Blavatsky's Nightmare Tales
Blavatsky's Nightmare TalesA BEWITCHED LIFE THE CAVE OF THE ECHOES THE LUMINOUS SHIELDFROM THE POLAR LANDS THE ENSOULED VIOLINCopyright
Blavatsky's Nightmare Tales
H. P. Blavatsky
A BEWITCHED LIFE
Introduction
It was a dark, chilly night in September, 1884. A heavy gloom
had descended over the streets of A——, a small town on the Rhine,
and was hanging like a black funeral-pall over the dull factory
burgh. The greater number of its inhabitants, wearied by their long
day’s work, had hours before retired to stretch their tired limbs,
and lay their aching heads upon their pillows. All was quiet in the
large house; all was quiet in the deserted streets.I too was lying
in my bed; alas, not one of rest, but of pain and sickness, to
which I had been confined for some days. So still was everything in
the house, that, as Longfellow has it, its stillness seemed almost
audible. I could plainly hear the murmur of the blood, as it rushed
through my aching body, producing that monotonous singing so
familiar to one who lends a watchful ear to silence. I had listened
to it until, in my nervous imagination, it had grown into the sound
of a distant cataract, the fall of mighty waters ... when, suddenly
changing its character, the ever growing “singing” merged into
other and far more welcome sounds. It was the low, and at first
scarce audible, whisper of a human voice. It approached, and
gradually strengthening seemed to speak in my very ear. Thus sounds
a voice speaking across a blue quiescent lake, in one of those
wondrously acoustic gorges of the snow-capped mountains, where the
air is so pure that a word pronounced half a mile off seems almost
at the elbow. Yes; it was the voice of one whom to know is to
reverence; of one, to me, owing to many mystic associations, most
dear and holy; a voice familiar for long years and ever welcome:
doubly so in hours of mental or physical suffering, for it always
brings with it a ray of hope and consolation.“Courage,” it
whispered in gentle, mellow tones. “Think of the days passed by you
in sweet associations; of the great lessons received of Nature’s
truths; of the many errors of men concerning these truths; and try
to add to them the experience of a night in this city. Let the
narrative of a strange life, that will interest you, help to
shorten the hours of suffering.... Give your attention. Look yonder
before you!”“Yonder” meant the clear, large windows of an empty
house on the other side of the narrow street of the German town.
They faced my own in almost a straight line across the street, and
my bed faced the windows of my sleeping room. Obedient to the
suggestion, I directed my gaze towards them, and what I saw made me
for the time being forget the agony of the pain that racked my
swollen arm and rheumatical body.Over the windows was creeping a
mist; a dense, heavy, serpentine, whitish mist, that looked like
the huge shadow of a gigantic boa slowly uncoiling its body.
Gradually it disappeared, to leave a lustrous light, soft and
silvery, as though the window-panes behind reflected a thousand
moonbeams, a tropical star-lit sky—first from outside, then from
within the empty rooms. Next I saw the mist elongating itself and
throwing, as it were, a fairy bridge across the street from the
bewitched windows to my own balcony, nay to my very own bed. As I
continued gazing, the wall and windows and the opposite house
itself, suddenly vanished. The space occupied by the empty rooms
had changed into the interior of another smaller room, in what I
knew to be a Swiss châlet—into a study, whose old, dark walls were
covered from floor to ceiling with book shelves on which were many
antiquated folios, as well as works of a more recent date. In the
center stood a large old-fashioned table, littered over with
manuscripts and writing materials. Before it, quill-pen in hand,
sat an old man; a grim-looking, skeleton-like personage, with a
face so thin, so pale, yellow and emaciated, that the light of the
solitary little student’s lamp was reflected in two shining spots
on his high cheek-bones, as though they were carved out of ivory.As
I tried to get a better view of him by slowly raising myself upon
my pillows, the whole vision, châlet and study, desk, books and
scribe, seemed to flicker and move. Once set in motion they
approached nearer and nearer, until, gliding noiselessly along the
fleecy bridge of clouds across the street, they floated through the
closed windows into my room and finally seemed to settle beside my
bed.“
“Listen to what he thinks and is going to write”—said in soothing
tones the same familiar, far off, and yet near voice. “Thus you
will hear a narrative, the telling of which may help to shorten the
long sleepless hours, and even make you forget for a while your
pain.... Try!”—it added, using the well-known Rosicrucian and
Kabalistic formula.I tried, doing as I was bid. I centered all my
attention on the solitary laborious figure that I saw before me,
but which did not see me. At first, the noise of the quill-pen with
which the old man was writing, suggested to my mind nothing more
than a low whispered murmur of a nondescript nature. Then,
gradually, my ear caught the indistinct words of a faint and
distant voice, and I thought the figure before me, bending over its
manuscript, was reading its tale aloud instead of writing it. But I
soon found out my error. For casting my gaze at the old scribe’s
face, I saw at a glance that his lips were compressed and
motionless, and the voice too thin and shrill to be his voice.
Stranger still, at every word traced by the feeble, aged hand, I
noticed a light flashing from under his pen, a bright colored spark
that became instantaneously a sound, or—what is the same thing—it
seemed to do so to my inner perceptions. It was indeed the small
voice of the quill that I heard, though scribe and pen were at the
time, perchance, hundreds of miles away from Germany. Such things
will happen occasionally, especially at night, beneath whose starry
shade, as Byron tells us, we... learn the language of another world
...However it may be, the words uttered by the quill remained in my
memory for days after. Nor had I any great difficulty in retaining
them, for when I sat down to record the story, I found it, as
usual, indelibly impressed on the astral tablets before my inner
eye.Thus, I had but to copy it and so give it as I received it. I
failed to learn the name of the unknown nocturnal writer.
Nevertheless, though the reader may prefer to regard the whole
story as one made up for the occasion, a dream, perhaps, still its
incidents will, I hope, prove none the less interesting.I The Stranger’s Story
