Yea,
though I walk through the valley of the Shadow: - Psalm of
David.
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 planet Jupiter is conjoined with the red ring of
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 artisan 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 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 upon the round table of ebony at which we sat,
each 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 undistinguishable,
and so faded 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 familiar
thing. And quivering awhile among the 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 indefinite, and was the shadow neither of
man nor of God- neither God of Greece, nor God of Chaldaea, 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 duskly upon our ears in
the well-remembered and familiar accents of many thousand departed friends.
