What boots it to tell of the long, long hours of horror more than mortal, during which I counted the rushing oscillations of the steel! Inch by inch—line by line—with a descent only appreciable at intervals that seemed ages—down and still down it came! Days passed—it might have been that many days passed—ere it swept so closely over me as to fan me with its acrid breath. The odor of the sharp steel forced itself into my nostrils. I prayed—I wearied heaven with my prayer for its more speedy descent. I grew frantically mad, and struggled to force myself upward against the sweep of the fearful scimitar. And then I fell suddenly calm, and lay smiling at the glittering death, as a child at some rare bauble.
There was another interval of utter insensibility; it was brief; for, upon again lapsing into life, there had been no perceptible descent in the pendulum. But it might have been long—for I knew there were demons who took note of my swoon, and who could have arrested the vibration at pleasure. Upon my recovery, too, I felt very—oh! inexpressibly—sick and weak, as if through long inanition. Even amid the agonies of that period, the human nature craved food. With painful effort I outstretched my left arm as far as my bonds permitted, and took possession of the small remnant which had been spared me by the rats. As I put a portion of it within my lips, there rushed to my mind a half-formed thought of joy—of hope. Yet what business had I with hope? It was, as I say, a half-formed thought—man has many such, which are never completed. I felt that it was of joy—of hope; but I felt also that it had perished in its formation. In vain I struggled to perfect—to regain it. Long suffering had nearly annihilated all my ordinary powers of mind. I was an imbecile—an idiot.
The vibration of the pendulum was at right angles to my length. I saw that the crescent was designed to cross the region of the heart. It would fray the serge of my robe—it would return and repeat its operations—again—and again. Notwithstanding its terrifically wide sweep (some thirty feet or more), and the hissing vigor of its descent, sufficient to sunder these very walls of iron, still the fraying of my robe would be all that, for several minutes, it would accomplish. And at this thought I paused. I dared not go further than this reflection. I dwelt upon it with a pertinacity of attention—as if, in so dwelling, I could arrest here the descent of the steel. I forced myself to ponder upon the sound of the crescent as it should pass across the garment—upon the peculiar thrilling sensation which the friction of cloth produces on the nerves. I pondered upon all this frivolity until my teeth were on edge.
Down—steadily down it crept. I took a frenzied pleasure in contrasting its downward with its lateral velocity. To the right—to the left—far and wide—with the shriek of a damned spirit! to my heart, with the stealthy pace of the tiger! I alternately laughed and howled, as the one or the other idea grew predominant.
Down—certainly, relentlessly down! It vibrated within three inches of my bosom! I struggled violently—furiously—to free my left arm. This was free only from the elbow to the hand. I could reach the latter, from the platter beside me, to my mouth, with great effort, but no farther. Could I have broken the fastenings above the elbow, I would have seized and attempted to arrest the pendulum. I might as well have attempted to arrest an avalanche!
Down—still unceasingly—still inevitably down! I gasped and struggled at each vibration. I shrunk convulsively at its every sweep. My eyes followed its outward or upward whirls with the eagerness of the most unmeaning despair; they closed themselves spasmodically at the descent, although death would have been a relief, oh, how unspeakable! Still I quivered in every nerve to think how slight a sinking of the machinery would precipitate that keen, glistening axe upon my bosom. It was hope that prompted the nerve to quiver—the frame to shrink. It was hope—the hope that triumphs on the rack—that whispers to the death-condemned even in the dungeons of the Inquisition.
I saw that some ten or twelve vibrations would bring the steel in actual contact with my robe—and with this observation there suddenly came over my spirit all the keen, collected calmness of despair. For the first time during many hours—or perhaps days—I thought. It now occurred to me, that the bandage, or surcingle, which enveloped me, was unique. I was tied by no separate cord. The first stroke of the razor-like crescent athwart any portion of the band would so detach it that it might be unwound from my person by means of my left hand. But how fearful, in that case, the proximity of the steel! The result of the slightest struggle, how deadly! Was it likely, moreover, that the minions of the torturer had not foreseen and provided for this possibility? Was it probable that the bandage crossed my bosom in the track of the pendulum? Dreading to find my faint and, as it seemed, my last hope frustrated, I so far elevated my head as to obtain a distinct view of my breast. The surcingle enveloped my limbs and body close in all directions—save in the path of the destroying crescent.
Scarcely had I dropped my head back into its original position, when there flashed upon my mind what I cannot better describe than as the unformed half of that idea of deliverance to which I have previously alluded, and of which a moiety only floated indeterminately through my brain when I raised food to my burning lips. The whole thought was now present—feeble, scarcely sane, scarcely definite—but still entire. I proceeded at once, with the nervous energy of despair, to attempt its execution.
For many hours the immediate vicinity of the low framework upon which I lay had been literally swarming with rats. They were wild, bold, ravenous—their red eyes glaring upon me as if they waited but for motionlessness on my part to make me their prey. “To what food,” I thought, “have they been accustomed in the well?”
They had devoured, in spite of all my efforts to prevent them, all but a small remnant of the contents of the dish. I had fallen into an habitual see-saw or wave of the hand about the platter; and, at length, the unconscious uniformity of the movement deprived it of effect. In their voracity, the vermin frequently fastened their sharp fangs in my fingers. With the particles of the oily and spicy viand which now remained, I thoroughly rubbed the bandage wherever I could reach it; then, raising my hand from the floor, I lay breathlessly still.
At first, the ravenous animals were startled and terrified at the change—at the cessation of movement. They shrank alarmedly back; many sought the well. But this was only for a moment. I had not counted in vain upon their voracity. Observing that I remained without motion, one or two of the boldest leaped upon the framework, and smelt at the surcingle. This seemed the signal for a general rush. Forth from the well they hurried in fresh troops. They clung to the wood—they overran it, and leaped in hundreds upon my person. The measured movement of the pendulum disturbed them not at all. Avoiding its strokes, they busied themselves with the anointed bandage. They pressed—they swarmed upon me in ever accumulating heaps. They writhed upon my throat; their cold lips sought my own; I was half stifled by their thronging pressure; disgust, for which the world has no name, swelled my bosom, and chilled, with a heavy clamminess, my heart. Yet one minute, and I felt that the struggle would be over. Plainly I perceived the loosening of the bandage. I knew that in more than one place it must be already severed. With a more than human resolution I lay still.
Nor had I erred in my calculations—nor had I endured in vain. I at length felt that I was free. The surcingle hung in ribands from my body. But the stroke of the pendulum already pressed upon my bosom. It had divided the serge of the robe. It had cut through the linen beneath. Twice again it swung, and a sharp sense of pain shot through every nerve. But the moment of escape had arrived. At a wave of my hand my deliverers hurried tumultuously away. With a steady movement—cautious, side-long, shrinking and slow—I slid from the embrace of the bandage and beyond the reach of the scimitar. For the moment, at least, I was free.
Free!—and in the grasp of the Inquisition! I had scarcely stepped from my wooden bed of horror upon the stone floor of the prison, when the motion of the hellish machine ceased, and I beheld it drawn up, by some invisible force, through the ceiling. This was a lesson
which I took desperately to heart. My every motion was undoubtedly watched. Free!—I had but escaped death in one form of agony, to be delivered unto worse than death in some other. With that thought I rolled my eyes nervously around on the barriers of iron that hemmed me in. Something unusual—some change which, at first, I could not appreciate distinctly—it was obvious, had taken place in the apartment. For many minutes of a dreamy and trembling abstraction, I busied myself in vain, unconnected conjecture. During this period, I became aware, for the first time, of the origin of the sulphurous light which illumined the cell. It proceeded from a fissure, about half an inch in width, extending entirely around the prison at the base of the walls, which thus appeared, and were completely separated from the floor. I endeavored, but of course in vain, to look through the aperture.
As I arose from the attempt, the mystery of the alteration in the chamber broke at once upon my understanding. I have observed that, although the outlines of the figures upon the walls were sufficiently distinct, yet the colors seemed blurred and indefinite. These colors had now assumed, and were momentarily assuming, a startling and most intense brilliancy, that gave to the spectral and fiendish portraitures an aspect that might have thrilled even firmer nerves than my own. Demon eyes, of a wild and ghastly vivacity, glared upon me in a thousand directions, where none had been visible before, and gleamed with the lurid lustre of a fire that I could not force my imagination to regard as unreal.
Unreal!—Even while I breathed there came to my nostrils the breath of the vapor of heated iron! A suffocating odor pervaded the prison! A deeper glow settled each moment in the eyes that glared at my agonies! A richer tint of crimson diffused itself over the pictured horrors of blood. I panted! I gasped for breath! There could be no doubt of the design of my tormentors—oh! most unrelenting! oh! most demoniac of men! I shrank from the glowing metal to the centre of the cell. Amid the thought of the fiery destruction that impended, the idea of the coolness of the well came over my soul like balm. I rushed to its deadly brink. I threw my straining vision below. The glare from the enkindled roof illumined its inmost recesses. Yet, for a wild moment, did my spirit refuse to comprehend the meaning of what I saw. At length it forced—it wrestled its way into my soul—it burned itself in upon my shuddering reason. Oh! for a voice to speak!—oh! horror!—oh! any horror but this! With a shriek, I rushed from the margin, and buried my face in my hands—weeping bitterly.
The heat rapidly increased, and once again I looked up, shuddering as with a fit of the ague. There had been a second change in the cell—and now the change was obviously in the form. As before, it was in vain that I at first endeavored to appreciate or understand what was taking place. But not long was I left in doubt. The Inquisitorial vengeance had been hurried by my two-fold escape, and there was to be no more dallying with the King of Terrors. The room had been square. I saw that two of its iron angles were now acute—two, consequently, obtuse. The fearful difference quickly increased with a low rumbling or moaning sound. In an instant the apartment had shifted its form into that of a lozenge. But the alteration stopped not here—I neither hoped nor desired it to stop. I could have clasped the red walls to my bosom as a garment of eternal peace. “Death,” I said, “any death but that of the pit!” Fool! might I not have known that into the pit it was the object of the burning iron to urge me? Could I resist its glow? or if even that, could I withstand its pressure? And now, flatter and flatter grew the lozenge, with a rapidity that left me no time for contemplation. Its centre, and of course its greatest width, came just over the yawning gulf. I shrank back—but the closing walls pressed me resistlessly onward. At length for my seared and writhing body there was no longer an inch of foothold on the firm floor of the prison. I struggled no more, but the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long, and final scream of despair. I felt that I tottered upon the brink—I averted my eyes—
There was a discordant hum of human voices! There was a loud blast as of many trumpets! There was a harsh grating as of a thousand thunders! The fiery walls rushed back! An outstretched arm caught my own as I fell, fainting, into the abyss. It was that of General Lasalle. The French army had entered Toledo. The Inquisition was in the hands of its enemies.
The Pit, the Pendulum, and Perfection
BY EDWARD D. HOCH
I have written elsewhere that my lifetime commitment to mystery fiction can be traced to an early exposure to the novels of Ellery Queen. But my love for the short story dates from my first reading of Edgar Allan Poe. It was in my school textbook that I discovered “The Pit and the Pendulum,” a near-perfect example of the horror and suspense that marked so much of Poe’s work.
From the very beginning with its description of the Inquisition chamber, the reader is caught up in the narrator’s terrible plight. We are to be his companion in the tortures that follow, and it seems that death will be his only release. He drifts between a conscious and dreamlike state, facing first the fate of execution by a swinging, razor-sharp pendulum, a method Poe had no doubt seen described in a contemporary history of the Inquisition. As his narrator describes the slow descent of the pendulum and the scurrying of rats about his chamber, there seems to be no chance of survival.
When he miraculously escapes death by the pendulum, he is immediately faced with an even graver danger. The red-hot walls of his cell begin to close in upon him, forcing him ever closer to the gaping abyss at the center of the room. The suspense builds to a terrifying pitch that holds the reader until the story’s final paragraph. Poe’s ending may be a bit far-fetched, but it has a historical basis. To the reader it is supremely satisfying, the perfect ending to a half hour of nail-biting suspense.
For anyone who wishes to write short stories, there is no better teacher than Edgar Allan Poe. And there is no better example of suspenseful perfection in a short story than “The Pit and the Pendulum.”
Edward D. Hoch (1930–2008) was a past president of Mystery Writers of America and winner of its Edgar Award for Best Short Story. In 2001 he received MWA’s Grand Master Award. He was a guest of honor at Bouchercon, two-time winner of its Anthony Award, and recipient of its Lifetime Achievement Award. The Private Eye Writers of America honored him with its Life Achievement Award as well. Author of some 975 published stories, he appeared in every issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in the past thirty-five years.
The Pit and the Pendulum at the Palace
BY PETER ROBINSON
If I hadn’t become a crime writer, I think it most likely I would have written horror or science fiction. I certainly did when I was a teenager; then, after many years of poetry, I turned to crime. While Poe’s stories of “ratiocination” featuring Auguste Dupin never really thrilled me (even back then I just couldn’t believe in that Ourang-Outang!), his tales of mystery and imagination enthralled me from the start. And I came to them first through the films of Roger Corman, many of them scripted by the excellent Richard Matheson.
In England in the early 1960s there were three ratings for films: U, A, and X. The first was general admission, for an A film you had to be accompanied by an adult, and you had to be over sixteen to see an X film. X ratings weren’t reserved for films about sex and violence but were applied to just about every exciting horror and science fiction film that came out in that golden age—from The Blob to Psycho. For a twelve-year-old fan, the pickings were pretty slim. You might get something decent with an A rating, which meant that you had to hang around outside the cinema and ask some adult stranger to take you in—something I’m sure would be inconceivable in this day and age. But we did it and survived.
Luckily, though, there was one local fleapit, incredibly named the Palace, where the old woman in the ticket booth didn’t really care how old you were. At twelve or thirteen, I was tall enough that I could pass for sixteen there, or so I thought. At any rate, she took my money and let me in without a second glance. I can still recall the sense of excitement and anticipation I felt before the lush red velvet curtains parted. I
was doing something I shouldn’t be doing, seeing something forbidden—at least to kids my age—and I had no idea what wonders to expect. My previous horror and science fiction experiences had included A for Andromeda and Quatermass and the Pit on television, and the latter had scared the living daylights out of me. Now here I was, alone in a dark cinema, waiting for the ultimate experience in terror—in living color on a large screen—The Pit and the Pendulum. No wonder my stomach clenched as I lit a Woodbine and slunk down in my seat.
When the curtains opened, the swirl of colors was much like that of light shows I was to see later in the decade, but at the time, combined with a quirky, contemporary score, it was just enough to set the juices flowing. This was going to be weird. Then came the impossible castle on its hill, surrounded by a ring of mist, and the coach driver who would only take his passenger so far. (Quickly developing a taste for these horror films, I also devoured everything Hammer produced around the same time and got used to seeing such openings over and over again!) But it wasn’t so much the castle and the cobwebs and the dungeon and the strange colors and the distortion used in flashbacks and dream sequences that made me squirm in my seat. Poe, I discovered through Corman, was a master of morbid psychology, master of the language of grief and loss and how they could lead a man (usually Vincent Price) to madness beyond the grave.
Of course, in retrospect, it’s hard to say how much I understood at the time. Probably the whole element of adultery that underpins the tale was lost on me, though the hints of illicit sex and debauchery certainly weren’t—heaving cleavage was as much a feature of the Corman films as it was with Hammer—and the way Elizabeth expresses her fascination with the torture chamber, rushing around feverishly, touching the implements with a kind of sexual longing, was both disturbing and exciting. I knew about the Spanish Inquisition (though this was several years before it was immortalized by Monty Python) and its tortures—the Iron Maiden, the rack, and the rest—but perhaps the adult relationships were somewhat lost on me.