The Accursed (28 page)
Yet it seemed that the cornfield was empty, as before. Only the desiccated stalks moved, in a continuous teasing whisper. In a moment’s madness, Upton ran to the barn, to locate the revolver on a high ledge, where he’d hidden it beneath a canvas; next, he returned to the cabin, where, beneath a loose floorboard, he’d hidden the bullets. With shaking hands he forced bullets into the revolver’s chambers, he knew not whether in the correct direction, or not; for he had no clear idea how to load a gun. A great artery was beating in his head as he ran outside, waving the gun: “I’ve seen you! I know, now! I will murder you both!”
Though there was no one in sight, Upton lifted the gun, aimed it recklessly and pulled the trigger. A terrible, deafening
crack!
nearly split his eardrums.
Yet, the wildness was upon him: Upton pulled the trigger again, and again. Where the bullets flew, into the rippling cornstalks, he had no idea. But there were no outcries, there was no sign of anyone hiding—“Where are you! Devils! Adulterers! How dare you taunt me!”
To this there was no reply. Only the dry mock-whispering of the cornstalks; and, as he began at last to hear, the faint crying of an abandoned baby in the farmhouse.
FOR IN TRUTH
there was no one in the field, nor had ever been, it seemed. After returning to his son, to strap him into the awkward backpack, which Upton had yet to adjust correctly, Upton hurried back to the field, to look more closely, making his way along rows of broken stalks.
In the field, he discovered skeletal remains of—something. Some small creatures, rabbits perhaps. Tufts of grayish fur, or feathers—the devoured prey of an owl?
At the farther edge of the field he discovered a sizable mound of horse manure, but couldn’t decide to his satisfaction whether the excrement was fresh, or a day or two old.
“And no other damn’d clue!”
A few hours later, near dusk Meta returned.
In a drab cotton skirt of some faded floral design, that looked as if it had been fashioned out of a seed sack, her bonnet limply askew and her shoes covered in dust, a scattering of thistles on her clothing, Meta approached the house in no great haste, yet not in apparent dread; rather, like a young woman in a dream. Through the kitchen window Upton observed her, still in his astonished state, with a headache now, and a sickened sense of malaise through his body.
“Meta! Where in hell have you been?”
There was a familiarity to this question, that quickened the sense of malaise in Upton.
Meta protested: hadn’t she told Upton that she was “going for a walk”?—she was sure that she had.
“I’ve only been gone for an hour, or a little more.”
An hour! But Upton bit his tongue, not wanting to quarrel. He returned to the table where Meta would see, as she entered, yawning, removing her bonnet, that her disheveled hair would tumble about her shoulders, that he’d been cleaning the revolver: unskillfully oiling its parts, with greasy fingers.
Upton didn’t doubt that his narrow, clean-shaven and fiercely indignant face was shrouded in a melancholy of its own, or that his deep-socketed eyes were moist. At his elbow the kerosene lamp gave off a feeble flickering glow.
Seeing the revolver, Meta stared for a moment; then asked, casually, or carelessly, why the gun was “allowed” back in the house, since Upton had forbade it?
“The murders in New Jersey are mostly unsolved. It shouldn’t surprise us if there are more to come.”
“Murders? Have there been more than one?”
“I think, yes. Many more.”
Meta shivered, shaking her hair loose, and removing a fragment of cornsilk from it.
D
isgust! And dismay.
That’s what I feel, to be utterly frank, as I approach one of the most painful episodes of this history, the subject of the chapter that follows, titled “The Bog Kingdom.”
This is Annabel Slade’s “confession.” It is a very disturbing and in some respects an obscene document, which I choose to present without censorship or distortion, as earlier historians have done; it has been taken nearly verbatim from a notebook identified (by me) as “The Turquoise-Marbled Book.”
Historians must rely upon sources. Historians do not “invent” sources. Yet it is as much of an invention, that’s to say a lie, to omit or distort sources, in the interests of protecting “innocent parties.”
The fact is, my historian-rivals have dealt with Annabel Slade’s confession in very unprofessional ways. They have been misleading, obfuscatory, and timid; they have not been honest, and they have not been professional. (Ironic that I, an “amateur” historian, should accuse these others of unprofessional behavior; but so it is.)
Granted, the subject matter is disconcerting, if not frankly repulsive. And its exact authenticity can’t be guaranteed.
(But then, what of the past can be verified
exactly,
even if we were eyewitnesses?)
Yet there is no excuse for the historian Q. T. Hollinger to relegate the “unconfirmed tale of a ‘bestial’ birth” to a mere footnote in
The Unsolved Enigma of the Crosswicks Curse: A Fresh Inquiry
(1949), and to so vaguely paraphrase Annabel’s story that one can’t grasp the poetic flavor of its highly refined language. As for Hiram Tite in
The Unsolved Mystery of the “Crosswicks Horror”—
this sensationalist study isolates the final humiliation and (evident) death of Annabel Slade in a separate chapter, yet deals with it so ineptly in its particulars as to suggest to the skeptical reader that it is nothing more than rumor or gossip, or that category of twaddle dismissed as
old wives’ tales
.
The Vampire Murders of Old Princeton,
by an “anonymous” author, is too contemptible to justify serious comment; yet little more can be said for Croft-Crooke, with his impressive academic credentials (Harvard B.A., Yale M.A., longtime headmaster of the Lawrenceville School), or Miss Helena Worthing, with hers (Barnard B.A., Columbia M.A.). What is most disturbing to me are several articles written, in obvious haste, for New Jersey newspapers, that confuse Annabel’s tragic fate with the alleged fates of victims of the “Jersey Devil.” (This quasi-mythical creature went on a rampage in January 1909, when reports of miscarriages, stillbirths, and other abnormalities among women were noted, including at least one of a
monstrous birth
to a young woman in the Pine Barrens—improbable and unverified incidents which fall entirely beyond the scope of my fact-based chronicle.)
My primary source of information for this section of the chronicle is a journal measuring eight inches by twelve with a turquoise-marbled cover in which Josiah Slade seems to have written sometime after the New Year of 1906, at the bedside of his sister Annabel; though not transcribed in code, like Adelaide Burr’s journal, this account has been difficult to transcribe because it was clearly written in haste, and with emotional anguish, resulting in numerous disjunctions, confused figures of speech, abrupt breaks and elliptical statements. And the reader will note the abrupt ending—as, it is believed, Annabel Slade began labor, with a sequence of powerful contractions of the womb, that would continue for twenty excruciating hours.
On the flyleaf of the journal is the poignant inscription, in Josiah’s hand:
God grant me the strength to be equal to all that my sister will reveal
.
SINCE THIS IS
a chapter many readers will wish to skim, or to skip altogether, as it is concerned with the historian’s trade, and of as much interest to admirers of screen actors as an account of the “backstage” of film production might be of interest to those admirers, I think it is judicious at this point to enumerate certain of my prized research materials, which are not to be found, nor even alluded to, in most of the libraries, special collections, historical archives, etc., that contain information pertinent to the subject. The Turquoise-Marbled Book is one of the most precious, obviously; and though in Josiah Slade’s hand it is kept separate from the morass of letters, notes, newspaper items, and other memorabilia relevant to Josiah, to be found between the pages of the Beige Morocco Book—Josiah’s diary for the years 1901–06. (Typical of a young male diarist, Josiah did not faithfully record each day of his life but rather went for long stretches without writing a word. And there are pages roughly torn out.) In addition, as the reader knows, I have relied heavily upon Mrs. Adelaide Burr’s Crimson Calfskin Book—now so faded and shabby, it seems a melancholy document indeed, despite the vivid and “perky” writing of that inveterate invalid; and also Mrs. Johanna van Dyck’s multi-volumed journal, known to historians as the Ivory Book, as it resides in the Princeton Special Collection, and has been consulted by numerous historians. (Unknown to these historians, Johanna van Dyck kept a second, secret diary, which I have called the Black-Dappled Book. It is a small-sized diary of about sixty written pages, much of the entries undated, and not very coherent; for it did happen, Johanna van Dyck gave (premature) birth to a baby boy in February 1906, at about the time that Annabel Slade gave birth; during which time her usually devoted husband Pearce suffered from a variant, it seems, of the Princeton
malaise,
with unfortunate consequences about which I do not wish to comment.) Most consistently rewarding has been Wilhelmina Burr’s Brown-Dappled Book which is filled to bursting with notes, personal documents, news clippings, love letters (?) from unidentified individuals, photographs, and even tradesmen’s receipts, as well as Wilhelmina’s minutely observed diary-entries; yet more crowded and untidy, the Sandalwood Box, in which I store a miscellany of Woodrow Wilson material that has made its way into my private possession; and the Rose Brocade Box, in which materials pertaining to the Grover Clevelands are kept. I have also at hand the Orange-Marbled Book which was once the diary of Mrs. Henrietta Slade, but it is disappointing in its particulars, and of little use to the historian; and the Fleur-de-lis Book of Mrs. Amanda FitzRandolph, whose confused and hallucinatory accounts of her “possessed” infant son are both shocking and questionable, and of little practical use.
Most prized, and kept under lock and key here in my study, is the Ebony-Lacquered Box in which are stored all materials pertaining to Winslow Slade; though I am doubtful about this material also, and sometimes wake in the night wondering if I should destroy it at once. Priceless matter it is, to me, throwing light, and a great deal more, on these events of long ago; but the wisdom of introducing certain facts into my chronicle, that so refute the material of the Princeton Special Collection regarding Dr. Slade, that cannot be verified, and cannot fail to disturb, is an ethical issue not easily resolved.
For
The Accursed
is intended as a work of inquiring moral complexity, and not a “sensationalist” rehashing of an old, dread scandal far better left to molder in the grave!
AS FOR THE DOCUMENT
known generally as “The Confession of Annabel Slade”—or, as I prefer, “The Bog Kingdom”—Josiah didn’t date it exactly but since Annabel (evidently) returned to Crosswicks in the second week of December 1905, and since her confinement and its (unspeakable) aftermath took place within a fortnight, it is reasonable to presume that Josiah transcribed his sister’s distraught tale sometime between December 12 and Christmas Day. It is possible that the entire confession was told during a single protracted period, for Annabel’s voice seems to falter, and grow faint, and takes on a sporadic strength again, with the rhythms of a human soul baring itself utterly; no revisions were made afterward by Josiah or by Annabel, one can tell from the document.
So far as I’ve been able to discover, by collating diaries, no one except Annabel’s mother, her grandfather Winslow and her brother Josiah, of course, was present in her bedchamber at this time. (Annabel’s father, Augustus, it was said, could not bear to look upon his daughter’s face; her cousin Todd, literally “under lock and key” at Wheatsheaf, clamored to see her, but was forbidden; and Wilhelmina, who also wanted to visit Annabel, and whom, possibly, Annabel would have liked to see, was forbidden as well, by a curt decree of Annabel’s parents.)
There were visits by the astonished Dr. Boudinot, but either that gentleman was sworn to secrecy, which he did not violate; or, his accounts of the monstrous delivery have been lost.
F
aster, yet ever faster, the horses galloped along the old King’s Highway foaming at the mouth, and snorting—our carriage wildly rocking from side to side . . .
So faintly Annabel spoke, so uncertain and faltering her voice, it was very difficult for Josiah to hear, and to transcribe what she said.
Poor Annabel! Returned in disgrace, and in physical distress, to her girlhood room at Crosswicks Manse.
In a fever—delirium, her lower body grotesquely swollen in pregnancy.
Also with Annabel were her mother, Henrietta, in a state of great anxiety, and her grandfather Winslow Slade, only partly recovered from a stroke of several months before, that had paralyzed the left half of his face, and caused his left eye to squint, with but minimal sight in that eye. And the elderly man’s speech had been slowed, as if each word came of its own, like a rock rolled with effort, and independent of words preceding and following. For it was as Winslow Slade had foreseen, through the window of the railway car: his granddaughter would return home not only alone, but afoot; in a condition exhausted and broken, beyond hysteria; on a particularly cold and snowy night in December—
cast off from her lover.
This is a scene of flickering candlelight, and not electricity. (Though the Slades’ house was fully electrified by 1905.) As Annabel’s room had not been at all changed since her girlhood: very prettily decorated in a “feminine” Victorian style with rose-colored fleur-de-lis French wallpaper, a charming little chandelier of Irish crystal, white-lacquered furniture and a cherrywood writing desk overlooking a view of the rose garden, desiccated now in winter. There was a marble fireplace, of Sienna marble, rarely used; above it, a mirror that resembled a woodland pool, flickering with candleflame amid shadows. At the several tall narrow windows were curtains of chintz-and-damask, in bright colors now muted and indistinct. Annabel’s girlhood bed was a beautiful old eighteenth-century “sleigh” bed that had come down through the family, with a white silken canopy, and mostly white bed-linens and quilts; it was bizarre to see, in a girl’s narrow, single bed, a young woman in the last stage of pregnancy, clutching a chaste-white comforter with desperate fingers.
Dr. Boudinot had been hurriedly summoned, and had been sent away again. For Annabel wished to speak openly to her brother, her mother, and her grandfather, and would have felt restrained by the presence of a stranger.
(In his place, the Slades’ longtime housekeeper Cassandra, trained in midwifery, would help with the delivery. But Cassandra was downstairs at this time, waiting to be called.)
(Readers should be warned: the various first-person and “eyewitness” accounts of the delivery of Axson Mayte’s hideous offspring that have been reported, in previous chronicles by Hollinger, Tite, Worthing, “Anonymous,” et al., are utterly meretricious and inauthentic. Cassandra, who loved her employers’ granddaughter dearly, did not ever reveal what she’d seen, or even that she’d assisted at the birth, though many individuals would question her, some of them quite persistently, for years.
All that is known of this episode is by way of Josiah’s recording in the Turquoise-Marbled Book, which is in my keeping.
)
One more item should be noted, to “set” the scene: a pastel portrait (by Winslow Homer, a friendly acquaintance of the elder Slades) of little Annabel, at about the age of eleven, in a beribboned sailor cap and with a shyly sweet smile, hung on the wall near the canopied bed; this image of childhood innocence and trust, in painful contrast to the young woman in the canopied bed, her delicate features contorted in humiliation, and in pain.
. . . .
THE
wind tearing at my hair and ripping my bridal veil from my head—causing my eyes to fill with tears—though not—(not yet!)–tears of regret and shame.
Do you love me above all men, dear Annabel
he whispered
and will you be my bride, and Queen of my Kingdom . . .
So strange it was, trees flew past us—meadows beside the King’s Highway that should have been the freshest green were now starkly gray and drained of all color as in a solar eclipse. More strangely, we seemed to be passing Crosswicks Manse, my beloved home for all of my life, set back from the road beneath tall trees and yet to my dazed eye the house was leaden-dull lacking all color, and beauty; and the sky beyond no longer blue but of the transparency of washed glass. Hedgerows looming close to the road were startling in their uncanny
chalkiness
—and the newly cultivated soil in farmers’ fields was no longer a rich deep earthen color but reversed in tone, strangely pale as if a fine powdery snow had fallen upon it, on a fair June day!
He had warned me—I must not look back. Must not glance back over my shoulder not once at all that I had left for his sake.
The wind, the wind! Whipping at my hair—and my lover’s powerful arm clasped about me that I might bury my face in his neck—
Do you pledge your troth to me and only me as your true husband?
—bringing his lips to my eyelids and a tightening of his arm that made me cry out, in sudden pain.
My breath was drawn from me by the hot whipping wind that had acquired a brackish odor though we were traveling through a familiar landscape which I’d known since childhood—yet, what were these strange creatures at the roadside?—fluttering into the air, on dark leathery wings, as we approached?—they appeared to be birds, yet not birds of the kind one usually sees here but rather goatsuckers, or nighthawks, with great flat heads and long pointed wings and eyes mere slits glaring at us, like smoldering coals. Their cries were angry and impatient and close to human, seeming particularly to be addressed to Axson, as we passed; as if they knew him, and he them, in some unknown way.
My brave Annabel!—to have cast off your old life, for my sake!
The horses were galloping faster, and more fiercely—almost I could believe that flames snorted from their nostrils—their long manes blown in the wind and their tails uplifted—their eyes rolling—yet impatient Axson flicked his whip over their withers—as if he feared pursuit.
Soon we shall be safe in my kingdom, where no one can follow.
No one, dear Annabel, to wrench you from my arms.
Chalk-hued hedgerows, and great looming leafless trees, and desolate countryside in which creatures of an unknown species grazed—so eerie and glowering with light, yet a pallid light, my eyes ached and I could not look too closely at anything I saw; for all was faded like an engraving of many years past, or one of Grandfather’s daguerreotypes of his youth. O wild frenzied ride! O drear changed world! But once we encountered another vehicle at the junction of a narrow road—a farmer’s wagon drawn by a swaybacked horse—this vehicle though surely moving yet appeared frozen in motion and the grizzled farmer seated behind his horse in overalls and shabby straw hat gazed upon us with blank glassy eyes as if he saw us, yet did not see; the wagon moved, yet its crude wheels did not turn, nor did the horse trot forward. And I seemed to know, it was for Axson’s sake: time might be stopt for us, that Axson might plunge forward with his bride.
We saw a forsaken cemetery that had been a Quaker graveyard, by an old ruin of a church; and all the grave markers, and the gutted church, were of the identical hue of lead. We saw a convict gang toiling by the roadside in shapeless prison clothes and leg-irons—not a one of these men was of Caucasian features but African in descent with flat blunt noses and fleshy lips and yet their skins were
chalky-white
!—astonishing to the eye, one would have thought that the world had turned inside-out and Heaven had drunkenly reversed itself with Hell.
Hours passed, or days—I was confused in Time, like one buffeted in a rough surf—scarcely knowing where I was being taken in such haste; for love had entered me like chloroform, through the nostrils and mouth and causing a mist in the brain. The rough motion of the carriage was a comfort to me, as the carriage was a confinement; in my dazzling-white bridal gown that had become soiled, rumpled and torn. Never again would I be Annabel Slade, never again that ignorant child but a woman bound to her lover, forever more; it was a part of my enthrallment, I gave no thought to my lawful wedded husband Dabney Bayard, as one would not give thought to a dream that has been supplanted by a newer, more powerful and demanding dream. As the carriage lurched along a sandy rutted lane leading into the depths of the forest—which was meant to be the Pine Barrens—and yet our own forest, at Crosswicks.
You are all to me, dear Axson as a shadow absorbs a fainter shadow, or a single powerful stream absorbs countless small tributaries.
How strange, the great trees locked overhead to form a kind of arch—these leafless trees of a ghostly hue, and nothing of life visible in them; though these appeared to be the oaks, elms, beeches and chestnuts of Crosswicks Forest. Presently we passed through a clearing of some size, that was most painfully familiar; an uncanny space filled with sultry glaring light; my eyes leapt upward, to the limb of a great oak from which two bodies hung, by their necks; lifeless, hideously burnt, very still despite the whipping wind. My eyes were affrighted, I could not look but buried my face in my lover’s hot neck and he laughed
Dear Annabel, you are almost safe—do not be frightened—no one will ever hurt
you
as others are hurt—by your beauty you will be spared—I vow to you as your lover for eternity.
So the horses drew us onward into the Bog Kingdom, which I did not yet know was the Great Dark, or the Kingdom of the Accursed—the narrow roadway growing more narrow still, and subsiding to mud—the beautiful matched horses so cruelly used by this time by their impatient master, their bits were scummed over with froth and blood and their poor straining backs brightly gleaming in cross-hatched stripes of blood. Of a sudden we were in the Bog and surrounded by enormous trees of some moss-bearded sort, also of the hue of ash; and marsh water lay in dark pools on all sides, rippling with unseen serpentine creatures beneath the surface of the water; and the smell was brackish and sharp like an odor of drains, and rich with vegetative decay.
Be patient, my love, my sweet, pure bride!—for we are almost there, where our bridal bed awaits in the most sumptuous bedchamber of my palace.
A heady paludal air so ripe, so rich—almost, I could not breathe. The beeches of Crosswicks Forest gave way to the moss-bearded trees, and to others which were unfamiliar to me, tall straight smooth-barked trees of a species I didn’t recognize—unless they were mangroves, with snaky roots in dense clusters. Birds circled about us with angry cries—the nighthawks, with renewed ferocity; and other great predator-birds, flapping leathery wings like Lucifer making his way through the void, to the despair of humankind. I had begun to feel alarm now, the hairs at the nape of my neck stirring in animal panic, and my protector the more tightly squeezed me to his bosom.
Be patient, my dear! We have some small distance before us yet, and cannot force these lazy brutes to trot faster!
Presently we came to an aged and rusted gateway of wrought iron, its arch crowned with gryphon-like figures, and spikes; that lent it both a kindly and a forbidding air. Yet the gate was opened wide, and no gatekeeper in evidence. Here my lover gripped my hands in his so hard, I feared he would break my fingers, and passionately whispered
Do you hereby reject your family, and your lawful wedded husband; do you stand by your decision to cleave to your heart’s true lover, forevermore?
And I could scarcely breathe to vow
Yes! Yes.
IN THIS WAY
I was brought to the Bog Kingdom in my ruined bridal gown; in my veil, and my Spanish lace, and my satin lilies-of-the-valley each exquisite as an actual miniature blossom. And in my pride and ignorance I was brought, in the very vanity of my innocence.
Dear Annabel! Sweet Annabel! In my Kingdom at last.
In my intoxication of love that fed upon even as it shrank from the fire of my protector’s gaze. In my blindness of wishing only to sink into another’s being.
For Axson Mayte was the most handsome man I had ever seen, I was sure. Tall, and well-formed, and exquisitely well-mannered; gentle-voiced, and loving.
Thus in my blindness, and sinful, sickly nature.
Brought to the Bog Palace deeply hidden in that lightless swamp, that no one might find it; that no one from
that other world
might venture into it, to bring the deluded Annabel home.
Soon we alighted from the mud-splattered carriage, and the panting horses were led from us; it was a murmured aside of Axson’s, they were to be
put down
—for he never used the same matched pair of horses twice, after such a journey.
Leading me then—somewhat roughly it seemed to me, by fingers shut about my wrist—into the central hall of the cavernous Palace, which astonished me, and silenced me, with the high gloomy granite arch of its vaulted ceiling, like an old, great cathedral, and the echoing emptiness all around, and the overwhelming odor of damp, earthen rot, and fetid decay.
And with no further words, my bridegroom led me up a great spiral staircase littered with the broken bones of delicate, small creatures, the which I could not help stepping on, in a
frisson
of horror; no further words, except
Annabel: come!
To our bridal bed.
IN THIS WAY
, the Bog Palace.
In the very interior of the Bog Kingdom.
And I, Annabel—Queen!
Queen Annabel, of the Bog Kingdom.
And the cruel “Axson Mayte,” beside her as King.
OF HOW MY
bridegroom used me, it is very difficult to speak.