Medusas Coil

by H. P. Lovecraft

The unnamed narrator of the story is driving to plantation house, and finds the only inhabitant is an emaciated old man named Antoine de Russy. The narrator asks if he could spend the night in the house. The old man agrees, and begins to tell him the tale of the place. He explains that he inherited the estate from his grandfather, and married in 1885. He had a son, Denis, who, as a young man, was sent to the Sorbonne in Paris. There, Denis met an artist, Frank Marsh, from New Orleans and the two men became involved in a mystical cult. Denis became infatuated with the head of the cult, a woman named Marceline, and married her. Around 1916, Denis returned to Missouri with his new wife, but Antoine and his servants found her strangely repulsive. When Frank Marsh came to visit, he developed a friendship with Marceline and insisted on painting her portrait.

Aware that his son may become jealous, Antoine arranged for Denis to be called away on business, while Frank Marsh set about painting Marceline. However, Denis comes home unexpectedly, entered the studio where Marsh was painting Marceline, and a fight took place. It was then that the painting was first revealed, showing the truth as to what Marceline really was. In horror, Denis killed Marceline, but her "blasphemous braid of coarse black hair" struck and killed Marsh "coiling around him as a python would". Denis confessed all of this to his father, and then killed himself. Antoine buried the bodies in the cellar, including the coil of hair around Marsh. Antoine comes to the end of his story, but offers to show his guest the horrific painting: Horrified, the narrator pulls out a gun and shoots the painting. But this, as the old man explains, has now unleashed a curse: "She and that hair will come up out of their graves, for God knows what purpose!" The narrator flees to his car, and drives away just as the house is engulfed in flames. After several miles, the narrator stops and talks to a farmer, but the farmer explains that the old man mysteriously disappeared and the house burned down "five or six years" earlier. The narrator drives on, but mentions one final horror that he learned from details in the lost masterpiece of poor Frank Marsh: