the switch

This is based on one of my literary challenge stories, which went down well wheh I read it to friends.  I have since recast it as a monologue for stage or radio, and revuised it to 1880s New York, which is more historically accurate.

Cast: Howard Morley, forties, writer 
Set: A dark space. A heavy wooden chair with leather straps attached to the arms

Blackout. Sound of a switch being pulled, high voltage electricity, sizzling, underneath it the echo of a scream. Slowly the sounds subside, light comes up on MORLEY, dressed in an open white shirt and formal trousers, centre stage, harshly downlit, sitting in a chair, the rest of the set dark. When still seen only dimly, he appears to be struggling as if having a nightmare, then as the light increases, he suddenly jerks upright, staring

MORLEY

So it's happened. But I'm still alive? Awake? Was it all a dream? I have always had a strong imagination.

But WHAT has happened? Flashes, only flashes, recently.

Imagination is important in a criminologist. But this?

To write about crime: it's not just about the cold facts, the police reports, the evidence. You also have to be able to put yourself into the mind of the criminal; to see the world through his eyes. I was always good at that. I can walk through a present day landscape and imagine how it was at the historic time I am researching. Maybe a hundred, two hundred years ago. I can see almost like a double image how the streets would have looked at the time – the old fashioned shop fronts, the hurrying people in crinolines and top hats, the horses and carts, like a black-and-white movie overlaying the technicolor image of today.

I can even move back and forth in time, fast forwarding the chiaroscuro image, back to a time of wooden cottages and dirt roads, forward to impressive facades and brick and cobbles.

So it was a real privilege to visit the actual scenes of one of the murderers I have always been interested in: William Kemmler. He was no Jack the Ripper. It was a fairly banal murder as they go, but my interest was sparked by the fact that he was the first to be executed by electric chair: August the sixth, 1890; Auburn Penitentiary, New York. As I looked into it, something fascinated me about it. It seemed to be a motiveless crime. His relationship with his wife previously had been idyllic and their love for each other was remarked upon. There had been no sign of mental illness – Kemmler lived a blameless life, he was a hard worker, a good churchman, a follower of the temperance movement. There was no evidence of gambling or debts; nor of infidelities on either side. This was Chicago in the 1880s, the boom time, a time of confusion and lawlessness – but there were no indications of connections with the underworld. So all the usual motivations for murder were absent. Some thought that a devil had possessed him, others that some kind of seizure had made him mad. The violence of his attack was horrific, by all accounts. But he offered no resistance to the authorities afterwards, and no explanation. In fact, he claimed not to be Kemmler at all, on the rare occasions when he spoke. Nowadays he would have been decalred insane, but then it was strictly an eye for an eye.

So with my good wife I decided to visit modern day New York. Olga likes to accompany me on these trips, even though I can sometimes appear to be in a dream as I wander the streets with my double exposure imagination going full tilt. Auburn Prison is today a modern correctional facility. But the old building is still there, alongside. The courtroom where Kemmler was tried and convicted, and the death row suite where they constructed the horrific machine that would end his life, have been turned into a little museum, although the execution room is now normally off limits. I had been given special access by the curator, Sam Wise, whom I knew through collaborations and conferences we had both attended.

I arranged a private tour a few days after we arrived. The prison was quite close to the house where William and Marie Kemmler boarded, which is even now a small family-run hotel, little changed externally but with marginally better plumbing and quite plushly furnished rooms in that characteristic American 'inn' style, and that is where we stayed. As I walked through its hall and sitting rooms I could picture how it would have looked in the 1880s, filled with heavy Victorian mahogany and slightly faded brocades that survived from a more prosperous time as a family house. It would have all been threadbare but respectable: my research showed it was run as a temperance boarding house by an impoverished widow.

The silent movie ran in my head, overlaying the real images as we toured the house and climbed the ornate staircase to our room. I had of course booked the room where the Kemmlers had lived, generously sized and now with an ensuite carved out of one corner where there would have been an overbearing wardrobe and dressing table. There was a small closet and the chimney breast of a fireplace on one side, long since boarded up. The bed would have been opposite, a big iron-framed affair in the same location as today's twin beds.

We went out to dinner and then back in the room to read. I wanted to find all I could about the house while I was there. Olga retired early and I stayed up in a comfortable armchair, reading once more the police reports, which survived. I imagined the door opening and Kemmler entering from a late shift, his wife already in bed just like my wife tonight, the room cold and dark but for the flickering light of the dying embers. It was as if I could really see him now, standing there, taking off his heavy coat and his hat, brushing off a little snow on this deep winter night. He stood for a minute looking down at the bed and his sleeping wife. Then suddenly he looked up and seemed to stare right at me. I shook my head to lose the image: I had seen the police mugshot, directly into the camera, so that was the look I imagined.

I went to bed and turned out the light. The house, all gothic details and grey clapboard, creaked and cracked as the night temperatures fell. I fell asleep I think, because I seemed to see him again, staring at me in the firelight.

Next morning was bright and clear. That evening we had dinner with Sam who explained the history of the old prison, an imposing classical edifice that had seen many a famous criminal sent down. Tomorrow the museum was closed to the public but he had offered to take us round personally. It was an entertaining evening: Olga enjoyed Sam's anecdotes and decided to come with me on the tour.

We got straight to bed, ready for an early start. As I lay down, I felt decidedly chilly, even despite the late spring sunshine earlier, and decided to fetch the extra comforter in the closet. As I turned back into the room, I seemed to imagine Kemmler entering the room with his wife, perhaps a happier earlier occasion, I thought to myself. With these visions of the past it was always vision only, but tonight instead of the sketchy version of the mind's eye, the figures, while still black and white seemed more solid, more real. He was taking her in his arms: they seemed to be laughing wildly, whirling round and round in a mad dance, then abruptly he checked them and threw his wife roughly on the bed. Enough: my imagination was running away with me. I shook my head and thought no more about it. I went to bed and switched off the light. My wife's sleep seemed to be disturbed: she was breathing fast and shallow and moving about in her bed. I opened my eyes and looked over. I was shocked to be confronted by the vision of Kemmler's face no more than a couple of feet from mine, as if he was lying on top of Olga, looking straight at me, staring wildly. I jumped up and the vision was gone. My heart was beating fast and I decided I had lapsed into a dream, perhaps a little anxious about tomorrow.

Early next day Sam took us around the museum exhibits then into the courtroom, oak panelled and surprisingly small. In those days courtrooms were often attached to prisons. He pointed out the various features – the judge's dais, the witness box, the jury bench, and the barred cage of the dock, with its stairs down to below.

'To be honest, it gives me the creeps down there.' he said, 'Every time I go down there. So if you don't mind, here's the key. Take your time and come up to the office when you're finished.' This suited me as I rather wanted to have some quiet time there, to imagine what it would have been like for the prisoner. We stayed for a while in the courtroom. Olga looked through a register of cases on the judge's bench as I thought about what would have happened here.

I could imagine him standing there in the dock, with the officers behind him ready with their truncheons in case of trouble, hearing the dread words of the foreman as his fellows of the jury looked on – serious and upstanding gentlemen aware of their solemn duty – and then the awful sentence of the judge as the lawyers and the gawping public looked on.

I saw him pleading, pointing at the jury then once again, strangely, seeming to stare directly at me, shouting something. This imagination thing was getting out of hand. I wondered how he felt as he descended the steps into the darkness below, then was led to the small whitewashed cell we found there, probably much smarter and cleaner than in his time, but still grim and dark. We walked along the corridor to a plain metal door at the end. It was heavy and creaky: it was obviously rarely opened. The room beyond was quite large, with some natural light from arched barred windows high on the wall. To one side, a heavy partition with a window, through which could be seen a brighter room, with ancient electrical equipment, and a separate entrance to another circulation route. This was where the witnesses would have stood, two physicians, with the executioner. In the middle of the electrical panel was a big switch, the kind that Dr Frankenstein would have used to pulse electricity into the dead body of his monster, to give it life. But here it served the opposite purpose.

And in this room stood nothing but the horrific instrument of torture and death. We both shivered a little. In fact, Olga was shaking and I took her in my arms and comforted her.

I could imagine the moustachioed gentlemen watching as the guards dragged Kemmler into the room and strapped him down. Was he terrified, was he calm? There was nothing in the record about this, just the bare fact that he was executed at such and such a time on such and such a day.

I imagined him there, scared, looking nervously over to the window as the guards left and locked the metal door, alone now. Seeing the men in the other room, looking back grim. I could see it all. He seemed to be calling out. Then the hand of Edwin F. Davis, the executioner, moving almost in slow motion towards the switch. Then it seemed all too real for me: I could see his actual body there, as he turned and looked at me and he was mouthing – something. What was it? It looked like 'You – you!'

The first 1000 volt surge lasted 17 seconds, but failed to kill him. He slumped unconscious. The physician urged the executioner to turn the current on again with no delay, but it took several minutes to recharge the circuit. It took eight minutes for the prisoner to die. Earlier an appeal judge had declared that the electric chair was not a 'cruel and unusual' punishment.

I hurried Olga out and back up the stairs and locked the door to the cellar behind us. 'What is it?' she said. You look more scared than me! Like you've seen a ghost.'

That night we went to bed early as we had an early flight in the morning. I lay awake thinking about what I had seen in the execution chamber. For a minute it had seemed absolutely real. I really need to get more detachment, I thought. My eyes were just drooping shut when I thought I saw a flash of light, as if the door from the hall had opened. I sat up and looked over. There was the form of Kemmler, just like the first night, still wavering - but I realised that it was as if he was seen in firelight – otherwise he appeared to be completely solid. I jumped out of the bed and stood at the far side of the room. He seemed so real. He brushed off the snow and took off his hat and coat again.

Then he took a knife from the coat pocket, long bladed like a butcher's knife – the knife that was in the police report – and went to stand by the bed. Over the sleeping form. Was it my wife? Was it an image of his wife? It was hard to tell. I saw the old iron bedstead and the modern twin beds like a double exposure in my head.

Then he lifted the knife and slowly turned to me and once again was looking directly into my eyes: into my soul.

Then he started to plunge the knife rapidly down into the body, over and over. I wasn't thinking, but just from instinct I rushed forward and tried to grab the knife, but my hands seemed to go right through him. Then there was a blinding flash.

This is where things start to get confused in my mind. Suddenly the room was brightly lit and there was blood, bright red blood, lots of it below me. There was Kemmler's wife, stabbed over and over and I heard her last gasps as she expired, and almost the echo of her screams from before. And I looked down at my hand and it was bloody too, and in my hand was the knife. And I looked around and there was the mahogany and the brocade, the dowdy wallpaper of the old boarding house, just as I had imagined it. And there was a sudden banging on the door, a crash, a splintering of wood, and two men burst in and wrestled me to the ground. And they dragged me away from the bed, wrenched the knife from my hand.

'Kemmler, what have you done?'

There was another flash: then there's a gap. I can't remember what happened next. Suddenly I was in the courtroom. The judge and the jury and the counsel were all there, just as I had imagined them, but real this time, in full colour and sound. They were all looking at me sternly.

Three people entered the floor of the court – strange, insubstantial people I could barely see in the glare of the winter morning. One of them was pointing around but making no sound. The other two, a man and a woman, were laughing and smiling, taking no notice of the courtroom proceedings. Then the first man left and the woman seemed to go behind the judge's bench. And the grim-faced jury stood. And the judge said: 'Have you reached your verdict?' And one of them said: 'Yes, your Honor. Guilty!' And there was some cheering and clapping and the judge banged down his gavel and called for silence.

Then he sentenced me to death. 'No, no, I'm not Kemmler,' I yelled. 'Tell them!' I shouted at the other man, who was staring. He seemed more substantial now. The other man: it was me.

Another flash. I remember I was sitting in the dreary cell. Unpainted, dirty, dank, just as I had imagined it would have been then. The man and woman appeared again at the barred door hatch. They look in. They are insubstantial, like ghosts. But I recognise them. Myself and Olga.

Another flash. I am strapped into the electric chair. The guards are just closing the door. The man and woman are there in the room, black and white, flickering now, fading. I look across to the side and there are the men behind the glass; and there is the switch. I stare back at the couple. He takes her in his arms, hugs her tight, tenderly.

It is Olga and me. Or IS it me? The man checks their hug, stops and faces me, staring into my eyes. It looks like my face: but suddenly it breaks into a malevolent grin. I realise now. 'You! You!' I cry. He grins wider, the embodiment of evil. Suddenly he slams her body against the wall. Olga's body. Out of the corner of my eye I see a movement behind the glass. The hand moves towards the panel and starts to close the switch.

Blackout. Sound effects as before

END