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 feeling 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 enjoined 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 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 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 an 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
Teos. 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 undefiled 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
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.
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