The Vampire Soul (French Horror Book 20) by Jean-Marie-Mathias Villiers de l'Isle-Adam

Author:Jean-Marie-Mathias Villiers de l'Isle-Adam [Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Jean-Marie-Mathias]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror
Publisher: Black Coat Press
Published: 2012-09-22T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

The King of Terrors {137}

The abyss cried out; the deep lifted its hands

Habbakuk 3:10.{138}

Then: oh! fright of my life! oh! vision that has changed the world into a sepulchre for me, and installed Madness in my soul!

On examining the eyes of the dead woman the first thing I saw, distinctly outlined, as if it were a frame, was the strip of violet paper which ran around the top of the wall. And within this frame, like some kind of echo, I saw a picture which is beyond the expression of any language under the Sun and the Moon, alive or dead–and I say that without a single instant’s hesitation.

Oh, how to describe it? What imagination could heap up the derisory inanity of the words that I am writing?

The paroxysm of ardent disquiet that seized me made the ophthalmoscope shake in my hands, and the beam of light danced in the eyes of the cadaver: in those huge inverted eyes, so vitreous, fixed, exorbitant and wide open.

And this is fairly close to what I saw:

Yes! The sky! Distant waves, a huge rock, the fall of a starry night! And upright on the rock, larger than life, stood a man like an inhabitant of the archipelagos of the Dangerous Sea! Was it a man, this phantom? In one hand, lifted towards the abyss, he held a bloody head by the hair! With a howl that I could not hear, but whose horror I divined in the volcanic distension of the wide-open mouth, he seemed to offer it as a sacrifice to the darkness and the void! In his other hand, dangling down, he held a stone cutlass, bloody and loathsome. Around him, the horizon seemed boundless, the solitude eternally accursed! And, beneath the expression of supernatural fury, beneath the concentration of vengeance, ceremonious wrath and hatred, I suddenly recognized in the face of the Ottysor-vampire {139} an uncanny resemblance to poor Monsieur Lenoir immediately before his death–and, in the severed head, the direly shadowed features of the young man of yesteryear, the lost lieutenant, Sir Henry Clifton.

Tottering unsteadily, like a little child, I extended my arms as I recoiled.

My reason fled; hideous, confused conjectures, maddened my stupefaction. I was no more than a seething chaos of anguish, a human rag, a brain as desiccated as chalk, pulverized beneath the menacing immensity! And Science, the smiling old woman with clear eyes, whose logic and fraternal embrace are a little too disinterested, whispered derisively in my ear that she too is no more than bait for the Unknown that lies in wait for us, patiently.

Suddenly, I hurled myself at the wall and held myself tightly against it, my hands–whose fingers were splayed by a nameless fear–flat upon the stonework.

“But... but...” I grunted, with a sidelong glance at the dead woman, “it must have been the case that in spite of the ancient lies of Extension and Duration... which all the available evidence proves to be lies... it must have been the case that

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