William Wilson (adapted)
Category: Short Stories
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A man using the name William Wilson tells the story of his troubled life. From his early days at a strict English boarding school, he’s haunted by a mysterious classmate—another boy who shares his name, looks, and manner. Over time, this strange double appears again and again, always interfering whenever William strays into vice or dishonor. As the narrator descends into a life of temptation and misdeeds, the presence of this mirror-like rival becomes more intense... This is an adapted version, simplified to A2 level, while preserving Poe’s original tone and suspense.

William Wilson

[adapted]

by
Edgar Allan Poe


William Wilson (adapted)

What say of it? what say of conscience grim,
That spectre in my path?

Chamberlayne’s, Pharronida

Let me call myself William Wilson for now. My real name doesn’t need to be written on this clean page. That name has already been hated and cursed far too much. Hasn’t its unmatched shame been shouted by angry winds across the world? Oh, outcast among outcasts—are you not dead to this earth forever? To its honours, its beauty, its shining hopes? Isn’t there a dark, endless cloud hanging forever between you and heaven?

Even if I could, I wouldn’t write here about the miserable and criminal later years of my life. Those years suddenly became deeply sinful, and I only want to explain how that started. Most people become corrupt slowly, over time. But with me, all goodness vanished in an instant—like a cloak falling to the ground. I leapt from small misdeeds to the wickedness of monsters. What single event caused this fall? Please listen while I explain. Death is coming, and its shadow is already softening my heart. As I pass into the darkness, I long for sympathy—maybe even pity—from other people. I hope they will believe that I was, in some way, trapped by powers beyond my control. I hope they will find, in what I’m about to tell, some excuse—some small piece of fate in a desert of wrong. I hope they will admit—because they must—that while others may have faced strong temptation before, no one has ever been tempted like this. And because no one has ever fallen like this, has anyone ever suffered like I have? Have I been living in a dream? Am I now dying from the terror and strangeness of the wildest nightmare a man has ever known?

I come from a family known for strong imagination and intense emotions. Even as a baby, I showed that I had inherited those traits. As I grew, these qualities became even more clear. They caused trouble for my family and harmed me personally. I became stubborn, full of strange moods, and overwhelmed by wild passions. My parents were weak and had health problems like mine. They could do little to stop my bad behaviour. Their weak attempts failed completely, and I always won. After that, I ruled the household. When most children were still learning to walk, I was already doing whatever I wanted, making my own choices, and running my own life in everything but name.

My earliest memories of school are from a large, old, Elizabethan house in a foggy English village, full of huge, twisted trees and very old buildings. It was truly a dream-like, peaceful place. Even now, I can imagine the cool air in the shady paths, the smell of flowers and bushes, and the thrill of hearing the deep, echoing sound of the church bell. It rang each hour, loud and sudden, breaking the quiet over the dark village, where the carved Gothic tower seemed to sleep.

Thinking back on the school and all its little details gives me about as much pleasure as I can still feel now. I’m so full of misery—real, painful misery—that I hope I’ll be forgiven for taking some small, temporary comfort in remembering the past, even in little things. These memories may seem small or even silly, but to me they feel important. That time and place were where I first felt the strange warnings of the fate that would later take over my life completely. So, let me remember.

The house, as I said before, was old and oddly shaped. The grounds were large, surrounded by a high brick wall. The top of the wall was lined with cement and broken glass. This prison-like wall marked the edge of our world. Outside of it, we only went three times a week—once every Saturday afternoon, when two teachers took us out walking as a group through nearby fields—and twice on Sundays, when we marched in the same way to morning and evening church services. The head of our school was the pastor of that church.

How amazed and confused I used to be as I watched him from our far-away pew up in the gallery! I’d see him walking slowly and seriously up into the pulpit, his face kind and calm, his robe shiny and flowing, his white powdered wig large and stiff—was this the same man who, just days before, had looked so stern, dressed in dusty old clothes, punishing us with a stick under the strict rules of the school? What a strange and impossible mystery that was!

At one corner of the big wall there was an even bigger gate. It was heavy, covered in iron bolts, and topped with sharp metal spikes. It filled us with deep fear and wonder. It only opened during those same three times a week when we left or returned, and every creak of its giant hinges seemed full of meaning. We always thought about it with serious awe.

The whole yard inside the walls was oddly shaped, with several large corners and alcoves. Three or four of the biggest ones made up our playground. It was flat and covered in smooth gravel. I remember it had no trees, no benches—nothing like that. Of course, it was behind the schoolhouse. In front of the building was a small fancy garden with boxwood and other shrubs. We only passed through that part on special occasions—like when we first arrived at the school or finally left it for good, or when a parent or friend came to take us home for the Christmas or summer holidays.

But the house!—what a strange old building it was!—to me it was truly a magical palace! Its hallways and rooms seemed to go on forever, turning and splitting in ways that didn’t make sense. It was hard at any moment to say for sure whether you were on the first or second floor. Between any two rooms, you almost always had to go up or down three steps. The side hallways were endless and confusing, twisting around so much that our best understanding of the whole house felt as vague as trying to imagine infinity. During the five years I lived there, I was never quite sure where exactly my tiny sleeping room was—the one I shared with about eighteen or twenty other students.

The schoolroom was the biggest room in the house—maybe even, I used to think, the biggest in the whole world. It was very long, narrow, and gloomy, with pointed Gothic windows and a wooden ceiling made of oak. In a dark and scary corner of the room was a square area, about eight or ten feet wide, that was the private space, “during hours,” of our headmaster, the Reverend Dr. Bransby. It had a thick, heavy door, and we were so afraid of it that none of us would dare open it when the “Dominie” wasn’t there—not even if we were dying.

In other corners of the room were two more little rooms like it, not as feared but still impressive. One belonged to the teacher of classical subjects, and the other to the teacher of English and math. Scattered all around the room, crisscrossing in every direction, were rows and rows of benches and desks—old, black, and worn down with age. They were piled with well-used books and so covered with carved initials, full names, strange drawings, and other scratchings that they had lost whatever shape they originally had. At one end of the room was a huge water bucket, and at the other, a massive clock.

Inside the thick walls of this ancient school, I spent the years of my third lustrum—that is, the time from age ten to fifteen—but I didn’t spend them in boredom or misery. A child’s active imagination doesn’t need the outside world to feel busy or entertained; even the dull routine of school was full of excitement—excitement even deeper than what I later found in luxury, or even in my worst crimes. Still, I believe my mind developed in a strange way—something unusual, even extreme. Most people, looking back on their early childhood, barely remember anything clearly. It’s all grey and blurry—vague memories of faint joys and dream-like fears. But not for me. In my childhood, I felt things as deeply as a grown man, and now those memories are burned into my mind just as clearly and permanently as ancient images on a Carthaginian coin.

But in truth—looking at it from the outside—there wasn’t much there to remember! Waking up in the morning, going to bed at night; studying and reciting lessons; the half-holidays and supervised walks; the playground, with its arguments, games, and secrets—these things, through a kind of forgotten magic, became full of feelings, rich with stories, bursting with emotion and passion. “Oh, the good old days, even in that age of iron!”

In truth, my passion, energy, and need to be in charge soon made me stand out among my classmates. Over time, and quite naturally, I became a leader over all the boys my age—except for one. This exception was a student who, even though we were not related, had the same first and last name as me. That wasn’t so strange, though, because despite my noble family line, my real name was a very common one, often shared by ordinary people. So, in this story, I’ve given myself the name William Wilson—a made-up name that’s not too far from the real one.

Only my namesake, out of all the boys in “our group,” dared to challenge me—whether in class, in games, or even in arguments. He refused to blindly accept what I said or follow my lead. He didn’t let me boss him around in any way. If there is such a thing as complete, unquestioned power, it exists in the control one strong-willed boy can have over the weaker ones around him.

Wilson’s refusal to obey me was a huge problem for me. Even though I made a show of acting like I wasn’t bothered, deep down I feared him. I couldn’t help but feel that his ability to match me in every way was a sign he was actually better than I was. Just to keep up with him took constant effort. Yet no one else saw it that way. For some strange reason, none of the other boys seemed to notice his strength or rivalry with me. They didn’t even seem to realize he was competing with me. In fact, Wilson didn’t seem to have any ambition at all. He didn’t have the fiery drive that helped me succeed. It was as if his only reason for going against me was to annoy, surprise, or frustrate me. And yet, sometimes, strangely enough, I felt like he added a kind and gentle tone to his arguments and teasing—something completely out of place, and definitely unwelcome. I could only assume that this strange behavior came from extreme arrogance, and that he was trying to act like he was guiding or protecting me.

Maybe it was this habit of his, along with our identical names and the fact that we had joined the school on the same day, that made some of the older boys believe we were brothers. Older students don’t usually look too closely into the background of the younger ones. As I’ve said already—or should have said—Wilson and I were not related at all. But we might as well have been twins. I later learned, by chance, that he had been born on January 19, 1813—the exact same day as I was. That’s quite a remarkable coincidence.

It might seem odd that, even with the constant stress he caused me and his annoying way of always disagreeing, I couldn’t bring myself to completely hate Wilson. We had arguments almost every day. Publicly, I always appeared to win—but somehow, he always made me feel like he was the one who had truly earned the victory. Still, I had too much pride, and he had too much quiet confidence, for us to completely stop speaking to one another. In fact, we shared many personality traits, and those similarities created a bond between us—a bond that might have become real friendship if things had been different. It’s hard to explain exactly how I felt about him. My feelings were a strange mix—some frustration that didn’t quite become hatred, some admiration, more respect, a lot of fear, and a deep curiosity that made me uneasy. A moralist would not be surprised to hear that, in the end, Wilson and I were almost always together. We were inseparable.

It was probably the strange relationship between us that made all my attacks on him—whether open or secret—turn into jokes or pranks instead of serious fights. These tricks were meant to hurt, though I tried to make them look like harmless fun. But even my cleverest jokes didn’t always work. My namesake had a quiet, serious nature that enjoyed a clever joke, but didn’t have any weak spots to laugh at. He absolutely refused to be made fun of. I could only find one thing to tease him about, and even that was a personal issue that a kinder person would have left alone. He had a problem with his throat or voice box that made it impossible for him to speak above a whisper. I didn’t miss any chance to use that against him, as mean as that was.

Wilson often got back at me with pranks of his own. One kind of trick really got under my skin. How he figured out it would bother me so much, I’ll never know—but once he did, he kept doing it. I had always hated my plain last name and its common, boring first name. Hearing it annoyed me. So, when another William Wilson showed up at school the same day I did, I was angry—not just because someone else had my name, but because now that name would be used twice as often. He would be around all the time, and our names would constantly get mixed up in school activities.

That frustration grew stronger with every new thing that made us seem alike, whether in looks or personality. I didn’t yet know that we were the same age, but I saw that we were the same height and very similar in body shape and facial features. I was also bothered by the rumor going around the upper classes that we might be related. In short, nothing annoyed me more—though I always hid it carefully—than any comment suggesting we were similar in mind, looks, or background. But the truth is, I had no reason to think that anyone else besides Wilson had noticed these similarities. That Wilson noticed them as much as I did was clear. That he found so many ways to use this to irritate me showed his unusual cleverness.

His goal was to perfectly copy me, both in speech and in behavior—and he did this extremely well. My clothes were easy for him to copy. My walk and general behavior were also easy to imitate. And even though he had that voice problem, he still managed to match my voice. He didn’t try to speak loudly like I did, but the tone of his voice was exactly the same. His strange whisper became a perfect echo of mine.

I won’t try to describe how much this perfect imitation bothered me (because it truly wasn’t a mockery—it was too accurate to be called that). My only comfort was that no one else seemed to notice it—only I did. So I had to endure only the knowing, sarcastic smiles of my double. He seemed pleased with the effect his copying had on me and quietly enjoyed the pain it caused. He didn’t care about getting praise from others for how clever his imitation was. I couldn’t understand why the rest of the school didn’t notice what he was doing. Maybe his slow, careful copying made it harder for others to spot. Or maybe it was because he was so skilled—he didn’t copy every little detail that everyone would see. Instead, he captured the deeper “spirit” of me, just for my eyes, and that made it worse.

I’ve already mentioned how annoying his fake attitude of superiority was, and how he often stepped in to give me advice I didn’t want. He didn’t give advice directly—he just hinted at it. As I got older, I found this more and more irritating. But even now, looking back, I have to admit one thing: his advice was never bad. He didn’t try to lead me into trouble or mistakes like you’d expect from a kid his age. His sense of right and wrong was sharper than mine. Maybe if I had listened to him more, I would be a better—and happier—man today. But back then, I hated those whispered hints, and I didn’t take them seriously.

Eventually, I got so fed up with his behavior that I started showing my anger more openly. I’ve said before that, early on, we might have even become friends. But near the end of my time at the school, even though he had backed off a little, my feelings had changed into real hatred. I think he noticed this once, and after that, he either avoided me or pretended to.

It was around this time that I had a serious argument with him. During that fight, he lost control and acted less guarded than usual. It was then that I noticed—or thought I noticed—something strange in his voice, his way of speaking, and his whole appearance. It startled me. It made me feel like I was seeing someone from a long time ago, from when I was very, very young—even before I had real memories. I can’t fully explain it, but it was like I had known him long ago, in some far-off past. The feeling went away quickly, but I mention it now because that was the day I spoke to him for the last time at that school.

The huge old house, with all its many rooms, had several large chambers connected to each other, where most of the students slept. But, as happens in oddly built houses, there were also many small nooks and corners—leftover spaces in the layout. Dr. Bransby, always thinking about saving space, had turned these tiny closets into bedrooms too, though they were so small that only one person could fit. Wilson had one of these little rooms.

One night, near the end of my fifth year at school, and not long after the fight I just described, I got up quietly after everyone had gone to sleep. I took a lamp and made my way through a maze of narrow hallways from my own room to Wilson’s. I had been planning another one of my mean tricks—like the others I’d tried before, which had always failed. This time, I was determined to go through with it and to make him feel just how nasty I could be.

When I reached his room, I quietly stepped inside and left the lamp, with its shade on, just outside the door. I crept forward and listened; his breathing was calm—he was definitely asleep. Then I went back, got the lamp, and returned to his bed. Curtains surrounded the bed, and I slowly and quietly pulled them open. The light fell clearly on the sleeping boy’s face—and I saw it. I froze. I felt a chill all over. My chest tightened, my knees shook, and I was filled with a terrible, confusing fear. I leaned in closer, holding the lamp nearer to his face.

Was this really William Wilson? Yes—it was his face. But I trembled with the crazy thought that it might not be. What was it about his face that frightened me so much? I stared, while my mind filled with wild, chaotic thoughts. He did not look like this when he was awake and full of life. But—he had the same name! The same build! He had arrived at the school the same day as I had! And what about his constant copying—my walk, my voice, my habits, my whole way of being? Could this terrifying likeness really just be the result of him imitating me for so long? Overwhelmed with fear, I blew out the lamp, left the room without a sound, and ran away from the school that very night—never to return again.

A few months later, after spending time at home doing nothing, I became a student at Eton. That short break was enough to blur my memories of everything that happened at Dr. Bransby’s—or at least, to change how I felt about it. The truth of the story, the horror of it, didn’t seem so real anymore. I began to doubt my own senses. I only thought about it occasionally, and when I did, it was with disbelief at how easily people can believe strange things, and with a smile at how vivid my imagination could be—an imagination I had clearly inherited. This doubt was helped along by the way I lived at Eton. I quickly and carelessly dove into a life of wild fun and foolishness. It swept away anything serious from my past, leaving only silly memories behind.

I don’t want to describe here the full course of my shameful and wicked behavior—a lifestyle that openly defied the rules and cleverly avoided the notice of school officials. After three years of wasted time, I had only developed deep habits of vice, and had grown unusually tall and strong. One week, after days filled with empty pleasures, I invited a small group of the most immoral students to a secret drinking party in my room. We met late at night, planning to continue our wild celebration until morning.

The wine was flowing freely, and there were other, perhaps even more dangerous temptations as well. The first light of dawn had already appeared in the sky when our wild behavior was at its peak. Drunk and crazed from drinking and gambling, I was about to make a toast that was especially offensive, when suddenly the door burst partly open, and a servant called out from the hallway. He said someone—someone in great haste—urgently needed to speak with me.

Still drunk and overly excited, I was more entertained than alarmed by this interruption. I stumbled out of the room, and a few steps brought me to the entry hall of the building. This low-ceilinged room had no lamp, and now only the faint light of dawn shone through the half-moon-shaped window.

As I stepped into the room, I saw the figure of a young man about my height. He wore a white morning coat made of kerseymere, in the same modern style as the one I was wearing at that very moment. In the dim light I could see his clothing, but I could not make out his face. As I came in, he rushed up to me, grabbed my arm impatiently, and whispered in my ear: “William Wilson!”

I sobered up instantly.

There was something about his manner, and the way he held up one finger between my eyes and the dim light, that stunned me completely. But what shook me most wasn’t just his behavior—it was the serious warning in his voice, the low and hissing tone, and especially the sound of the voice itself. Those few simple whispered words brought back a flood of memories, and hit me like an electric shock. Before I could gather my thoughts, he was gone.

Even though this strange event had a strong effect on my troubled mind, the feeling faded as quickly as it came. For a few weeks, I was deeply curious and full of dark thoughts. I didn’t pretend to misunderstand the identity of the mysterious person who kept interfering in my life and pestering me with whispered advice. But who exactly was this Wilson? Where had he come from? What did he want?

I couldn’t answer any of those questions. I only learned that a sudden family emergency had caused him to leave Dr. Bransby’s school on the same day that I ran away. Soon enough, though, I stopped thinking about it. I was too focused on preparing to leave for Oxford.

Not long after, I went there—my parents, blindly proud, gave me a large allowance and a full setup to live in luxury. This allowed me to enjoy all the pleasures I already loved. I wanted to compete with the richest and most spoiled young men in all of England, and now I could.

Fueled by this freedom and wealth, my wild nature exploded. I ignored all decency and threw myself into reckless behavior. But it’s not worth going into all the details of my wasteful living. Let me just say this: among the most reckless students, I was the worst of all. I invented new kinds of foolishness, and added plenty of fresh sins to the already long list common at the most immoral university in Europe.

It may be hard to believe, but I even fell so low as to study the dirty tricks of professional gamblers. I learned their dishonest skills and used them often to increase my already huge income by cheating the weaker, more gullible students. This terrible betrayal of honor and manliness was so extreme that no one even suspected it. After all, who among my equally corrupt friends would have believed that I, the lively, generous, well-liked William Wilson—known for bold, harmless fun and extravagant habits—was actually a cheat?

By then I had been carrying on like this for two years. Then a new student arrived: a young nobleman named Glendinning. Rumor had it he was as rich as Herodes Atticus, and that he’d come by his fortune easily. I quickly saw that he was simple-minded, and I knew right away that he would be easy to trick.

I often played cards with him and, like all cheats do, let him win large amounts at first, to pull him deeper into my trap. Once everything was set, I arranged a final, decisive game. We met in the rooms of a mutual friend, Mr. Preston, who knew nothing of my plan and had no idea what I was really doing. To make everything seem normal, I invited a group of eight or ten other students, and I made sure that the card game seemed to happen by chance—suggested, of course, by Glendinning himself, not me. To keep things short: every dirty trick common to these kinds of scams was used. These tricks are so well-known and obvious that it’s amazing anyone still falls for them.

We had been playing cards late into the night. At last, I managed to arrange it so that Glendinning was the only one playing against me. The game was my favorite—écarté. The rest of the guests, curious about our high stakes, stopped their own games and stood around us to watch.

Glendinning, who had been tricked by me into drinking a lot earlier, was now dealing and playing with a shaky, nervous manner. I thought the wine could explain some of it, but not all. Soon he had lost a huge amount of money to me. Then, after drinking another large glass of port wine, he did exactly what I had expected—he suggested that we double our already ridiculous stakes.

Pretending to be unsure and hesitant, I said no several times until he got annoyed and said something rude. I then gave in, as if I were doing it out of pride. Of course, I won again. Within an hour, his debt to me was four times bigger.

I noticed that the red flush in his face from drinking was gone. He had turned a pale, sickly white. This surprised me. I had been told he was extremely rich, so even these large losses shouldn’t have affected him so much. I guessed the wine had finally hit him. I was about to stop the game—not because I cared, but so I wouldn’t look bad in front of the others—when I heard some murmurs from the onlookers, and Glendinning let out a sound of total despair. That’s when I realized: I had completely ruined him. He had lost everything. And what’s worse, it had happened in such a way that even a devil should have held back. Everyone pitied him.

I don’t know what I would have done next. The mood in the room turned dark and uncomfortable. For a few moments, no one spoke. I could feel the shame in my burning cheeks as some of the others stared at me with disgust and anger. I’ll admit, I actually felt relieved when something completely unexpected happened.

Suddenly, the big double doors of the room flew open with such force that all the candles were blown out in an instant. Just before the room went completely dark, we caught a glimpse of a man entering. He was about my height and wore a cloak. Now, in the total darkness, we could only sense that he stood among us. Before anyone could react, we heard his voice.

“Gentlemen,” he said, in a low, clear whisper I would never forget—it chilled me to the bone—“I will not apologize for this. I am simply doing my duty. You don’t know who the person is who just won a fortune from Lord Glendinning. So let me help you find out. Please check the inside of the cuff of his left sleeve, and also look in the large pockets of his fancy morning coat. You’ll find what you need.”

While he spoke, the room was so silent you could hear a pin drop. As soon as he finished, he left just as suddenly as he had arrived. Can I even describe how I felt? Should I say I felt like I was in hell? Without a doubt, I had no time to think. Many hands grabbed me roughly right away, and lights were quickly brought back into the room. A search followed. In the lining of my sleeve, they found all the face cards needed to cheat at écarté. In the pockets of my robe, they found several decks of cards that looked exactly like the ones we had been using—except mine were a special type called arrondées. The face cards in these decks were slightly curved at the ends, and the lower cards were curved at the sides. This trick meant that the person cutting the deck in the usual way would always give me a strong card, while I, cutting differently, would ensure that he got nothing useful in return.

The shock of this discovery didn’t hit me as much as the cold silence and sarcastic calm with which everyone reacted.

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