The Moonlit Road by Ambrose Bierce

"Fear has no brains; it is an idiot."

Ambrose Bierce, a rather prolific short story writer, is known for his whit, but scholars have often noted that The Moonlit Road is a piece that is not talked about enough. This traditional gothic tale, uses rather unconventional storytelling to deliver a piece that is not only gripping, but also deeply moving. Rae Wilson shares her observations on Bierce's tragic tale and and invites you question the both the power of love and the power of perspective.

Support the Show & Get Exclusive Stories: Stories with Rae | Patreon

Read the Story

Music by:

Sneaky Snitch by Kevin MacLeod http://incompetech.com

Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0

Free Download / Stream: http://bit.ly/sneaky-snitch

Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/7-rXQALDv-4

-------------

Dread by Rae Wilson 

------------

Dark Shadows - by David Fesliyan

https://www.fesliyanstudios.com/

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to Echoes in the Dark, a podcast dedicated to the oral tradition of storytelling. If you're looking to enjoy more classic literature, struggle to find the time to read, hate reading, or just love listening to stories, then this podcast is for you. At the end of each story, I'll share my analysis on the story's deeper meaning. The Moonlit Road by Ambrose Beerce is a short story that was originally published in 1907 in a Cosmopolitan magazine. It is estimated that Bierce wrote some 120 to 160 short stories. He also wrote fables and poems. The entire story is told in first-person perspective and is told over three chapters with three different characters sharing their point of view. If you want to follow along, you can get a copy on my website, better essaywriting.com. And if you'd like to hear more works by Beerce and his contemporaries, pick up some underused and possibly archaic words, then join me on Patreon. That's Patreon CW Stories with Ray R A E. Or click on the link in the show notes. The Moonlit Road by Ambrose Here. Statement of Joel Hetman Jr. I am the most unfortunate of men. Rich, respected, fairly well educated and of sound health, with many other advantages, usually valued by those having them and coveted by those who have them not. I sometimes think that I should be less unhappy if they had been denied me. For then the contrast between my outer and my inner life would not be continually demanding a painful attention. In the stress of privation and the need of effort, I might sometimes forget the somber secret, ever baffling the conjecture that it compels. I am the only child of Joel and Julia Hetman. The one was a well-to-do country gentleman, the other, a beautiful and accomplished woman to whom he was passionately attached with what I now know to have been a jealous and exacting devotion. Family home was a few miles from Nashville, Tennessee, a large, irregularly built dwelling of no particular order of architecture, a little way off the road, in a park of trees and shrubbery. At the time of which I write, I was 19 years old, a student at Yale. One day I received a telegram from my father of such urgency that in compliance with its unexplained demand, I left at once for home. At the railway station in Nashville, a distant relative awaited me to apprise me of the reason for my recall. My mother had been barbariously murdered. Why and by whom none could conjecture. But the circumstances were these. My father had gone to Nashville intending to return the next afternoon. Something prevented his accomplishing the business in hand, so he returned on the same night, arriving just before the dawn. In his testimony before the coroner, he explained that, having no latch key and not caring to disturb the sleeping servants, he had, with no clearly defined intention, gone round to the rear of the house. As he turned an angle of the building, he heard a sound as of a door gently closed, and saw in the darkness, and distinctly, the figure of a man which instantly disappeared among the trees of the lawn. A hasty pursuit and brief search of the grounds in the belief that the trespasser was someone secretly visiting a servant proving fruitless, he entered at the unlocked door and mounted the stairs to my mother's chamber. Its door was open, and, stepping into black darkness, he fell headlong over some heavy object on the floor. I may spare myself the details. It was my poor mother, dead of strangulation by human hands. Nothing had been taken from the house, the servants had heard no sound, and excepting those terrible finger marks upon the dead woman's throat, dear God, that I might forget them. No trace of assassin was ever found. I gave up my studies and remained with my father, who naturally was greatly changed. Always of a sedate, tactical disposition, he now fell into so deep a dejection that nothing could hold his attention. It's anything, a footfall, the sudden closing of a door, aroused in him a fitful interest one might have called it an apprehension. At any small surprise of the senses, he would start visibly and sometimes turn pale, then relapse into a melancholy apathy deeper than before. I suppose he was what is called a nervous wreck. As to me, I was younger then than now. There is much in that. Youth is Gilead, and which is balm for every wound. Ah, that I might again dwell in that enchanted land. Unacquainted with grief, I knew not how to appraise my bereavement. I could not rightly estimate the strength of the stroke. One night, a few months after the dreadful event, my father and I walked home from the city. The full moon was about three hours above the eastern horizon. The entire countryside had the solemn stillness of a summer night. Our footfalls and the ceaseless songs of the Caedids were the only sound aloof. Black shadows of bordering trees lay athwart the road, which, in the short reaches between, gleamed ghostly white. As we approached the gate to our dwelling, whose front was in shadow, and which no light shone, my father suddenly stopped and clutched my arm, saying hardly above his breath God what is that? I hear nothing, I replied. But see he said, pointing along the road directly ahead. I said Nothing is there. Come, father, let us go in. You are ill. He had released my arm and was standing rigid and motionless in the center of the illuminated roadway, staring like one bereft of senses. His face in the moonlight showed a pallor and fixity inexpressibly distressing. I pulled gently at his sleeve, but he had forgotten my existence. Presently he began to retire backward, step by step, never for an instant removing his eyes from what he saw or thought he saw. I turned half round to follow, but stood irresolute. I do not recall any feeling of fear unless a sudden chill was its physical manifestation. It seemed as if an icing wind had touched my face and folded my body from head to foot. I could feel the stir of it in my hair. At that moment my attention was drawn to a light that suddenly streamed from an upper window of the house. One of the servants, awakened by what mysterious premonition of evil, who can say? And in obedience to an impulse that she was never able to name, had lit a lamp. When I turned to look for my father, he was gone. And in all the years that have passed, no whisper of his fate has come across the bordered land of conjecture from the realm of the unknown. Chapter 2 Statement of Caspar Rotten. Today I'm said to live. Some doubtless will go further and inquire, who was he? In this writing I supply the only answer that I am able to make Casper Groton. Surely that should be enough. The name has served my small need for more than twenty years of a life of unknown length. True. I gave it to myself, but lacking another I had the right. In this world one must have a name. It prevents confusion even when it does not establish identity. Some though are known by numbers which also seem inadequate distinctions. One day for illustration, I was passing along a street of a city far from here, when I met two men in uniform, one of whom, half pausing and looking curiously into my face, said to his companion, That man looks like seven sixty seven. Something in the number seemed familiar and horrible. Moved by an uncontrollable impulse, I sprang into a side street and ran until I fell exhausted in a country lane. I have never forgotten that number. Always it comes to memory, attended by gibbering obscenity, peals of joyless laughter, the clang of iron doors. So I say a name, even if self bestowed is better than a number. In the register of the potter's field I shall soon have both. What wealth Of him who shall find this paper I must beg a little consideration. It is not the history of my life. The knowledge to write that is denied me. This is only a record of broken and apparently unrelated memories, some of them as distinct and sequent as brilliant beads upon a thread. Others remote and strange, having the character of crimson dreams with interspaces blank and black, witch fires glowing still and red in a great desolation. Standing upon the shore of eternity, I turn for a last look landward over the course by which I came. There are twenty years of footprints, fairly distinct the impressions of bleeding feet. They lead through poverty and pain, devious and unsure as of one staggering beneath a burden. Remote, unfriended melancholy slow. Ah the poet's prophecy of me, how admirable How dreadfully admirable. Backward beyond the beginning of this Via Dolorosa, this epic of suffering with episodes of sin, I see nothing clearly. It comes out of a cloud. I know that it spans only twenty years, yet I am an old man. One does not remember one's birth, one has to be told. But with me it was different. Life came to me full handed and endowed me with all my faculties and powers. Of a previous existence, I know no more than others, for all having stammering imitations that may be memories and may be dreams. I know only that my first consciousness was of maturity in body and mind, a consciousness accepted without surprise or conjecture. I merely found myself walking in the forest, half clad, foot sore, unutterably weary and hungry, seeing a farmhouse. I approached and asked for food, which was given me by one who inquired my name. I did not know, yet knew that all had names. Greatly embarrassed I retreated, and night coming on lay down in the forest and slept. The next day I entered a large town which I shall not name, nor shall I recount further incidents of the life that is now to end. A life of wandering always and everywhere haunted by an overmastering sense of crime and punishment of wrong, and of terror and punishment of crime. Let me see if I can reduce it to narrative. I seem once to have lived near a great city, a prosperous planter, married to a woman who I loved and distrusted. We had it sometimes seems. One child, a youth of brilliant parts and promise. He is at all times a vague figure, never clearly drawn, frequently altogether out of the picture. One luckless evening it occurred to me to test my wife's fidelity in a vulgar, commonplace way, familiar to everyone who has acquaintance with the literature of fact and fiction. I went to the city, telling my wife that I should be absent until the following afternoon, but I returned before daybreak and went to the rear of the house, purposing to enter by a door with which I had secretly so tampered that it would seem to lock, yet not actually fasten. As I approached it, I heard it gently open and close and saw a man steal away into the darkness. With murder in my heart, I sprang after him, but he had vanished without even the bad look of identification. Sometimes now I cannot even persuade myself that it was a human being. Crazed with jealousy and rage, blind and bestial with all the element passions of insult and manhood, I entered the house and sprang up the stairs to the door of my wife's chamber. It was closed. But, having tampered with its lock also, I easily entered and despite the black darkness, soon stood by the side of her bed. My groping hands told me that although disarranged, it was unoccupied. She is below, I thought, and terrified by my entrance, has evaded me in the darkness of the hall. With the purpose of seeking her, I turned to leave the room but took a wrong direction. The right one. My foot struck her, cowering a corner of the room. Instantly my hands were at her throat, stifling a shriek, my knees were upon her struggling body, and there in the darkness, without a word of accusation or reproach, I stringed her till she died. There ends the dream. I have related it in the past tense, but the present would be the fitter form, for again and again the somber tragedy reenacts itself in my consciousness over and over. I lay the plan. I suffer the confirmation, I redress the wrong. Then all is blank, and afterward the rains beat against the grimy window panes, or the snows fall upon my scant attire. The wheels rattle in the squalid streets where my life lies in poverty and mean employment. If there is ever sunshine, I do not recall it. If there are birds, they do not sing. There is another dream, another vision of the night. I stand among the shadows in the moonlit road. I am aware of another presence, but whose I cannot rightly determine. In the shadow of a great dwelling I catch the gleam of white garments. Then the figure of a woman confronts me in the road. My murdered wife. There is death in the face, there are marks upon the throat, the eyes are fixed on mine with an infinite gravity which is not reproach, nor hate, nor menace, nor anything less terrible than recognition. Before this awful apparition I retreat in terror, a terror that is upon me as I write. I can no longer rightly shape the words. See they now I am calm, but truly there's no more to tell. The incident ends where it began in darkness and in doubt. Yes, I am again in control of myself The captain of my soul. But that is not response, it is another stage and phase of expiation. My penance, constant in degree, is mutable and calm. One of its variants is tranquility. After all, it is only a life sentence To hell for life. That is a foolish penalty. The culprit chooses the duration of his punishment. Today my time expires to each and all the peace that was not mine. Chapter three Statement of the Late Julia Hetman through the Medium Bay Rolls I had retired early and fallen almost immediately into a peaceful sleep, from which I awoke with that indefinable sense of peril which is, I think, a common experience than that other earlier life. Of its unmeaning character too, I was entirely persuaded. Yet that did not banish it. My husband, Joel Hetman, was away from home. The servant slept in another part of the house. But these were familiar conditions. They had never before distressed me. Nevertheless, the strange terror grew so insupportable that conquering my reluctance to move, I sat up and lit the lamp at my bedside. Contrary to my expectation, this gave me no relief. The light seemed rather an added danger, for I reflected that it would shine out under the door, disclosing my presence to whatever evil thing might lurk outside. You that are still in the flesh, subject to horrors of the imagination. What a monstrous fear that must be witnessing in darkness and security from malevolent existences of the night. That must bring to close quarters with an unseen enemy, the strategy of despair. Extinguishing the wind, I pulled the bed closing about my head and lay trembling and silent, unable to shriek, forgetful to pray in this pitable state. I must have learned for what you call hours. With us, there are no hours. At last it came. Hesitant, uncertain, as of something that did not see its way. To my disordered reason, all the more terrifying for that as the approach of some blind and mindless malevolence to which is no appeal. I even thought that I must have left the whole limp button, and the groping of this creature proved it a monster of the night. This was foolish and inconsistent with my previous dread of the light. But what would you have? It has no brains, it is an idiot. The dismal witness that bears and the cowardly counsel that it whispers are unrelated. We know this well. We who have passed into the realm of terror, who skulk in eternal dust among the scenes of our former lives, invisible even to ourselves and one another, yet hiding forlorn in lonely places, yearning for speech with our loved ones, yet dumb and as fearful of them as they of us. Sometimes the disability is removed, the law suspended. By the deathless power of love or hate we break the spell. We are seen by those whom we would warn, console, or punish. What form we seem to them to bear we know not. We know only that we terrify even those whom we most wish to comfort and from whom we most crave tenderness and sympathy. Forgive. I pray you this inconsequent digression by what was once a woman. You who consult us in this imperfect way you do not understand. You ask foolish questions about things unknown and things forbidden. That we know and could impart in our speech is meaningless in yours. We must communicate with you through a stammering intelligence and that small fraction of our language that you yourselves can speak. You think that we are of another world? No. We have no knowledge of no world but yours. Though for us, it holds no sunlight, no warmth, no music, no laughter, song of birds, nor any companionship. Oh God, what a thing it is to be a ghost, cowering and shivering in an altered world a prey to apprehension and despair. No, I did not die of fright. The thing turned and went away. I heard it go down the stairs. Hurriedly, I thought, as if itself in sudden fear. Then I rose to call for help. Hardly had my shaking had found the doorknob when merciful heaven I heard it returning. Its footfalls as it remounted the stairs were rapid, heavy and loud. They shook the house. I fled to an angle of the wall and crouched upon the floor. I tried to pray. I tried to call the name of my dear husband. Then I heard the door thrown open. There was an interval of unconsciousness, and when I revived, I felt a strangling clutch upon my throat. Felt my arms feebly beating against something that bore me backward. Felt my tongue thrusting itself between my teeth, and then I passed into this life. No, I have no knowledge of what it was. The sum of what we knew at death is the measure of what we know afterward of all that went before. We know many things, but no new light falls upon any page of that. In memory is written all of it that we can read. Here are no heights of truth overlooking the confused landscape of that dubitable domain. We still dwell in the valley of the shadow, lurk in its desolate places, peering from brambles and thickets at its mad, maligned inhabitants. How should we have new knowledge of that fading past? What I am about to relate happened on a night. We know when it is not. For then you retire to your houses and we can venture from our places of concealment to move unafraid about our old homes, to look in at the windows, even to enter and gaze upon your faces as you sleep. I had lingered long near the dwelling where I have been so cruelly changed to what I am, as we do while any that we love or hate remain. Vainly, I had sought some method of manifestation, some way to make my continued existence and my great love and poignant pity understood by my husband and son. Always, if they slept, they would wake, or if in my desperation I dared approach them when they were awake, would turn toward me the terrible eyes of the living, frightening me by the glances that I sought from the purpose that I held. On this night, I had searched for them without success, fearing to find them. They were nowhere in the house, nor about the moonlit long, for although the sun is lost to us forever, the moon, full orbit or slender, remains to us. Sometimes it shines by night, sometimes by day, but always it arises and sets, as in that other life. I left the lawn and moved in the white light and silence along the road, aimless and sorrowing. Suddenly I heard the voice of my poor husband in exclamations of astonishment, with that of my son in reassurance and dissuasion, and there, by the shadow of a group of the trees they stood near, so near their faces were toward me, the eyes of the elder man fixed upon mine. He saw me at last, at last he saw me. In the consciousness of that, my terror fled as a cruel dream. The death spell was broken. Love had conquered law. Mad with exhalation, I shouted, I must have shouted. He ceases, he ceased, he will understand. Then, controlling myself, I moved forward, smiling and consciously beautiful to offer him myself to his arms to comfort him with endearments and with my son's hand in mine to speak words that should restore the broken bonds between the living and the dead. Alas, alas, his face went white with fear, his eyes were as those of a haunted animal. He backed away from me as I advanced and at last turned and fled into the woods, whither it is not given to me to know, to my poor boy, left doubly desolate. I have never been able to impart a sense of my presence. Soon he too must pass to this life invisible and be lost to me forever. That was The Moonlit Road by Ambrose Bierce, and this is not the first time we've read a piece by Ambrose Bierce. We've previously read in this podcast The Boarded Window, as well as A Vine on a House. If you have not had an opportunity to listen to those tales, I do recommend going back and taking a listen. Okay, so let's get into it, my friends. What is it to say about the Moonlit Road? Well, after having read a few Ambrose Spears pieces now, I have to say this is by far my favorite. Um A Vine on a House was a bit comical. Um you can hear my my giggles and comments and reflection upon that piece when you listen to that episode. And a boarded window, it's fine. For me, that one was a bit predictable and not the most memorable. Um you know what's going to happen. At least I felt I knew what was going to happen. It's still a decent ride. But I don't feel that it had a whole lot to say. It was a very simple story. Now, with all of that being said, Window was written some almost a decade before our current piece, The Moonlit Road. So I realize I'm making these comparisons early on, but I do want to just throw those out there because if you haven't listened to the other pieces, I think it's worth taking a listen, and then you can come back and fully understand all the things that I have to say about this piece. So wow, The Moonlit Road. I find it to be a beautiful yet tragic love story and almost Shakespearean, if you will. There were a lot of fun phrases, in my opinion. And I was very eager to find out what was going to happen next. Oftentimes, when I am recording these stories, it is what us actors call a code read. So I have not had an opportunity to read the story prior to preparing for our lovely recording. Hopefully, I'm getting better at this and maintaining some consistency with the voices, but I feel I held strong with this one. So, what do we learn? What do we learn from Beerce's beautiful love story? Well, we do learn that there are two sides to every story, and in this case, three sides to a single story, right? Everyone has their own view of what happened. Um and often in the kind of true crime thriller world, we like to romanticize that the deceased will somehow be able to tell us what happened to them. And I like that this character just says outright, I don't know. I don't know what happened to me. I know as much as I knew when I was alive. Anything after that point, I can't tell you, can't help ya. Um, as someone who does listen to a lot of dateline as I am doing long drives across the country, there's always this idea of, well, the victim themselves had DNA under their fingernails, and so they were able to point us to their killer. Now, mind you, this story was done before the times of DNA testing, but it really I really just appreciate the fact that Bears wrote, hey, I don't expect for the deceased to have all the answers. And it just kind of makes us uh well make makes me realize how much um uh pressure uh how much we put upon those that have passed. Surely they must have taken some secrets with them to the grave, right? Um surely if they were here, they could help us solve their murder. Surely if they were here, they could uh ease the pain that we feel that they are no longer here and comfort us um and explain it to us. And just uh it really is kind of crazy, at least in Western society, this idea of intense mourning for those who have passed. Now, in this case, we have uh an intense longing by the lady, um longing to comfort and reconnect with her loved ones. She doesn't want to be away from them, she wants to uh uh make sure that they're okay and that they aren't missing her too much, but but that's just not an option. I also appreciate the description of the afterlife. She's like, look, there's no other world. I'm here, it's the same world I've always been a part of. I just can't do I can't speak the same language as you. I'm not seen as the living, but I'm still here, I'm always here. And very poetic in the sense that our memories of someone are always ever present. As long as you keep thinking of someone, that memory exists. And so in in that aspect, I feel like ghosts as as Bears lays it out for us, um, are like memories. We can be comforted by our memories, we can be tortured by our memories, we can be frightened by our memories. And I think that is what we're being told here. Now, when we looked at the captain, I I I really liked that because this guy's like, hey, I don't really remember much up until I was wandering through the woods, and then someone asked my name, and I was like, oh, don't know, can't tell. So we have a bit of like amnesia, right? Um, shock and denial happening for this man. And uh he goes off, lives a new life, and he has this dream. He never tries to find out who he is, you know, or what his life was like before he realized he was wandering in these woods. He never takes that step. But he does have a recurring dream where he remembers seeing someone in the woods, at least he thought he saw someone, and going into the home and strangling his wife. Oh, his poor wife, who was cowering in a corner because she heard someone in the house, and lo and behold, um the person who should be there to protect her, love her, uh, runs to the house and attacks her. One thing Birsch doesn't give us is whether there truly was someone in the woods and uh who that person was, what were they doing? What were they doing there, right? It could have definitely been someone who wanted to have a little alliance with one of the maids. That is absolutely a possibility. And so they snuck in, snuck out, and they were gone, because that's what people do when they're having little late-night romps with maids. Um and uh the husband in this story, Mr. Hurt Hetman, he knows this could be someone connected to one of the servants, but there's a part of them who also says, This must be my wife's lover. My unfaithful wife, my beautiful wife must be unfaithful. And isn't that interesting? It puts a lot of pressure on those that are considered beautiful, right? Even those we consider to be faithful to us. My wife is beautiful, she must be unfaithful. My son is loyal, he must drop his studies and come home, right? Um, and not that uh the pressure all came from Mr. Hetman. Um Mrs. Hetman also assigns some pressure uh to others, right? Um my family loves me, my son loves me, my husband loves me. They must want to see me, they must be able to see me the way I want to be seen. I want to be seen as someone who is here to comfort, as someone who is loving, as someone who is able to speak and uh be heard. But lo and behold, um, as much as we all may want to be seen the way we want to be seen, people are gonna see us how they see us. And in her case, unfortunately, her husband saw her as a threat and ran away. Now, he saw her as a threat. Did he see her as a threat just because she was deceased and he was seeing a ghost and he was scared of that? Did he see her as a threat because of his guilty conscience, knowing that he's the one who ended her life? Or did he see her very existence as a threat? Because you have to remember he was threatened torture by the idea that she might be betraying him when he had gone out of town. Apparently, he took frequent trips out of town and he was always worried, always worried. Something else was going on. So maybe just having her as his wife was threatening to him. Um, maybe that threat existed prior before they're getting married. And I don't really get a feeling that she gave him any reason to be suspicious. Some people are just like that. Some people just are insecure in a sense that they are just constantly concerned they're going to lose what they have, whether that is a loved one, whether that is love, whether that is money, their home, uh, worldly possessions. Some people just always live in fear. And uh, in a way, I think that was Mr. Hetman. Okay. Other things to have learned. So we didn't know that there's more than one side to every story. Um, something that I also found very, very beautiful was the idea that you can love something or someone so much that you literally suffocated. Um, and that for me is very, very powerful. In this case, Mr. Hetman loved his wife so much that it it strangled her. Uh he strangled her. Um and she loved her husband so much that it frightened him, right? He was frightened by her love returning to him and he ran away. Um, we could say that the son loved his father so much that he was blinded by this love. He didn't see right away that there is something wrong with the way his father was behaving and the fact that no one can ever figure out what happened that night. You know, he's young, 19-year-old. So he's like, uh, this is all weird, but let me just I don't know how I'm supposed to act. I don't know how my father's supposed to act. I'm just gonna, you know, keep things going here. Make sure bills get paid, dad still eats, those kinds of things. So we can love something or someone so much we literally suffocate it. That one just really, really stands out to me. Um, and you can create your own hell. So from the captain story, we definitely learn that by choice he chose not to find out his true identity or name. He had these dreams, he could have tried to find out more about these dreams, but you know, um, he would not have had Facebook or Google back in the days. Um, but he he could have acted, he chose not to. That's fine. He decided to get a basic job and uh, you know, live a basic life. He never tried to find love again or anything like that. Uh, he allowed himself to be repeatedly tortured, and he was okay with that. That's what he chose. He never wanted the dreams to stop. Um, so torture. He was tortured by what he did not know. Is my wife cheating? And he was tortured by what he knew. Um, still having these dreams. I killed my wife. Those were things that haunted him till his dying day. Do we really know anyone? That's another strong question that Bears raises with this story. Do we really know our loved ones? So we have right off the bat the son who um thought he knew his parents, but didn't really understand just how intense his father's love was for his mother. Um we have the fact that the mother has no inkling that her husband was the one who um ended her life. Um and of course, we have Mr. Hetman, who's so convinced that his wife is doing wrong and doesn't realize that she was faithful to the end. She wasn't doing anything wrong. Um, and you you know, just going back to that creating your own torture, she created her own hell by being terribly afraid that night. And instead of, you know, summoning one of the servants, um, maybe, you know, you're gonna have lady servants, um having one of them sleep in your room or something, or just check around the room or what have you. Uh, please read to me. I'm tired, uh, I'm having trouble sleeping. Please read to me. Be here, be here. Um, she didn't, she didn't want to be alone, she didn't want to be in the dark, but she was. And she cowered in her room, and she was tortured all night long until she no longer existed in her state of living. And then, of course, in her afterlife, in her new state, she was a bit tortured again because she really wanted to be with her family, and she kept trying to go see them, and ultimately she loses her husband again when he runs away from her. So that's in the whole new torture. She can't go after him, she can't find him, and all she can do is just be around her son, knowing that one day he is going to pass on, and then she won't have him anymore. So that's a whole other kind of torture. Okay, so there you have those, the tortures. But do we really know anyone? The son didn't really know the father, the father didn't really know his wife, and the wife didn't really know her husband. No one really knew anybody. And that, these themes, they all exist today. Um, so many times we think we know someone, and after spending more time with them, we go, oh my gosh, who is this person? Were they always like this? Um, is this new? Have I always felt this way? Um, have they always looked at me this way? I really, really love how Beerce points out the idea of being able to come back to comfort the ones you love or punish the ones that cause you pain. And you really left on edge wondering like, does she know? Does she know? Does she know, right? Is she coming back because she loves her husband? Or is she coming back? We are seen, quote, we are seen by those whom we would warn, console, or punish. What form we seem to them to bear, we know not. We know only that we terrify even those whom we wish to comfort and from whom we most crave tenderness and sympathy. So it's like, oh my gosh, you know. Um, doesn't she coming back because she wants to punish her husband? But no, that's not at all. She's coming back because she loves him, she loves him, she loves her family, but she can't control how he sees her. She has no control over what he sees. We know only that we terrify even those whom we most wish to comfort. This reminds me of mother and child, right? Or parents and children. How parents often say they only want to do what's right for their child. And children are often saying, My parents don't understand me, they're so mean, they are ruining my life, right? That's a teenager. You're torturing me, you're ruined my life. Even um, you know, the preteen nowadays, they don't get that video game, they're upset. The the uh toddler that wants the candy and is told they can't have it, or the toy, you're a meanie, you're a bully, you're the worst. Um and this goes on, at least for women um for their entire lives, really, right? I say at least for women because we have this with the female character here who brings up this idea of wanting to comfort and yet even though you you're you want to do right, you're just you're you're just terrifying people, you're just seen as a monster. Um golly gosh, I can't say that Casper Groton um has that same sentiment in his tidbits. And with the son, I feel for that guy. I'm assuming it is the son who later hires a um medium in order to find out what happened with my mom. Right. Statement of the late Julia Hetman through the medium bails. Sharing on her behalf. And yet, you know, it's the medium becomes a fourth player in this. So maybe the medium wasn't really just saying verbatim. Maybe she really did cheat. Ha ha ha ha. And the medium was just trying to comfort this guy to get more money. That could be a possibility. Um, or maybe the son didn't pay the medium, maybe somebody else did. But I'm gonna say actually the son probably paid the medium because uh the son does say the one was a well-to-do country gentleman, the other a beautiful and accomplished woman to whom he was passionately attached with what I know now. I know now to have been a jealous and exacting devotion. So he didn't realize it when he was 19, but he knows now, as an older man who's probably not gonna be around for much longer, you know, he is older. One thing that's interesting is Joel Hetman Jr. starts out with um, you know, I've got education and money, and I'm respected and I've got good health. So I've got a great life, but it's really stressful um knowing this this family secret. Um and it makes me unhappy. And I get that, I get that. When there's something that's in your family's past, maybe it's not something you did, but it's just a stain on your life. That can be a lot to bear. Um I don't know that Joel Hetman Jr. ever married and had kids. But having lost both parents and strange circumstances really weighed on him and he was unhappy. So I'm guessing maybe he did not uh become a family man um in his own right. And with his wealth, you know, they say money uh money leads to happiness. He's saying, hey, I wasn't happy. Uh but he was able to then hire that medium to find out what happened. And of course, knowing the secret also contributes to further unhappiness. Maybe he would have rather not have known. Now, in terms of finding out what happened to his father, really the only way he finds that out is when his father passes. The letter that his father wrote is published in the papers, and the connection is made that this is the man who disappeared oh so many years ago. That's the best we can get there in terms of him learning what happened to his dad. But all in all, I found this to be an excellent work of fiction. I thought the writing was very good, and I did see um notes online when I was looking for a copy of this story that a lot of scholars think this is one of Bierce's best works. Um, if not just a literary work that is not talked about enough. Um, yeah, vocabulary-wise, on point. And unlike The Boarded Window, I don't find this one forgettable. I like it so much, I feel like I need to send this one to a few people, um, but I'm sending it to you first. So I hope you like it too. I hope you enjoyed this story and do come back for another Dr. Tale.