This image and the one that directly follows, ending this set, act as the unspoken and unseen events at the end of “Berenice.” In the short story, Berenice falls into a seizure and is believed to have died. Then. the narration picks up again an indiscernible amount of time later with Egaeus in the library, vaguely aware that he has done something.
It seemed that I had newly awakened from a confused and exciting dream. I knew that it was now midnight, and I was well aware, that since the setting of the sun, Berenice had been interred. But of that dreary period which intervened I had no positive, at least no definite comprehension. Yet its memory was replete with horror—horror more horrible from being vague, and terror more terrible from ambiguity. It was a fearful page in the record my existence, written all over with dim, and hideous, and unintelligible recollections. I strived to decypher them, but in vain; while ever and anon, like the spirit of a departed sound, the shrill and piercing shriek of a female voice seemed to be ringing in my ears. I had done a deed—what was it? I asked myself the question aloud, and the whispering echoes of the chamber answered me,—”what was it?”
Readers never really find out what “it” was. Instead, it is revealed the servants were called over to the grave by the horrific screams of a young woman. They find her writhing body shrouded and disfigured.
My version of this scene is very gritty and close to home, literally.
