The heat rapidly increased, and once again I looked up, shuddering as with a fit of the ague. There had been a second change in the cell-and now the change was obviously in the form. As before, it was in vain that I at first endeavored to appreciate or understand what was taking place. But not long was I left in doubt. The Inquisitorial vengeance had been hurried by my two-fold escape, and there was to be no more dallying with the King of Terrors. The room had been square. I saw that two of its iron angles were now acute-two, consequently, obtuse. The fearful difference quickly increased with a low rumbling or moaning sound. In an instant the apartment had shifted its form into that of a lozenge. But the alteration stopped not here-I neither hoped nor desired it to stop. I could have clasped the red walls to my bosom as a garment of eternal peace. “Death,” I said, “any death but that of the pit!” Fool! might I not have known that into the pit it was the object of the burning iron to urge me? Could I resist its glow? or if even that, could I withstand its pressure? And now, flatter and flatter grew the lozenge, with a rapidity that left me no time for contemplation. Its centre, and of course its greatest width, came just over the yawning gulf. I shrank back-but the closing walls pressed me resistlessly onward. At length for my seared and writhing body there was no longer an inch of foothold on the firm floor of the prison. I struggled no more, but the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long, and final scream of despair. I felt that I tottered upon the brink-I averted my eyes-
There was a discordant hum of human voices! There was a loud blast as of many trumpets! There was a harsh grating as of a thousand thunders! The fiery walls rushed back! An outstretched arm caught my own as I fell, fainting, into the abyss. It was that of General Lasalle. The French army had entered Toledo. The Inquisition was in the hands of its enemies.
The Pit, the Pendulum, and Perfection BY EDWARD D. HOCH
I have written elsewhere that my lifetime commitment to mystery fiction can be traced to an early exposure to the novels of Ellery Queen. But my love for the short story dates from my first reading of Edgar Allan Poe. It was in my school textbook that I discovered “The Pit and the Pendulum,” a near-perfect example of the horror and suspense that marked so much of Poe’s work.
From the very beginning with its description of the Inquisition chamber, the reader is caught up in the narrator’s terrible plight. We are to be his companion in the tortures that follow, and it seems that death will be his only release. He drifts between a conscious and dreamlike state, facing first the fate of execution by a swinging, razor-sharp pendulum, a method Poe had no doubt seen described in a contemporary history of the Inquisition. As his narrator describes the slow descent of the pendulum and the scurrying of rats about his chamber, there seems to be no chance of survival.
When he miraculously escapes death by the pendulum, he is immediately faced with an even graver danger. The red-hot walls of his cell begin to close in upon him, forcing him ever closer to the gaping abyss at the center of the room. The suspense builds to a terrifying pitch that holds the reader until the story’s final paragraph. Poe’s ending may be a bit far-fetched, but it has a historical basis. To the reader it is supremely satisfying, the perfect ending to a half hour of nail-biting suspense.
For anyone who wishes to write short stories, there is no better teacher than Edgar Allan Poe. And there is no better example of suspenseful perfection in a short story than “The Pit and the Pendulum.”
Edward D. Hoch (1930-2008) was a past president of Mystery Writers of America and winner of its Edgar Award for Best Short Story. In 2001 he received MWA’s Grand Master Award. He was a guest of honor at Bouchercon, two-time winner of its Anthony Award, and recipient of its Lifetime Achievement Award. The Private Eye Writers of America honored him with its Life Achievement Award as well. Author of some 975 published stories, he appeared in every issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in the past thirty-five years.
The Pit and the Pendulum at the Palace BY PETER ROBINSON
If I hadn’t become a crime writer, I think it most likely I would have written horror or science fiction. I certainly did when I was a teenager; then, after many years of poetry, I turned to crime. While Poe’s stories of “ratiocination” featuring Auguste Dupin never really thrilled me (even back then I just couldn’t believe in that OurangOutang!), his tales of mystery and imagination enthralled me from the start. And I came to them first through the films of Roger Corman, many of them scripted by the excellent Richard Matheson.
In England in the early 1960s there were three ratings for films: U, A, and X. The first was general admission, for an A film you had to be accompanied by an adult, and you had to be over sixteen to see an X film. X ratings weren’t reserved for films about sex and violence but were applied to just about every exciting horror and science fiction film that came out in that golden age-from The Blob to Psycho. For a twelve-year-old fan, the pickings were pretty slim. You might get something decent with an A rating, which meant that you had to hang around outside the cinema and ask some adult stranger to take you in-something I’m sure would be inconceivable in this day and age. But we did it and survived.
Luckily, though, there was one local fleapit, incredibly named the Palace, where the old woman in the ticket booth didn’t really care how old you were. At twelve or thirteen, I was tall enough that I could pass for sixteen there, or so I thought. At any rate, she took my money and let me in without a second glance. I can still recall the sense of excitement and anticipation I felt before the lush red velvet curtains parted. I was doing something I shouldn’t be doing, seeing something forbidden-at least to kids my age-and I had no idea what wonders to expect. My previous horror and science fiction experiences had included A for Andromeda and Quatermass and the Pit on television, and the latter had scared the living daylights out of me. Now here I was, alone in a dark cinema, waiting for the ultimate experience in terror-in living color on a large screen-The Pit and the Pendulum. No wonder my stomach clenched as I lit a Woodbine and slunk down in my seat.
When the curtains opened, the swirl of colors was much like that of light shows I was to see later in the decade, but at the time, combined with a quirky, contemporary score, it was just enough to set the juices flowing. This was going to be weird. Then came the impossible castle on its hill, surrounded by a ring of mist, and the coach driver who would only take his passenger so far. (Quickly developing a taste for these horror films, I also devoured everything Hammer produced around the same time and got used to seeing such openings over and over again!) But it wasn’t so much the castle and the cobwebs and the dungeon and the strange colors and the distortion used in flashbacks and dream sequences that made me squirm in my seat. Poe, I discovered through Corman, was a master of morbid psychology, master of the language of grief and loss and how they could lead a man (usually Vincent Price) to madness beyond the grave.
The Pit and the Pendulum at the Palace
Of course, in retrospect, it’s hard to say how much I understood at the time. Probably the whole element of adultery that underpins the tale was lost on me, though the hints of illicit sex and debauchery certainly weren’t-heaving cleavage was as much a feature of the Corman films as it was with Hammer-and the way Elizabeth expresses her fascination with the torture chamber, rushing around feverishly, touching the implements with a kind of sexual longing, was both disturbing and exciting. I knew about the Spanish Inquisition (though this was several years before it was immortalized by Monty Python) and its tortures-the Iron Maiden, the rack, and the rest- but perhaps the adult relationships were somewhat lost on me.