Page:Weird Tales Volume 12 Issue 06 (1928-12).djvu/102

 coverlets in profusion to comfort his rest. But he could not sleep. Fear gripped his heart. It made of him a pitiful thing, a shaking, cringing, fawning thing that jumped at every shadow.

After he turned out the lamps, which had added a bit of cheer to the room, it was as though reality vanished utterly. He was in a strange region of legends and odd beliefs. The blackness bore down upon him with frightful weight. It seemed to have texture like the black velvet draperies in the throneroom. And in the blackness he imagined he could dimly make out wraiths, forms, odd figments of his distorted imagination. Utter silence reigned. Its pitch was deafening, almost bursting his eardrums. It seemed as if numerous voices were whispering. Far in the distance they were forever whispering. Sighing and whispering. Moaning and whispering. Sobbing and whispering. The pressure of the blackness increased. He was suffocating, buried alive, engulfed in a jet pit of fear.

Yet naught had he beheld at the great house but beauty. The woman was more glorious than sunrise over the yellow sea, than moonlight on a pink coral beach, than fronds of palm trees, silhouetted against a deep blue starlit sky. The furnishings of the house were of immense worth. The tapestries were masterpieces. The vases were as wondrous as any ever turned out by the greatest ceramic artists of King-teh-chen. The floor coverings were as soft and rich as fine grass. Nothing had been singular except that the light of the opal had died when the lady had touched it. And a flower had withered that she had lifted to her soft red lips. Truly this was little whereof to weave such stark horror. Yet horror had taken root in his mind. He could not banish it. It was as un escapable as the pressing blackness that bore down upon his chest.

With great effort he rose from his couch and strode over to the tiny aperture that served as a window. It was no wider than the palm of his hand. Not even a dog could have pressed his way through it. He gazed beyond it eagerly. A bit of the moon was visible, and one bright star. Constantly they disappeared as scurrying clouds drifted by. Then the clouds thickened and the star vanished utterly, leaving the darkness more pronounced than ever.

In a frenzy of fear Li Kan relighted the lamps.

The room once more assumed an air of naturalness. The varicolored silk cushions, the rich coverlets, the carved teakwood pedestals on which rare porcelains stood, all served to draw him back to a state of repose. But the horror of his thoughts continued, the presentiment of impending calamity. For the rest of the night he slept not nor did he permit the lamps to expire.

The ensuing days passed like a weird fantasmagoria. Li Kan wished to leave that gorgeous house but he could not. Whenever he attempted to steal out into the sunlit garden he found the doors barred. It is a peculiar fact that he never told the lovely lady of his desire to leave. He believed that to do so would have been futile; more, it would have been highly dangerous. There was a menace constantly hanging over him. He felt it in every fiber of his body. It was as though a keen two-edged sword hung suspended above him by a thread. The trembling of a flower might cause it to fall.

As time wore on there were moments when he was madly in love with the beauteous lady. These were the periods when he had drunk much of the amber liquor and his blood was a surging fire. The liquor created a tumult within him. He longed to take her into his arms, to press his lips to hers, to take the present and let the future go. Then