Gothic Short Story

This was a midterm project for a Comparative Literature class. I chose to write a gothic story, becuase we had had a semester filled with Hawthorne, Poe, Blake, Shelley, etc. Call me inspired.

Jessica Ruckman
Midterm Project
11/21/2006


*My holiday began innocently enough. I had been fortunately boarded at the Delacroix School for Ladies in the wilderness near Boston, Massachusetts. My parents, Lord Albert and Lady Adeline Grey brought the family to this country in search of a new beginning, and to escape the monstrous tyranny of the ruling government. They sought democracy and freedom, so we began a new life here in America. I was a mere child of seven when we made the crossing from England to America, but I remember distinctly the long and arduous journey across a frigid, choppy and grey sea with naught but storm clouds to keep our group company. Many men, women and children spent the journey in the throes of seasickness, and many more of our group died aboard the ship only to meet their burials in an icy, storm tossed grave.
*Father Riley, one such unfortunate soul passed into the afterlife before my very eyes. As he drew in and released his last shuddery breath, I stood over him, mesmerized, frozen and otherwise unable to move. His icy hand was clamped down on mine as his eyes, filled with terror and eerie relief, relaxed into the regular position of a corpse. His chest stilled, the muscles fell into a mask of death. I know not what compelled me to stay with the body but stay I did until finally the next watch came and discovered his death. I stood by silently, the iced and salty wind whipping my disheveled hair about my face, as Father Riley’s last rights were given and his body was slid off of a plank to fall unceremoniously into the water. I peered over the ship’s rail after the Father’s corpse and watched as those wide open eyes stared blankly up at me and as his body slipped silently beneath the waves. As the corpse disappeared into its watery grave, I felt distinctly as though a large piece of my soul too had sunk with it. I felt myself a corpse and from then on, without my own soul.
*I digress, but I reflect on that treacherous crossing often during my daydreams. I do not dream at night anymore. Those dreams blur too intoxicatingly with reality and prove to be much too terrifying for the average soul. When we landed on this continent, I attempted to tuck away the circumstances of our crossing neatly into my memory-locked away and removed from my consciousness.
*I was raised in the bourgeois comfort of my parents’ home in central Boston surrounded by maids and servants and tutors, the best that money could buy. By a stroke of luck or breeding I was accepted into Delacroix School where I delved hungrily into the arts and literature. I became engrossed and extremely passionate about knowing, understanding and feeling, immersing myself, as it were, in the romance that these things offered me. Powerful and terrible works of art and penmanship flooded my senses and the more I studied, the more I hungered.
*I spent almost all of my time in the library, so it stands to reason that in that library, large and archaic, rough hewn and endless, is where I met Angela. As privileged as I, with a pale, drawn face and sunken eyes, mousy brown hair and a tall, lank figure, she stood in direct opposition to myself. Perhaps the contrary description was the initial attraction to my new bosom friend but as we learned more of each other through mutual interests in the romantic arts and through intense conversations lasting well into the night or until the headmistress begged us to exit the library and retire to our own quarters, I grew to love her as my dearest friend. Angela’s pallid face soon was the only visage I looked forward to seeing when I awoke, and it was the last thing that I wanted in my mind as I laid down to sleep at night. Her friendship became everything, her smile, my world.
*My suitemate Rebecca became increasingly suspicious and skeptical of my friend, having never met the girl herself. Through my narrations of our conversations it is my understanding that Rebecca merely became entangled in jealous feelings for my newly cultivated friendship because previous to meeting Angela, Rebecca was my closest friend and perhaps she’d lost some territory at the boarding school. In retrospect I can understand her misery-a suitemate should be a bosom friend and I must admit that I became preoccupied to an extreme degree. Thus was my passion for Angela’s friendship.
*My admiration for her also permeated the academic arena of my life. Although our conversations were academic to an extreme degree, the marks that I had consistently held began to slip from exemplary to questionable. Constantly exhausted, I spent my sparse free time sleeping deeply, almost to the degree where Rebecca thought me dead. Dreams metamorphosed from pleasant and peaceful, much like the smooth mirrored glass of a placid lake to black, white and grey storm-tossed nightmares. My sleep was to such a depth that, in my dreams, no matter how I struggled to wake, the horrid monsters, zombie like and blood-stained fangs chased me ‘round rain-slicked streets, until I awoke, heaving and screaming, calling for Angela to comfort me.
*She always came, and held me until the horrors passed and looking back, it was almost as though Angela had a peculiar hold over me, and I was nothing but a helpless fly trapped in a web of madness. But it makes no difference now. It is all over now. As for the memory of better days then…
*For almost six months, Angela and I remained bosom friends in what seemed like a symbiotic relationship, each growing stronger in the light of the other. We spoke often throughout the days and stayed up many evenings relating with one another the trials and even minute matters of our lives. Soon it became the holiday season, and as November was ushered in by an explosion of leaves into a myriad of magnificent colors, it became time to arrange a holiday home in order to be with my dear family for the holiday months.
*My mind exhausted itself with thoughts of excitement with the impending season of glowing candles, family and warmth, my heart also ached with the thought of leaving school and Angela for a month or more. As the time drew to within a fortnight of my departure, I was sitting in the cavernous study, cuddled with my feet tucked beneath me, the warmth and glow of the fireplace to warm me as I devoured Shelley’s Frankenstein. It was nearing midnight, as I recall, when the heavy oaken door to the study creaked ominously open. Into the dimly lit room stepped the diminutive and yet imposing figure of the headmistress, but her stern expression of discipline with typically clouded her features was replaced by one of apprehension and sorrows. My heart fell immediately as I scrambled out of the leather armchair and to my feet: I was the only soul in the study, so instinctively I knew the news was for me.
*The headmistress stepped into the dimly lit room, carefully closing the heavy door behind her. She looked about the room quite nervously, as though hoping someone else had miraculously come to deliver the news, sparing her from the task. I merely stood silently on wobbly knees and I clutched the back of the warm leather chair with one hand and with the other I clutched the book to my heaving chest. At the very second that I felt certain my knees would buckle beneath me, the headmistress spoke.
*“Miss Grey, I am afraid that I have some difficult news for you. It seems that your family, well, has contracted the fever. They will all be quarantined until further notice.” She halted, and in an uncharacteristic gesture, seemed to be gathering her wits. She moved closer to me, gesturing for me to sit as she entreated me further. “I took the liberty of writing to Miss Black’s father so that he may ask you to stay with them for the holidays. It is only the two of them, you know, as Mrs. Black died during Angela’s birth. O dear, look at me babbling on like a sack of monkeys.” She patted my knee. “Chin up Isabel. All will be well.” And with that miserly assurance, she stood straight as a ramrod and marched quietly from the room, leaving me alone in the dark, empty room.

*The darkness and damp of the empty room matched my somber and desperate mood as I waited and worried for my family. Luckily I had escaped with my health as almost everyone in my burrow became ill with the fever. And through this tragic turn of events, the invitation was extended for me to spend many weeks with my dearest friend at such a magical time of year.
*And still I was a bit apprehensive at the thought of a wonderful vacation while my family was suffering and, to a more extreme degree, perhaps dying. But what choice did I really have in the matter? The thought of going home was simply out of the question and I could not tolerate staying at the school for weeks by myself. The only viable option was in fact to go to Angela’s home and enjoy my stay with her and her chemist father, Dorian. I remembered that the headmistress had let slip that Angela was an only child and that her mother was dead, so when our carriage came upon a long driveway lined with dismally dormant, grey and ice coated trees that, in summer, would be positively magnificent, but now against a steel grey sky, the twisted and gnarled limbs jutted out at odd and unsightly angles that it struck an ominous fear into my heart that I could not explain. I felt an impending and desperate sense of gloom, to such a degree that I could scarcely catch my breath, but with Angela’s pale but reassuring countenance next to me, I felt sure that my mind was simply overwrought due to the stress that I had been under with regards to my family’s precarious situation.
*As we drew nearer to the property, my fear was put swiftly aside. The house itself was a singularly beautiful sight, even in the gloom and starkness of winter. It was a three story masterpiece, stark white against the ominous grey sky. Four large and broad pillars were evenly spaced on the front of the house and between the second and third pillars, a grand red door, at least three times the size of an average front door stood in cheerful greeting. On the massive front porch, an extensive arrangement of shrubberies and plants, obviously out of season, but beautiful all the same, sat in tasteful elegance. In my delighted state, I turned to Angela in full expectation of a similar expression because were this my home, I would try my absolute best to never have to leave! Such a wonderful home I had never seen!
*My own was of course beautiful, given my family’s status and rank within Boston, but we lived in the city, surrounded by other affluent families and their regal homes. Our residence did not have a large yard, nor were there so many trees or the proper space to raise them. And here, there was so much to explore, between the grounds and the immense house itself. In my excitement, I searched Angela’s face for some sign of happiness but found none.
*In place of ecstasy, apprehension reigned. “Angela, why do you have such a look in your eyes? I should think you would be happy to return to such a beautiful home. Whatever could be the matter?” I asked, waiting patiently for a reply, but she only turned to look out the carriage’s window. More than a few moments passed in uncomfortable silence before Angela finally spoke again.
*“You know, it has been so long since I have been home. I’m not quite sure what to expect after a year of being away. My father is a scientist. He works many hours, sometimes for days before he sleeps. He’s a very driven man, and because of his career choice I was never most important in his life. I spent my childhood in the presence of nannies and governesses and tutors. I saw my father at dinner, and every year that passed, he aged. Not just aged in years but in sanity as well. He’s not a crazy man, mind you. He does, however, become more and more engrossed in his work, some type of psychology, the maintenance of the mind-” She stopped, tore her pale green eyes from the window and bore them strangely into mine. “The mind is a dangerous arena, Isabel. My father is stepping heavily where only a light touch is necessary and I am afraid that your stay here will not be as pleasant as you might expect.” And with that, silence enshrouded us.
*Stepping out of carriage where our boots crunched into the snow, we were helped from the carriage by a gaunt and ashen-faced man in a dusty grey suit. His name was Frederick Riley and he had been the family’s butler for decades, but there was absolutely no indication of relationship between Angela and Mr. Riley. In fact, I may have only perceived that perhaps there was an air of resentment between the two, and the sensation left as quickly as it came, but a remnant of some strange feeling remained. Our group solemnly walked to the pretty red door, and it opened seemingly of its own volition just before we reached it. But behind the door stood a matronly older woman wearing a dress of faded vermillion, accented with a long white apron and cap. Silver hair bounded from underneath the cap even though I suspected that the lady had tried strenuously to tame it while two emerald green eyes twinkled merrily as she smiled broadly at us and welcomed in the trio. “For Heaven’s sake, do get in here before you turn into icicles where you stand. We have been waiting for you for hours, but naturally I assumed you had been delayed by the inclement weather. All of the papers have said that an ice and snow storm will be coming in this evening after sundown, so I was getting worried about you!”
The lively woman named Elizabeth ushered us into the parlor where Angela and I parted from Mr. Riley. We removed our overcoats and stepped further into the house and into a lushly decorated sitting area. I sat down next to Angela on a plush velvet sofa in deep scarlet velvet, and while we waited for tea, I pressed her further regarding her thoughts on her father and his career because I was in need of reassurance that these next few weeks would pass rather smoothly.
*“Angela, you are my bosom friend and I feel we can share anything with each other, and I was curious if you would expound on your father’s career, I think I would be comforted extremely. In fact, you gave me an awful sense of fear during the ride here. I’m hoping you could offer some relief.” I looked into her eyes and awaited a response. Angela looked more pale and ill than before as she glanced over at me. It seemed as though the house was making Angela ill, but she smiled broadly, and patted my hand as she said, “I am sorry for being overly dramatic while we rode in the carriage. I’m afraid that I was in an overly somber and dramatic mood due to the fact that I haven’t been here in such a long time. I had mixed feelings, and I chose to show you the absolute worst of them. I am sorry.” She bestowed upon me such a loving and enthusiastic smile that I could not help but to be reassured, and with my best friend by my side and weeks to explore this wondrous house and lush grounds, my heart absolutely floated within my chest.
*Angela and I spent the next little while touring the house and meeting the staff. She took the liberty of introducing me to the entire household which consisted of two maids, a butler, two chefs and a groundskeeper. Their names, I swore I would never be able to remember, but they all shared the same characteristic, except of course for Elizabeth, whom I had met previously. All of the household staff looked as though they had been dead for years but unable to give up the motions of life. All had grey, sallow skin and sunken eyes which contained vacant expressions. Their hair had a dull grey tint which hung limply down to their dusty and rumpled uniforms, which all of course were colored in a dull and sickly shade of grey. In short, the entire staff moved and lived as though they had continued on through a life that they had left long ago.
*Angela and I continued our tour and she herself showed me to my room, which conveniently stood just across the hall from her own. It was a very expansive and beautiful room that contained highly varnished wooden floors with Persian rugs and tasteful paintings, all in different shades of red. The large four poster bed stood in the center of the room, an island unto itself, hooded by a red velvet canopy, but as I peeled back the curtains, a lush pile of bright white bedding layered onto the bed seemed to invite me to jump in and wallow around in them. Such a luxurious bed I hadn’t even seen in my home, but manners prevented me from doing so.
*I had quite a bit of time before we were to be called to dinner, so I leisurely unpacked my toiletries as Mr. Riley had given my clothes a home while Angela and I were exploring the house. During the exploration, Angela had alerted me to the grand library in the house’s west wing so in lieu of jumping into the luxurious bed with the possibility of never lifting myself out, I decided that I should explore that luxurious library. I finished putting my things into their proper places, changed out of my riding clothes and into a dress befitting a guest. I knocked on Angela’s door, but she was not in her room, so assuming that she had gone to find her father since, after all, it had been almost half a year since the two had come face to face. Innocently I assumed that they were having a private family reunion, so I quietly let myself into the small, cozy library and wandered among the books and periodicals.
*This room, however incongruous to the staff, was spotless in its cleanliness and life. The books seemed to absolutely breathe with verve and hum with excitement. Such a library I had never seen! It was very small, to be sure, but with every book I opened, a new spell had been put on me. I found a particularly exciting book that I had previously begun to read, but for some reason or another, put it aside. It was the terrifying tale called The Portrait of Dorian Gray, and I was very excited to learn that I had remembered just where I left off within the novel, so I ventured back through the crowded shelves and sat myself down by the fireplace and pass a few hours in the company of a positively excellent book. I had decided that I would stay out of Angela and Dorian’s way in order for them to become reacquainted with one another, although it did seem odd to me that he did not greet us at the door as one would expect from their hosts, speaking nothing of Dorian being the father of my companion. Odd, indeed! Pushing that thought aside, however, I began to devour the sumptuous details of Oscar Wilde’s most fantastical and horrifying work. I do not know how much time had passed from the time I sat down and the time that I was assaulted with a kerchief filled with some type of hypnotic poison, but I do know this: how I got when I awoke from an ill-gotten state of unconsciousness, tied to a bed not unlike the sumptuous one in my guest chamber.
*The difference, however, was that I was chained like a dog onto the bed which lay in the center of a damp and windowless room somewhere within the belly of the house. I was fully clothed, mind you. Please put that thought from your mind. Everything about my confinement was proper if anyone can say that about their false imprisonment and be serious about it, but to be perfectly truthful, I was under an extreme fear that I was to be held here against my will and used for some sort of madman’s toy. I was not thinking coherently, however, having just been awakened and finding myself in such a predicament but no matter how I worked myself up, I felt nothing but anger tinged with slight morbid curiosity. I only struggled mildly, knowing that regardless of how I fought, I would merely suffer from exhaustion added to whatever distress may befall me.
*Angela, who had previously been missing from this disastrous scene, came through the door, carrying some concoction or another in a ceramic bowl. The steam rose menacingly from it as she smiled grimly down on me. In my helpless state, I asked, “Angela, bosom friend of mine, why is this happening to me?” She merely laughed softly, deeply to herself with almost a twinge of pleasure dancing around the corners of her lips as she dipped her naked hands into the bowl of steaming juices. Without a word, she wrung out several long, heavy cloths and laid them over my chest, my arms and legs. I screamed in wild agony. Angela burned me with some agent or another that seemed as though it would burn right through my flesh and begin to gnaw at the very bone at any second! I writhed in pain, trying desperately to loosen myself from the fetters of my captors. Angela, in her ghostly way, reached out a slim and surprisingly unmarred hand into the potion and, having pulled it out, brushed against my burning cheek. My chest heaved with agony and fear. “Angela, why are you doing this to me? What have I done to deserve such torture?” I cried, my voice reaching a hysterical pitch. She, however, must have been immune to my desperate pleas because as she burned my cheek with her own hand, she continued in her sad way to comfort me, repeating, “Poor girl, it will all be okay. Shh, now, it is all okay but you have to trust in me, Isabel. This is for your own good. I know it hurts, and oh! how your skin must burn, but I promise you, it will all be okay.”
* What nonsense! Exactly what was she playing at? Was this a trap, an elaborate scheme all along? I did not know, but just at the moment where I think I would have given it all up for lost, the heavy door to my prison chamber opened, and in walked a very tall, salt and pepper haired gentleman with a kind disposition and a gentle manner. My rescuer had come to save me from Angela’s demented torture! He walked straight to me without hesitation, and, sitting in the spot that Angela had just vacated whispered to her, “Honey, go rest please. You have done enough here, and I will take over for you.”
*“But Father, I don’t want to leave now, I-”
*“Angela, go and rest, please. We have a long time to go before everything is settled.” Without another word, Angela left the cell and disappeared from sight. I was alone with the madman.
*“You must be Dorian Black. Can you please tell me why I am here? I am sure my family will want to know where I am, so if you please, just-” and before I could finish, Dorian the Chemist took over the job where his daughter-his protégé-had left off. He rolled up his shirtsleeves and dipped his hands into the steaming liquid, began to coat my face and chest with it. I screamed again and again writhed in severe agony! My face, what possibly could be left of my face? Dorian Black continued to bathe my arms and face in this poison, obviously unaffected by my pleas of mercy and screams of pain, for he did not stop for what seemed like hours until I blacked out into oblivion. The last I remember is my torturer saying, “Isabel, be strong and fight. Be strong, fight, and the worst will become like nothing at all.”

*When I awoke again, I was alone in a dark and damp chamber, wrapped in blankets like a mummy and still chained to a bed. What on earth would have possessed the Blacks to kidnap and torture me? What could I possibly have done to warrant such horrors? A servant lit a small fire across the room, and I could not even bear to bring myself to look at him because he must have been a monster too, like them. As he stalked away, however, my focus became my body. I felt angry red lesions and blisters running the length of my torso, and by the state of the gauze in which I was bound so tightly, I could tell that I had been tortured most violently. The lesions that I could not see left their evidence as they seeped through the gauzy material; my torso was bleeding and seeping in small patches that ran up to my chest. I could see no closer nor farther than my chest and stomach, but just by feel did I understand that my body had been injured significantly.
*Days must have passed, because some of the patches were dry, and new ones cropped up in their places. How long would they keep me here, in this chamber? Until I succumbed to death, madness, or both? I knew that in order to save myself, I had to find a way out!
*I’ll not bore you with the details of how I managed to loosen the bonds that held me; of how for hours upon hours while my captors thought I slept, that I rubbed my wrists against the bonds until there was no longer any skin left that might hinder my escape. I won’t tell you how, though bloody and exhausted, I managed to slip out of the bonds undetected in order to hunt down a weapon-a dagger, in fact-and replace myself exactly how I had been before I had so cleverly found a way to escape.
*The gory details of how, when Angela and Dorian returned in their calm and clever ways, I reached out for Dorian and cut him neatly about the neck before he even knew what had happened would horrify you if I told you, as would how, after murdering her father, and her teacher, Angela begged for her own life after she had so carelessly toyed with mine! She begged just as I had, pleaded for her life as she crouched in a corner of the dark and damp room, but I ended it all the same. I murdered her in the same manner as I had murdered her father. They tortured me for days, and I murdered them. They thought they would get away with kidnap and desecration of my body, but indeed, I turned the tables on them! But before I could gather my wits completely, I again fell into a state of black oblivion.

*When I awoke, however, I was back at the Delacroix School, and in my own bed. The room was awash with sunlight, and it positively streamed into the windows of my chamber. I yawned broadly and stretched my dormant limbs, and as I did, the nightmare came flooding back into my memory. I laughed nervously to myself, as if to shake away remnants of a horrible memory. It had only been a nightmare. Angela and I had not even left the school and it must have simply been my mind’s way of dramatizing a chain of uneasy events.
*I made a move to throw the down covers from my bed, but something stopped my arm from reaching out properly.
*A chain!
*"And that, gentlemen, is when I knew that I had not been dreaming.” Every gruesome sequence that I thought had been a mere imaginative tool for my discomfort was the truth, and actual happening, and to my horror a part of my life forever.
*It was only when I snapped out of my terrific revelry that I looked about me. In my bedchamber sat two armed guards and my pastor, all with grim looks of dread creeping across their stony faces.
*“Why have I been chained here like an animal? I was the victim of some horrific experiment by Dorian Black and his daughter! I was lured there by some elaborate scheme and I beat them at their own sick game! Why am I in chains?” I fairly screamed as tears of angst streamed down my face.
*And that is when I learned the truth.
*The official furthest from me was a tall, lean man with merely a fringe of hair and stooping shoulders. His eyes were of the dreary color of gray that I remembered so well in the Black household that I shrank from him as he spoke.
*“Isabel Grey, you have had a horrific chain of events befall you. And if you will be patient, I will tell you everything that I know. We have pieced together what is likely to have happened, and if you will please listen, I think that we can get to the bottom of this. Your family came down with Scarlet Fever, and the Blacks invited you to stay with them for the holiday season, correct?”
*“Yes, of course.”
*“And at some point or another, you yourself came in contact with the disease. During the carriage ride from this school to the Black house, you were overcome by the fever, and in your delirium, the Blacks rushed you to their home where you passed out in the library. Mr. Black tried to revive you with a cool cloth to the face, and you woke momentarily, and then slipped back into oblivion.”
*“That cannot possibly be! I was drugged with some concoction or another!” I yelled in a panic. “They held me captive day and night and tortured me by dousing me with a liquid that made my skin blister! Look at me; I am the proof that what I am saying is true!” I felt weak and helpless because if what this man was saying was the truth, I had-NO! Impossible! Surely Angela was in the next room, perhaps recovering herself; or perhaps in prison.
*The man pressed on. “The Blacks took you to a lower level room where you might be cooler. You kept an extremely high fever for days which caused your skin to blister and lesions to open and bleed. You were tied to the bed because according to the staff, you were delusional, and becoming increasingly violent. You broke free and murdered your best friend and her father.” This man sat next to me now, and patted my shoulder. The other two people in the room, guards as it was, glanced away from me as my priest told me the remainder. “Although you were in a state of delusion, you are to be hanged for your actions. Immediately. ” He made the sign of the cross about my chest, and added, “May God have mercy upon your soul.”
*My family recovered fully from their own illnesses, but made no attempt to contact me in the days before my hanging. I was not bothered though, because of my preoccupation with Angela and her father. Dreams became nightmares, and in my mind, every night, they walked behind me, in front of me, in a slow and deathlike march, as though leading me to the hell that I would know for all eternity. My mind became the torturer, and I the victim.
*On the predetermined day of my death, I welcomed the rough and thick rope that slid about my neck in such a way that I knew my life had come to an end. I welcomed it, and as the floor beneath me dropped, a thousand demons reached up from the depths to take me home.