The Collected Stories

by Earl

  Perched on the broad tor of a spreading hill, the castle seemed to be battling the slimy, curling, electric-blue mists which hovered, almost sentiently, over this queer land. Hurling an unvoiced challenge, the hoary man-made edifice stood like a symbol of Man’s eternal battle against the forces of Nature, and it brought a warm glow to my somewhat chilled heart and mind.

  Breaking from my revery, I decided to approach the castle, where surely I must find people of some sort who would help me in my unprecedented predicament. Hardly had I started, when I observed the whirling mists grow suddenly thicker all about the castle, engulfing it completely. At the same time, the baffling, intangible stuff—which was neither moist, nor cool, nor definable to my sense of touch—closed around me inexorably, as though the skies above had fallen.

  There was a strange sensation of motion. . . .

  I started up from the sofa bewildered. Here I was in my room, the radio going, the moonlight bathing my near-nudeness—all normal and sensible as it should be. I rubbed my eyes, picked up the watch-fob with the glinting sapphire from where it had fallen on the carpet, and laughed in relief. What a dream!

  AUGUST 7th—Weather still sultry, as it has been now for a week. It is really a trial to do anything. I could write here of the day’s little things—getting called down for day-dreaming at the office, for instance.

  But the big thing that’s burning in my brain is not what happened today while I was awake, but instead what I . . . well, what I dreamed again!

  Well, speculation aside [The diary is evidently incomplete here.—EANDO.] . . . this evening when I came home from work I made myself comfortable, almost naked, on the sofa—it’s getting to be a habit these hot summer evenings—and listening to the radio in the dark. At the time I did not realize how identically things happened as they did four evenings ago, even when the fob again dangled from my vest pocket, twinkling its inset sapphire in the moonlight before my blank eyes. I reached for it idly, peering into its iridescent depths at the bubbles that seemed to froth about as though alive.

  Suddenly, with a start, I remembered my dream of that other evening, and I peered at it in deeper interest. Maybe it was just the humidity, or my being tired; again it may have been some sort of hypnotic influence from the sparkling shafts of fiery blues and violets in my heavy eyes, but I just winked out like a light there on the sofa. Then came my dream. . . .

  Immersed in a world of lapis-lazuli fog, I felt myself floating downward through strata of indigo, royal blue, pale ultramarine, and cerulean shades. Then it changed and I was cooled in a cauldron of frost blue and ice blue, gelid and congealed blue. With a shower of sparkles I slithered through electric blues, China blues, crystal blues. Blissfully soothed, I soared as a bird might through opal blues, sky blues, mauve blues, and water blues. Like an aimless feather I fell through rosy blues, iridescent blues, limpid blues, and topaz blues. Then, with a nameless uneasiness coming over me, I drifted in a mist of melancholy blue, which changed abruptly to poison and oppressive blues.

  The last wisps of dull and venom blue whirled away fitfully, and with a crawling of my spine I found myself lying full length in a ghastly glow of phosphorescent light. The full remembrance of that other horrible experience came upon me; the breath choked in my throat. Was I again in that sepulchral crypt which the spiders had made their home for unmolested years?

  It was the same place! With a gasp I sat up, already hearing the maddening echoes and ghostly mockings that seemed part of this subterranean cavern. I prepared to leap from the couch, tigerishly wild in my desire to escape—but a hand pressed lightly on my shoulder!

  I twisted my head to one side, in the direction of the little table, and then relaxed, still sitting up on the couch. There beside me was a curious old man; his hand rested soothingly on my shoulder. I saw then that the huge tome was open and there were finger marks in the dust of the table. The old man gazed at me with eager eyes, and his presence so dispelled the funereal atmosphere of the place that I smiled a greeting to him, too astounded yet to speak. He then pressed my shoulder more firmly, indicating I should lie down, and this I did, watching him as he turned to the open volume on the table.

  Small and bent with great age, the venerable old fellow, chin adorned with a long silvery beard, stooped over the book, reading. He was dressed outlandishly, like a medieval priest of some wealthy cult, his toga resplendent with golden threads among silken designs alien to my eye. On his head was a bulky miter-like hat, inset with sparkling gems, oriental in aspect; yet the face beneath it was the face of a white man, noble with centuries of gentle breeding. His features were puzzling, Arabic in fineness and complexion, but with thin, Nordic lips and grave blue eyes. His gnarled fingers, as he turned the pages of the tome, flashed gem-encrusted rings in the pale rosy glow from above.

  As I fretted in impatience, my fingers accidentally encountered something strapped across my chest, and for the first time I looked down at my body. That other time I had been here I had not noticed—but now I saw that I was clothed in a harness of soft leather whose broad straps lay against my bare flesh. At my waist, attached to a gem-studded belt, was a short skirt of silken texture, embellished with queer symbols. My legs and arms were bare, but one finger of each hand held a golden ring, and on my feet were sandals of thick leather tied to my ankles with thongs of meshed silver. I also noticed that the muscles of my arms and legs were powerful and bulging, even in repose, and the breadth of my chest was unbelievable. Unless it was a trick of the flickering glow from the ceiling, I was a veritable giant of a man with the strength of a bear! Plainly, it was not I—as I knew myself.

  I had no further time to conjecture over this miraculous thing, for the aged man turned from his book and addressed me in a solemn voice. He spoke softly and with apparent respect, but with articulations I had never heard before! He ended after a moment with a note of interrogation, and I shook my head bewildered. A look of surprize came to his features, and also in his eyes I saw a gleam of uneasiness. He spoke again, more slowly and distinctly, but I shook my head vigorously.

  Thereupon the old man stared at me perplexedly, and I, just as puzzled, stared back at him. For a tiny instant I had seemed to understand him—felt the impression of subtle familiarity—but it did not last, and we were silent before each other after I tried a few words of English and French on him.

  I waited for him to make the next move, and suddenly the old priest—somehow he impressed me as a priest or patriarch—turned to his book and feverishly leafed its yellowed pages. When next he turned to me, he had in his hand a small thin rod of bone, with a carved metal tip. Waving the wand over my face in curious configurations, he muttered a cadence that writhed through the air like the sibilant hissing of snakes. I felt my senses reel as the rhythmic rune drummed into my ears, and the fogs of blueness that I knew so well danced before my eyes in legions of shade and tone. Royal blue and plum blue, tepid blue and wash blue—in tune with his softly modulated accents, they contorted in weird designs before me, forming mystic symbols and achingly remembered, yet not cognizable, letter forms.

  Then a smoke-curl of rich, vibrating blue weaved purposefully in the air and wound itself on an invisible framework into a symbol that seemed to burn into my brain and put it afire. With searing force the symbol drummed at the closed portals of my subconscious mind, and suddenly poured through.

  I SPRANG up with a cry, for it seemed my brain was bathed in hot acid, and shouted for the old priest to stop. He withdrew his weaving wand, and hushed his hypnotic chant; and the flames in my brain died away. Then the venerable old man smiled in a pleased manner, for I had spoken to him in his own tongue!

  “You understand at last, Prince Dahrin, do you not?”

  “Yes,” I answered fluently in the strange tongue. “Not only your words, but—other things. . . . It is not clear in my mind.”

  “Do you know me—and yourself?”

  “I know your name to be Shorro-Kal, and mine to be Prince Dahrin, but beyon
d that——”

  I stopped in perplexity. The aged man stroked his silvery beard thoughtfully, gazing at me with quiet eyes. Presently he said: “You have heard these names before: Jorentia—the Miskovites—Castle Oppor—Princess Alvena?”

  “Yes, yes!” I cried, each name arousing strangely familiar, but always submerged, memories. “Yet of the connection they have with me, I know nothing, save a vague impression that they mean much to me——”

  “And you to them,” finished Shorro-Kal cryptically.

  “Tell me more!” I said then. “Tell me all about those things. Somehow I want to know more. What land is this? What is this clammy, underground vault in which I have awakened from some mysterious sleep?”

  I panted in my eagerness, for the power of the mystic blue symbol seemed to have charged my mind like an electric battery, and it had opened doors beyond which were scenes clouded in vagueness and mystery.

  “Do not exert yourself, Prince Dahrin,” admonished Shorro-Kal. “You have just awakened from a long, mesmeric sleep, and your heart and nerves must not be taxed with the duties of wakeful life too suddenly.”

  I lay back at his words, and he continued: “I will tell you a few things to refresh the memory which in your long sleep has seemed to become sadly lacking. Jorentia, then, is this land in which we live, and of which you are the last of its extraregal princes. The Miskovites are the race who hold us in bondage, and may Tordok—who is our great God—blast them to damnation soon if I fail in my last desperate attempt to free our fair land of them. Castle Oppor—so old that the records of its construction have been lost—is, of course, our royal stronghold. And the Princess Alvena—do you not know her, Prince Dahrin? Can you not remember that you and she were——”

  He paused suggestively. My mind seemed to break into a turmoil; fleeting impressions drummed at the portals of my waking thought—impressions of a ravishingly beautiful girl, whose grave, troubled eyes seemed to look at me sadly. For a long minute I attempted to remember more, but without success.

  I relaxed wearily. “No, I do not, Shorro-Kal. She is much to me, it seems, but——” I pressed a puzzled hand to my forehead.

  Shorro-Kal shook his head sorrowfully. “Strange!—strange indeed that you cannot remember her. Well, all in good time. I am sure that once you have seen Castle Oppor and those surroundings so familiar to you, memory will come back. As for this underground chamber, it is an ancient burial place for knaves and evildoers who were executed by royal decree. Under this chamber, which is but a connection to the unnumbered catacombs below, lie the bones of countless evil men, for the kings of Jorentia, in olden times, buried them here for ages. It is said that their spirits sometimes wander through the upper labyrinths, in one part of which we are now, and drive to madness any mortals who dare to disturb their rest.”

  “How well I know!” I agreed, vehemently. “During my last period of wakefulness, I could feel their presence—somehow. By the way, that last time I fell to unconsciousness outside these corridors—how was I brought back here?” Shorro-Kal nodded. “I found you lying by the road and carried you back in, as there is much danger in your being outside at present. I have visited this place every day for a long time—ever since you were immersed in your . . . sleep.”

  “You carried me in!” I smiled incredulously. “I doubt you could have dragged me this far, much less carried me.”

  “Ah, Prince Dahrin,” replied my companion with an odd smile, “have you forgotten who I am? I have powers that at will can give me the strength of ten men. Forget not that I, and I alone, have dared to use these forbidden chambers of the dead, whose spirits have vainly tried to bring about my ruin.”

  “But why have you used this chamber, defying the spirits? And how long have I been asleep? And what sickness has been upon me? This is a most uncanny place for a sick-bed!”

  I looked into the grave eyes of the aged priest, but his answer was evasive: “You have heard enough for the present, Prince Dahrin. You must now go to sleep, and awake to another life——”

  The old priest took from an inner part of his robe the wand of bone and metal and waved it before my face, mumbling some mysterious incantation that soothed me to sleep. The fogs of blue descended over me, shimmering in hues that were of many colors and yet were nothing but blue. Shorro-Kal faded into the ultra-marine mists and with him the chamber and all in it. . . .

  Then I was awake, blinking in astonishment at the room revealed in the moonlight, my ears suddenly filled with the music of a dance orchestra from the radio. The sapphire and fob lay on the floor.

  For an hour I just sat and thought over the vividness of my dream. Now I am writing and it is after midnight. After reading over what I have written, I see that I have made it sound as though it actually happened. To the critical eye it would seem that the thing must be mostly imagination, as dreams are never so well ordered nor so logical in their sequence. Yet that is exactly what the dream was in detail!

  Dual personality . . . splitting of the consciousness . . . an unborn twin . . . something of that sort. . . . [There are apparently several deletions at this point.—EANDO.]

  As for the “blue” complex in this and that other dream—that comes from falling asleep while gazing at the sapphire. Perhaps, just as an experiment, I shall try—days from now when the memory of this dream is hazy—to put myself asleep again with the sapphire in front of my eyes, and see if I get another “blue” dream out of it.

  AUGUST 20th—Tonight I shall not attempt to put any trivialities at all under this date, nor shall I deny that in some sixteen hours, the last half-hour has been the most eventful—the last half-hour, and that taken up with but a dream!

  Looking bade at the entries of the 3rd, and again the 7th, I see that those dreams I had were singularly detailed, as though being real experiences. I also notice that at the end of the entry for the 7th, I promised to try the “experiment” again, just for curiosity, using die sapphire as—well, as an inducer of sleep. I did just that, and with an uncanny ease I fell into sleep and—the dream. That occurred just an hour ago, and somehow I feel, instinctively, that I am being drawn into something above and beyond ordinary things. The sapphire seems to exert a powerful influence on me when I am alone in the dark. Imagination?—hypersensitivity?—delusion?—I have ceased groping for an explanation. I record the dream I had under the influence of tire gem in my fob—my mother’s parting, loving gift—just as it came to me. . . .

  First of all, there was again that indescribable drift through layers of blueness. All the words in our language could not begin to do justice to the strangeness of it, nor the beauty of it. There were thousands of blues, all different—all blue. Then again the awakening in the underground cavern which lies over the dust of countless dead. Just as twice before, there was the ghostly light shimmering on a myriad of spider webs, on clammy clay Avails, on the table, and on my body—that new and powerful body dressed in the abbreviated harness of a Prince of Jorentia. There I was lying; a few minutes before I had been George Borland, citizen of the United States, in a world that knew nothing of the dreamland of Jorentia.

  I turned my eyes to find Shorro-Kal thumbing through the huge tome on the table, stroking his long gray beard with gnarled old fingers. I called his name, sitting up, and he turned with a bow and a weaving salute of his old hands.

  “You have slept long, Prince Dahrin,” were his first words. “Tordok has been good, and I think you are fully recovered from that spell which has lain on you for so long.”

  “I am greatly refreshed, Shorro-Kal,” I returned, “but tormented by a hunger nearly as great as my curiosity.”

  The old priest smiled. “Then come, Prince. I shall this day satisfy both hungers—of the mind and of the body. Put your strong young body to that door and open the way to the outside.”

  I sprang from my couch with alacrity, and pushed the huge, ponderous door outward, revealing the midnight darkness of the passage beyond. I shivered in remembrance of how the
first time I had awakened alone and had traversed the stygian corridor, my mind a prey to the evil spirits that haunted the labyrinths. But my venerable companion went first through the doorway, and in his hand he held the bone wand, from whose oddly shaped metal tip now shone a steady white light like a beacon. We walked along in the deserted, dank cavern, and I saw it to be curved and steadily rising. At the second door I again applied my shoulder, exulting in the tremendous strength of my lithe young body.

  Then we were in the lighted pit whose egress to the outer air was so carefully camouflaged with bushes, and from there we stepped to the comparative brilliance of daylight, although I saw that again the skies were overcast with a leaden blue pall.

  Saying never a word, Shorro-Kal whistled with puckered lips and from a clump of trees near by came a figure leading three horses. To Prince Dahrin, there was nothing in the horses to excite wonder, but in the memory of George Borland (as I now write) they were creatures having no comparison on earth. Somehow, I can find no words to describe the difference, because the variations were not such as having two extra legs, or feathers instead of hair, or anything of that sort. They were horses, but as subtly different from earthly horses as the topography I saw, though earth-like, was yet not earth-like!

  The lackey, having come up, bowed and saluted me more elaborately than Shorro-Kal had done before, and looked at me with a light of worship in his eyes.

  I was mystified by this and also by his words of greeting: “Hall, noble Prince Dahrin! There will be great rejoicing at Castle Oppor with the return of her great prince, long thought dead!”

  I turned to the old priest inquiringly, but he was already trying to mount one of the steeds, and I ran to help him, the lackey beside me. Then, at Shorro-Kal’s gesture, I vaulted lightly into my own saddle, intuitively knowing that I had ridden horses all my life here in Jorentia. At a slow pace, for the old priest was not able to ride at a gallop, we went a piece along the road paved with cemented blocks of wood, toward the castle that I had seen upon my first awakening. But the lackey, in the lead, suddenly veered into the forest before we had gone halfway, following an obscure trail that wound among the trees. Mystified, I followed, seeing that Shorro-Kal also went that way.