No signs of human life were anywhere visible nor audible; no rising smoke, no watch-dog's bark, no lowing of cattle, no shouts of children at play--nothing but that dismal burial-place, with its air of mystery and dread, due to my own disordered brain. Was I not becoming again delirious, there beyond human aid? Was it not indeed all an illusion of my madness? I called aloud the names of my wives and sons, reached out my hands in search of theirs, even as I walked among the crumbling stones and in the withered grass.
A noise behind me caused me to turn about. Awild animal--a lynx--was approaching. The thought came to me: if I break down here in the desert--if the fever return and I fail, this beast will be at my throat. I sprang toward it, shouting.
It trotted tranquilly by within a hand's-breadth of me and disappeared behind a rock.
A moment later a man's head appeared to rise out of the ground a short distance away. He was ascending the farther slope of a low hill whose crest was hardly to be distinguished from the general level. His whole figure soon came into view against the background of grey cloud. He was half naked, half clad in skins. His hair was unkempt, his beard long and ragged. In one hand he carried a bow and arrow; the other held a blazing torch with a long trail of black smoke. He walked slowly and with caution, as if he feared falling into some open grave concealed by the tall grass. This strange apparition surprised but did not alarm, and taking such a course as to intercept him I met him almost face to face, accosting him with the familiar salutation, 'God keep you.'
He gave no heed, nor did he arrest his pace.
'Good stranger,' I continued, 'I am ill and lost.
Direct me, I beseech you, to Carcosa.'
The man broke into a barbarous chant in an un-known tongue, passing on and away.
An owl on the branch of a decayed tree hooted dismally and was answered by another in the dis-tance. Looking upward, I saw through a sudden rift in the clouds Aldebaran and the Hyades! In all this there was a hint of night--the lynx, the man with the torch, the owl. Yet I saw--I saw even the stars in absence of the darkness. I saw, but was apparently not seen nor heard. Under what awful spell did I exist?
I seated myself at the root of a great tree, seri-ously to consider what it were best to do. That I was mad I could no longer doubt, yet recognized a ground of doubt in the conviction. Of fever I had no trace.
I had, withal, a sense of exhilaration and vigour altogether unknown to me--a feeling of mental and physical exaltation. My senses seemed all alert;I could feel the air as a ponderous substance; I could hear the silence.
A great root of the giant tree against whose trunk I leaned as I sat held enclosed in its grasp a slab of stone, a part of which protruded into a recess formed by another root. The stone was thus partly protected from the weather, though greatly decomposed. Its edges were worn round, its corners eaten away, its surface deeply furrowed and scaled. Glittering par-ticles of mica were visible in the earth about it--vestiges of its decomposition. This stone had ap-parently marked the grave out of which the tree had sprung ages ago. The tree's exacting roots had robbed the grave and made the stone a prisoner.
A sudden wind pushed some dry leaves and twigs from the uppermost face of the stone; I saw the low-relief letters of an inscription and bent to read it.
God in heaven! my name in full!--the date of my birth!--the date of my death!
A level shaft of light illuminated the whole side of the tree as I sprang to my feet in terror. The sun was rising in the rosy east. I stood between the tree and his broad red disk--no shadow darkened the trunk!
A chorus of howling wolves saluted the dawn. Isaw them sitting on their haunches, singly and in groups, on the summits of irregular mounds and tumuli filling a half of my desert prospect and ex-tending to the horizon. And then I knew that these were ruins of the ancient and famous city of Carcosa.
Such are the facts imparted to the medium Bay-rolles by the spirit Hoseib Alar Robardin.
