Reincarnations

I reached down and ran my hand through them. The not unpleasing music they made striking one against another suggested something to me, something not merely musical but reminding me of- Of what I never learned, for I awoke then, and the answer, if answer there was, vanished and was lost forever, as is the way of dreams. Yet the dream itself remained perfect in my memory, suffering none of the usual distortion and diminution attendant upon these nocturnal visions in the clear light of morning.

A few nights later, I dreamt once more; once more I found myself in a world seeming perfectly real, yet assuredly the product of a dreadful and disordered imagination. My enemies-vile ecclesiastics of some inquisitorial sect better left u

I lay on my back, strapped to a low wooden platform by the securest of leather lashings, at the bottom of a deep and but dimly lighted chamber. And above me-as yet some distance above me, but slowly and inexorably lowering towards my helpless and recumbent frame-swung an immense pendulum, hissing through the air at its every passage. The heavy metal ball weighting it would have sufficed-would far more than have sufficed-to crush the life from me when its arc should at last have met my yielding flesh, but that, apparently, was not the doom ordained for me.

For, you see, affixed to the bottom of the weighty ball was an enormous tooth, sharpened by patient and cu

Closer and closer, over what seemed hours, descended the pendulum and that supernally terrifying instrument of destruction at which I could but gaze in dread, almost mesmerized fascination. Already I could feel the sinister wind of its passage with each swing. Soon, soon- Soon, how much more I would feel!

From far above, a soft but clear voice called, "Will you not return that which you have stolen?"

"Stolen?" I said, and my own voice held a new terror, for I pride myself, and with justice, on being an honest man. "I have stolen nothing-nothing, do you hear me?"

"I hear lies; naught save lies." The inquisitor, I thought, spoke more in sorrow than in anger. "Even now, that which you purloined remains with you to embellish your person and salve your vanity."

"Lies! You are the one who lies!" I cried, my desperation rising as the pendulum, the terrible pendulum, perceptibly descended.

"Having granted you the opportunity to repent of your crimes, I now give you the punishment you have earned both for your sin and for your failure of repentance," the inquisitor declared. "I wash my hands of you, Legrand, and may God have mercy upon your immortal soul."

Again the pendulum lowered, and lowered, and, Lord help me, lowered once more. Its next stroke sliced through some of the lashings binding me to that sacrificial platform. The one following that would surely slice through me. My eyes arced with the inexorable motion of the ball and its appended cutting tooth. I watched it reach the high point of its trajectory, and then, moaning with fear at what was to come, I watched it commence its surely fatal descent. I screamed-

And I awoke with Helen beside me, warm in my own bed and altogether unbisected.

After these two most vivid dreams, I trust you will understand why from that time forward I feared and shu

One night, asleep despite all wishes and efforts to remain awake, I fancied myself-indeed, in my mind, I was-guilty of some heinous crime. I had done it, and I had concealed it, concealed it so perfectly no human agency could have hoped to discover my guilt. Yes, officers of the police had come, but purely pro forma. That the crime had been committed at all was even, in their minds, a question; that I was in any way co

We sat down to confer together in the very chamber where the nefarious deed was done. I was, at first, charming and witty. But something then began to vex me, something at first so slight as to be all but imperceptible-certainly so to the minions of the law with whom I was engaged. And yet it grew and grew and grew within the confines of my mind to proportions Brobdingnagian. It was a low, dull pain-much such a pain as a tooth makes when commencing to ache. I gasped for breath-and yet the officers, lucky souls, felt it not.

I grew nervous, agitated, distrait, for the pounding in my mouth grew worse and worse. Soon I felt I must cry out or perish. It hurt more and more and more!-and at last, unable to suffer such anguish for another instant, I cried, "I admit the deed! Tear out the tooth!"- -and I pointed to the one in question. "Here, here!-it is the paroxysm of this hideous bicuspid!"

Then, as before, I awoke in a house all quiet and serene; all quiet and serene but for me, I should say, for I lay with my heart audibly thudding as if in rhythm to the tinti

I had begun to steel myself towards a course of action I should have called mad in any other, yet one seemingly needful in my particular circumstance. Yet still I hesitated, for divers reasons that appeared to me good, begi

Whilst equivocating-indeed, tergiversating, for I knew in my heart of hearts the right course, yet found not the courage to pursue it-I again found I could no longer hold eyelid apart from eyelid despite the heroic use of every stimulant known to man. I yawned; I tottered; I fell into bed, more in hope than in expectation of true rest; I slept.

And, once more, I dreamt. I had thought my previous nightmare the worst that could ever befall any poor mortal, of no matter how sinful a character. This proves only the limits of my previous power of imagination, not of the horror to which I might subject myself in slumber-or rather, as I had begun to suspect, the horror to which some increasingly unwelcome interloper and cuckoo’s egg might subject me.

I seemed to awake, not from sleep, but from some illness so grave and severe, so nearly fatal, as to have all but suspended permanently my every vital faculty. And, upon awakening, I found myself not in the bed in which I had surely had consciousness slip away from me, but lying on rude, hard planks in darkness absolute.

It was not night. Oh, it may have been night, but it was not night that made the darkness. This I discovered on extending my hands upwards and encountering, less than a foot above my face, more boards, these as rude and hard as the others. Reaching out to either side, I found, God help me, more still. I had been laid in the tomb alive!