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I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more.
Penniless, and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone, makes life endurable, I
can bear the torture no longer; and shall cast myself from this garret window into the
squalid street below. Do not think from my slavery to morphine that I am a weakling or a
degenerate. When you have read these hastily scrawled pages you may guess, though
never fully realise, why it is that I must have forgetfulness or death.

It was in one of the most open and least frequented parts of the broad Pacific that the
packet of which I was supercargo fell a victim to the German sea-raider. The great war
was then at its very beginning, and the ocean forces of the Hun had not completely sunk
to their later degradation; so that our vessel was made a legitimate prize, whilst we of her
crew were treated with all the fairness and consideration due us as naval prisoners. So
liberal, indeed, was the discipline of our captors, that five days after we were taken I
managed to escape alone in a small boat with water and provisions for a good length of
time.

When I finally found myself adrift and free, I had but little idea of my surroundings.
Never a competent navigator, I could only guess vaguely by the sun and stars that I was
somewhat south of the equator. Of the longitude I knew nothing, and no island or
coastline was in sight. The weather kept fair, and for uncounted days I drifted aimlessly
beneath the scorching sun; waiting either for some passing ship, or to be cast on the
shores of some habitable land. But neither ship nor land appeared, and I began to despair
in my solitude upon the heaving vastness of unbroken blue.

The change happened whilst I slept. Its details I shall never know; for my slumber,
though troubled and dream-infested, was continuous. When at last I awakened, it was to
discover myself half sucked into a slimy expanse of hellish black mire which extended
about me in monotonous undulations as far as I could see, and in which my boat lay
grounded some distance away.

Though one might well imagine that my first sensation would be of wonder at so
prodigious and unexpected a transformation of scenery, I was in reality more horrified
than astonished; for there was in the air and in the rotting soil a sinister quality which
chilled me to the very core. The region was putrid with the carcasses of decaying fish,
and of other less describable things which I saw protruding from the nasty mud of the
unending plain. Perhaps I should not hope to convey in mere words the unutterable
hideousness that can dwell in absolute silence and barren immensity. There was nothing
within hearing, and nothing in sight save a vast reach of black slime; yet the very
completeness of the stillness and the homogeneity of the landscape oppressed me with a
nauseating fear.

The sun was blazing down from a sky which seemed to me almost black in its cloudless
cruelty; as though reflecting the inky marsh beneath my feet. As I crawled into the
stranded boat I realised that only one theory could explain my position. Through some
unprecedented volcanic upheaval, a portion of the ocean floor must have been thrown to
the surface, exposing regions which for innumerable millions of years had lain hidden
under unfathomable watery depths. So great was the extent of the new land which had
risen beneath me, that I could not detect the faintest noise of the surging ocean, strain my
ears as I might. Nor were there any sea-fowl to prey upon the dead things.

For several hours I sat thinking or brooding in the boat, which lay upon its side and
afforded a slight shade as the sun moved across the heavens. As the day progressed, the
ground lost some of its stickiness, and seemed likely to dry sufficiently for travelling
purposes in a short time. That night I slept but little, and the next day I made for myself a
pack containing food and water, preparatory to an overland journey in search of the
vanished sea and possible rescue.

On the third morning I found the soil dry enough to walk upon with ease. The odour of
the fish was maddening; but I was too much concerned with graver things to mind so
slight an evil, and set out boldly for an unknown goal. All day I forged steadily westward,
guided by a far-away hummock which rose higher than any other elevation on the rolling
desert. That night I encamped, and on the following day still travelled toward the
hummock, though that object seemed scarcely nearer than when I had first espied it. By
the fourth evening I attained the base of the mound, which turned out to be much higher
than it had appeared from a distance, an intervening valley setting it out in sharper relief
from the general surface. Too weary to ascend, I slept in the shadow of the hill.

I know not why my dreams were so wild that night; but ere the waning and fantastically
gibbous moon had risen far above the eastern plain, I was awake in a cold perspiration,
determined to sleep no more. Such visions as I had experienced were too much for me to
endure again. And in the glow of the moon I saw how unwise I had been to travel by day.
Without the glare of the parching sun, my journey would have cost me less energy;
indeed, I now felt quite able to perform the ascent which had deterred me at sunset.
Picking up my pack, I started for the crest of the eminence.

I have said that the unbroken monotony of the rolling plain was a source of vague horror
to me; but I think my horror was greater when I gained the summit of the mound and
looked down the other side into an immeasurable pit or canyon, whose black recesses the
moon had not yet soared high enough to illumine. I felt myself on the edge of the world,
peering over the rim into a fathomless chaos of eternal night. Through my terror ran
curious reminiscences of Paradise Lost, and Satan’s hideous climb through the
unfashioned realms of darkness.

As the moon climbed higher in the sky, I began to see that the slopes of the valley were
not quite so perpendicular as I had imagined. Ledges and outcroppings of rock afforded
fairly easy footholds for a descent, whilst after a drop of a few hundred feet, the declivity
became very gradual. Urged on by an impulse which I cannot definitely analyse, I
scrambled with difficulty down the rocks and stood on the gentler slope beneath, gazing
into the Stygian deeps where no light had yet penetrated.

All at once my attention was captured by a vast and singular object on the opposite slope, which rose steeply about a hundred yards ahead of me; an object that gleamed whitely in
the newly bestowed rays of the ascending moon. That it was merely a gigantic piece of
stone, I soon assured myself; but I was conscious of a distinct impression that its contour
and position were not altogether the work of Nature. A closer scrutiny filled me with
sensations I cannot express; for despite its enormous magnitude, and its position in an
abyss which had yawned at the bottom of the sea since the world was young, I perceived
beyond a doubt that the strange object was a well-shaped monolith whose massive bulk
had known the workmanship and perhaps the worship of living and thinking creatures.

Dazed and frightened, yet not without a certain thrill of the scientist’s or archaeologist’s
delight, I examined my surroundings more closely. The moon, now near the zenith, shone
weirdly and vividly above the towering steeps that hemmed in the chasm, and revealed
the fact that a far-flung body of water flowed at the bottom, winding out of sight in both
directions, and almost lapping my feet as I stood on the slope. Across the chasm, the
wavelets washed the base of the Cyclopean monolith, on whose surface I could now trace
both inscriptions and crude sculptures. The writing was in a system of hieroglyphics
unknown to me, and unlike anything I had ever seen in books, consisting for the most
part of conventionalised aquatic symbols such as fishes, eels, octopi, crustaceans,
molluscs, whales and the like. Several characters obviously represented marine things
which are unknown to the modern world, but whose decomposing forms I had observed
on the ocean-risen plain.

It was the pictorial carving, however, that did most to hold me spellbound. Plainly visible
across the intervening water on account of their enormous size was an array of bas-reliefs
whose subjects would have excited the envy of a Dore. I think that these things were
supposed to depict men — at least, a certain sort of men; though the creatures were shown
disporting like fishes in the waters of some marine grotto, or paying homage at some
monolithic shrine which appeared to be under the waves as well. Of their faces and forms
I dare not speak in detail, for the mere remembrance makes me grow faint. Grotesque
beyond the imagination of a Poe or a Bulwer, they were damnably human in general
outline despite webbed hands and feet, shockingly wide and flabby lips, glassy, bulging
eyes, and other features less pleasant to recall. Curiously enough, they seemed to have
been chiselled badly out of proportion with their scenic background; for one of the
creatures was shown in the act of killing a whale represented as but little larger than
himself. I remarked, as I say, their grotesqueness and strange size; but in a moment
decided that they were merely the imaginary gods of some primitive fishing or seafaring
tribe; some tribe whose last descendant had perished eras before the first ancestor of the
Piltdown or Neanderthal Man was born. Awestruck at this unexpected glimpse into a past beyond the conception of the most daring anthropologist, I stood musing whilst the moon cast queer reflections on the silent channel before me.

Then suddenly I saw it. With only a slight churning to mark its rise to the surface, the
thing slid into view above the dark waters. Vast, Polyphemus-like, and loathsome, it
darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith, about which it flung its
gigantic scaly arms, the while it bowed its hideous head and gave vent to certain
measured sounds. I think I went mad then.

Of my frantic ascent of the slope and cliff, and of my delirious journey back to the
stranded boat, I remember little. I believe I sang a great deal, and laughed oddly when I
was unable to sing. I have indistinct recollections of a great storm some time after I
reached the boat; at any rate, I knew that I heard peals of thunder and other tones which
Nature utters only in her wildest moods.

When I came out of the shadows I was in a San Francisco hospital; brought thither by the
captain of the American ship which had picked up my boat in mid-ocean. In my delirium
I had said much, but found that my words had been given scant attention. Of any land
upheaval in the Pacific, my rescuers knew nothing; nor did I deem it necessary to insist
upon a thing which I knew they could not believe. Once I sought out a celebrated
ethnologist, and amused him with peculiar questions regarding the ancient Philistine
legend of Dagon, the Fish-God; but soon perceiving that he was hopelessly conventional,
I did not press my inquiries.

It is at night, especially when the moon is gibbous and waning, that I see the thing. I tried
morphine; but the drug has given only transient surcease, and has drawn me into its
clutches as a hopeless slave. So now I am to end it all, having written a full account for
the information or the contemptuous amusement of my fellow-men. Often I ask myself if
it could not all have been a pure phantasm — a mere freak of fever as I lay sun-stricken
and raving in the open boat after my escape from the German man-of-war. This I ask
myself, but ever does there come before me a hideously vivid vision in reply. I cannot
think of the deep sea without shuddering at the nameless things that may at this very
moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshipping their ancient stone
idols and carving their own detestable likenesses on submarine obelisks of water-soaked
granite. I dream of a day when they may rise above the billows to drag down in their
reeking talons the remnants of puny, war-exhausted mankind — of a day when the land
shall sink, and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium.
The end is near. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering
against it. It shall not find me. God, that hand! The window! The window!

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The Strange Orchid

By H.G. Wells

The buying of orchids always has in it a certain speculative flavour. You
have before you the brown shrivelled lump of tissue, and for the rest you
must trust your judgment, or the auctioneer, or your good luck, as your
taste may incline. The plant may be moribund or dead, or it may be just a
respectable purchase, fair value for your money, or perhaps–for the thing
has happened again and again–there slowly unfolds before the delighted
eyes of the happy purchaser, day after day, some new variety, some novel
richness, a strange twist of the labellum, or some subtler colouration or
unexpected mimicry. Pride, beauty, and profit blossom together on one
delicate green spike, and, it may be, even immortality. For the new
miracle of nature may stand in need of a new specific name, and what so
convenient as that of its discoverer? “John-smithia”! There have been
worse names.

It was perhaps the hope of some such happy discovery that made Winter
Wedderburn such a frequent attendant at these sales–that hope, and also,
maybe, the fact that he had nothing else of the slightest interest to do
in the world. He was a shy, lonely, rather ineffectual man, provided with
just enough income to keep off the spur of necessity, and not enough
nervous energy to make him seek any exacting employments. He might have
collected stamps or coins, or translated Horace, or bound books, or
invented new species of diatoms. But, as it happened, he grew orchids, and
had one ambitious little hothouse.

“I have a fancy,” he said over his coffee, “that something is going to
happen to me to-day.” He spoke–as he moved and thought–slowly.

“Oh, don’t say that!” said his housekeeper–who was also his remote
cousin. For “something happening” was a euphemism that meant only one
thing to her.

“You misunderstand me. I mean nothing unpleasant…though what I do mean I
scarcely know.

“To-day,” he continued, after a pause, “Peters’ are going to sell a batch
of plants from the Andamans and the Indies. I shall go up and see what
they have. It may be I shall buy something good unawares. That may be it.”

He passed his cup for his second cupful of coffee.

“Are these the things collected by that poor young fellow you told me of
the other day?” asked his cousin, as she filled his cup.

“Yes,” he said, and became meditative over a piece of toast.

“Nothing ever does happen to me,” he remarked presently, beginning to
think aloud. “I wonder why? Things enough happen to other people. There is
Harvey. Only the other week; on Monday he picked up sixpence, on Wednesday
his chicks all had the staggers, on Friday his cousin came home from
Australia, and on Saturday he broke his ankle. What a whirl of
excitement!–compared to me.”

“I think I would rather be without so much excitement,” said his
housekeeper. “It can’t be good for you.”

“I suppose it’s troublesome. Still … you see, nothing ever happens to
me. When I was a little boy I never had accidents. I never fell in love as
I grew up. Never married… I wonder how it feels to have something
happen to you, something really remarkable.

“That orchid-collector was only thirty-six–twenty years younger than
myself–when he died. And he had been married twice and divorced once; he
had had malarial fever four times, and once he broke his thigh. He killed
a Malay once, and once he was wounded by a poisoned dart. And in the end
he was killed by jungle-leeches. It must have all been very troublesome,
but then it must have been very interesting, you know–except, perhaps,
the leeches.”

“I am sure it was not good for him,” said the lady with conviction.

“Perhaps not.” And then Wedderburn looked at his watch. “Twenty-three
minutes past eight. I am going up by the quarter to twelve train, so that
there is plenty of time. I think I shall wear my alpaca jacket–it is
quite warm enough–and my grey felt hat and brown shoes. I suppose–”

He glanced out of the window at the serene sky and sunlit garden, and then
nervously at his cousin’s face.

“I think you had better take an umbrella if you are going to London,” she
said in a voice that admitted of no denial. “There’s all between here and
the station coming back.”

When he returned he was in a state of mild excitement. He had made a
purchase. It was rare that he could make up his mind quickly enough to
buy, but this time he had done so.

“There are Vandas,” he said, “and a Dendrobe and some Palaeonophis.” He
surveyed his purchases lovingly as he consumed his soup. They were laid
out on the spotless tablecloth before him, and he was telling his cousin
all about them as he slowly meandered through his dinner. It was his
custom to live all his visits to London over again in the evening for her
and his own entertainment.

“I knew something would happen to-day. And I have bought all these. Some
of them–some of them–I feel sure, do you know, that some of them will be
remarkable. I don’t know how it is, but I feel just as sure as if some one
had told me that some of these will turn out remarkable.

“That one “–he pointed to a shrivelled rhizome–“was not identified. It
may be a Palaeonophis–or it may not. It may be a new species, or even a
new genus. And it was the last that poor Batten ever collected.”

“I don’t like the look of it,” said his housekeeper. “It’s such an ugly
shape.”

“To me it scarcely seems to have a shape.”

“I don’t like those things that stick out,” said his housekeeper.

“It shall be put away in a pot to-morrow.”

“It looks,” said the housekeeper, “like a spider shamming dead.”

Wedderburn smiled and surveyed the root with his head on one side. “It is
certainly not a pretty lump of stuff. But you can never judge of these
things from their dry appearance. It may turn out to be a very beautiful
orchid indeed. How busy I shall be to-morrow! I must see to-night just
exactly what to do with these things, and to-morrow I shall set to work.”

“They found poor Batten lying dead, or dying, in a mangrove swamp–I
forget which,” he began again presently, “with one of these very orchids
crushed up under his body. He had been unwell for some days with some kind
of native fever, and I suppose he fainted. These mangrove swamps are very
unwholesome. Every drop of blood, they say, was taken out of him by the
jungle-leeches. It may be that very plant that cost him his life to
obtain.”

“I think none the better of it for that.”

“Men must work though women may weep,” said Wedderburn with profound
gravity.

“Fancy dying away from every comfort in a nasty swamp! Fancy being ill of
fever with nothing to take but chlorodyne and quinine–if men were left to
themselves they would live on chlorodyne and quinine–and no one round you
but horrible natives! They say the Andaman islanders are most disgusting
wretches–and, anyhow, they can scarcely make good nurses, not having the
necessary training. And just for people in England to have orchids!”

“I don’t suppose it was comfortable, but some men seem to enjoy that kind
of thing,” said Wedderburn. “Anyhow, the natives of his party were
sufficiently civilised to take care of all his collection until his
colleague, who was an ornithologist, came back again from the interior;
though they could not tell the species of the orchid, and had let it
wither. And it makes these things more interesting.”

“It makes them disgusting. I should be afraid of some of the malaria
clinging to them. And just think, there has been a dead body lying across
that ugly thing! I never thought of that before. There! I declare I cannot
eat another mouthful of dinner.”

“I will take them off the table if you like, and put them in the
window-seat. I can see them just as well there.”

The next few days he was indeed singularly busy in his steamy little
hothouse, fussing about with charcoal, lumps of teak, moss, and all the
other mysteries of the orchid cultivator. He considered he was having a
wonderfully eventful time. In the evening he would talk about these new
orchids to his friends, and over and over again he reverted to his
expectation of something strange.

Several of the Vandas and the Dendrobium died under his care, but
presently the strange orchid began to show signs of life. He was
delighted, and took his housekeeper right away from jam-making to see it
at once, directly he made the discovery.

“That is a bud,” he said, “and presently there will be a lot of leaves
there, and those little things coming out here are aerial rootlets.”

“They look to me like little white fingers poking out of the brown,” said
his housekeeper. “I don’t like them.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. They look like fingers trying to get at you. I can’t help
my likes and dislikes.”

“I don’t know for certain, but I don’t think there are any orchids
I know that have aerial rootlets quite like that. It may be my fancy, of
course. You see they are a little flattened at the ends.”

“I don’t like ’em,” said his housekeeper, suddenly shivering and turning
away. “I know it’s very silly of me–and I’m very sorry, particularly as
you like the thing so much. But I can’t help thinking of that corpse.”

“But it may not be that particular plant. That was merely a guess of
mine.”

His housekeeper shrugged her shoulders. “Anyhow I don’t like it,” she
said.

Wedderburn felt a little hurt at her dislike to the plant. But that did
not prevent his talking to her about orchids generally, and this orchid in
particular, whenever he felt inclined.

“There are such queer things about orchids,” he said one day; “such
possibilities of surprises. You know, Darwin studied their fertilisation,
and showed that the whole structure of an ordinary orchid flower was
contrived in order that moths might carry the pollen from plant to plant.
Well, it seems that there are lots of orchids known the flower of which
cannot possibly be used for fertilisation in that way. Some of the
Cypripediums, for instance; there are no insects known that can possibly
fertilise them, and some of them have never been found with seed.”

“But how do they form new plants?”

“By runners and tubers, and that kind of outgrowth. That is easily
explained. The puzzle is, what are the flowers for?

“Very likely,” he added, “my orchid may be something extraordinary
in that way. If so I shall study it. I have often thought of making
researches as Darwin did. But hitherto I have not found the time, or
something else has happened to prevent it. The leaves are beginning to
unfold now. I do wish you would come and see them!”

But she said that the orchid-house was so hot it gave her the headache.
She had seen the plant once again, and the aerial rootlets, which were now
some of them more than a foot long, had unfortunately reminded her of
tentacles reaching out after something; and they got into her dreams,
growing after her with incredible rapidity. So that she had settled to her
entire satisfaction that she would not see that plant again, and
Wedderburn had to admire its leaves alone. They were of the ordinary broad
form, and a deep glossy green, with splashes and dots of deep red towards
the base He knew of no other leaves quite like them. The plant was placed
on a low bench near the thermometer, and close by was a simple arrangement
by which a tap dripped on the hot-water pipes and kept the air steamy. And
he spent his afternoons now with some regularity meditating on the
approaching flowering of this strange plant.

And at last the great thing happened. Directly he entered the little glass
house he knew that the spike had burst out, although his great
Paloeonophis Lowii hid the corner where his new darling stood.
There was a new odour in the air, a rich, intensely sweet scent, that
overpowered every other in that crowded, steaming little greenhouse.

Directly he noticed this he hurried down to the strange orchid. And,
behold! the trailing green spikes bore now three great splashes of
blossom, from which this overpowering sweetness proceeded. He stopped
before them in an ecstasy of admiration.

The flowers were white, with streaks of golden orange upon the petals; the
heavy labellum was coiled into an intricate projection, and a wonderful
bluish purple mingled there with the gold. He could see at once that the
genus was altogether a new one. And the insufferable scent! How hot the
place was! The blossoms swam before his eyes.

He would see if the temperature was right. He made a step towards the
thermometer. Suddenly everything appeared unsteady. The bricks on the
floor were dancing up and down. Then the white blossoms, the green leaves
behind them, the whole greenhouse, seemed to sweep sideways, and then in a
curve upward.

* * * * *

At half-past four his cousin made the tea, according to their invariable
custom. But Wedderburn did not come in for his tea.

“He is worshipping that horrid orchid,” she told herself, and waited ten
minutes. “His watch must have stopped. I will go and call him.”

She went straight to the hothouse, and, opening the door, called his name.
There was no reply. She noticed that the air was very close, and loaded
with an intense perfume. Then she saw something lying on the bricks
between the hot-water pipes.

For a minute, perhaps, she stood motionless.

He was lying, face upward, at the foot of the strange orchid. The
tentacle-like aerial rootlets no longer swayed freely in the air, but were
crowded together, a tangle of grey ropes, and stretched tight, with their
ends closely applied to his chin and neck and hands.

She did not understand. Then she saw from under one of the exultant
tentacles upon his cheek there trickled a little thread of blood.

With an inarticulate cry she ran towards him, and tried to pull him away
from the leech-like suckers. She snapped two of these tentacles, and their
sap dripped red.

Then the overpowering scent of the blossom began to make her head reel.
How they clung to him! She tore at the tough ropes, and he and the white
inflorescence swam about her. She felt she was fainting, knew she must
not. She left him and hastily opened the nearest door, and, after she had
panted for a moment in the fresh air, she had a brilliant inspiration. She
caught up a flower-pot and smashed in the windows at the end of the
greenhouse. Then she re-entered. She tugged now with renewed strength at
Wedderburn’s motionless body, and brought the strange orchid crashing to
the floor. It still clung with the grimmest tenacity to its victim. In a
frenzy, she lugged it and him into the open air.

Then she thought of tearing through the sucker rootlets one by one, and in
another minute she had released him and was dragging him away from the
horror.

He was white and bleeding from a dozen circular patches.

The odd-job man was coming up the garden, amazed at the smashing of glass,
and saw her emerge, hauling the inanimate body with red-stained hands. For
a moment he thought impossible things.

“Bring some water!” she cried, and her voice dispelled his fancies. When,
with unnatural alacrity, he returned with the water, he found her weeping
with excitement, and with Wedderburn’s head upon her knee, wiping the
blood from his face.

“What’s the matter?” said Wedderburn, opening his eyes feebly, and closing
them again at once.

“Go and tell Annie to come out here to me, and then go for Dr. Haddon at
once,” she said to the odd-job man so soon as he brought the water; and
added, seeing he hesitated, “I will tell you all about it when you come
back.”

Presently Wedderburn opened his eyes again, and, seeing that he was
troubled by the puzzle of his position, she explained to him, “You fainted
in the hothouse.”

“And the orchid?”

“I will see to that,” she said.

Wedderburn had lost a good deal of blood, but beyond that he had suffered
no very great injury. They gave him brandy mixed with some pink extract of
meat, and carried him upstairs to bed. His housekeeper told her incredible
story in fragments to Dr. Haddon. “Come to the orchid-house and see,” she
said.

The cold outer air was blowing in through the open door, and the sickly
perfume was almost dispelled. Most of the torn aerial rootlets lay already
withered amidst a number of dark stains upon the bricks. The stem of the
inflorescence was broken by the fall of the plant, and the flowers were
growing limp and brown at the edges of the petals. The doctor stooped
towards it, then saw that one of the aerial rootlets still stirred feebly,
and hesitated.

The next morning the strange orchid still lay there, black now and
putrescent. The door banged intermittently in the morning breeze, and all
the array of Wedderburn’s orchids was shrivelled and prostrate. But
Wedderburn himself was bright and garrulous upstairs in the glory of his
strange adventure.

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The Vampire Cat of Nabéshima

By A.B. Mitford, Lord Redesdale

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The Masque of the Red Death

By Edgar Allen Poe

THE “Red Death” had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal — the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.

But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince’s own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the “Red Death.”

It was toward the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion, and while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad, that the Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence.

It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But first let me tell of the rooms in which it was held. There were seven — an imperial suite. In many palaces, however, such suites form a long and straight vista, while the folding doors slide back nearly to the walls on either hand, so that the view of the whole extent is scarcely impeded. Here the case was very different; as might have been expected from the duke’s love of the bizarre. The apartments were so irregularly disposed that the vision embraced but little more than one at a time. There was a sharp turn at every twenty or thirty yards, and at each turn a novel effect. To the right and left, in the middle of each wall, a tall and narrow Gothic window looked out upon a closed corridor which pursued the windings of the suite. These windows were of stained glass whose color varied in accordance with the prevailing hue of the decorations of the chamber into which it opened. That at the eastern extremity was hung, for example, in blue — and vividly blue were its windows. The second chamber was purple in its ornaments and tapestries, and here the panes were purple. The third was green throughout, and so were the casements. The fourth was furnished and lighted with orange — the fifth with white — the sixth with violet. The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue. But in this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes here were scarlet — a deep blood color. Now in no one of the seven apartments was there any lamp or candelabrum, amid the profusion of golden ornaments that lay scattered to and fro or depended from the roof. There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the suite of chambers. But in the corridors that followed the suite, there stood, opposite to each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire that protected its rays through the tinted glass and so glaringly illumined the room. And thus were produced a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. But in the western or black chamber the effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered, that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all.

It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to hearken to the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while the chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confused reverie or meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased, a light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked at each other and smiled as if at their own nervousness and folly, and made whispering vows, each to the other, that the next chiming of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion; and then, after the lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace three thousand and six hundred seconds of the Time that flies,) there came yet another chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation as before.

But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent revel. The tastes of the duke were peculiar. He had a fine eye for colors and effects. He disregarded the decora of mere fashion. His plans were bold and fiery, and his conceptions glowed with barbaric lustre. There are some who would have thought him mad. His followers felt that he was not. It was necessary to hear and see and touch him to be sure that he was not.

He had directed, in great part, the moveable embellishments of the seven chambers, upon occasion of this great fete; and it was his own guiding taste which had given character to the masqueraders. Be sure they were grotesque. There were much glare and glitter and piquancy and phantasm — much of what has been since seen in “Hernani.” There were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies such as the madman fashions. There was much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust. To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams. And these — the dreams — writhed in and about, taking hue from the rooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps. And, anon, there strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of the velvet. And then, for a moment, all is still, and all is silent save the voice of the clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand. But the echoes of the chime die away — they have endured but an instant — and a light, half-subdued laughter floats after them as they depart. And now again the music swells, and the dreams live, and writhe to and fro more merrily than ever, taking hue from the many-tinted windows through which stream the rays from the tripods. But to the chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven, there are now none of the maskers who venture; for the night is waning away; and there flows a ruddier light through the blood-colored panes; and the blackness of the sable drapery appals; and to him whose foot falls upon the sable carpet, there comes from the near clock of ebony a muffled peal more solemnly emphatic than any which reaches their ears who indulge in the more remote gaieties of the other apartments.

But these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them beat feverishly the heart of life. And the revel went whirlingly on, until at length there commenced the sounding of midnight upon the clock. And then the music ceased, as I have told; and the evolutions of the waltzers were quieted; and there was an uneasy cessation of all things as before. But now there were twelve strokes to be sounded by the bell of the clock; and thus it happened, perhaps, that more of thought crept, with more of time, into the meditations of the thoughtful among those who revelled. And thus, too, it happened, perhaps, that before the last echoes of the last chime had utterly sunk into silence, there were many individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of the presence of a masked figure which had arrested the attention of no single individual before. And the rumor of this new presence having spread itself whisperingly around, there arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or murmur, expressive of disapprobation and surprise — then, finally, of terror, of horror, and of disgust.

In an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted, it may well be supposed that no ordinary appearance could have excited such sensation. In truth the masquerade license of the night was nearly unlimited; but the figure in question had out-Heroded Herod, and gone beyond the bounds of even the prince’s indefinite decorum. There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made. The whole company, indeed, seemed now deeply to feel that in the costume and bearing of the stranger neither wit nor propriety existed. The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet all this might have been endured, if not approved, by the mad revellers around. But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood — and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.

When the eyes of Prince Prospero fell upon this spectral image (which with a slow and solemn movement, as if more fully to sustain its role, stalked to and fro among the waltzers) he was seen to be convulsed, in the first moment with a strong shudder either of terror or distaste; but, in the next, his brow reddened with rage.

“Who dares?” he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood near him — “who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? Seize him and unmask him — that we may know whom we have to hang at sunrise, from the battlements!”

It was in the eastern or blue chamber in which stood the Prince Prospero as he uttered these words. They rang throughout the seven rooms loudly and clearly — for the prince was a bold and robust man, and the music had become hushed at the waving of his hand.

It was in the blue room where stood the prince, with a group of pale courtiers by his side. At first, as he spoke, there was a slight rushing movement of this group in the direction of the intruder, who at the moment was also near at hand, and now, with deliberate and stately step, made closer approach to the speaker. But from a certain nameless awe with which the mad assumptions of the mummer had inspired the whole party, there were found none who put forth hand to seize him; so that, unimpeded, he passed within a yard of the prince’s person; and, while the vast assembly, as if with one impulse, shrank from the centres of the rooms to the walls, he made his way uninterruptedly, but with the same solemn and measured step which had distinguished him from the first, through the blue chamber to the purple — through the purple to the green — through the green to the orange — through this again to the white — and even thence to the violet, ere a decided movement had been made to arrest him. It was then, however, that the Prince Prospero, maddening with rage and the shame of his own momentary cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six chambers, while none followed him on account of a deadly terror that had seized upon all. He bore aloft a drawn dagger, and had approached, in rapid impetuosity, to within three or four feet of the retreating figure, when the latter, having attained the extremity of the velvet apartment, turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer. There was a sharp cry — and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which, instantly afterwards, fell prostrate in death the Prince Prospero. Then, summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the black apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave-cerements and corpse-like mask which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form.

And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

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THE MOONLIT ROAD
by Ambrose Bierce

1: Statement of Joel Hetman, Jr.

I AM the most unfortunate of men. Rich, respected, fairly well educated and of sound health–with many other advantages usually valued by those having them and coveted by those who have them not–I sometimes think that I should be less unhappy if they had been denied me, for then the contrast between my outer and my inner life would not be continually demanding a painful attention. In the stress of privation and the need of effort I might sometimes forget the sombre secret ever baffling the conjecture that it compels.

I am the only child of Joel and Julia Hetman. The one was a well-to-do country gentleman, the other a beautiful and accomplished woman to whom he was passionately attached with what I now know to have been a jealous and exacting devotion. The family home was a few miles from Nashville, Tennessee, a large, irregularly built dwelling of no particular order of architecture, a little way off the road, in a park of trees and shrubbery.

At the time of which I write I was nineteen years old, a student at Yale. One day I received a telegram from my father of such urgency that in compliance with its unexplained demand I left at once for home. At the railway station in Nashville a distant relative awaited me to apprise me of the reason for my recall: my mother had been barbarously murdered–why and by whom none could conjecture, but the circumstances were these.

My father had gone to Nashville, intending to return the next afternoon. Something prevented his accomplishing the business in hand, so he returned on the same night, arriving just before the dawn. In his testimony before the coroner he explained that having no latchkey and not caring to disturb the sleeping servants, he had, with no clearly defined intention, gone round to the rear of the house. As he turned an angle of the building, he heard a sound as of a door gently closed, and saw in the darkness, indistinctly, the figure of a man, which instantly disappeared among the trees of the lawn. A hasty pursuit and brief search of the grounds in the belief that the trespasser was some one secretly visiting a servant proving fruitless, he entered at the unlocked door and mounted the stairs to my mother’s chamber. Its door was open, and stepping into black darkness he fell headlong over some heavy object on the floor. I may spare myself the details; it was my poor mother, dead of strangulation by human hands!

Nothing had been taken from the house, the servant ants had heard no sound, and excepting those terrible finger-marks upon the dead woman’s throat-dear God! that I might forget them!–no trace of the assassin was ever found.

I gave up my studies and remained with my father, who, naturally, was greatly changed. Always of a sedate, taciturn disposition, he now fell into so deep a dejection that nothing could hold his attention, yet anything–a footfall, the sudden closing of a door–aroused in him a fitful interest; one might have called it an apprehension. At any small surprise of the senses he would start visibly and sometimes turn pale, then relapse into a melancholy apathy deeper than before. I suppose he was what is called a ‘nervous wreck.’ As to me, I was younger then than now–there is much in that. Youth is Gilead, in which is balm for every wound. Ah, that I might again dwell in that enchanted land! Unacquainted with grief, I knew not how to appraise my bereavement; I could not rightly estimate the strength of the stroke.

One night, a few months after the dreadful event, my father and I walked home from the city. The full moon was about three hours above the eastern horizon; the entire countryside had the solemn stillness of a summer night; our footfalls and the ceaseless song of the katydids were the only sound, aloof. Black shadows of bordering trees lay athwart the road, which, in the short reaches between, gleamed a ghostly white. As we approached the gate to our dwelling, whose front was in shadow, and in which no light shone, my father suddenly stopped and clutched my arm, saying, hardly above his breath:

‘God! God! what is that?’

‘I hear nothing,’ I replied.

‘But see–see!’ he said, pointing along the road, directly ahead.

I said: ‘Nothing is there. Come, father, let us go in-betweenyou are ill.’

He had released my arm and was standing rigid and motionless in the centre of the illuminated roadway, staring like one bereft of sense.  His face in the moonlight showed a pallor and fixity inexpressibly distressing. I pulled gently at his sleeve, but he had forgotten my existence. Presently he began to retire backward, step by step, never for an instant removing his eyes from what he saw, or thought he saw. I turned half round to follow, but stood irresolute. I do not recall any feeling of fear, unless a sudden chill was its physical manifestation. It seemed as if an icy wind had touched my face and enfolded my body from head to foot; I could feel the stir of it in my hair.
At that moment my attention was drawn to a light that suddenly streamed from an upper window of the house: one of the servants, awakened by what mysterious premonition of evil who can say, and in obedience to an impulse that she was never able to name, had lit a lamp. When I turned to look for my father he was gone, and in all the years that have passed no whisper of his fate has come across the borderland of conjecture from the realm of the unknown.

2: Statement of Caspar Grattan

Today I am said to live, tomorrow, here in this room, will lie a senseless shape of clay that all too long was I. If anyone lift the cloth from the face of that unpleasant thing it will be in gratification of a mere morbid curiosity. Some, doubtless, will go further and inquire, ‘Who was he?’ In this writing I supply the only answer that I am able to make-Caspar Grattan. Surely, that should be enough. The name has served my small need for more than twenty years of a life of unknown length. True, I gave it to myself, but lacking another I had the right. In this world one must have a name; it prevents confusion, even when it does not establish identity. Some, though, are known by numbers, which also seem inadequate distinctions.
One day, for illustration, I was passing along a street of a city, far from here, when I met two men in uniform, one of whom, half pausing and looking curiously into my face, said to his companion, ‘That man looks like 767.’ Something in the number seemed familiar and horrible. Moved by an uncontrollable impulse, I sprang into a side street and ran until I fell exhausted in a country lane.
I have never forgotten that number, and always it comes to memory attended by gibbering obscenity, peals of joyless laughter, the clang of iron doors. So I say a name, even if self-bestowed, is better than a number. In the register of the potter’s field I shall soon have both. What wealth!
Of him who shall find this paper I must beg a little consideration. It is not the history of my life; the knowledge to write that is denied me. This is only a record of broken and apparently unrelated memories, some of them as distinct and sequent as brilliant beads upon a thread, others remote and strange, having the character of crimson dreams with interspaces blank and black–witch-fires glowing still and red in a great desolation.
Standing upon the shore of eternity, I turn for a last look landward over the course by which I came. There are twenty years of footprints fairly distinct, the impressions of bleeding feet. They lead through poverty and pain, devious and unsure, as of one staggering beneath a burden-

Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow.

Ah, the poet’s prophecy of Me–how admirable, how dreadfully admirable!

Backward beyond the beginning of this via dolorosa–this epic of suffering with episodes of sin –I see nothing clearly; it comes out of a cloud. I know that it spans only twenty years, yet I am an old man.

One does not remember one’s birth–one has to be told. But with me it was different; life came to me full-handed and dowered me with all my faculties and powers. Of a previous existence I know no more than others, for all have stammering intimations that may be memories and may be dreams. I know only that my first consciousness was of maturity in body and mind–a consciousness accepted without surprise or conjecture. I merely found myself walking in a forest, half-clad, footsore, unutterably weary and hungry. Seeing a farmhouse, I approached and asked for food, which was given me by one who inquired my name. I did not know, yet knew that all had names. Greatly embarrassed, I retreated, and night coming on, lay down in the forest and slept.

The next day I entered a large town which I shall not name. Nor shall I recount further incidents of the life that is now to end–a life of wandering, always and everywhere haunted by an overmastering sense of crime in punishment of wrong and of terror in punishment of crime. Let me see if I can reduce it to narrative.

I seem once to have lived near a great city, a prosperous planter, married to a woman whom I loved and distrusted. We had, it sometimes seems, one child, a youth of brilliant parts and promise. He is at all times a vague figure, never clearly drawn, frequently altogether out of the picture.

One luckless evening it occurred to me to test my wife’s fidelity in a vulgar, commonplace way familiar to everyone who has acquaintance with the literature of fact and fiction. I went to the city, telling my wife that I should be absent until the following afternoon. But I returned before daybreak and went to the rear of the house, purposing to enter by a door with which I had secretly so tampered that it would seem to lock, yet not actually fasten. As I approached it, I heard it gently open and close, and saw a man steal away into the darkness. With murder in my heart, I sprang after him, but he had vanished without even the bad luck of identification. Sometimes now I cannot even persuade myself that it was a human being.

Crazed with jealousy and rage, blind and bestial with all the elemental passions of insulted manhood, I entered the house and sprang up the stairs to the door of my wife’s chamber. It was closed, but having tampered with its lock also, I easily entered, and despite the black darkness soon stood by the side of her bed. My groping hands told me that although disarranged it was unoccupied.

‘She is below,’ I thought, ‘and terrified by my entrance has evaded me in the darkness of the hall.’ With the purpose of seeking her I turned to leave the room, but took a wrong direction–the right one! My foot struck her, cowering in a corner of the room. Instantly my hands were at her throat, stifling a shriek, my knees were upon her struggling body; and there in the darkness, without a word of accusation or reproach, I strangled her till she died! There ends the dream. I have related it in the past tense, but the present would be the fitter form, for again and again the sombre tragedy re-enacts itself in my consciousness–over and over I lay the plan, I suffer the confirmation, I redress the wrong. Then all is blank; and afterward the rains beat against the grimy windowpanes, or the snows fall upon my scant attire, the wheels rattle in the squalid streets where my life lies in poverty and mean employment. If there is ever sunshine I do not recall it; if there are birds they do not sing.

There is another dream, another vision of the night. I stand among the shadows in a moonlit road. I am aware of another presence, but whose
I cannot rightly determine. In the shadow of a great dwelling I catch the gleam of white garments; then the figure of a woman confronts me in
the road–my murdered wife! There is death in the face; there are marks upon the throat. The eyes are fixed on mine with an infinite
gravity which is not reproach, nor hate, nor menace, nor anything less terrible than recognition. Before this awful apparition I retreat in
terror–a terror that is upon me as I write. I can no longer rightly shape the words. See! they–

Now I am calm, but truly there is no more to tell: the incident ends where it began–in darkness and in doubt.

Yes, I am again in control of myself: ‘the captain of my soul.’ But that is not respite; it is another stage and phase of expiation. My penance, constant in degree, is mutable in kind: one of its variants is tranquillity. After all, it is only a life-sentence. ‘To Hell for life’–that is a foolish penalty: the culprit chooses the duration of his punishment. To-day my term expires.

To each and all, the peace that was not mine.

3: Statement of the Late Julia Hetman, through the Medium Bayrolles

I had retired early and fallen almost immediately into a peaceful sleep, from which I awoke with that indefinable sense of peril which is, I think, a common experience in that other, earlier life. Of its unmeaning character, too, I was entirely persuaded, yet that did not banish it. My husband, Joel Hetman, was away from home; the servants slept in another part of the house. But these were familiar conditions; they had never before distressed me. Nevertheless, the strange terror grew so insupportable that conquering my reluctance to move I sat up and lit the lamp at my bedside. Contrary to my expectation this gave me no relief; the light seemed rather an added danger, for I reflected that it would shine out under the door, disclosing my presence to whatever evil thing might lurk outside. You that are still in the flesh, subject to horrors of the imagination, think what a monstrous fear that must be which seeks in darkness security from malevolent existences of the night. That is to spring to close quarters with an unseen enemy–the strategy of despair!

Extinguishing the lamp I pulled the bedclothing about my head and lay trembling and silent, unable to shriek, forgetful to pray. In this pitiable state I must have lain for what you call hours–with us there are no hours, there is no time.

At last it came–a soft, irregular sound of footfalls on the stairs! They were slow, hesitant, uncertain, as of something that did not see its way; to my disordered reason all the more terrifying for that, as the approach of some blind and mindless malevolence to which is no appeal. I even thought that I must have left the hall lamp burning and the groping of this creature proved it a monster of the night. This was foolish and inconsistent with my previous dread of the light, but what would you have? Fear has no brains; it is an idiot. The dismal witness that it bears and the cowardly counsel that it whispers are unrelated. We know this well, we who have passed into the Realm of Terror, who skulk in eternal dusk among the scenes of our former lives, invisible even to ourselves, and one another, yet hiding forlorn in lonely places; yearning for speech with our loved ones, yet dumb, and as fearful of them as they of us. Sometimes the disability is removed, the law suspended: by the deathless power of love or hate we break the spell–we are seen by those whom we would warn, console, or punish. What form we seem to them to bear we know not; we know only that we terrify even those whom we most wish to comfort, and from whom we most crave tenderness and sympathy.

Forgive, I pray you, this inconsequent digression by what was once a woman. You who consult us in this imperfect way–you do not understand.  You ask foolish questions about things unknown and things forbidden. Much that we know and could impart in our speech is meaningless in yours. We must communicate with you through a stammering intelligence in that small fraction of our language that you yourselves can speak. You think that we are of another world. No, we have knowledge of no world but yours, though for us it holds no sunlight, no warmth, no music, no laughter, no song of birds, nor any companionship. O God! what a thing it is to be a ghost, cowering and shivering in an altered world, a prey to apprehension and despair!

No, I did not die of fright: the Thing turned and went away. I heard it go down the stairs, hurriedly, I thought, as if itself in sudden fear. Then I rose to call for help. Hardly had my shaking hand found the door-knob when–merciful heaven!–I heard it returning. Its footfalls as it remounted the stairs were rapid, heavy and loud; they shook the house. I fled to an angle of the wall and crouched upon the floor. I tried to pray. I tried to call the name of my dear husband. Then I heard the door thrown open. There was an interval of unconsciousness, and when I revived I felt a strangling clutch upon my throat-felt my arms feebly beating against something that bore me backward–felt my tongue thrusting itself from between my teeth! And then I passed into this life.

No, I have no knowledge of what it was. The sum of what we knew at death is the measure of what we know afterward of all that went before. Of this existence we know many things, but no new light falls upon any page of that; in memory is written all of it that we can read. Here are no heights of truth overlooking the confused landscape of that dubitable domain. We still dwell in the Valley of the Shadow, lurk in its desolate places, peering from brambles and thickets at its mad, malign inhabitants. How should we have new knowledge of that fading past?

What I am about to relate happened on a night. We know when it is night, for then you retire to your houses and we can venture from our places of concealment to move unafraid about our old homes, to look in at the windows, even to enter and gaze upon your faces as you sleep. I had lingered long near the dwelling where I had been so cruelly changed to what I am, as we do while any that we love or hate remain. Vainly I had sought some method of manifestation, some way to make my continued existence and my great love and poignant pity understood by my husband and son. Always if they slept they would wake, or if in my desperation I dared approach them when they were awake, would turn toward me the terrible eyes of the living, frightening me by the glances that I sought from the purpose that I held.

On this night I had searched for them without success, fearing to find them; they were nowhere in the house, nor about the moonlit dawn. For, although the sun is lost to us forever, the moon, full-orbed or slender, remains to us. Sometimes it shines by night, sometimes by day, but always it rises and sets, as in that other life.

I left the lawn and moved in the white light and silence along the road, aimless and sorrowing. Suddenly I heard the voice of my poor husband in exclamations of astonishment, with that of my son in reassurance and dissuasion; and there by the shadow of a group of trees they stood–near, so near! Their faces were toward me, the eyes of the elder man fixed upon mine. He saw me–at last, at last, he saw me! In the consciousness of that, my terror fled as a cruel dream. The death-spell was broken: Love had conquered Law! Mad with exultation I shouted–I must have shouted,’ He sees, he sees: he will understand!’  Then, controlling myself, I moved forward, smiling and consciously beautiful, to offer myself to his arms, to comfort him with endearments, and, with my son’s hand in mine, to speak words that should restore the broken bonds between the living and the dead.

Alas! alas! his face went white with fear, his eyes were as those of a hunted animal. He backed away from me, as I advanced, and at last turned and fled into the wood–whither, it is not given to me to know.

To my poor boy, left doubly desolate, I have never been able to impart a sense of my presence. Soon he, too, must pass to this Life Invisible and be lost to me for ever.

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The House of the Past

by Algernon Blackwood

One night a Dream came to me and brought with her an old and rusty key. She led me across fields and sweet smelling lanes, where the hedges were already whispering to one another in the dark of the spring, till we came to a huge, gaunt house with staring windows and lofty roof half hidden in the shadows of very early morning. I noticed that the blinds were of heavy black, and that the house seemed wrapped in absolute stillness.

“This,” she whispered in my ear, “is the House of the Past. Come with me and we will go through some of its rooms and passages; but quickly, for I have not the key for long, and the night is very nearly over. Yet, perchance, you shall remember!”

The key made a dreadful noise as she turned it in the lock, and when the great door swung open into an empty hall and we went in, I heard sounds of whispering and weeping, and the rustling of clothes, as of people moving in their sleep and about to wake. Then, instantly, a spirit of intense sadness came over me, drenching me to the soul; my eyes began to burn and smart, and in my heart I became aware of a strange sensation as of the uncoiling of something that had been asleep for ages. My whole being, unable to resist, at once surrendered itself to the spirit of deepest melancholy, and the pain of my heart, as the Things moved and woke, became in a moment of time too strong for words…

As we advanced, the faint voices and sobbings fled away before us into the interior of the House, and I became conscious that the air was full of hands held aloft, of swaying garments, of drooping tresses, and of eyes so sad and wistful that the tears, which were already brimming in my own, held back for wonder at the sight of such intolerable yearning.

“Do not allow this sadness to overwhelm you,” whispered the Dream at my side.  “It is not often They wake. They sleep for years and years and years. The chambers are all full, and unless visitors such as we come to disturb them, they will never wake of their own accord. But, when one stirs, the sleep of the others is troubled, and they too awake, till the motion is communicated from one room to another and thus finally throughout the whole House…. Then, sometimes, the sadness is too great to be borne, and the mind weakens. For this reason Memory gives to them the sweetest and deepest sleep she has and she keeps this old key rusty from little use. But, listen now,” she added, holding up her hand: “do you not hear all through the House that trembling of the air like the distant murmur of falling water? And do you not now… perhaps… remember?”

Even before she spoke, I had already caught faintly the beginning of a new sound; and, now, deep in the cellars beneath our feet, and from the upper regions of the great House as well, I heard the whispering, and the rustling and the inward stirring of the sleeping Shadows. It rose like a chord swept softly from the huge unseen strings stretched somewhere among the foundations of the House, and its tremblings ran gently through its walls and ceilings. And I knew that I heard the slow awakening of the Ghosts of the Past.

Ah, me, with what terrible inrushing of sadness I stood with brimming eyes and listened to the faint dead voices of the long ago…. For, indeed, the whole House was awakening; and there presently rose to my nostrils the subtle, penetrating perfume of age: of letters, long preserved, with ink faded and ribbons pale; of scented tresses, golden and brown, laid away, ah, how tenderly! among pressed flowers that still held the inmost delicacy of their forgotten fragrance; the scented presence of lost memories — the intoxicating incense of the past. My eyes o’erflowed, my heart tightened and expanded, as I yielded myself up without reserve to these old, old influences of sound and smell. These Ghosts of the Past — forgotten in the tumult of more recent memories — thronged round me, took my hands in theirs, and, ever whispering of what I had so long forgot, ever sighing, shaking from their hair and garments the ineffable odours of the dead ages, led me through the vast House, from room to room, from floor to floor.

And the Ghosts — were not all equally clear to me. Some had indeed but the faintest life, and stirred me so little that they left only an indistinct, blurred impression in the air; while others gazed half reproachfully at me out of faded, colourless eyes, as if longing to recall themselves to my recollection; and then, seeing they were not recognised, floated back gently into the shadows of their room, to sleep again undisturbed till the Final Day, when I should not fail to know them.

“Many of these have slept so long,” said the Dream beside me, “that they wake only with the greatest difficulty. Once awake, however, they know and remember you even though you fail to remember them. For it is the rule in this House of the Past that, unless you recall them distinctly, remember precisely when you knew them and with what particular causes in your past evolution they were associated, they cannot stay awake. Unless you remember them when your eyes meet, unless their look of recognition is returned by you, they are obliged to go back to their sleep, silent and sorrowful, their hands unpressed, their voices unheard, to sleep and dream, deathless and patient, till….”

At this moment, her words died away suddenly into the distance and I became conscious of an overpowering sensation of delight and happiness. Something had touched me on the lips, and a strong, sweet fire flashed down into my heart and sent the blood rushing tumultuously through my veins. My pulses beat wildly, my skin glowed, my eyes grew tender, and the terrible sadness of the place was instantly dispelled as if by magic. Turning with a cry of joy, that was at once swallowed up in the chorus of weeping and sighing round me, I looked… and instinctively stretched forth my arms in a rapture of happiness towards… towards a vision of a Face… hair, lips, eyes; a cloth of gold lay about the fair neck, and the old, old perfume of the East – ye stars, how long ago – was in her breath. Her lips were again on mine; her hair over my eyes; her arms about my neck, and the love of her ancient soul pouring into mine out of eyes still starry and undimmed. Oh, the fierce tumult, the untold wonder, if I could only remember! …. That subtle, mist-dispelling odour of many ages ago, once so familiar… before the Hills of Atlantis were above the blue sea, or the sands had begun to form the bed of the Sphinx. Yet wait; it comes back; I begin to remember. Curtain upon curtain rises in my soul, and I can almost see beyond. But that hideous stretch of the years, awful and sinister, thousands uponthousands …. My heart shakes, and I am afraid. Another curtain rises and a new vista, farther than the others, comes into view, interminable, running to a point among thick mists. Lo, they too are moving, rising, lightening. At last, I shall see… already I begin to recall… the dusky skin… the Eastern grace, the wondrous eyes that held the knowledge of Buddha and the wisdom of Christ before these had even dreamed of attainment. As a dream within a dream, it steals over me again, taking compelling possession of my whole being… the slender form… the stars in that magical Eastern sky… the whispering winds among the palm trees… the murmur of the river’s waves and the music of the reeds where they bend and sigh in the shallows on the golden sand. Thousands of years ago in some aeonian distance. It fades a little and begins to pass; then seems again to rise. Ah me, that smile of the shining teeth… those lace-veined lids. Oh, who will help me to recall, for it is to far away, too dim, and I cannot wholly remember; though my lips are still tingling, and my arms still outstretched, it again begins to fade. Already there is a look of sadness too deep for words, as she realizes that she is unrecognized… she, whose mere presence could once extinguish for me the entire universe… and she goes back slowly, mournfully, silently to her dim, tremendous sleep, to dream and dream of the day when I must remember her and she must come where she belongs…

She peers at me from the end of the room where the Shadows already cover her and win her back with outstretched arms to her age-long sleep in the House of the Past.

Trembling all over, with the strange odour still in my nostrils and the fire in my heart, I turned away and followed my Dream up a broad staircase into another part of the House.

As we entered the upper corridors I heard the wind pass singing over the roof. Its music took possession of me until I felt as though my whole body were a single heart, aching, straining, throbbing as if it would break; and all because I heard the wind singing round the House of the Past.

“But, remember,” whispered the Dream, answering my unspoken wonder, “that you are listening to the song it has sung for untold ages into untold myriad ears. It carries back so appallingly far; and in that simple dirge, profound in its terrible monotony, are the associations and recollections of the joys, grieves, and struggles of all your previous existence. The wind, like the sea, speaks to the inmost memory,” she added, “and that is why its voice is one of such deep spiritual sadness. It is the song of things for ever incomplete, unfinished, unsatisfying.”

As we passed through the vaulted rooms, I noticed that no one stirred. There was no actual sound, only a general impression of deep, collective breathing, like the heave of a muffled ocean. But the rooms, I knew at once, were full to the walls, crowded, rows upon rows …. And, from the floors below, rose ever the murmur of the weeping Shadows as they returned to their sleep, and settled down again in the silence, the darkness, and the dust. The dust …. Ah, the dust that floated in this House of the Past, so thick, so penetrating; so fine, it filled the throat and eyes without pain; so fragrant, it soothed the senses and stilled the heart; so soft, it parched the tongue, without offence; yet so silently falling, gathering, settling over everything, that the air held it like a fine mist and the sleeping Shadows wore it for their shrouds.

“And these are the oldest,” said my Dream, “the longest asleep,” pointing to the crowded rows of silent sleepers. “None here have wakened for ages too many to count; and even if they woke you would not know them. They are, like the others, all your own, but they are the memories of your earliest stages along the great Path of Evolution. Some day, though, they will awake, and you must know them, and answer their questions, for they cannot die till they have exhausted themselves again through you who gave them birth.”

“Ah me,” I thought, only half listening to or understanding these last words, “what mothers, fathers, brothers may then be asleep in this room; what faithful lovers, what true friends, what ancient enemies! And to think that some day they will step forth and confront me, and I shall meet their eyes again, claim them, know them, forgive, and be forgiven… the memories of all my Past….”

I turned to speak to the Dream at my side, but she was already fading into dimness, and, as I looked again, the whole House melted away into the flush of the eastern sky, and I heard the birds singing and saw the clouds overhead veiling the stars in the light of coming day.