A Thanksgiving To Remember

This is the time of year that we all give thanks, or at least that is the theory, for the blessings we have. My thought had always been that while heads were bowed during grace, the blessings are for more material things. Mom is giving thanks that her best china hasn't been broken to pieces, Dad is giving thanks that as soon as this is over he can take a nap before the football game. Bradley is giving thanks that he found a part for his car, Bella is giving thanks that she's not pregnant and little Billy is giving thanks that he can play his video games when all this family stuff is over.

Years ago I worked on the pediatric ward of one of our local hospitals. Now I know many of you are thinking, how sad, all those sick children. True, it could be very sad. But, as Art Linkletter used to say (yes, I am old) "Kids say the darnedest things".

This tale is not, however, not a happy one. It is the story of a little four year old Arabian girl who touched my heart in such a way that I will never forget her.

It was this time of the year and on the pediatric floor we were very busy. It's the middle of respiratory season. Children with asthma, sinus infections and chronic bronchitis are the main admissions. You can walk onto the floor and almost hear the oxygen tents at work. It was my year to work Thanksgiving and my shift began at three o'clock. Because of the holiday, several of the children had been discharged earlier in the day and most were expected to leave during my shift.

After, what would be considered the dinner hour, admissions called stating they had a child to be admitted with a fracture caused by a fall at her uncle's home. She was visiting from nearby Toronto in Canada for the holiday. Oh, she was tiny and timid, obviously scared to death. All I kept thinking was, here is this poor little girl, in a strange country surrounded by all these people poking and prodding, not understanding a word we said. How frightening that must be.

It was during the admission process while I was getting her into a gown, that I noticed a red marking on her back, a welt you might say. The welt was about an inch and a half wide and approximately four or five inches long. Of course, this was pointed out to my charge nurse who immediately called on the attending resident to look at. To all of us, this looked like it was done by a belt. This gets the ball rolling with Child Protective Services (CPS) in a heartbeat. I was asked to stay with her until her family returned from completing the admissions process. I picked her up, took her to the rocker and sat there with her, stroking her hair, humming and telling her that everything would be just fine, no one would hurt her again. She, of course, didn't understand the words I was saying but I believe she did understand the tears in my eyes and my gentle touch.

Her mother, back from admissions, took a chair but made no move to comfort the child. She sat there with her eyes darting back and forth like a scared rabbit. This really was not unusual. Many of the women I had encountered over the years at the hospital from Yemen or any of the Arabian countries do not speak English. I looked at her, smiled what I'd hoped would be a comforting smile, letting her know that everything would be fine. No sense speaking the words she wouldn't understand. Her uncle was the next to enter the room and the child tensed so much that I knew in my heart that he was the one that had done this to her.

When the resident came in to speak with the family, I gave her to her mother and left the room. I immediately expressed my thoughts to my charge nurse and asked that we move her to the "fishbowl" to keep an eye, not only on her, but her uncle. The "fishbowl" is what we called the observation room across from the nurses station. It's comprised of all windows and used most of the time for seizure patients. My spot at the nurse's station was directly across from this room and I kept a close watch to what was going on in there. This was one time my nosy nature was a blessing. I noticed the behavior of her with each family member, and each time her uncle came into the room she'd manage to get out of there and come running to me. It seemed I'd become her safe haven.

It finally came out that the uncle had sexually abused her, gave her the whipping and pushed her down the stairs as a warning as to what would happen to her if she ever told anyone what he had done.

This little one, that touched me so, nominated me as Employee of the Month (I lost to the groundskeeper. Mowing the lawn is so much more important than what I was doing), sent me cards and drawings. She came to visit me a few months later to give me the greatest of all her gifts, in English she said "Thank you". Suddenly, the cards and pictures stopped. I received word though her mother (just try and find someone to translate Arabic when you need to) that her uncle was released and beat her to death.

So each year, when my head is bowed in prayer, I think of that little one, who so many years ago changed the blessings I count.

A Visit From St. Nicholas

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads.
And mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below.
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tinny reindeer.

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name!

"Now Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! On, Cupid! on, on Donner and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!"

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky.
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of Toys, and St Nicholas too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.
A bundle of Toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler, just opening his pack.

His eyes-how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly!

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself!
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk.
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose!

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight,
"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!"

 

Morry's Gift

Chances are there was a monster under your bed or in your closet when you were a kid.  In all likelihood, it had been there since you were born.  The job of this monster was to break your will and spirit just before you stopped believing in it.  For most of you, age seven was the magic age when you stopped believing.  Once it wore you down, saw you crumble; it got new orders and was sent on its merry way.

Maurice’s last assignment was a little boy, Jimmy, whose spirit was never broken.  He was a fearless little boy.  His dad called him “Red Chief” after a character in an old O’Henry story Jimmy’s dad loved as a kid. 

It was Halloween when Jimmy confronted Maurice, Morry for short, about the facts of a monster’s job.  Jimmy made a deal with him that night.  Since Morry knew he would never break Jimmy’s spirit, he agreed.  The deal was to leave Jimmy for greener pastures.  He promised Morry the job would not only be easy but entertaining.  His Halloween gift to Morry was Boris.

Boris was a classmate of Jimmy’s.  He picked on Jimmy and his friend, Billy, on a daily basis.  Boris was the class bully.

After he came home from trick or treating, Boris gave the bag to his dad to check the candy.  He kissed his mom and went up to his room.

Boris barely heard his dad call after him, “Sport, you don’t want any candy?”

He didn’t say a word; just shook his head.  As he pulled off his costume he saw something move in the corner of his eye.  It was probably nothing but a shadow.  It was Halloween.  You were supposed to be spooked. 

The next morning he saw Jimmy and Billy as they walked passed the house.  He wasn’t in the mood to pick on them.   Percy, his older brother, beat him up again.  Boris couldn’t wait until he was old enough to get even with him.  On top of that, he saw the shadow go under the bed again. 

Time moved on and Boris began to see the shadow more and more.  He had begun to think he was losing his mind.  Just before spring vacation started, something had begun tugging at his blankets. 

Boris bolted up in bed, “Percy, if you don’t stop I’m gonna pound you!”

Percy did not respond to the threat.  Boris was relieved.  He didn’t want to deal with him tonight.  He crawled under the blankets and hugged his pillow.  Silent tears began to run down his face.  His parents had been fighting again when he came home. Before too long, Boris was asleep.

Morry saw the toes first.  The toes were short and pudgy.  He was ready to run his nail down the bottom of Boris’s foot when he heard a sob.  He didn’t think Boris was the bully he made himself out to be outside the walls of his house.  In fact, he knew it. 

Morry had learned over the past months that Boris was a sad little boy.  If Jimmy had known, heck if Morry had known Boris was not the bully he pretended to be, the deal would have never happened.  Tonight Boris was told his parents were getting separating.  His dad was moving to the other side of town.  Percy told him if their parent got a divorce, it would be his fault. 

Morry had seen everything on this job.  Boris was not the first kid whose parents separated.  He decided Boris needed help and he was just the monster to do it.  Morry first needed to talk to Jimmy. He silently slurked out the window into the night.

Jimmy stopped wrapping himself like a mummy when Morry left.  Morry took advantage of it.  His nail ran down the length of the bottom of Jimmy’s foot.  Jimmy bolted straight up in bed. 

“Morry?” Jimmy croaked.

“Yes.  Jimmy, we need to talk about Boris.  And I need a favor from you.  This seems only fair.  I did do one for you.” Morry made himself at home on the end of the bed.

“Sure, what is it?” Jimmy answered.  He remembered last Halloween when the deal was made.  He did owe one to Morry.  He’d been with Boris for about six months.  He thought maybe Morry had come to tell him the job was done and was coming back. 

“It’s about Boris.  I would like you and Billy to befriend him.  Close your mouth Jimmy.  Boris is having a very hard time.  He really is just a scared little boy.” Jimmy snapped his mouth shut and continued to listen.

Morry told him Boris was bullied by older brother, Percy.  He mentioned the fighting between his parents. Then Morry told Jimmy about Boris’s parents.

“Jimmy, this kid has no spirit to break.  He was broken when I moved under the bed.  His, by the way is completely neat and tidy compared to yours.” Morry ducked his head under the bed as he said this; his voice muffled.

He popped back up and said, “You and Billy start hanging with him a little. I’m going to do my best to talk to him.  You know, set him straight.  Maybe I should go into the counseling business.”

Morry was out the window before Jimmy could register a response.

When Morry returned to Boris’s room, he noticed that pudgy foot again.  He took action.  He ran his nail on the bottom of his foot. His foot twitched. Morry did it again.  Boris woke just as Morry was about to just shake him awake. 

“Hey, kid.  We need to have a monster to bully talk.”

Boris sat there with his eyes wide and mouth open.  Morry placed his pointed nail under Boris’s chin and gently pushed it shut. 

“What is with you boys and your mouths hanging open? It makes you all look a bit like goldfish. Don’t answer; I truly do not want to know. Let me introduce myself.  I am Maurice.  And if you don’t blink soon, I will be forced to eat you.”

Boris blinked.

“Thank you.  You may call me Morry.  I’m the monster who lives under your bed.  Normally, I would be sent to you as a baby.  Then I would wait for your seventh year and basically turn you into a sniveling little boy.  You, however, were a gift to me. 

“I’d been told you are a bit of a bully.  No, that’s not right.  You are a bully.  I’ve spent months under your bed and I have to tell you, you are not good at it.  What you are is a frightened little boy.  I have decided to give you some advice.”

“On being a bully?” Boris managed to sputter.

“No. No. No.  I could give you lessons of course; but you are not cut from the right cloth for it.  No.  I’m going to tell you how things really are.  First, about your parents and the fighting; grownups do that. It comes from stress.  Grownup stuff.  It comes from the frustration you get when something happens and you have no control over it.”  Morry looked at Boris.  The kid wasn’t getting it. He was seriously thinking of exchanging this gift.

“Let me put it this way.  When your parents are arguing, you are unable to do anything to stop it.  You have been taught your entire seven years to respect your parents.  That’s a very good thing.  Unfortunately, you cannot fight back.  So what does little Boris do?  He wipes the tears and goes out and picks on other little kids.  That’s going to stop.” Morry inspected his nails.

Boris began to whimper, “The kids don’t like me.”

“Of course they don’t kid.  Tell me, do you like it when Percy picks on you?” 

“I hate it.”

“Everyone hates to be picked on.  It’s the number one reason the other kids aren’t too fond of you.  But, like I said, the bully act is going to stop.  Once you do, the other kids will start seeing you for who you really are.”

“Do you really think so?”  Boris was beginning to get his hopes up. 

“I do.  Now, about your parents getting a separating…”

“Uhhhh”, moaned Boris.

“Hear me out on this one kid.  That is not exactly the worst thing that can happen.” Morry saw Boris was going to protest and held a hand in front of his face to get him to stop.  He noticed he needed more scum under some of the nails.

“I see and hear things you don’t.  By the way, Percy is an idiot.  You are not the cause of your parents separating.  I would love more than anything to tell you its Percy’s fault. I really don’t like that kid.  The fault belongs to no one.  It happens.  But I know, after your mom and dad are apart for awhile, things will get better.  The fighting will stop.  They will get along much better.  The sad part of the whole mess will be Percy.  He’ll still be here.”  Morry had plans for Percy.

Boris sat straight in his bed, “Really?  Do you think everything will be okay?  Mom and Dad don’t blame me? They really don’t?” Boris sniffed. “And you are right about Percy.  He is a jerk.  I’m just not big enough to get him back.”

“You will be alright Boris.  You’ll see.  Now I have to take care of my next assignment.” Morry gave Boris a thumb up as he slipped out the window.

Boris sniffled again.  As he drifted off to sleep, he thought he heard Percy scream. 

The next morning at breakfast, he heard Percy coming down the stairs.  He closed his eyes and waited for the morning blow to the back of his head.  It never came. With one eye open he looked at Percy.  He had dark circles under his eyes.  He looked pale.  He stood there shaking and just stared off into space.  Boris had an idea who Morry’s next job was.

Boris grabbed his books.  When he had opened the door to leave, there stood Jimmy and Billy. 

“Hey Boris, walk with us to school.” Jimmy and Billy said at the same time.  They turned into the school yard when the three of them saw Chloe, the new girl from their class. She tossed her hair as they looked her way. Boris gave her a shy wave then caught up with his new friends.

  

Halloween with Morry

I've decided to post "Halloween with Morry" again this year.  Look for a new story featuring Morry coming in a few days.  I hope you all have a safe and candy fulled Halloween!

For a seven year old, Jimmy was a pretty typical boy.  He was kind of short and what his mom called husky.  Dad gave him a close brush cut at the beginning of summer that was now growing out; it spiked on its own now.  He was tough and afraid of almost nothing.  Actually, his father was often heard calling him “Red Chief”, telling friends that most living things were afraid of Jimmy.  His mom would wrinkle her nose and squirm when he would show her a frog or snake, but secretly smile to herself at her little man’s teasing.  He was very much his father’s son.

The walls of his bedroom were filled with posters of movie monsters; from Lon Chaney as The Wolfman and Boris Karloff as The Mummy to modern movie monsters of Jason and Michael Meyers.  The shelves were filled with the monster models he and his dad put together (well his dad put together, Jimmy just watched for most of them).  Jimmy knew every one of the monsters wasn’t real; they were all make believe.  But there was a monster he was afraid of.  Dad didn’t know about it.  His mom and sister didn’t know about it.  Even his best friend didn’t know about it.  But it was very, very real.

This monster lived under his bed.  He knew it was real.  The thing would stretch its slimy green arm from under the bed, searching for his foot at night.  It’s long, sharp nails would run along the bottom of his foot. 

After the first couple times the monster touched him, Jimmy began shoving anything he could under the bed.  Toys, his and his sister Molly‘s, books, clothes, whatever he could find.  He had hoped it would keep the monster from coming out.  Then there were the covers.  Jimmy was always covered from his neck to his toes, even in the heat of summer.  Everything was working out fine.  Almost a year had gone by since he had been touched.  The plan worked! But then today, Halloween, his mom said something that made Jimmy’s skin crawl.  “Clean under that bed or there will be no trick or treating for you young man.”  It was Jimmy’s worst nightmare come true. 

He sat in the middle of the room, staring at the bed.  He didn’t look under the bed itself, just the bed.  What was he going to do?  He didn’t want to miss out on Halloween but Jimmy also didn’t want to tell his mom and dad WHY he didn’t clean from under his bed.  He sat there staring and thinking; thinking and staring. He suddenly sat bolt straight; his eyes wide.

He’d make a deal.  Maybe like in that story The Devil and Tom Walker the librarian at school read to them.  He began to grin; he knew it was a deal the monster couldn’t refuse.  Grinning from ear to ear, Jimmy began to remove toys, both his and his sister’s, clothes and what may have been food at one time.  He not only put his things away but his sister’s as well.  Clothes were put in the hamper. Jimmy did not expect to see them again.  He had grown in the past year. 

With everything out from under the bed, Jimmy was ready to deal with the monster. From across the room, Jimmy stood bent sideways at his waist as he looked under the bed.  Nothing.  He wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans and moved in closer.  Still nothing.  With the broom in his hand, Jimmy swiped it along the underside of the bed.  Nothing, not even a cobweb. 

He knelt there at the side of the bed.  The blank look on Jimmy’s face said it all, “Where is it?”, he was shocked it wasn’t there.  But as his grandpa used to tell him, “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”  He had no idea what that meant but he didn’t think this was the time to find out.  He heard something.  It was his best buddy, Billy, calling him to play.  He grabbed his mitt and out he went.  Jimmy forgot about the monster for the afternoon.

After dinner, Jimmy and Molly began getting ready for their night of begging door to door.  They were dressed as their favorite fantasies.  Jimmy was The Wolfman.  Dad did his face makeup so he would look hairy and Mom found an old grey wig for him to wear from a thrift store.  She took one of his older suit coats and tore the sleeves.  It was a size or so too small for him and he’d flexed what muscles he had to tear at the seam in the back.  It gave the illusion of bursting out of his clothes during his change.

Molly was two years older and going through what Mom kept telling Dad was a perfectly normal phase.  She was now into “boy bands” and Miley Cyrus.  So Molly, in her long blonde wig and wireless microphone danced a few steps ahead of Jimmy and their parents.

Jimmy spotted Billy. The two put their heads together, whispering.  The two boys had been plagued by the same bully at school since they were in kindergarten.  Jimmy had spilled his guts to Billy about the monster.  He was now telling him about his plan.  Billy thought it was brilliant.  Billy had also thought Jimmy should leave his brain to science.  However, when Jimmy asked if he’d like to sleep over, he gave him a sideways glance and said no. Jimmy was on his own.

Dad went through the candy, just as he did every year.  Jimmy and Molly noticed that the candy Dad liked best was always the candy he found to be suspicious.  After watching some old horror movies and eating candy, Mom announced it was time for bed.  It felt like a cold iron hand clamped around Jimmy’s heart. Sweat formed on his upper lip.  Slowly, he climbed the stairs.

Once in his room, he looked around.  Nothing was different from that afternoon.  He slipped into his pajamas, took a quick look under the bed, then made a mad dash to it.  Shaking, he pulled the covers around him. 

Then it dawned on him.  If the monster was still here, how would he get it to talk if he was wrapped like a mummy in blankets?  The blankets prevented the monster from coming out.  Very slowly, he started to move his foot from under the quilt. A few minutes later, he heard it.  The slithering, slurping sound of the monster as he moved under the bed.  Jimmy tensed, forcing himself to relax.  He could do this.  That’s when he felt it.

The long nail of the slimy finger slowly moved from the ball of this foot to his heel.  Jimmy cleared his throat, just a couple of small coughs.

“Hey, Mr. Monster! I’d really like you to leave me alone.”  His voice shaking only a bit.

“My name is Maurice, but please, call me Morry.  All my future meals do.  I can’t leave Jimmy.  You are my human for the moment, you, my dear boy, were assigned to me.  By the way, I’m not here to eat you.  I just always wanted to say that.”

Jimmy was impressed but not enough to allow Morry to stay.  He knew not every human had a monster under their beds or in their closets.  Billy didn’t have a monster.

“Tell me Morry, why am I your human? Why doesn’t every human have a monster? What are you going to do to me?”  Jimmy was getting less scared and more interested. 

“Questions, questions.”  Morry began to explain the order of monster and human relationships.  Monsters scare and humans get frightened.  “You see Jimmy, the relationship is chosen for us.  You didn’t choose me and I  certainly didn’t choose you.  Usually these things are done at the time of the human’s birth.  I’ve been with you that long.  Seven years; seven long years.  I’ve watched you grow into a strong willed young boy.  I’ve had other humans before you and I will have others after you.  It appears you are too strong willed for the Elders liking.  You, Jimmy, are a very brave young man.

“By the way, all the toys, books, clothes and anything else you stuffed under the bed?  Doesn’t stop a monster from being under the bed; they just give them something to do.  We are flexible beings and can change our size at will.  Now, Jimmy, let’s get down to business and get this done.  I have to break your strong will.  I must scare you enough to become a sniveling crybaby as it were.  And I’m sorry I have to do it.  I like you Jimmy.”  Morry’s voice was soothing, smooth and almost hypnotic.

Through blank, staring eyes and a mouth drooping open (if his mom were to see him now she’d ask if he was catching flies), Jimmy’s mind began to float back to the surface.  “WAIT!”

Morry did not expect this.  His victims never spoke before the end.  He was losing his patience with this boy.

“I…want…to make…a deal…with…you.” Jimmy was having a problem finding his voice.

“What kind of a deal?” Morry was never given a proposal before.   This intrigued him.

Jimmy shifted in bed, hung over the side and was looking Morry right in the eyes.  He began whispering to the monster that had lived under his bed for the past seven years.  The monster who scared him.  Morry began to nod his head; he seemed to like the idea.   He didn’t think here would be a problem.  He thought of himself as a freelance monster.  Putting a slimy hand out, he took Jimmy’s and considered the deal sealed in a gentlemanly manner.  Morry was a monster that stood by his word. 

Jimmy watched as Morry left his room by way of the window.  He was almost sad to see him go.  What was he thinking!  Jimmy shook his head.  He was happy Morry left; even happier that Morry had made the deal with him.

The next morning, with a bounce in his step, Jimmy walked to school with Billy.  As they came to the corner of Main and Elmwood, their steps became slower.  They were passing the house of Boris; the bully that had bothered them for the past three years.  Billy cringed as Boris came out of the house.  Standing there and shaking in place, Billy squeezed his eyes shut waiting to get slugged.  Nothing happened.  Boris walked by, never saying a word to them.  He hung his head like he was looking for spare change on the street.  Jimmy whispered to Billy and nodded.  As the two friends began to walk to school, Jimmy looked back at the window of Boris’s bedroom.  Looking out at him was Morry giving him the thumbs up.

Berenice

By Edgar Allan Poe 
--1835


Dicebant mihi sodales, si sepulchrum amicae visitarem, curas meas aliquantulum forelevatas.
- Ebn Zaiat.
MISERY is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow, its hues are as various as the hues of that arch - as distinct too, yet as intimately blended. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow! How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness? - from the covenant of peace, a simile of sorrow? But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies which are, have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.
My baptismal name is Egaeus; that of my family I will not mention. Yet there are no towers in the land more time-honored than my gloomy, gray, hereditary halls. Our line has been called a race of visionaries; and in many striking particulars - in the character of the family mansion - in the frescos of the chief saloon - in the tapestries of the dormitories - in the chiselling of some buttresses in the armory - but more especially in the gallery of antique paintings - in the fashion of the library chamber - and, lastly, in the very peculiar nature of the library's contents - there is more than sufficient evidence to warrant the belief.
The recollections of my earliest years are connected with that chamber, and with its volumes - of which latter I will say no more. Here died my mother. Herein was I born. But it is mere idleness to say that I had not lived before - that the soul has no previous existence. You deny it? - let us not argue the matter. Convinced myself, I seek not to convince. There is, however, a remembrance of aerial forms - of spiritual and meaning eyes - of sounds, musical yet sad - a remembrance which will not be excluded; a memory like a shadow - vague, variable, indefinite, unsteady; and like a shadow, too, in the impossibility of my getting rid of it while the sunlight of my reason shall exist.
In that chamber was I born. Thus awaking from the long night of what seemed, but was not, nonentity, at once into the very regions of fairy land - into a palace of imagination - into the wild dominions of monastic thought and erudition - it is not singular that I gazed around me with a startled and ardent eye - that I loitered away my boyhood in books, and dissipated my youth in reverie; but it is singular that as years rolled away, and the noon of manhood found me still in the mansion of my fathers - it is wonderful what stagnation there fell upon the springs of my life - wonderful how total an inversion took place in the character of my commonest thought. The realities of the world affected me as visions, and as visions only, while the wild ideas of the land of dreams became, in turn, not the material of my every-day existence, but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself.
* * * * * * *
Berenice and I were cousins, and we grew up together in my paternal halls. Yet differently we grew - I, ill of health, and buried in gloom - she, agile, graceful, and overflowing with energy; hers, the ramble on the hill-side - mine the studies of the cloister; I, living within my own heart, and addicted, body and soul, to the most intense and painful meditation - she, roaming carelessly through life, with no thought of the shadows in her path, or the silent flight of the raven-winged hours. Berenice! -I call upon her name - Berenice! - and from the gray ruins of memory a thousand tumultuous recollections are startled at the sound! Ah, vividly is her image before me now, as in the early days of her light-heartedness and joy! Oh, gorgeous yet fantastic beauty! Oh, sylph amid the shrubberies of Arnheim! Oh, Naiad among its fountains! And then - then all is mystery and terror, and a tale which should not be told. Disease - a fatal disease, fell like the simoon upon her frame; and, even while I gazed upon her, the spirit of change swept over her, pervading her mind, her habits, and her character, and, in a manner the most subtle and terrible, disturbing even the identity of her person! Alas! the destroyer came and went! - and the victim -where is she? I knew her not - or knew her no longer as Berenice.
Among the numerous train of maladies superinduced by that fatal and primary one which effected a revolution of so horrible a kind in the moral and physical being of my cousin, may be mentioned as the most distressing and obstinate in its nature, a species of epilepsy not unfrequently terminating in trance itself - trance very nearly resembling positive dissolution, and from which her manner of recovery was in most instances, startlingly abrupt. In the mean time my own disease - for I have been told that I should call it by no other appellation - my own disease, then, grew rapidly upon me, and assumed finally a monomaniac character of a novel and extraordinary form - hourly and momently gaining vigor - and at length obtaining over me the most incomprehensible ascendancy.
This monomania, if I must so term it, consisted in a morbid irritability of those properties of the mind in metaphysical science termed the attentive. It is more than probable that I am not understood; but I fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader, an adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in my case, the powers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied and buried themselves, in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of the universe.
To muse for long unwearied hours, with my attention riveted to some frivolous device on the margin, or in the typography of a book; to become absorbed, for the better part of a summer's day, in a quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry or upon the floor; to lose myself, for an entire night, in watching the steady flame of a lamp, or the embers of a fire; to dream away whole days over the perfume of a flower; to repeat, monotonously, some common word, until the sound, by dint of frequent repetition, ceased to convey any idea whatever to the mind; to lose all sense of motion or physical existence, by means of absolute bodily quiescence long and obstinately persevered in: such were a few of the most common and least pernicious vagaries induced by a condition of the mental faculties, not, indeed, altogether unparalleled, but certainly bidding defiance to anything like analysis or explanation.
Yet let me not be misapprehended. The undue, earnest, and morbid attention thus excited by objects in their own nature frivolous, must not be confounded in character with that ruminating propensity common to all mankind, and more especially indulged in by persons of ardent imagination. It was not even, as might be at first supposed, an extreme condition, or exaggeration of such propensity, but primarily and essentially distinct and different. In the one instance, the dreamer, or enthusiast, being interested by an object usually not frivolous, imperceptibly loses sight of this object in a wilderness of deductions and suggestions issuing therefrom, until, at the conclusion of a day dream often replete with luxury, he finds the incitamentum, or first cause of his musings, entirely vanished and forgotten. In my case, the primary object was invariably frivolous, although assuming, through the medium of my distempered vision, a refracted and unreal importance. Few deductions, if any, were made; and those few pertinaciously returning in upon the original object as a centre. The meditations were never pleasurable; and, at the termination of the reverie, the first cause, so far from being out of sight, had attained that supernaturally exaggerated interest which was the prevailing feature of the disease. In a word, the powers of mind more particularly exercised were, with me, as I have said before, the attentive, and are, with the day-dreamer, the speculative.
My books, at this epoch, if they did not actually serve to irritate the disorder, partook, it will be perceived, largely, in their imaginative and inconsequential nature, of the characteristic qualities of the disorder itself. I well remember, among others, the treatise of the noble Italian, Coelius Secundus Curio, "De Amplitudine Beati Regni Dei;" St. Austin's great work, the "City of God;" and Tertullian's "De Carne Christi," in which the paradoxical sentence "Mortuus est Dei filius; credible est quia ineptum est: et sepultus resurrexit; certum est quia impossibile est," occupied my undivided time, for many weeks of laborious and fruitless investigation.
Thus it will appear that, shaken from its balance only by trivial things, my reason bore resemblance to that ocean-crag spoken of by Ptolemy Hephestion, which steadily resisting the attacks of human violence, and the fiercer fury of the waters and the winds, trembled only to the touch of the flower called Asphodel. And although, to a careless thinker, it might appear a matter beyond doubt, that the alteration produced by her unhappy malady, in the moral condition of Berenice, would afford me many objects for the exercise of that intense and abnormal meditation whose nature I have been at some trouble in explaining, yet such was not in any degree the case. In the lucid intervals of my infirmity, her calamity, indeed, gave me pain, and, taking deeply to heart that total wreck of her fair and gentle life, I did not fall to ponder, frequently and bitterly, upon the wonder-working means by which so strange a revolution had been so suddenly brought to pass. But these reflections partook not of the idiosyncrasy of my disease, and were such as would have occurred, under similar circumstances, to the ordinary mass of mankind. True to its own character, my disorder revelled in the less important but more startling changes wrought in the physical frame of Berenice - in the singular and most appalling distortion of her personal identity.
During the brightest days of her unparalleled beauty, most surely I had never loved her.

The Black Cat's Message

 I came home late one night after work and found my wife Ethel puttering about the kitchen with a big yellow cat at her heels.      “And who is this?” I asked jovially.        “This is our new cat,” said Ethel, giving me a hug and a kiss to welcome me home.  “She just appeared at the kitchen door and wanted to come in.  None of the neighbors know where she came from, so I guess she’s ours.  It will be nice to have some company around the house.”      I bent down and scratched the yellow cat under the chin.  She purred and stretched.       “Well, I think our income can stretch far enough to feed three,” I said.       My son had taken over my job at the mercantile and my wife and I were enjoying a leisurely old age.  I liked to keep busy though, and so I spent a few hours every day cutting and hauling wood to be used at the mill.         I went out to milk the cow, and when I came back in, Ethel gave the cat some cream in a saucer.         We sat on the porch after dinner, and the cat sat with us.         “You are a very nice kitty,” I said to her.  She purred loudly.        “Donald,” Ethel said.  She sounded worried.  I turned to look at her.  “The neighbors acted rather oddly when I told them about the cat.  They seemed to think she was a ghost or a witch of some sort, transformed into a cat.  They told me to get rid of her.”          “A witch?” I asked, and laughed heartily.  “Are you a witch, little cat?”        The cat yawned and stretched.  Reluctantly, Ethel started to laugh with me.  It seemed such a ludicrous notion.  We sat watching the beautiful sunset, and then took ourselves to bed.         The cat quickly became an essential part of our household.  She would purr us awake each morning, and would beg for cream when I brought in the morning’s milking.  She followed Ethel around supervising her work during the day and would sit by the fire at night while we read aloud.       The days became shorter as autumn approached, and often I would work until nearly sunset, cutting and hauling wood.  One night in October, I didn’t finish hauling my last load until dusk.  As soon as I had piled the last log, I started down the road, hoping to get home before dark since I had not brought a lantern with me.  I rounded a corner and saw a group of black cats standing in the middle of the road.  They were nearly invisible in the growing dark.           As I drew nearer, I saw that they were carrying a stretcher between them.  I stopped and rubbed my eyes.  That was impossible.  When I looked again, the stretcher was still there, and there was a little dead cat lying on it.        I was astonished.  It must be a trick of the light, I thought.  Then one of the cats called out, “Sir, please tell Aunt Kan that Polly Grundy is dead.”       My mouth dropped open in shock.  I shook my head hard, not believing my ears.  How ridiculous, I thought.  Cats don’t talk.        I hurried past the little group, carefully looking the other way.  I must be working too hard, I thought.  But I couldn’t help wondering who Aunt Kan might be.  And why did the cat want me to tell her Polly Grundy was dead?  Was Polly Grundy the cat on the stretcher?     Suddenly, I was confronted by a small black cat.  It was standing directly in front of me.  I stopped and looked down at it.  It looked back at me with large green eyes that seemed to glow in the fading light.        “I have a message for Aunt Kan,” the cat said.  “Tell her that Polly Grundy is dead.”       The cat stalked passed me and went to join the other cats grouped around the stretcher.        I was completely nonplussed.  This was getting very spooky.  Talking cats and a dead Polly Grundy. And who was Aunt Kan?  I hurried away as fast as I could walk.  Around me, the woods were getting darker and darker.  I did not want to stay in that wood with a group of talking cats.  Not that I really believed the cats had spoken.  It was all a strange, waking dream brought on by too much work.       Behind me, the cats gave a strange shriek and called out together:  “Old man!  Tell Aunt Kan that Polly Grundy is dead!”      I’d had enough.  I sprinted for home as fast as I could go, and didn’t stop until I had reached the safety of my porch.  I paused to catch my breath.  I did not want to explain to Ethel that I was seeing and hearing impossible things.  She would dose me with caster oil and call the doctor.        When I was sufficiently composed, I went into the house and tried to act normally.  I should have known it wouldn’t work.  Ethel and I had been married for thirty years, and she knew me inside and out.  She didn’t say anything until after I’d finished the chores.  Then she sat me down in front of the fire and brought me my supper.  After I’d take a few bites and started to relax, she said, “Tell me all about it, Donald.”     “I don’t want to worry you,” I said, reluctant to talk about what I had seen and heard on the way home.          The yellow cat was lying by the fire.  She looked up when she heard my voice, and came to sit by my chair.  I offered her a morsel of food, which she accepted daintily.       “I’ll worry more if you don’t tell me,” said Ethel.       “I think maybe something is wrong with my brain,” I said slowly.  “While I was walking home, I thought I saw a group of black cats carrying a stretcher with a dead cat on it.  Then I thought I heard the cats talking to me.  They asked me to tell Aunt Kan that Polly Grundy was dead.”      The yellow cat leapt up onto the window sill.  “Polly Grundy is dead?” she cried.  “Then I am the Queen of the Witches!”      She switched her tail and the window flew open with a bang.  The yellow cat leapt through it and disappeared into the night, never to return.        Ethel had to dump an entire bucket of water over my head to revive me from my faint.        ‘The good news,” she told me when I sat up, dripping and swearing because the water was ice cold, “is that you have nothing wrong with your brain.  The bad news is that our cat has just left us to become the Queen of the Witches.  We’ll have to get another cat.”      “Oh no,” I said immediately.  “I’ve had enough of cats.”     We got a dog.  


Author Unknown

A Ghost Story by Mark Twain

I TOOK a large room, far up Broadway, in a huge old building whose upper stories had been wholly unoccupied for years, until I came. The place had long been given up to dust and cobwebs, to solitude and silence. I seemed groping among the tombs and invading the privacy of the dead, that first night I climbed up to my quarters. For the first time in my life a superstitious dread came over me; and as I turned a dark angle of the stairway and an invisible cobweb swung its lazy woof in my face and clung there, I shuddered as one who had encountered a phantom. I was glad enough when I reached my room and locked out the mould and the darkness. A cheery fire was burning in the grate, and I sat down before it with a comforting sense of relief. For two hours I sat there, thinking of bygone times; recalling old scenes, and summoning half-forgotten faces out of the mists of the past; listening, in fancy, to voices that long ago grew silent for all time, and to once familiar songs that nobody sings now. And as my reverie softened down to a sadder and sadder pathos, the shrieking of the winds outside softened to a wail, the angry beating of the rain against the panes diminished to a tranquil patter, and one by one the noises in the street subsided, until the hurrying footsteps of the last belated straggler died away in the distance and left no sound behind.  The fire had burned low. A sense of loneliness crept over me. I arose and undressed, moving on tiptoe about the room, doing stealthily what I had to do, as if I were environed by sleeping enemies whose slumbers it would be fatal to break. I covered up in bed, and lay listening to the rain and wind and the faint creaking of distant shutters, till they lulled me to sleep.  I slept profoundly, but how long I do not know. All at once I found myself awake, and filled with a shuddering expectancy. All was still. All but my own heart -- I could hear it beat. Presently the bedclothes began to slip away slowly toward the foot of the bed, as if some one were pulling them! I could not stir; I could not speak. Still the blankets slipped deliberately away, till my breast was uncovered. Then with a great effort I seized them and drew them over my head. I waited, listened, waited. Once more that steady pull began, and once more I lay torpid a century of dragging seconds till my breast was naked again. At last I roused my energies and snatched the covers back to their place and held them with a strong grip. I waited. By and by I felt a faint tug, and took a fresh grip. The tug strengthened to a steady strain -- it grew stronger and stronger. My hold parted, and for the third time the blankets slid away. I groaned. An answering groan came from the foot of the bed! Beaded drops of sweat stood upon my forehead. I was more dead than alive. Presently I heard a heavy footstep in my room -- the step of an elephant, it seemed to me -- it was not like anything human. But it was moving FROM me -- there was relief in that. I heard it approach the door -- pass out without moving bolt or lock -- and wander away among the dismal corridors, straining the floors and joists till they creaked again as it passed -- and then silence reigned once more.  When my excitement had calmed, I said to myself , "This is a dream -- simply a hideous dream." And so I lay thinking it over until I convinced myself that it WAS a dream, and then a comforting laugh relaxed my lips and I was happy again. I got up and struck a light; and when I found that the locks and bolts were just as I had left them, another soothing laugh welled in my heart and rippled from my lips. I took my pipe and lit it, and was just sitting down before the fire, when -- down went the pipe out of my nerveless fingers, the blood forsook my cheeks, and my placid breathing was cut short with a gasp! In the ashes on the hearth, side by side with my own bare footprint, was another, so vast that in comparison mine was but an infant's'! Then I had HAD a visitor, and the elephant tread was explained.  I put out the light and returned to bed, palsied with fear. I lay a long time, peering into the darkness , and listening. Then I heard a grating noise overhead, like the dragging of a heavy body across the floor; then the throwing down of the body, and the shaking of my windows in response to the concussion. In distant parts of the building I heard the muffled slamming of doors. I heard, at intervals , stealthy footsteps creeping in and out among the corridors, and up and down the stairs. Sometimes these noises approached my door, hesitated, and went away again. I heard the clanking of chains faintly, in remote passages, and listened while the clanking grew nearer -- while it wearily climbed the stairways, marking each move by the loose surplus of chain that fell with an accented rattle upon each succeeding step as the goblin that bore it advanced. I heard muttered sentences; half-uttered screams that seemed smothered violently; and the swish of invisible garments, the rush of invisible wings. Then I became conscious that my chamber was invaded -- that I was not alone. I heard sighs and breathings about my bed, and mysterious whisperings. Three little spheres of soft phosphorescent light appeared on the ceiling directly over my head, clung and glowed there a moment, and then dropped -- two of them upon my face and one upon the pillow. They spattered, liquidly, and felt warm. Intuition told me they had turned to gouts of blood as they fell -- I needed no light to satisfy myself of that. Then I saw pallid faces, dimly luminous, and white uplifted hands, floating bodiless in the air -- floating a moment and then disappearing. The whispering ceased, and the voices and the sounds, and a solemn stillness followed. I waited and listened. I felt that I must have light or die. I was weak with fear. I slowly raised myself toward a sitting posture, and my face came in contact with a clammy hand! All strength went from me ap- parently, and I fell back like a stricken invalid. Then I heard the rustle of a garment -- it seemed to pass to the door and go out.  When everything was still once more, I crept out of bed, sick and feeble, and lit the gas with a hand that trembled as if it were aged with a hundred years. The light brought some little cheer to my spirits. I sat down and fell into a dreamy contemplation of that great footprint in the ashes. By and by its outlines began to waver and grow dim. I glanced up and the broad gas flame was slowly wilting away. In the same moment I heard that elephantine tread again. I noted its approach, nearer and nearer, along the musty halls, and dimmer and dimmer the light waned. The tread reached my very door and paused -- the light had dwindled to a sickly blue, and all things about me lay in a spectral twilight. The door did not open, and yet I felt a faint gust of air fan my cheek, and presently was conscious of a huge, cloudy presence before me. I watched it with fascinated eyes. A pale glow stole over the Thing; gradually its cloudy folds took shape -- an arm appeared, then legs, then a body, and last a great sad face looked out of the vapor. Stripped of its filmy housings, naked, muscular and comely, the majestic Cardiff Giant loomed above me!  All my misery vanished -- for a child might know that no harm could come with that benignant countenance. My cheerful spirits returned at once, and in sympathy with them the gas flamed up brightly again. Never a lonely outcast was so glad to welcome company as I was to greet the friendly giant. I said:  "Why, is it nobody but you? Do you know, I have been scared to death for the last two or three hours? I am most honestly glad to see you. I wish I had a chair -- Here, here, don't try to sit down in that thing! But it was too late. He was in it before I could stop him, and down he went -- I never saw a chair shivered so in my life.  "Stop, stop, You'll ruin ev--"  Too late again. There was another crash, and another chair was resolved into its original elements. "Confound it, haven't you got any judgment at all? Do you want to ruin all the furniture on the place? Here, here, you petrified fool--" But it was no use. Before I could arrest him he had sat down on the bed, and it was a melancholy ruin.  "Now what sort of a way is that to do? First you come lumbering about the place bringing a legion of vagabond goblins along with you to worry me to death, and then when I overlook an indelicacy of costume which would not be tolerated anywhere by cultivated people except in a respectable theater, and not even there if the nudity were of YOUR sex, you repay me by wrecking all the furniture you can find to sit down on. And why will you? You damage yourself as much as you do me. You have broken off the end of your spinal column, and littered up the floor with chips of your hams till the place looks like a marble yard. You ought to be ashamed of yourself -- you are big enough to know better."  "Well, I will not break any more furniture. But what am I to do? I have not had a chance to sit down for a century." And the tears came into his eyes. "Poor devil," I said, "I should not have been so harsh with you. And you are an orphan, too, no doubt. But sit down on the floor here -- nothing else can stand your weight -- and besides, we cannot be sociable with you away up there above me; I want you down where I can perch on this high counting-house stool and gossip with you face to face."  So he sat down on the floor, and lit a pipe which I gave him, threw one of my red blankets over his shoulders, inverted my sitz-bath on his head, helmet fashion, and made himself picturesque and comfortable. Then he crossed his ankles, while I renewed the fire, and exposed the flat, honey-combed bottoms of his prodigious feet to the grateful warmth.  "What is the matter with the bottom of your feet and the back of your legs, that they are gouged up so?"  "Infernal chillblains -- I caught them clear up to the back of my head, roosting out there under Newell's farm. But I love the place; I love it as one loves his old home. There is no peace for me like the peace I feel when I am there."  We talked along for half an hour, and then I noticed that he looked tired, and spoke of it. "Tired?" he said. "Well, I should think so. And now I will tell you all about it, since you have treated me so well. I am the spirit of the Petrified Man that lies across the street there in the Museum. I am the ghost of the Cardiff Giant. I can have no rest, no peace, till they have given that poor body burial again. Now what was the most natural thing for me to do, to make men satisfy this wish? Terrify them into it! -- haunt the place where the body lay! So I haunted the museum night after night. I even got other spirits to help me. But it did no good, for nobody ever came to the museum at midnight. Then it occurred to me to come over the way and haunt this place a little. I felt that if I ever got a hearing I must succeed, for I had the most efficient company that perdition could furnish. Night after night we have shivered around through these mildewed halls, dragging chains, groaning, whispering, tramping up and down stairs, till, to tell you the truth, I am almost worn out. But when I saw a light in your room to-night I roused my energies again and went at it with a deal of the old freshness. But I am tired out -- entirely fagged out. Give me, I beseech you, give me some hope!"  I lit off my perch in a burst of excitement, and exclaimed:  "This transcends everything -- everything that ever did occur! Why you poor blundering old fossil, you have had all your trouble for nothing -- you have been haunting a PLASTER CAST of yourself -- the real Cardiff Giant is in Albany!  [Footnote by Twain: A fact. The original fraud was ingeniously and fraudfully duplicated, and exhibited in New York as the "only genuine" Cardiff Giant (to the unspeakable disgust of the owners of the real colossus) at the very same time that the latter was drawing crowds at a museum in Albany.]  Confound it, don't you know your own remains?"  I never saw such an eloquent look of shame, of pitiable humiliation, overspread a countenance before.  The Petrified Man rose slowly to his feet, and said:  "Honestly, IS that true?"  "As true as I am sitting here."  He took the pipe from his mouth and laid it on the mantel, then stood irresolute a moment (unconsciously, from old habit, thrusting his hands where his pantaloons pockets should have been, and meditatively dropping his chin on his breast), and finally said:  "Well -- I NEVER felt so absurd before. The Petrified Man has sold everybody else, and now the mean fraud has ended by selling its own ghost! My son, if there is any charity left in your heart for a poor friendless phantom like me, don't let this get out. Think how YOU would feel if you had made such an ass of yourself."  I heard his, stately tramp die away, step by step down the stairs and out into the deserted street, and felt sorry that he was gone, poor fellow -- and sorrier still that he had carried off my red blanket and my bath tub. --THE END--