The Last Days of Victor Usher

“If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you” - Friedrich Nietzsche

  I have written my own death. My name is Victor Usher, and I feel I must explain what has happened to me before I can no longer do so. It will not help the inevitable police investigation, but maybe it will save others from the end I cannot escape.

I am a relatively successful author of fairy tale to novel adaptions. Not those vapid, candy coated ones corporations like Disney shell out. Those are an insult to the very purpose of a fairy tale. They are not stories told to give gullible children a false impression of life, an expectation of a perfect “happily ever after”. Rather, they were intended to reflect the real world and to prepare their readers for it. The real world has no room to hide from violence. Every tale must end with death. The singular truth my stories revolve around is the finality of death. Its shadow shapes our lives until it consumes us. Every other truth is secondary to that ultimate one.  

Some have described my stories as “unnecessarily violent and disturbing”. Until the last few days, I had always viewed such critics with mild amusement. Some people would rather inebriate themselves with the comfort of the artificial fairy stories than be shaken or challenged by their own mortality. Were they, at least partially, correct in their criticism? Perhaps. But it’s too late for that to matter now. 

Having already tackled the more well known fairy tales such as Cinderella, Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, and Rumpelstiltskin, I was ready for a fresh challenge. After some initial push back, I convinced my publisher that using a lesser known fairy tale for my next novel would be a viable idea. After all, hadn’t my success been due to breaking with more conventional storytelling? 

I spent a few hours pouring over my old collection of Grimm’s fairy tales with several cups of hot, black tea. I always appreciated my collection for not being full of stories sanitized out of recognition. Rather, they had all the violence of reality which their authors intended. Throughout my reading, my thoughts kept wandering back to one story: “The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was”. I had read it before that day, of course, but it struck me then as a particularly likely candidate for my next novel. It is the story of an unintelligent young man who leaves his father’s house because he wants to learn to shudder, thinking it a profession of some kind. Through the course of his journey, he encounters multiple horrors, but does not react to any of them with the appropriate amount of fear or disgust. He ultimately fails to learn what fear is, but it’s this lack of normal emotion which leads to his becoming a wealthy king.

The story always struck me as fascinating because the protagonist’s courage is almost entirely due to his inability to properly understand the finality of death. I smiled to myself as I flipped through the pages of the story yet again. Keeping the attention of the reading public is difficult, and I had found it necessary to keep the content of my successive stories more shocking than their predecessors. This story already contained much that would shock modern audiences on its own, even more so than a typical unedited fairy tale. Exactly what I was looking for.

I plunged into the story with relish, and the pages I wrote practically dripped with blood. For almost a week, I wrote with little to disturb me except making pots of tea and ordering my meals. On Saturday night, I raised my exhausted, aching head from my computer to observe the dirty dishes and take out boxes piled around me like the beginnings of a makeshift wall. 

“I’d better start dismantling Fort Disgusting Dishes,” I chuckled as I rose from my chair.

Gathering all the dishes I could hold, I moved from my study into the kitchen. As I set the dishes beside the sink, I absently looked out into my backyard through the kitchen window. All was dark and quiet. I turned back to my work, but a knife at the bottom of the sink caught my eye. It was a large butcher knife, one I usually only use to slice roasts or other large cuts of meat. I was positive I had not used it recently. Picking it up, I noticed the entire blade was covered with a thick layer of dry blood. Startled, I dropped the knife. After taking a moment to process my discovery, I ran to the back and front doors to make sure they were locked. Both were locked and did not appear to have been tampered with. I checked every window in the house. All were shut, and locked from the inside. Going back to the sink I picked up the knife again with incredulity. Nothing in the house appeared to be disturbed except this one knife. How could that be? I looked out the window again, straining to see anything unusual. That is when I noticed two black shapes, the size of large dogs, lying on the ground on the far side of my patio. Still  gripping the knife, I crept out my back door towards the two unmoving shapes. I could hardly believe what I saw was real. Lying before me in the porch light were two hideous, impossibly large, black cats. Across both throats were slashes, like those from a heavy knife. Covering the fur and the ground around both cats was brown, dried blood. 

Muttering a curse, I dropped the knife again, ran inside my house, and slammed the door. I was trembling and sweating as I sat on the floor just inside the kitchen. Coming to my senses, I called the police and explained what I had found. It must have only been about ten minutes, but it seemed like at least an hour, before I heard a heavy knock on my front door. 

I opened the door to a middle aged police officer with an almost bald head and world weary manner. 

“Hello, sir. I understand you’ve had an issue with animals killed on your property?”

“Yes, but that’s not what I’m most concerned about. The knife which I believe was used is my own knife which I found in my kitchen sink covered with blood. The knife wielding maniac who killed those cats, if that’s what they are, must have had access to my house,” I said, wiping a hand across my sweating brow.

“I see. Were there any signs of a break in?” the police officer asked.

“None that I can find. Someone must have broken in since both doors were locked.”

“Alright. Show me these dead cats of yours, then I’ll take a look and see what else I can find.”

I lead the police officer through my house to the back door. I flipped on the porch light and opened the door to find absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. I stood in the doorway for a moment in shock, and then ran to the spot where the dead cats had lain. The police officer came on steadily behind me. 

I turned to him and said, “I... don’t understand it. They were right here! There were blood stains all over the ground, and I dropped the knife right there,” I pointed to a spot directly in front of the officer’s feet.

The police officer seemed completely unmoved by my revelation.

“So between your 9-1-1 call and my arrival, someone came, moved the cats, cleaned up the blood, and took the knife all without you hearing?”

“It appears so,” I snapped back at him. “I know what I saw, and before you ask, I also know I wasn’t dreaming, drunk, or high.”

The police officer sighed, “I can check your house for signs of a break in, but there isn’t much else for me to do here.”

After about half an hour of looking, the police officer said he could find no signs of a break in. He told me to let the police know if I had any other issues. The majority of my night was spent alternating between pacing around my kitchen and watching the back window for any signs of movement. The possibility of the culprit returning made sleeping in my bed upstairs impossible. Eventually, I managed to drift off for the few remaining hours of the night on the sofa in my study. The first rays of light woke me again, and I went into the kitchen to make myself some tea. When I opened a kitchen drawer to take out a spoon, I saw the knife. It glinted up at me from its usual place, completely clean. 

Was I going insane? Everything I had seen last night was so real, I couldn’t have just imagined it all.  Convinced the best thing to do was forget it ever happened, I furiously worked on my manuscript. My fevered focus made the pages fly by. When I finally stopped writing around ten o’clock that night, the manuscript was nearly complete. Reading through what I had written made me feel somewhat uncomfortable. Perhaps it was a reaction to the previous night’s scare, but my writing seemed more graphically violent and dark than I intended. I gave my head a shake to clear my thoughts. Darkness was the hallmark of my work. If I had crossed a line into unpublishable territory, my editor would let me know.

I was giving the last few paragraphs another read through, when I heard the sound of a soft thud at my front door. It was not a knock, rather, the sound of a heavy bundle or sack being thrown to the ground. Before I could decide how to proceed, I was already mechanically walking down the hallway towards my front door. It was almost as if my body had chosen to ignore my strong misgivings and move of its own accord. With a trembling hand, I opened the door. I gave a sharp cry as something limp fell through the door to my feet. Flicking on the light I saw, to my horror, the bottom half of a man. The feet had on heavy work boots, and the legs were clothed with faded, torn jeans. The body was roughly hewn at the waist, just at the point where the jeans began. I turned away from the revolting sight and was sick on the hardwood floor. When I recovered, I noticed a smudged trail of blood leading away from my door up the stairs to the second floor of my house. 

I didn’t want to follow that trail, but something outside my own will seemed to control my actions now. Up the stairs I went, following the rusty trail. The blood turned left at the top of the stairs, and into my bedroom. My mind screamed, wailed, and pleaded for me to stop and run as fast as I could away from there. In defiance of my terror, my hand reached out and pushed completely ajar the partially opened door. What I saw then will be burned in my memory for as long as I live, however short a time that may be. The hallway light revealed the second half of the body from below, but it was not lying limp like the bottom. The hands were pulling the quilt of my bed, as if the man was trying to pull himself up off the floor. But his face was not turned towards the bed. It was turned back towards me, eyes wild and mouth twisted between a grimace and a toothy grin. Around him pooled the dark blood still dripping from his severed torso. 

I turned and ran as fast as I could back down the stairs. In my frantic haste, I tripped over my own feet and fell down the last few steps. The last thing I remember is pain from hitting my head on the floor. I woke up to my head throbbing and, for a blessed moment, could not remember how I ended up lying at the foot of my staircase. Then, like the memory of a nightmare, everything came back to me. I looked up, expecting to see the lower half of the man on the threshold before me. Nothing. The front door was still open, but there was no sign of the body or any blood. The blood trail leading up the stairs was gone too. Mustering the tattered remains of my courage, I checked my bedroom and saw no sign of the man’s upper half. My bedroom appeared normal and undisturbed.

I knew I couldn’t go to the police. Just as last night, I had absolutely nothing to back my story. They would assume I was experiencing hallucinations caused by the trauma to my head. Worse, they might think I was suffering psychosis. I could not bear the humiliation of their concerned condescension. No, I couldn’t go to the police or anyone else. I was alone. 

I spent the rest of the night locked in my study. Sleep came upon me in fits, and my head continued to throb. The dawn wafting through the skylight was some comfort, and I considered trying to escape. Even as I moved to start packing my things, the paralyzing dread returned. Somehow I knew that whatever was happening here would follow me wherever I tried to run. It was not attached to my house. It was attached to me. I stumbled back into my study and sunk back down onto the sofa. I could not eat or drink. All I could manage was to wait with a growing dread as the dreary winter day faded into an early nightfall. 

Around midnight, I was roused from a restless sleep by a deep, smooth voice calling my name.

“Victor!”

The speaker was an old man who was sitting in my desk chair in front of my computer. He had snow white hair and a long white beard. His skin was like old parchment, and his nails were long, yellow, and cracked. From his withered face glowed deep set, blood red eyes under bristling eyebrows. He was wearing a plain, old fashion looking black suit, and was fingering a gold coin of some currency I did not recognize. Next to the man, wedged between my desk and the study door was a long, black casket. The casket was not adorned in any way, but it was polished so that it reflected the study around it like a sable mirror. I caught sight of my own face in it, and was repulsed. The face which stared back at me was so pale and haggard, I could hardly believe it was my own. The old man cast no reflection. 

For what seemed like several minutes, he stared at me with hellish amusement while I stared back at him in terror. Finally, he broke the silence.

“I would have expected you to be filled with awe and excitement at the advent of your god.”

“I… I don’t believe in God,” I managed to say.

The old man laughed with disdain. “Of course, but I didn’t say God, did I? I said your god. Every man has a god, Victor, whether he professes it or not. Your god is what determines the direction of your life. It’s the common thread weaving itself through your soul, binding your life together and shaping you in its image.”

“If that is true, I certainly do not have a god. Nothing has that power over me. What god do you say I have?” I asked the old man.

“I should have thought it was obvious,” the old man said with mock surprise, “Your god is Death, Victor.”

Every word of the old man’s last sentence fell on my mind with the force of a hammer on an anvil. I began to tremble, and then wept into my hands while the man cackled hysterically. When I could weep no more, I looked up to see the old man had gone. The black casket has remained, and I cannot move it from its place against the door. It’s my casket. I know I will not leave this room alive. I’m going to destroy my manuscript, that at least I can do. This letter is my last communication to the outside world. There is nothing left for me but the abyss.