Mysteries of Winterthurn by Joyce Carol Oates

Author:Joyce Carol Oates
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-10-05T16:00:00+00:00

Quicksand

The following episode, which occurred a few days after the dinner party at Ravensworth Park, is so anomalous an event in Xavier Kilgarvan’s life, and, withal, so repellent,—particularly to those of us whose celebration of Crime Detection is best confined to the study, and the cushioned easy chair!—I had long debated whether to include it here at all: for it seriously detracts from our estimate of Xavier Kilgarvan’s high moral worth, if not his credentials as an “amateur expert” in Crime; and advances the narrative but slightly. Yet, as one or two revelations herein are, I suppose, crucial to the reader’s comprehension of the whole, I am left with very little choice in the matter: and must beg the reader’s pardon for two things,—first, the bizarre philosophical musings to which Xavier succumbs, in his distress (the which I make no pretense of understanding, no more than the citizens of Winterthurn professed to understand Simon Esdras Kilgarvan’s divers ravings: for are not such speculations mere twaddle set beside the hard facts of science?); and, second, the loathsome physical experience our hero is obliged to undergo, which fairly sickens me to record.

THE SETTING IS THE DEVIL’S HALF-ACRE, to which, unwisely unaccompanied, Xavier Kilgarvan hiked, by way of the river; the time, a sunny August morning, following a night of harsh and cleansing rains,—which, drumming against his roof and his windowpane, had afforded Xavier his most soothing slumber in many weeks; and encouraged the young idealist to muse that, perhaps, the solution to the vexing mystery was close at hand.

Thus it was, he betook himself to the Half-Acre yet again; and made another examination of that desolate and eerily forsaken place of rocks, boulders, and stunted vegetation,—half fearing, it should be confessed, that his darting eye might fall upon the corpse of yet another murdered girl. (And would not a fresh murder, at this time, constitute a gesture of the most vicious mocking cruelty, aimed against Xavier himself, by the monstrous heir of Ravensworth Park?—for Xavier had no doubt that Valentine sensed his suspicion; and quite exulted in it.)

So absorbed in his investigation was Xavier, the minutes speedily passed: and though his pulses leapt with the certainty that some clue, some shard of overlooked “evidence,” some wondrous Fact, was about to declare itself to his penetrant gaze, nothing emerged. “How unyielding!—how pitiless!” Xavier murmured, shading his eyes from the midmorning sun. “The Half-Acre is more repugnant, because more inhuman, than I remember: these ‘strewn-down’ boulders as ugly as anything in Nature might be: and, ah!—the heat,—the glare,—the marshy stench,—that curious rumbling noise in the distance, which appears to fade when one listens closely, then resumes the more ominously a moment afterward!—a place forsaken by God, indeed.”

These words, and more beside, the disappointed young man so forgot himself as to voice aloud: a mannerism he noted frequently in persons of uncertain mental equipoise, or advanced age: and scarcely wished to cultivate in himself. Yet the Half-Acre was a most uncannily desolate place, near-impossible to

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