Old Man Killed By Madman! Written By Seth Johnson

     At 3:45 AM yesterday morning, I got a complaint about an old man that screamed so loud---shrieked, shrieked is more like it---that he woke up the neighbors three houses down from his. It took about 15 minutes to get two of my colleagues and get too the old man's house. When we arrived the bell was just sounding the hour.

     We knocked on the door as soon as we arrived. A minute later an unknown man answered the door. We interrogated the man about the shriek. The man claimed that it had been him, not the old man, that shrieked. He claimed that he was coming out of a nightmare. He said that the old man had been out of town for the past week because of a death in the family. We told him that we had been sent to check out the premises and asked to enter. The man smiled and welcomed us in. He showed us all over the house. When we had been through the entire house--had searched everything so well that our gloves had probably wiped all of the fingerprints off the items--I still wasn't satisfied.

     I gave my colleagues a look that told them to pretend to be satisfied. We told him that we were satisfied with the results of the search. He then grabbed us some chairs and asked us to stay a while. We willingly agreed. We sat there for quite some time, chatting about popular things. After a while I could tell the man wanted us to leave--he was starting to look pale, even--but I wasn't going to let him get off that easily. Minutes after he started paling, I heard a sort of ringing. From the look on the man's face, I could tell he heard it too. All of a sudden he became more chatty. His voice went up an octave or so.

     After a few more seconds, he was gasping for breath--but still, we were acting like we didn't notice. He continued to act like a madman--to do things only a madman would do. Minutes more had passed. Then, as unsurprising as it was, he screamed out, "Villains! Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! --tear up the planks! here, here! --It is the beating of his hideous heart!" We pulled up the boards where he indicated. When we had them all up, we saw what was left of the old man.

      When we found the old man, one of my colleagues--anxious to get away from the sight--ran to get a doctor. Within the hour we had the unknown man in custody. We took him to an interrogation room and he admitted to the entire thing. We even discovered the name of this, this madman!

     His name was Edgar Allan Poe.