Chapter 1. The Face in the Mist
"We are no other than a moving row
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and
go."
Omar Khayyam
The horror first took concrete form amid that most unconcrete of all
things - a hashish dream. I was off on a timeless, spaceless journey through the
strange lands that belong to this state of being, a million miles away from
earth and all things earthly; yet I became cognizant that something was
reaching across the unknown voids - something that tore ruthlessly at the
separating curtains of my illusions and intruded itself into my visions.
I did not exactly return to ordinary
waking life, yet I was conscious of a seeing and a recognizing that was
unpleasant and seemed out of keeping with the dream I was at that time
enjoying. To one who has never known the delights of hashish, my explanation
must seem chaotic and impossible. Still, I was aware of a rending of mists and then
the Face intruded itself into my sight. I though at first it was merely a
skull; then I saw that it was a hideous yellow instead of white, and was
endowed with some horrid form of life. Eyes glimmered deep in the sockets and
the jaws moved as if in speech. The body, except for the high, thin shoulders,
was vague and indistinct, but the hands, which floated in the mists before and
below the skull, were horribly vivid and filled me with crawling fears. They
were like the hands of a mummy, long, lean and yellow, with knobby joints and
cruel curving talons.
Then,
to complete the vague horror which was swiftly taking possession of me, a voice
spoke - imagine a man so long dead that his vocal organ had grown rusty and
unaccustomed to speech. This was the thought which struck me and made my flesh
crawl as I listened.
"A strong brute and one who
might be useful somehow. See that he is given all the hashish he
requires."
Then the face began to recede, even
as I sensed that I was the subject of conversation, and the mists billowed and
began to close again. Yet for a single instant a scene stood out with startling
clarity. I gasped - or sought to. For over the high, strange shoulder of the
apparition another face stood out clearly for an instant, as if the owner
peered at me. Red lips, half-parted, long dark eyelashes, shading vivid eyes, a
shimmery cloud of hair. Over the shoulder of Horror, breathtaking beauty for an
instant looked at me.
Chapter 2. The Hashish Slave
"Up from Earth's center through the
Seventh Gate
I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn
sate."
Omar Khayyam
My dream of the skull-face was borne over that usually uncrossable gap
that lies between hashish enchantment and humdrum reality. I sat cross-legged
on a mat in Yun Shatu's Temple of Dreams and gathered the fading forces of my
decaying brain to the task of remembering events and faces.
This last dream was so entirely
different from any I had ever had before, that my waning interest was roused to
the point of inquiring as to its origin. When I first began to experiment with
hashish, I sought to find a physical or psychic basis for the wild flights of illusion
pertaining thereto, but of late I had been content to enjoy without seeking
cause and effect.
Whence this unaccountable sensation
of familiarity in regard to that vision? I took my throbbing head between my
hands and laboriously sought a clue. A living dead man and a girl of rare
beauty who had looked over his shoulder. Then I remembered.
Back in the fog of days and nights
which veils a hashish addict's memory, my money had given out. It seemed years
or possibly centuries, but my stagnant reason told me that it had probably been
only a few days. At any rate, I had presented myself at Yun Shatu's sordid dive
as usual and had been thrown out by the great Negro, Hassim, when it was learned
I had no more money.
My
universe crashing to pieces about me, and my nerves humming like taut piano
wires for the vital need that was mine, I crouched in the gutter and gibbered
bestially, till Hassim swaggered out and stilled my yammerings with a blow that
felled me, half-stunned.
Then as I presently rose,
staggeringly and with no thought save of the river which flowed with cool
murmur so near me - as I rose, a light hand was laid like the touch of a rose on
my arm. I turned with a frightened start, and stood spellbound before the
vision of loveliness which met my gaze. Dark eyes limpid with pity surveyed me
and the little hand on my ragged sleeve drew me toward the door of the Dream Temple.
I shrank back, but a low voice, soft and musical, urged me, and filled with a
trust that was strange, I shambled along with my beautiful guide.
At the door Hassim met us, cruel
hands lifted and a dark scowl on his ape-like brow, but as I cowered there,
expecting a blow, he halted before the girl's upraised hand and her word of
command, which had taken on an imperious note.
I did not understand what she said,
but I saw dimly, as in a fog, that she gave the black man money, and she led me
to a couch where she had me recline and arranged the cushions as if I were king
of Egypt instead of a ragged, dirty renegade who lived only for hashish. Her slim
hand was cool on my brow for a moment, and then she was gone and Yussef Ali came
bearing the stuff for which my very soul shrieked - and soon I was wandering
again through those strange and exotic countries
that only a
hashish slave knows.
Now as I sat on the mat and pondered
the dream of the skull-face, I wondered more. Since the unknown girl had led me
back into the dive, I had come and gone as before, when I had plenty of money
to pay Yun Shatu. Someone certainly was paying him for me, and while my subconscious
mind had told me it was the girl, my rusty brain had failed to grasp the fact
entirely, or to wonder why. What need of wondering? So someone paid and the
vivid-hued dreams continued, what cared I? But now I wondered. For the girl who
had protected me from Hassim and had brought the hashish for me was the same
girl I had seen in the skull-face dream.
Through the soddenness of my
degradation the lure of her struck like a knife piercing my heart and strangely
revived the memories of the days when I was a man like other men - not yet a
sullen, cringing slave of dreams. Far and dim they were, shimmery islands in
the mist of years - and what a dark sea lay between!
I looked at my ragged sleeve and the
dirty, claw-like hand protruding from it; I gazed through the hanging smoke
which fogged the sordid room, at the low bunks along the wall whereon lay the
blankly staring dreamers - slaves, like me, of hashish or of opium. I gazed at the
slippered Chinamen gliding softly to and fro bearing pipes or roasting balls of
concentrated purgatory over tiny flickering fires. I gazed at Hassim standing,
arms folded, beside the door like a great statue of black basalt.
And I shuddered and hid my face in
my hands because with the faint dawning of returning manhood, I knew that this
last and most cruel dream was futile - I had crossed an ocean over which I could
never return, had cut myself off from the world of normal men or women. Naught
remained now but to drown this dream as I had drowned all my others - swiftly
and with hope that I should soon attain that Ultimate
Ocean which lies
beyond all dreams.
So these fleeting moments of
lucidity, of longing, that tear aside the veils of all dope
slaves - unexplainable, without hope of attainment.
So I went back to my empty dreams,
to my phantasmagoria of illusions; but sometimes, like a sword cleaving a mist,
through the high lands and the low lands and seas of my visions floated, like half-forgotten
music, the sheen of dark eyes and shimmery hair.
You ask how I, Stephen Costigan,
American and a man of some attainments and culture, came to lie in a filthy
dive of London's Limehouse? The answer is simple - no jaded debauchee, I,
seeking new sensations in the mysteries of the Orient. I answer - Argonne!
Heavens, what deeps and heights of horror lurk in that one word alone! Shell-shocked - shell-torn.
Endless days and nights without end and roaring red hell over No Man's Land
where I lay shot and bayoneted to shreds of gory flesh. My body recovered, how
I know not; my mind never did.
And the leaping fires and shifting
shadows in my tortured brain drove me down and down, along the stairs of
degradation, uncaring until at last I found surcease in Yun Shatu's Temple of
Dreams, where I slew my red dreams in other dreams - the dreams of hashish
whereby a man may descend to the lower pits of the reddest hells or soar into those
unnamable heights where the stars are diamond pinpoints beneath his feet.
Not the visions of the sot, the
beast, were mine. I attained the unattainable, stood face to face with the unknown
and in cosmic calmness knew the unguessable. And was content after a fashion,
until the sight of burnished hair and scarlet lips swept away my dream-built universe
and left me shuddering among its ruins.
