by James Lewelling
Of course, I knew even then—lying on my back on the planking of the front porch, having purged my stomach into the rhododendrons—that I had no justification for enjoying such a posture of tranquility. The old man was still dead, and I had still killed him. The Fiend was still alive, and I had brought him no closer to destruction. Nonetheless, that abrupt and deliciously comprehensive purgation of gastric cud had brought with it waves of release that seemed to extend beyond the physical as well as, when it was over, the vague intimation that the situation, internal and external, had changed its aspect in some subtle but fundamental way. Something had snapped. Or two things had come together. I hardly knew which.
The starless night sky hung close and flat above me like an immense sheet of black construction paper.
If this were death, I thought, lying there on the planking, gazing up at that flat blackness, how easily I might embrace it! Such terrific cancellation! Such soothing nullity! No world; no me. No me; no Fiend. No Fiend; no White House (my Hell). Of course also, no you, Lucy (no betrayal). No green hill in the sunshine. No future; no past. No now.
Have no doubt, Lucy, I knew the error in this formulation. I’m no solipsist. I knew all would go on, but that was the best part! The Fiend would go on. The White House would go on. You would go on. (Your betrayal would go on.) The sun would continue to fall on the hill that would continue to green. But there would be no edge to any of it because I would not be involved! Even the Fiend would be without edges. All the machinery of existence would continue to run and with a perfect smoothness. For I, I came to realize there lying on the planking, considering the vast blackness above, was the only bit of grit in the gear box.
Such a simple solution! It took my breath away. For so long I had labored, since the very first instant of my tenancy in the White House (no, even before that, from the very beginning, for all roads had led to the White House), to extend my purview inch by inch, against all odds in the face of persistent (no, absolutely consistent) reversal so as to encompass and then solve (destroy) a problem which I had conceived of as outside of myself—I am speaking of the Fiend, here; the problem was the Fiend—when all the while I had actually held the levers of power in my very own hands! The problem was my problem, I realized then, rising from the porch. The problem was a problem to me. No me; no problem!
I got up and walked back into the house.
As you have probably guessed, my beloved (that is, Lucy), I was headed for the Incineration Chamber. I had originally conceived of the room, and lovingly constructed it, bit by bit over an immensely long period of time, as my last avenue of escape should no other be discovered before the ministrations of the Fiend had surpassed all my powers of resistance. Yes, I had imagined it as the place to which I could drag my shattered body, after a particularly grueling punishment session, for example, and in which, at the touch of a switch (I had ingeniously rigged the apparatus such that I need not even light a match) I would cheat the Fiend of his victory, so to speak. Yes, I had imagined the use of the Incineration Chamber as a last gesture of defiance, performed, nonetheless, in a moment of imminent defeat.
How much better have things turned out! I thought, striding down the hall towards the kitchen.
Here I am, I thought, about to make use of the Incineration Chamber, far from crushed and defeated but rather in full possession of my faculties, erect and on the very brink of victory! Had I not just been on the verge of assaulting the Fiend himself? Had I not so very recently dispatched his surrogate? (That old man was no innocent, I realized in retrospect. He could hardly have assumed that exact position in the Fiend’s favorite armchair at that particular moment on his own untutored initiative. No, in retrospect, the whole old man incident smelled strongly of collusion.) In fact, in coming to fully comprehend and appreciate the radically balming possibilities of utter nullity, I was victorious already! I could see that beautiful nullity hanging out there in space right in front of me like a room I might just step into, one that not only offered comprehensive cancellation of all my tribulations but also a future well within my singular unaided power to create, a guaranteed eventuality!
Striding into the house, I felt almost as if I had accomplished it already. I walked into that house (my Hell) as if it were untenanted. I stepped loudly down the front hall, carelessly kicking a path through the detritus, heedless of any diabolical detection. Was the Fiend still in the Eating Room on my left? Was he in the Second Study, along with the corpse of the old man, on my right? Had he retired to his bed chamber? Had he left the house by the back door? It didn’t matter.
Or rather, I didn’t care, for in moments, due to the efficacious use of the Incineration Chamber, a wall would spring up between the Fiend and I, a wall so definitive, so thick, so all encompassing, that even to speak of it as a wall is misleading for it was the ultimate barrier—a wall yes, but with only one side—such that any manifestation of the Fiend, even any thought of the Fiend, would be wholly banished from my universe (forever). I strode into the kitchen and stepped over to the tall and somewhat incongruous door to the walk-in freezer.
I confess my eagerness at this point resulted not only from what I expected would be my imminent and complete liberation from the Fiend, but also from the inventor’s all too understandable curiosity about how well his brain child will work on its first—and last, only, in fact—trial run. The entire device had taken me months to complete—working in my “free” time—that is, in the odd moments when I was neither pursuing nor being afflicted by the Fiend—but I found much of the labor oddly therapeutic, especially the repetitive task of poking all those holes in the tubing I had used to make the sprinklers, and even felt a bit sad, “let down” as they say, when I had finally completed it.
Of course at the time, I had regarded the project more as a model that I was assembling as a kind of “hobby” rather than a functional tool that I actually planned to put to use. Oh the heady days of youth when one regards one’s powers of resistance as inexhaustible! I may even—from time to time, back then—have considered the alternate application of the device to the person of the Fiend himself if ever I found a way to surmount the towering difficulties involved in luring him there under false pretences. What misguided speculations were these! One could spend a lifetime devising stratagems for luring the Fiend to his doom! Besides I would have to be there as well to pull the trigger as it were—an ingenious device in this case, an adapted egg timer.
Of course, I had not then considered that the Fiend might become mentally debilitated as was now the case, I thought standing beside the freezer door. With this factor in the equation, might it not be possible through the use of some simple, child-like ruse, perhaps under the pretence of playing some kind of game, even hide and seek, to induce the Fiend into setting the egg timer himself? What a happy prospect! Whilst he unwittingly effected his own immolation inside, I might press my cheek against the growing warmth on the other side of the “freezer” door, chuckling gleefully at his simplicity.
Bah! I will not be enticed by such speculations, I said to myself just outside the freezer door. I don’t need the Fiend to destroy the Fiend. The Fiend is superfluous. I alone am essential to this business. . .
(excerpt from his novel Harker)