, in Highland, Michigan. Nobody is supposed to like junior high school, I know, but seriously, HJH was a two-year prison sentence. The worst part was wintertime, when the sun didn’t even start coming up until the end of first period. As a bonus, sometimes a few of the worst kids would escape outside, push open the windows, and then pelt everyone with ice balls. If you weren’t quick enough, you were a goner.
That first class of the day, the world outside still pitch-black, was seventh-grade English. The teacher was a man named Vincent Lucius. I still remember him because at the time I thought he was probably insane. First of all, he was always in an unnaturally cheerful mood, even on Monday mornings in January. And even worse, he actually seemed to enjoy his job. He loved teaching. He loved being around seventh-graders, if you can even imagine that. More than anything, he loved good writing.
The first time he made us all write something, I came up with some strange story about me and my best friend catching a burglar. Mr. Lucius stood up in front of the class and read it out loud. Having a teacher single you out in seventh grade was a seriously uncool thing in 1974, and I don’t imagine that’s changed much since. But he made me keep writing. I ended up giving him more crime stories, always me and my friend catching grown-up bad guys. I was reading a lot of Hardy Boys then, along with Encyclopedia Brown and the Three Investigators. That’s what I thought a mystery should be. A little bit of danger to keep things interesting, but everything turning out right in the end. One day Mr. Lucius gave me the collected stories of Edgar Allan Poe and told me to give it a try. “I think you’re ready for something a little ‘darker,’ ” he said to me. “Just leave this on my desk at the end of class. You can read some more tomorrow.”