The Tell-Tale Heart

The CampfireThe openingFree

True. I'm nervous. Very, very nervous. I have been, and I am. But why will you say that I'm mad?

Listen. Listen to how calmly I can tell you the whole story. A madman couldn't do that.

I loved the old man. I want you to know that first. He never hurt me. He never insulted me. I didn't want his money. I lived in his house, and he was kind to me.

It was his eye.

One of his eyes was pale blue, with a thin film over it, like the eye of a vulture. Whenever it looked at me, my blood ran cold. And slowly, little by little, I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and rid myself of that eye forever.

Now, here's the point. You think I'm mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. How carefully I worked. How patient I was.

I was never kinder to the old man than during the week before I killed him.

Every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it. Oh, so gently. And when I had made an opening just wide enough for my head, I put in a dark lantern, all closed, so no light shone out. And then I put my head in.

It took me an hour to get my whole head through that opening. One hour. So slowly that I would not disturb the old man's sleep. Would a madman have been that careful?

And when my head was in the room, I opened the lantern, just a crack, so that a single thin ray of light fell on the vulture eye.

And I did this for seven long nights. Every night just at midnight.

But the eye was always closed. And so it was impossible to do the work. Because it wasn't the old man who bothered me. It was his Evil Eye.

And every morning I went boldly into his room and spoke to him cheerfully, and asked how he had slept.