In the Valley of the Shadow by Bram Stoker (read aloud .TXT) 📕
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In the Valley of the Shadow
By Bram Stoker
The rubber-tyred wheels jolt unevenly over the granite setts. Dimly
I recognise the familiar grey streets and garden-centred squares.
We stop, and through the little crowd on the pavement I am carried
indoors and up to the high-ceiling ward. Gently they lift me off the
stretcher and put me in bed, and I say:
“What queer curtains you have! They have faces worked on the
border. Are they those of your friends?”
The matron smiles, and I think what a quaint idea it is. Then
suddenly it strikes me that I have said something foolish, but still
the faces are there right enough. (Even when I got well I could
sometimes see them in certain lights.)
One of the faces is familiar, and I am just going to ask how they
know So-and-so, when I am left alone.
For hours and hours (it seems) no one comes near me. At first I am
patient, but gradually a fierce anger seizes me. Did I submit to be
brought here merely to die in solitude and in suffocating darkness? I
will not stay in this place; far better to go back and die at home!
Suddenly I am borne in a winged machine up, up into the cool air.
Far below and infinitesimally small lies the “New Town,” half-hid
beneath the fluffy smoke; yonder, clear and blue and glittering, is
the Firth of Forth; and beyond the sunlit hills of Fife are the
advance-guards of the Grampians. A moment only of sheer palpitating
ecstasy, then a soul-shattering fall into the black abyss of
oblivion. (I hold Mr H. G. Wells partially responsible for this
little excursion.)
It is light again, but what is that which prevents my seeing the
window? A screen? What does that betoken?
A blackness of despair grips me. It is all over, then! No more
mountaineering, no more pleasant holidays. This is the end of all
my little ambitions. This is, in truth, the bitterness of death.
Presently a nurse comes with a cooling drink, and, making a
tremendous effort to look unconcerned, I ask for the screen to be
removed. She laughs and folds it up, when I see another screen
opposite partially concealing a bed. So I have company. (This was
a comparatively lucid interval.)
What a queer place to have texts! Right round the cornice of
the room. And they are constantly changing too. “The Lord is my
Shepherd-” “I will arise-” Really this is most irritating. I
cannot finish any of them. If the letters would only stay still
for a single moment!
But what is that below? It is a wide sandy beach with the blue
sea beyond. On the top of a pole in the foreground is a-what is
it?-yes, a man’s head, of course. (It was really a hanging electric
light which by some curious means I must have seen in an inverted
position.)
“Sister, I am sure that could be worked up into a splendid story.
Please give me some paper and my fountain pen. If I don’t write it
down now I shall forget it, just as has happened before when I have
thought of things during the night.” (As a matter of fact, when,
I was convalescent I did want to write not only this particular
tale, but a complete account of my visions. Of course, I was not
permitted, and now, alas! it has gone to join that great company of
magnificent-seeming but elusive ideas one has in dreams.)
“Honestly, Sister, I must go out for a few moments. The man is in
great danger, and I alone can save him. There is a desperate plot
against his life. He lives quite close by in one of the two houses
on each side of this.”
Sister promises to see about this, and I lie back only
half-satisfied.
Presently my bed begins noiselessly to move. It goes through the
wall into the next house. Room after room is visited, but my doomed
friend is not there. The other houses are then inspected in turn,
with no result. I have a feeling that he is being spirited away just
in front of me so as to be always in the next house. Sister is at
the bottom of this trick, I am sure. (Here began that absurd hatred
and suspicion of her which only left me with the delirium.)
“Oh, doctor, I am glad to see you! Really in a free country it is
intolerable that a simple request like this cannot be granted me, and
to save a man’s life, too. You can see for yourself that I am quite
sensible and very much in earnest. Try me.”
The doctor asks what day of the week it is. I answer, Scots
fashion:
“Oh, that’s easy! If I am the man who came here on Monday, then
it is Wednesday, but if I came on Thursday, then it’s Saturday. If
you will tell me which man I am, I will tell you what day it is.”
Overcome by this logic, the doctor gives in, but suggests a
compromise, to which I agree. It is that the four neighbouring
houses be brought in and placed before my bed, so that I can make
sure of seeing and warning my friend in distress.
“No, I will not drink whisky. Surely you know perfectly well that
I am a Mussulman and forbidden to drink spirits? You cannot wish me
to violate the principles of my religion?”
Sister assures me that the draught is not whisky, and puts the
glass to my lips.
In horror I dash it to the floor.
“Devil in human form, you tempt me to my destruction. Begone and
let me die in the true faith.” (Of course it was not whisky, but
something of quite an opposite nature. Weeks later, on recounting
this incident, I was reminded of having one day casually read a page
or two of a novel in which a Mohammedan is tempted to drink wine.
It made no impression whatever at the time, but it must have been
stored up somewhere.)
Presently Sister returns with three other nurses and a fresh
supply of the accursed stuff. All means are tried, from argument,
in which they are signally worsted, to persuasion and gentle force.
Suddenly I resolve on flight, and actually reach the door of the
room before being overpowered and brought back to bed. Then I am
asked to put my finger in the dose and prove to myself that it is not
whisky. In this suggestion I see Sister’s malicious cunning, so I
smell the wet finger, and triumphantly assert that it is whisky.
When they say it is twelve o’clock, and that I am keeping them
all out of bed, I answer that they need not stay for me, and, anyway,
what is that to the loss of my soul?
At length I am forced down, and the glass put to my clenched
teeth. I pray inwardly for help in this dire extremity. Lo! a
brilliant idea. I will pretend to be dead. I stiffen myself and
hold my breath. (I can remember no further effort, but I was told
afterwards the imitation was wonderful. Even the nurses grew
alarmed, and the doctor was sent for. I have a dim recollection
of his coming, and before I knew where I was he had injected
something, which I thought was the whisky, into my arm.)
I sit up in bed, and glare at them all with concentrated
hatred, then I fall back, heartbroken at my forced abjuration,
sobbing, sobbing.
I am suffering for my sin. Sister is stabbing me in the
Shoulder-blade with a red-hot dagger. (It was a fly-blister,
and my skin is very sensitive.) I am aching all over.
Suddenly I am alone on a flat desert plain. I am sitting with
my back against one of the stone pillars of a huge closed gateway
reaching to the sky. In front of me is proceeding a cinematographic
entertainment on a stupendous scale. (I cannot now remember much
about it, but the series was long and of an appalling character.
Below each picture was a placard stating the subject of the next
one. I had the feeling that they were not pictures at all, but real
events in the process of happening; further that by answering a
question put to me by a mysterious voice I could bring the series
to an end, but, though I knew the answer, it was quite beyond my
power to give it. Immediately following my failure to reply, from
somewhere behind me a full organ pealed forth and a choir of voices
broke into a mocking ditty, which embodied the proper answer, and
also words of scorn directed against myself. Till recently this
ditty haunted me occasionally, but I have now, I am glad to say,
forgotten both air and words. All I know is that it was like a
quick chant, and quite unfamiliar to me. When the horrid song was
over I fell into a state of self-condemnation mixed with helpless
expectancy, which was so poignant as to move me still when I think
of it.)
This picture is one of wars and earthquakes and burning mountains.
Underneath it are the words “End of the World.” I have a vision of
the countless myriads of mankind kneeling in agony on the other side
of the gate. A multitudinous murmur swells into an awful shriek for
pity.
“Who am I, O God, that this burden is laid on me? Am I the keeper
of that countless host? I cannot answer.”
Even as I speak a shudder cleaves the air, a cataclysmal mirage
comes into view, the organ booms and the impish choir begins its
torturing refrain.
Underneath this picture there is no placard.
The dreadful music ceases, and the horrid scene before me works on
in silence. It passes, and then there is neither light nor darkness.
The desert disappears, the gateway is no more, the infinite host has
gone like the dew of the morning, and I am left in presence of
nothing.
The realisation is frightful; my brain is whirling; relief must
come; human nature cannot bear it. Ah, thank God, I am going mad-when
from somewhere, but whence I know not, comes a light scornful laugh,
a Satanic voice says, “Sold again!” the organ swells, the invisible
choir sings anew, and the whole series of pictures begins again from
the beginning. For a moment the tension is relaxed, “God’s in His
heaven” after all, when, like the clang of steel, the Voice utters
the unanswerable question. Oh, God, I must-I shall speak. The answer,
the answer is-
“What time is it, Russell?” (Russell was the male night-nurse, the
necessity for whose presence the reader will by this time fully
understand!)
“Half-past four, sir.”
“Well, I must get up to catch the first train to Glasgow. It is
a matter of life and death. Please give me my clothes.”
Russell endeavours to soothe me with promises of going tomorrow,
and so forth, all of which I see through with merciless clearness.
In the end, as I threaten to alarm the whole household, I am wrapped
up in blankets,
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