 | Tales of the grotesque and arabesque |  |
SHADOW.
A FABLE.
Ye who read are still among the living, but I who
write shall have long since gone my way into the
region of shadows. For indeed strange things shall
happen, and secret things be known, and many centuries
shall pass away ere these memorials be seen
of men. And when seen there will be some to disbelieve,
and some to doubt, and yet a few who will
find much to ponder upon in the characters here
graven with a stylus of iron.
The year had been a year of terror, and of feelings
more intense than terror for which there is no
name upon the earth. For many prodigies and
signs had taken place, and far and wide, over sea
and land, the black wings of the Pestilence were
spread abroad. To those, nevertheless, cunning in
the stars, it was not unknown that the heavens
wore an aspect of ill; and to me, the Greek Oinos,
among others, it was evident that now had arrived
the alternation of that seven hundred and ninety-fourth
year when, at the entrance of Aries, the
terrible Saturnus. The peculiar spirit of the skies,
if I mistake not greatly, made itself manifest, not
only in the physical orb of the earth, but in the
souls, imaginations, and meditations of mankind.
Over some flasks of the red Chian wine, within
the walls of a noble hall, in a dim city called Ptolemais,
we sat, at night, a company of seven. And
to our chamber there was no entrance save by a
lofty door of brass: and the door was fashioned by
the artizan Corinnos, and, being of rare workmanship,
was fastened from within. Black draperies,
likewise, in the gloomy room, shut out from our
view the moon, the lurid stars, and the peopleless
streets—but the boding and the memory of Evil,
they would not be so excluded. There were things
around us and about of which I can render no distinct
account—things material and spiritual. Heaviness
in the atmosphere—a sense of suffocation—
anxiety—and above all, that terrible state of existence
which the nervous experience when the
senses are keenly living and awake, and meanwhile
the powers of thought lie dormant. A dead weight
hung upon us. It hung upon our limbs—upon the
household furniture—upon the goblets from which
we drank; and all things were depressed, and borne
down thereby—all things save only the flames of
the seven iron lamps which illumined our revel.
Uprearing themselves in tall slender lines of light,
they thus remained burning all pallid and motionless;
and in the mirror which their lustre formed
of us there assembled beheld the pallor of his own
countenance, and the unquiet glare in the downcast
eyes of his companions. Yet we laughed and were
merry in our proper way—which was hysterical;
and sang the songs of Anacreon—which are madness;
and drank deeply—although the purple wine
reminded us of blood. For there was yet another
tenant of our chamber in the person of young Zoilus.
Dead, and at full length he lay, enshrouded—the
genius and the demon of the scene. Alas! he bore
no portion in our mirth, save that his countenance,
distorted with the plague, and his eyes in which
Death had but half extinguished the fire of the
pestilence, seemed to take such interest in our merriment
as the dead may haply take in the merriment
of those who are to die. But although I, Oinos, felt
that the eyes of the departed were upon me, still I
forced myself not to perceive the bitterness of their
expression, and, gazing down steadily into the
depths of the ebony mirror, sang with a loud and
sonorous voice the songs of the son of Teios. But
gradually my songs they ceased, and their echoes,
rolling afar off among the sable draperies of the
chamber, became weak, and indistinguishable, and
so fainted away. And lo! from among those sable
draperies where the sounds of the song departed,
there came forth a dark and undefined shadow—a
shadow such as the moon, when low in heaven,
might fashion from the figure of a man: but it was
the shadow neither of man, nor of God, nor of any
draperies of the room, it at length rested in full view
upon the surface of the door of brass. But the
shadow was vague, and formless, and indefinitive,
and was the shadow neither of man nor God—
neither God of Greece, nor God of Chaldæa, nor any
Egyptian God. And the shadow rested upon the
brazen doorway, and under the arch of the entablature
of the door, and moved not, nor spoke any
word, but there became stationary and remained.
And the door whereupon the shadow rested was, if
I remember aright, over against the feet of the young
Zoilus enshrouded. But we, the seven there assembled,
having seen the shadow as it came out
from among the draperies, dared not steadily behold
it, but cast down our eyes, and gazed continually
into the depths of the mirror of ebony. And at
length I, Oinos, speaking some low words, demanded
of the shadow its dwelling and its appellation. And
the shadow answered, “I am SHADOW, and my
dwelling is near to the Catacombs of Ptolemais, and
hard by those dim plains of Helusion which border
upon the foul Charonian canal.” And then did we,
the seven, start from our seats in horror, and stand
trembling, and shuddering, and aghast: for the tones
in the voice of the shadow were not the tones of any
one being, but of a multitude of beings, and, varying
in their cadences from syllable to syllable, fell duskily
upon our ears in the well remembered and familiar
accents of many thousand departed friends.
| Tales of the grotesque and arabesque | |