The Black Throne

As with the spectral presence of Poe earlier, I tried communing with her.

Ligeia? Are you there? Can you hear me? Do you know where I am, and what is happening to me?

Nothing. Could it be that my focus upon the blade was too distracting of full concentration? Had the drugs dulled my mentality? Had she tried to exploit whatever bond she had created while I was unconscious, and given me up for dead?

Poe? Are you still about? I tried.

Horrors! he seemed to cry. The abyss looks back at one!

It was given you to fill as you would, I offered, expressing a sudden flash of insight. You are an artist.

Your imagination is the equal of its vacancy.

Horrors! He repeated.

Where are you, Poe? Where are you?

His presence faded again. The pendulum jerked perceptibly downward, its arc lengthening slightly.

I forgot Poe then, and Ligeia. I even forgot the rats, so intently did my awareness seize upon the hissing edge which cleft the air above me. After a time—hours? days? I know not—I forgot even myself, becoming one with that glittering sweep of doom. I experienced a great calm, oceanic sensation during this period, an enormous sense of drifting peace.

At some point I lost consciousness.

Again, what space of time may have transpired, I do not know. I awoke to a dreadful, burning thirst. The rats went to and fro, squeaking of things below. Instantly, upon opening them, my eyes were caught again by the pendulum. It had descended considerably, its arc now traversing perhaps thirty feet, its singing, swishing note now an agonizing thing that cut the mind as it went, in anticipation of corporal contact.

It might be best to go unconscious again, I reflected, letting it write quietus with a single, cardiac stroke as I lay a-swooning. But now that I desired it, oblivion kept its distance. Alertness was all—alertness and anticipation.

Left, right ... swish! From somewhere there came maniacal laughter, which I only gradually realized to be my own. I bit my lip until I tasted blood, and I closed my eyes. I opened them immediately, discovering it to be worse that way—not knowing where the blade was. But now my head seemed clearer and I forced myself to think.

I studied the pendulum rationally rather than permitting myself to be hypnotized by it. I counted my heartbeats between downward jogs of that blade. Since I was at rest during this time my emotions remained relatively constant I assumed a uniformity to their progress... .

310 ... jog.

286 ... jog.

127 ... jog.

416 ... jog.

There was no pattern that I could detect. This was more interesting than any clock-like precision might have been. It told me that what I dealt with at the other end of the pendulum was a human operator rather than any mechanical device. I felt then my first small touch of hope. While the ironclad laws of mechanics might not be gainsaid there was a special order of predictability when it came to areas of existence ruled by human perversity.

I considered again the matter of my confinement. The strap which held me was in the nature of a surcingle—a single length of heavy material passed round and round me, many times. One slash through it—anywhere—by the destroying crescent and my entire wrapping would be loosened. A person capable of precision observation from a position such as mine—as well as a good head for calculation—might come up with an approximation of where its closest slash would fall before actual contact and whether to inhale or exhale. But I knew there was a human up there somewhere who delighted in inflicting pain. He was going to make this part last as long as he could.

It was no accident a surcingle held me either, I suddenly realized. Unless I did myself in by gasping at the wrong moment, the pendulum would sever my bond after the operator had had his fun. There would be time enough to roll from the rack to the floor. Such a roll could carry me right into the pit unless I were very careful. Somehow, I felt, what they really wanted was for me to choose the pit, to plunge into it of my own volition and perish below. All the rest was cake decoration.

So I kept my breathing slow and even and I waited.

Eight more passes of the pendulum and it was within inches of my breast. The next time by it had descended slightly. Four more, and it grazed my body as it went by. Now would come the toying with me, I guessed. It would remain at the same height or be raised slightly.

So I drew in a deep breath, gritted my teeth, and closed my eyes. There came a stinging sensation in my chest, and I flexed my arms, kicked with my legs, and rolled to the right. I was off of the rack then, falling... .

Dark bodies scurried, fleeing in all directions. The hissing sound ceased. I turned my head just in time to behold that damnable machine being drawn back upward into the ceiling. I massaged my aching limbs, attempting to remain alert to any new dangers.

It was only then that I realized the source of the hellish light which pervaded the place. It was leaking into the cell along the bottoms of the two metal walls—these being the one to my right (across the pit)

and the one to my left. I could not make anything out through those slits, but even as I tried a suffocating odor entered my cell. It was in the nature of heated iron, and with it the ghastly pictures took on a certain fresh and wild character before their colors, in places, began to run. The walls jolted inward, taking on a richer hue of red than that simple depiction of flame and blood. They began—faintly, at first—to glow.

They moved again, they brightened again. I smelled smoke and heard clanging and clashing sounds from without. I rose to my feet, kicking off the remainder of the surcingle. I retreated a pace from the advancing wall of heat. It would seem their greatest aim was still to force me to choose the pit.

The walls moved again. I retreated yet another step. I moved along the pit's edge until I came to a stone wall—the one which held the door. It seemed the most logical place of retreat in the room.

And then, slowly, I turned. The pit bad been calling to me, steadily, ever since I had discovered it. Now I felt compelled at least to gaze into it, to discover what it was that offered me such terror, such spiritual destruction. I cast my vision downward. The glare from the advancing walls shed further illumination now, and I forced myself to stare at the figures in the terrible tableau beneath my feet.

The short sidewhiskered man stood beside an open coffin. He wore formal evening attire and also had on black gloves and held in his hand a small whip of the sort I had seen used in animal acts. Somehow, I knew this man to be Rufus Griswold. Before him—head hanging, hands tied—stood Poe. Griswold gestured with the whip, indicating that Poe should enter the coffin. Poe straightened and raised his head, and then he became but an outline, a blackness through which stars shone and comets blazed; the wondrous majesty of the Milky Way scaling the heights of infinity stood now before the casket, and Griswold looked away and gnashed his teeth.

Then the whip cracked and the figure was Poe once again, and the walls advanced upon me but the greater part of horror lay below, where Griswold wished to destroy imagination, wonder, and the dark unknowns of the human spirit, placing them in a box, burying them in this pit forever.

The walls moved again. I was dripping with perspiration in the near-unbearable heat. The clanging continued, the smell of smoke was overpowering. I felt that I was about to pass out, and I pressed back against the stone wall.

"No!" I cried. "Don't do it, Poe! Damn you, Griswold!"

But neither seemed to hear me. I tottered upon the brink. From somewhere I heard voices. There came a crashing at the door beside me. A hairy hand seized hold of my shoulder. I fell swooning.