Extraordinary Tales Page #3

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do you still sleep?

Yes,

no.

I have been sleeping

and now...

Now...

I am dead.

It was evident that,

so far, death,

or what is usually termed death,

had been arrested

by the mesmeric process.

The experiment is completed.

But... are we sure he's dead?

You've heard it like me, right?

Is your scientific mind

restricted

by that which you can only see

or hear yourself?

From this period

until the close of last week,

an interval of

nearly seven months,

we continued to make daily calls

at M. Valdemar's house.

I managed to convince my

colleagues to leave M. Valdemar

in this state and

to monitor him.

First, we confined ourselves

to simple daily observations.

But soon, we were obliged

to face the facts.

Gentlemen,

we are not advancing our work.

These observations

are too superficial.

You still wish to

dissect the subject

like a laboratory animal.

Without going that far,

we can engage in

some light tests.

You are mistaken! I...

What are you suggesting, Dr. L?

Well, we could always...

let it be.

There is nothing further

to be done.

All of the subject's vital

functions are inert.

He has stopped breathing, his

heart no longer beats, yet...

in seven months, decomposition

has not attacked his body

and no treatment has

cured his illness.

Medically, M. Valdemar is dead.

Let's wake him up.

You're talking nonsense!

These thoughts are sacrilege!

Insanity!

You would not agree

to put him in this state

and now you refuse

to release him from it?

I...

Let it go my friend,

Dr. P is right.

M. Valdemar is legally dead.

All we can do now

is to offer him a decent burial.

It was on Friday last

that we finally resolved

to make the experiment

of awakening,

or attempting to awaken him.

For the purpose of

relieving M. Valdemar

from the mesmeric trance,

I made use of the

customary passes.

These, for a time,

were unsuccessful.

M. Valdemar,

can you explain to us what your

feelings or wishes are now?

For God's sake!

Quick! Quick!

Put me to sleep!

Or Waken me! Quick!

I say to you that I am dead!

Dead!

Dead!!!

For what really

occurred, however,

it is quite impossible

that any living human

could have been prepared.

And as I can see, he lost...

lost to me.

He was so close...

so close to sparing M. Valdemar

from your fatal embrace.

Was that a crime?

A crime against fate.

And your sentence

was a life of endless sorrow.

Stop with your

tortured mind games.

There is nothing worse than

imagining your own death.

Isn't it?

Nothing worse than

to fear eternity.

I wrote a story once.

A tale about someone

who relived the hell

of dying a thousand deaths.

Perhaps a mirror where you

saw yourself reflected,

every image

a different death.

I was sick...

sick to death with

that long agony.

And when they unbound me, I felt

that my senses were leaving me.

The sentence...

the dread sentence of death...

was the last of

distinct accentuation

which reached my ears.

After that,

the sound of the inquisitorial

voices seemed merged

into one dreamy

indeterminate hum.

I heard no more.

Yet, for a while,

I saw the lips of the judges.

I saw them pronouncing

the syllables of my name,

and I shuddered

because I heard no sound.

The tall candles sank

into nothingness;

their flames went out.

The blackness of darkness

supervened.

All sensations appeared

swallowed up in a mad

rushing descent as of the soul

into Hades.

Then silence, and stillness,

night were the universe.

After this I call to mind

flatness and dampness;

and then all the

madness of a memory

which busies itself

among forbidden things.

So far, I had not

opened my eyes.

I dreaded the first glance

at objects around me.

My worst thoughts, then,

were confirmed.

The blackness of eternal night

encompassed me.

I struggled for breath.

The atmosphere was

intolerably close.

But where

and in what state was I?

The condemned to death, I knew,

perished usually

at the autos-da-fe,

and one of

these had been held

on the very night

of the day of my trial.

Had I been remanded

to my dungeon,

to await the next

sacrifice, which

would not take

place for many months?

And now,

there came thronging

upon my recollection

a thousand vague rumors

of the horrors of Toledo.

Of the dungeons

there had been

strange things narrated,

strange, and too

ghastly to repeat.

Was I left to

perish of starvation

in this subterranean

world of darkness;

or what fate,

perhaps even more fearful,

awaited me?

My outstretched hands at length

encountered some solid

obstruction.

It was a wall,

I followed it up.

This process, however,

afforded me no means

of ascertaining

the dimensions of my dungeon.

Another step before my fall,

and the world had

seen me no more.

And the death just avoided,

was of that very character

which I had regarded

as fabulous and frivolous

in the tales regarding

the Inquisition.

To the victims of its tyranny,

there was the choice of death

with its direst physical

agonies,

or death with its most hideous

moral horrors.

I had been reserved

for the latter.

I was consumed with

intolerable thirst.

This thirst it appeared to be

the design of my persecutors

to stimulate:

for the food in

the dish was meat

pungently seasoned.

It must have been drugged;

for scarcely had I drunk,

before I became

irresistibly drowsy.

I could no longer doubt

the doom prepared for me

by monkish ingenuity in torture.

My cognizance of the pit

had become known

to the inquisitorial.

Having failed to fall,

it was no part of the demon plan

to hurl me into the abyss,

and thus a different and a

milder destruction awaited me.

I counted the rushing

vibrations of the steel!

Inch by inch...

line by line...

with a descent only appreciable

at intervals that seemed ages.

Down... steadily down it crept.

Down... certainly,

relentlessly down!

It vibrated within three inches

of my bosom!

I prayed for its

more speedy descent.

I grew frantically mad,

and struggled

to force myself upward

against the sweep

of the fearful scimitar.

For the moment, at least,

I was free.

Free! And in the grasp

of the Inquisition!

Free!

I had but escaped death

in one form of agony,

to be delivered unto worse

than death in some other.

For a wild moment,

did my spirit refuse

to comprehend the meaning

of what I saw.

Any horror but this!

Any death but that of the pit!

Might I have not known

that into the pit

it was the object

of the burning iron to urge me?

Could I resist its glow?

There was a discordant hum

of human voices!

There was a loud blast.

The French army

had entered Toledo.

The Inquisition was in

the hands of its enemies.

You have devoted

so many pages to my name,

caressing my face

with your poems,

kissing my lips with your prose.

All veiled love letters

addressed to me.

You fear me

and yet you are

insatiably attracted.

Come with me. It's time.

No, it cannot be.

I don't want to be forgotten.

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