Interior Monologue

The Lord finished his pipe, defiantly ignoring the moans that he was certain originated from within his own tortured mind. He rose from his chair and began pacing, long heavy strides leading nowhere, allowing his mind to untwist a bit. He had obviously not killed his wife; to even think the words was absurd. It was likewise unproveable, nor would anyone have cause to suspect such an outlandish thing, let alone attempt to prove it. She had passed quietly, and her breathing in the end so was shallow as to be imperceptible. Nonexistent! Even the doctors had agreed that it was hopeless; what use was there in waiting for the inevitable to occur? And what resolution could there be now? The Lady was almost certainly dead, and if she was not already, she would be soon enough. She had been so weak!

But she had improved on the last day. Lord Pierce mused on this thought. He had read that terminal patients regain some form of life and vigor in their final hours, and he had taken this as a sign of the end. So certain was he of this fact, that when she fell asleep once again, he considered that her final repose, and then ensured that it was. He wanted her last memories to be of happiness, and health. Her demise was inevitable.

The Lord’s pacing intensified into wandering, and at length he wandered out into the yard, across the garden, and eventually found himself entering the perimeter of the family cemetery. Lord Pierce stood at the foot of Lady Pierce’s grave, where the newly piled earth was only just surrendering its warmth to the night air. This was how the Lord saw it, and he swore he could see tendrils of faint steam rising from the Lady’s fresh grave. The earth is not yet packed, not yet solid, he thought to himself. If the Lady were to regain her senses, she might still escape her prison. His intent had never been to outright kill his wife, the mother of his son, but merely to pursue the most expeditious means to an inevitable end. But perhaps his methods had been too hasty. Perhaps he had acted rashly—wholly unlike him, but not beyond the realm of possibility. And would it not be more advantageous to raise his two children with the aid of a wife and mother by his side? Had her demise really been so imminent?

The Lord’s thoughts raced in circles, frenzied figure eights of logic, twisting into knots of selfish rationalization. Suddenly, with a strangled grunt, he lunged for the spade still laying on the ground nearby. With grim determination, he began to dig. Deliberate, methodical, once again in control of his senses, the Lord dug deep into the soft dirt, intent on excavating his wife. He was now fully convinced of her health and vitality and would play the hero in rescuing her from this tragic misfortune.

Deeper still he dug, oblivious to the madness of his endeavor. If she were dead, he reasoned, he would simply rebury her corpse. No one ever need know of this night’s activity. If she were alive, however, she would happily regain her position at his side, and his life could return to the quiet comfort of normalcy. Either way, he must know.

The hole grew deeper, the ground passing beyond his chest, and eventually reaching eye-level, when his spade finally struck the lid of the coffin. He hastily cleared the top half of the box so that he could know the truth, for good or ill. With mud-smeared hands, he seized the edge of the lid of the coffin and pulled with all of his might, splintering the soft pine and exposing its contents. Tears obscured his vision momentarily, and he quickly, violently wiped his face with his grubby forearm. Clear-eyed now, he looked down at his beloved wife.

Lady Pierce lay in repose, but not in peace. Her gown was disheveled and streaked with blood. The source of the blood was clear; her hands were covered in it, her nails torn, and soft skin flayed from the knuckles of both hands. In one hand she clutched the chisel, its blade pitted and marred. The other hand lay at her side, presumably holding the hammer he had so thoughtfully buried with his wife. The hammer and chisel that had given his not dead wife, in a hollow and ultimately meaningless gesture of mercy. His innocent, beloved wife and the mother of his son had died, struggling and screaming and suffering, clawing with her bare hands in frantic desperation at the lid of the casket. He could see it all in his mind’s eye, in vivid, grotesque detail.

He collapsed then, finally, under the weight of his weakness and utter betrayal. He fell with the full force of his considerable frame onto the groaning coffin and wept.

After a short time, he came back into his being, and realized that he was, in fact, laying on his dead wife, in her coffin, in her open grave, in the middle of the night. He pushed himself to a seated position on the sliding pile of dirt and prepared to hoist himself back up to reality. He stopped to look once more at his lover’s face and gazed not-unlovingly into the casket. He was disquieted to notice that her face was wet. His own tears, no doubt, or the rain; but even in death his beloved wife did not reek of decay, and her body was not yet stiff and cold. He looked at his wife intently, and noticed with wonder that the tears he mistook for his own were hers, and they still seeped from her eyes. He gasped, frozen in shock.

As the Lord looked on in horror, the Lady’s eyes fluttered, opening wider and wider, until they bulged from red-rimmed sockets, the whites shot through with scarlet ribbons. Her once carefully coiffed hair stood out in all directions, torn in savage desperation. Her lips pulled back from her teeth in a grotesque, strained grimace, her face twisting into a silent scream, and the only sound the Lord could hear—save the wind, whistling past the tombstones—was of a great sucking inhalation. The Lady’s chest rose with an extraordinary intake of air, as the seconds stretched and slowed.

The Lord had a fleeting, insanely practical thought; that if he was not hallucinating, then his wife must have been terribly short of fresh air, given the confines of the space, and in dire need of a bracing, tremendously deep breath. And so, he simply watched while the Lady inhaled, waiting for her to regain her senses, enjoying a ludicrous shred of hope.

Time slowed further still; her extraordinary inhalation paused, and she seemed to hover for an interminable instant between sanity and howling madness. Her eyes rolled up and back, her shoulders dropped, her chin rose, and letting loose all the air in her lungs, she sent forth into the night a piercing, wrenching scream.

The sound went on for eternity, it seemed, and held in it a lifetime of servitude and sorrow, of repression, of anger, of helplessness, and of unrealized potential. She became a howling banshee, shrieking into the unknown, delivering a monumental torrent of sorrow, loss, and rage.

The Lord stared, stupefied by the terrifying and fearsome sight of his wife, rendered dumbstruck by this frightful display of grief and fury. He gawked; he was confounded. Her seemingly eternal scream had the ragged edges of a sawblade, and it filled the cavernous night like a noxious gas. The scream swelled and crested, held aloft on the crisp air, and then dropped low, finally culminating in a guttural sob. She collapsed into herself, deflated, and was quiet. Lord Pierce raggedly exhaled the breath he had not realized he was holding. He regarded his wife with trepidation as she lay still, eyes mercifully closed—gone at last.

With great physical and mental effort, the Lord carefully extricated himself from the grave, mindful not to further disturb his lady’s repose. He lay at last beside the open pit, next to the great pile of earth he had only recently produced in his frenzy. He was exhausted, shaken, unnerved. He was embarrassed. In his chagrin he acknowledged that none of this had been necessary; he should be reading quietly by the fire, not covered in mud.

Lord Pierce lumbered to his feet, slowly regaining his composure, and once again picked up the shovel. As he spooned the dirt back onto his wife, he reminded himself that the day had begun with a difficult decision, and he had managed as best he could, under the circumstances. He offered himself slim comfort in the notion that he had at least, at last, born personal witness to his wife’s final moments, and that this whole endeavor had concluded without any lasting consequence or any witness to his mania. The thing had happened; there was no need to dwell upon or reexamine any part of the thing. Best to clean up and move on.

Wearily, the Lord shoveled the last of the raw earth into the pit. A cold rain had begun to fall, and the air’s nip had sharpened to a bite. He returned the shovel to its original resting place and made his way slowly back to the main house.

—