I expect you might think the story I am about to tell you is untrue or perversely gothic in some unhealthy way. You might even think I’ve exaggerated the facts in order to twist this book into a modern-day metaphor on the exploitation of human creation, as did Mary Shelley with Frankenstein. Maybe you’ll think I’m trying to spook you with a psychological tale of a murderous double as Edgar Allan Poe wrote in “William Wilson,” or stir up family shame as Hawthorne did in The House of the Seven Gables. But my story is entirely different.These gothic authors believed disturbing truths about deviant human behavior could only be revealed in settings that were slanted against nature. And although the literature is exceptional, the authors were only guessing at the dark side of the human condition because they based their books on superstition, not science.
But I don’t need outdated gothic conventions with their weird characters, paranormal fallacies, and eerie locations in order to report what I know about human behavior. I am simply going to tell you a plain and true small-town story about a family love curse that is so passionate and so genuinely expressed that it transcends everything commonly accepted about how love reveals itself—or conceals itself. What I discovered about my family opened my eyes to how love, when nurtured behind closed doors, is capable of turning a forbidden obsession into something that seems so natural.
What I had first judged unsympathetically to be the primitive behavior of two ailing minds became an activity so comforting that after a while I couldn’t understand why every family wouldn’t consider it a time-honored tradition. Some people think the Rumbaugh love is a hereditary curse passed down from one tainted generation to the next, but I believe our family legacy is a compassionate gift.
I expect upon reading this book most people will disagree with my point of view and especially with my contribution to the curse. This is understandable. And even though I firmly believe I am in the right and have behaved reverently, my mother always said that Roman law reads: In propria causa nemo judex, “No one can be judge in his own cause.” So for this story I’ll give you the facts as I know them and leave it in your hands to pass judgment.