During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the summer of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone in my Toyota Corolla, through a singularly flat and mosquito-ridden tract of country on Virginia's Eastern Shore and at length found myself, as the shades of evening drew on, within view of the melancholy summer cottage of Usher.. I don't know how it is, but the first glimpse of the building filled me with forebodings. What was it -- I paused to think -- what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the Summer Cottage of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble! Unless...

Oh, I KNOW what it is: Every time I come here, Usher's sister Yasha expects me to front the money for all the booze and grub that we consume during my stay, and between my friend's inordinate appetite and my notorious penchant for tippling (not to mention the lack of any major grocery stores on this Wal-Mart-forsaken island of Chincoteague), I knew all too well that provisions for this so-called "blow-out" were going to set me back several hundreds of dollars -- not counting the considerable fortune that I'd already squandered on gasoline alone in light of the 150 miles that separated this single-story clapboard getaway from my brick-lined high-rise digs "inside the Beltway."

Rousing myself from these melancholy reflections, I parked the car under a stand of windswept pine trees that provided the beach-side property with its one and only allotment of blissful shade, and proceeded to toot the horn to the familiar and time-honored rhythm of "Shave and a Haircut," a long-time custom of mine that I knew would instantly alert the tenant of the rustic building before me to the advent of my person on her family-owned vacation property.

Mind you, I was worried: After all, I hadn't seen Yasha since my last visit here a whole Summer ago, and her recent letters to me had hinted of a sort of nervous agitation on her part that she couldn't seem to shake. Well, that didn't sound like the fun-loving Yasha that I knew. Yasha? Nervous? Agitated? Was this the same Yasha who had spontaneously kissed me with ice-cream-covered lips in the outdoor dining area at Mr. Whippy's on Maddox Boulevard as we both savored the refreshing repast of a sprinkle-dipped softserve cone? Was this the same Yasha who had unilaterally decided to brush her hands through my sandy and sun-dried tresses as I gazed up from my beach towel with beneficent humanity on the porpoises sporting off of the sandbar at Tom's Cove? Was this the same Yasha who once, against my better judgment, actually convinced me to skinny-dip on the remote "hook" portion of the aforementioned Cove, until a park ranger, apparently unaware of our fortunately submerged "condition," upbraided us instead for swimming in an area that was off-limits due to a species rehabilitation project for Piping Plovers?

Yasha? Nervous? Agitated? I didn't think so.

And yet I was about to find out, wasn't I? because here she came now!



Oh, snap! It's you, Egbert! What's happening, homes!

Why, Yasha, you look great!

So then, you were expecting me to have let my body go "to pot," then, so to speak, since last year! Humph!

No, no: It's just that your letter to me spoke of a strange nervous agitation on your part.

What?

Yeah, some sort of "hereditary disposition," as you called it, that was making you all morose and gloomy and stuff.

Oh, you know what that is: My twin sister Madeline must have written that note to you in a fit of her usual jealousy, since she thinks that I'm the sister who always gets all the "hunks," as she calls them.

Oh, well, ahem... That's flattering, anyway.

Of course, I tried to explain to her that you aren't exactly a "hunk," but she, poor creature, was determined to idolize you.

Well, now, I don't know --

Not that you're an eyesore, mind. In fact.... Do you remember that time that you were lying on the beach looking at porpoises and I just spontaneously began threading these longish fingers of mine through your then-sandy and sun-dried hair -- or "tresses," as I probably called them back then, overcome for the nonce by that poetic fervor consequent upon romance.

That's funny, I was just thinking about that.

Yes, there's certainly SOMETHING about you, but don't ask me what.

Well, now, that's flattering -- I think.

One likes you, even if one doesn't know why.

Indeed?

But come on with the suitcase already -- we can talk on our way to my rustic getaway.

Still as rustic as ever, I suppose?

Even more so: I've added a few more creaking floorboards this year just for you.

How nice.

Ha ha!

What's so funny?

I just had a flashback to that skinny-dipping episode of ours from last summer.

Never again, Yasha: never again.

You should have seen your face when the ranger drove up in his Land Rover.

You never told me that the place was an off-limits sanctuary for Piping Plovers! Thank God he never insisted on his original request that I come out of the water to speak to him!

Yeah. You were like, "No, that's okay. I'm good. What can I do ya for?"

Well, I had to say SOMETHING!

Relax. This is going to be a very prudish weekend indeed.

Oh? How so?

Well, you know that twin sister Madeline I was talking about?

Yeah.

She's here for the weekend, too.

What?

That's right, my spiteful sister is here. And now, of course, she'll be more spiteful than ever when she realizes that her forged letters to you didn't dissuade you from visiting me after all.

Well, your sister has been through a lot, I suppose.

True: It's not everyone who gets buried alive by their own brother and lives to tell about it -- But Roderick has long since apologized for the gaffe and it's about time that my sister moved on. Besides, the real villain of this piece is the grossly incompetent family doctor who incorrectly advised our brother that Madeline was dead when she was still, in fact, very much alive -- albeit suffering from a kind of catatonic stupor that resembled death.



Nothing personal, but that sister Madeline of yours gives me the creeps the way she seems to flit about from room to room, always, it seems, out of the corner of one's eyes.

Yes, and I've often spoken to her about that "flitting" business -- I tell her it's positively rude to "come and go" like that so ephemerally in the presence of actual people, videlicit MY GUESTS! Besides, people who are unfamiliar with her creepy biography will probably get the idea that she's simply being stuck up rather than "mysterious."

Do you know my British brother-in-law was staying here just last week and he eventually became furious with my sister for her supposedly standoffish behavior. He was like, "Crikey Moses, Yasha, I just passed your sister in the hallway and she cut me cold!"

Of course, that relative was instantly appeased after I told him how Madeline had been prematurely buried once and then forced to wrest her way out of her own crypt in a sort of bloody Houdini act gone terribly wrong.

Oh, you can just leave your bag there for now on these increasingly creaky floorboards.

Oh, speaking of the devil, here comes Madeline now.

And there she goes -- "cutting us cold" again, as your brother-in-law might put it.

Madeline, you're not fooling anybody. You came out here to see my gentleman caller, so to speak, if only to give yourself something new to be jealous about. In case you're wondering, he's not a hunk, okay?

Hey, now --

But then you've always been jealous of me -- even before you were buried alive.

Now, be nice.

I'm sorry, but she's getting on my last nerve with this pretentious high-horse act of hers.

Uh, I made a reservation for dinner at 6:00 at Bill's restaurant on Main Street, so we'd better be off.

You hear that, Madeline? We're going out to eat. Of course, you're welcome to come with us, but then I suppose you'd rather stay at home and feel sorry for yourself as usual.

Aren't you being a little tough on her?

I've tried the carrot and it didn't work, so now she's getting the stick. Oh, incidentally, dinner's on you.

I figured as much.

But be good, and SOMEBODY around here might get another big sloppy kiss at the tables outside of the Mr. Whippy establishment on Maddox Boulevard, complete with rainbow sprinkles and soft-serve ice-cream, no less, until everybody stops and stares and we don't even care!

That sounds like a plan. Now if I can just start this car of mine...




Oh, but hear this, Yasha: We are NOT going to "top off the night" with any ill-advised skinny-dipping adventure out at Tom's Cove. Not THIS year, thank you very much.

Humph! I am shocked that you would even suspect me of such a twisted design.

Oh, you're shocked, are you?

Of course. Do I look like the kind of person who would knowingly trespass upon protected Piping Plover habitat to indulge a sophomoric whim?

Well, if you put it THAT way, I --

No, sir: perish the thought -- at least until we hoof it down to the suitably distant northerly beach near the Snow Goose Pool.

What?!

Then, on the admittedly off-chance that we decide to indulge some sophomoric whim or other....

Hey, where are you going?


I was just thinking: It's rude of us to leave poor Madeline by herself like this while we go out on the town and enjoy ourselves. I think she should come along...

What, as a chaperone, you mean?

Well, I --

Okay, okay. It's probably going to be too late to swim after dinner, anyway.

That's more like it.

But I do want to do at least one Chinese firedrill at one of the stoplights on Maddox Boulevard, sometime before we leave late Sunday afternoon.

What?

It doesn't have to be tonight. I'm sorry, I mean, I don't know about you, but I want to have a little FUN this weekend!

You know, Yasha, you are the exact opposite of your sister Madeline, personality-wise.

Well, she wasn't always such a notorious prude.

No, I don't suppose so.

Believe it or not, she was the real troublemaker of the family -- until that inhumation business, I mean.

Yes, I can see how that might change a person. But then you look just like her, too, and indeed you even ACT just like her, in some subtle way upon which I've yet to put my leery finger.

Yeah? Well, you keep that leery finger to yourself, okay? (The idea!)



Indeed, now that I think about it...

Yes?

I've never seen you two together at exactly the same time.

Meaning?

Meaning that you, perhaps, are yourself Madeline...

Yes, go on.

And that Madeline can actually manifest herself in two distinct personalities...

Yes?

you know, with a sort of Jekyll and Hyde arrangement: first a prude, then a flirt, then a prude, then a flirt -- prude, flirt, prude, flirt, prude, flirt, prude, flirt --

Yes, yes, I get the idea, already! And so you think that I am Hyde right now, given my apparent propensity for what you no doubt think of as "cheap thrills"?

Hey, I'm just thinking out loud here.

Well, if your theory is correct, then I might change at any moment back into a tiresome prude, so let's enjoy ourselves while I've still got a lively personality!

Okay, okay: Sloppy kisses and lovingly tussled hair are a definite go for tonight, okay?

That's more like it.

But skinny-dipping is out, period, Piping Plovers or NO Piping Plovers.

Not even way down at Snow Goose Pool, literally miles away from everybody?!

No, ma'am! Besides, you'd probably feel awful about it yourself later on, if (and when) you eventually turn back into the notoriously melancholy and self-absorbed Madeline that's familiar to us all from the Egghead Allan Poe story of yore (that whatchamacallit, "The Fall of the House of Yasha" or whatever).

Okay, okay... But I still get to call Chinese Firedrill sometime before we leave!

"Call" Chinese Firedrill?

Yes, sometime before we leave!

Whatever.