After threading many streets that were still darker and narrower than those before traversed, I found a second inn, bearing a similar weather-worn sign, and in all other respects very much like the first. The door was also barred, and I knocked thereon in much trepidation, and was in no manner surprised when a second individual with a cadaverous face informed me in tones of sepulchral solemnity:
“We cannot accommodate you. All the rooms have been taken by musicians and mourners who will serve at the obsequies of the lady Mariel; and all the wine has been reserved for their use.”
Now I began to dread the city about me with a manifold fear: for apparently the whole business of the people of Malnéant consisted of preparations for the funeral of this lady Mariel, whether or not she was the same Mariel whom I had known. And it began to be obvious that I must walk the streets of the city all night because of these same preparations. All at once, an overwhelming weariness was mingled with my nightmare terror and perplexity.
I had not long continued my peregrinations, after leaving the second inn, when the bells were tolled once more. For the first time, I found it possible to identify their source: they were in the spires of a great cathedral which loomed immediately before me through the fog. Some people were entering the cathedral, and a curiosity, which I knew to be both morbid and perilous, prompted me to follow them. Here, I somehow felt, I should be able to learn more regarding the mystery that tormented me.
All was dim within, and the light of many tapers scarcely served to illumine the vast nave and altar. Masses were being said by priests in black whose faces I could not see distinctly; and to me, their chanting was like words in a dream; and I could hear nothing, and nothing was plainly visible in all the place, except a bier of opulent fabrics, on which there lay a motionless form in white. Flowers of many hues had been strewn upon the bier, and their fragrance filled the air with a drowsy languor, with an anodyne that seemed to drug my heart and brain. Such flowers had been cast on the bier of Mariel; and even thus, at her funeral, I had been overcome by a momentary dulling of the senses because of their perfume.
I became dimly aware that someone was at my elbow. With eyes still intent on the bier, I asked:
“Who is it that lies yonder, for whom these masses are being said and these bells are rung?” And a slow, sepulchral voice replied:
“It is the lady Mariel, who died yesterday and who will be interred tomorrow in the vaults of her ancestors. If you wish, you may go forward and gaze upon her.”
So I went down the aisle of the cathedral, even to the side of the bier, whose opulent fabrics trailed on the cold flags. And the face of her who lay thereon, with a tranquil smile upon the lips, and tender shadows upon the shut eyelids, was the face of the Mariel I had loved, and of none other. The tides of time were frozen in their flowing; and all that was or had been or could be, all of the world that existed aside from her, became as fading shadows; and even as once before (was it aeons or instants ago?), my soul was locked in the marble hell of its supreme grief and regret. I could not move, I could not cry out or even weep, for my very tears were turned to ice. And now I knew with a terrible certitude that this one event, the death of the lady Mariel, had drawn apart from all other happenings, had broken away from the sequence of time and had found for itself a setting of appropriate gloom and solemnity; or perhaps had even built around itself the whole enormous maze of that spectral city, in which to abide my destined return among the mists of a deceptive oblivion.
At length, with an awful effort of will, I turned my eyes away; and leaving the cathedral with steps that were both hurried and leaden, I sought to find an egress from the dismal labyrinth of Malnéant to the gate by which I had entered. But this was by no means easy, and I must have roamed for hours in alleys blind and stifling as tombs, and along the tortuous, self-reverting thoroughfares, ere I came to a familiar street and was able henceforward to direct my paces with something of surety. And a dull and sunless daylight was dawning behind the mists when I crossed the bridge and came again to the road that would lead me away from that fatal city.
Since then, I have wandered long, and in many places. But never again have I cared to revisit those old-world realms of fog and mist, for fear that I should come once more to Malnéant, and find that its people are still busied with their preparations for the obsequies of the lady Mariel.
THE RESURRECTION OF
THE RATTLESNAKE
“No, as I’ve told you fellows before, I haven’t a red cent’s worth of faith in the supernatural.”
The speaker was Arthur Avilton, whose tales of the ghostly and macabre had often been compared to Poe, Bierce and Machen. He was a master of imaginative horrors, with a command of diabolically convincing details, of monstrous cobweb suggestions, that had often laid a singular spell on the minds of readers who were not ordinarily attracted or impressed by literature of that type. It was his own boast, often made, that all his effects were secured in a purely ratiocinative, even scientific manner, by playing on the element of subconscious dread, the ancestral superstition latent in most human beings; but he claimed that he himself was utterly incredulous of anything occult or phantasmal, and that he had never in his life known the slightest tremor of fear concerning such things.
Avilton’s listeners looked at him a little questioningly. They were John Godfrey, a young landscape painter, and Emil Schuler, a rich dilettante, who played in alternation with literature and music, but was not serious in his attentions to either. Both were old friends and admirers of Avilton, at whose house on Sutter Street, in San Francisco, they had met by chance that afternoon. Avilton had suspended work on a new story to chat with them and smoke a sociable pipe. He still sat at his writing-table, with a pile of neatly written foolscap before him. His appearance was as normal and non-eccentric as his handwriting, and he might have been a lawyer or doctor or chemist, rather than a concocter of bizarre fiction. The room, his library, was quite luxurious, in a sober, gentlemanly sort of fashion, and there was little of the outré in its furnishings. The only unusual notes were struck by two heavy brass candlesticks on his table, wrought in the form of rearing serpents, and a stuffed rattlesnake that was coiled on top of one of the low bookcases.
“Well,” observed Godfrey, “if anything could convince me of the reality of the supernatural, it would be some of your stories, Avilton. I always read them by broad daylight—I wouldn’t do it after dark on a bet… By the way, what’s the yarn you are working on now?”
“It’s about a stuffed serpent that suddenly comes to life,” replied Avilton. “I’m calling it ‘The Resurrection of the Rattlesnake’. I got the idea while I was looking at my rattler this morning.”
“And I suppose you’ll sit here by candlelight tonight,” put in Schuler, “and go on with your cheerful little horror without turning a hair.” It was well known that Avilton did much of his writing at night.
Avilton smiled. “Darkness always helps me to concentrate. And, considering that so much of the action in my tales is nocturnal, the time is not inappropriate.”
“You’re welcome,” said Schuler, in a jocular tone. He arose to go, and Godfrey also found that it was time to depart.