Now came an experience which I am aware it is difficult, if not impossible, for me to explain adequately. I can only say that I seemed to myself for the time being to have solved the problem of maintaining a conscious existence in two places at once; for while still gazing fixedly at Lionel inside the temple, I knew that I was also standing outside the same temple, in front of the grand entrance. A magnificent façade it was, apparently facing the west; for a great flight of broad black marble steps (fifty of them at least) which, extending the whole width of the building, led up to it from the plain, gleamed blood-red under the horizontal rays of the setting sun. I turned, and looked for surrounding habitations, but nothing was visible in any direction but one level unbroken desert of sand, save only three tall palm-trees in the distance on my right hand. Never till my dying day can I forget that weird, desolate picture—that limitless yellow desert, the solitary clump of palm-trees, and that huge forsaken temple bathed in blood-red light.
Quickly this scene faded away, and I was inside again, though still preserving that strange double consciousness; for while one part of me still remained in its original posture, the other saw the wonderful paintings on the walls pass before it like the dissolving views of a magic lantern. Unfortunately I have never been able to recall clearly the subject of those pictures, but I know that they were of a most exciting nature, and that the figures were remarkably spirited and life-like. This exhibition seemed to last for some time; and then, quite suddenly, my consciousness was no longer divided, but once more concentrated itself where the visible body had been all the time—leaning with my folded arms on the foot of the bedstead gazing fixedly on the face of the boy.
As I stood there, bewildered, awe-stricken, a voice fell upon my ear with startling suddenness—quite a natural, ordinary voice, though it spoke clearly and emphatically.
“Lionel must not be mesmerised,” it said; “it would kill him.”
I looked round hastily, but no one was visible, and no further remark was made. Once again I pinched my arm, hoping to find myself dreaming; but no—the result was the same as ever, and I felt that the awe which was upon me would develope into ignoble fear unless I did something to break the spell; so with an effort I pulled myself together, and moved slowly along the side of the bed.
I stood directly over Lionel—I bent my head down till I was looking close into his face; but not a muscle moved, not a shadow of change came into the expression of those wonderful luminous eyes, and for some moments I remained spell-bound, breathless, my face within a few inches of his. Then by a mighty effort I shook off the controlling influence and grasped wildly at the figure before me. In a moment the light vanished, and I found myself in total darkness kneeling beside my own bed, and tightly grasping the counterpane with both hands!
I rose, gathered my scattered wits, and tried to persuade myself that I must have fallen asleep in my chair, dreamed an extraordinarily vivid dream, and in the course of it walked into my bedroom. I cannot say that even then I felt at all satisfied with this explanation, because my common-sense assured me that it was all wrong; but at any rate I decided that I could do no more work that night, so I locked my desk, bathed my head with cold water, and went to bed.
Though I rose late the next morning, I still felt extremely weak and fatigued, which I attributed to the influence of my dream; however, I decided to say nothing about it, lest it should alarm my mother. I remember looking curiously in the broad daylight at the black marks made on my left arm by the pinches I had given myself in my dream.
That evening it chanced that Lionel St. Aubyn had to call at my house again—I forget now for what purpose; but I remember very distinctly that in course of conversation he suddenly said:
“O, sir, I had such a curious dream last night!”
A sort of electric shock ran through me at the words, but I retained sufficient presence of mind to say:
“Had you? Well, I am just coming out, so you can tell me about it as we walk along.”
Even then I had some uneasy prevision of what was coming—enough at least to make me wish to get him out of earshot from my mother before he said any more. As soon as we were outside, I asked for particulars, and the cold thrill of last night ran down my spine when he began by saying:
“I dreamt, sir, that I was lying on a bed—not asleep, somehow, though I couldn’t move hand or foot; but I could see quite well, and I had a strange feeling that I have never had before. I felt so wise, as though I could have answered any question in the world, if only some one had asked me.”
“How did you lie, Lionel?” I asked him; and I could feel my hair rise gently as he answered:
“I lay on my back, with my hands crossed in front of me.”
“I suppose you were dressed just as you are now?”
“O no, sir! I was dressed in a sort of long white gown, such as the priest wears under his chasuble; and across my breast and over one shoulder I had a broad band of red and gold; it looked so pretty, you can’t think.”
I knew only too well how it had looked, but I kept my thoughts to myself. Of course I saw by this time that my last night’s expedition was more than an ordinary dream, and I felt that his experiences would prove to be the same as mine; but I had a wild feeling of struggling against fate which prompted me to make every effort to find some difference, some flaw which would give me a loophole of escape from that conclusion; so I went on:
“You were in your own bedroom, of course?”
But he replied:
“No, sir; at first I was in a room that I thought I knew, and then suddenly it seemed to grow larger, and it was not a room at all, but a great strange temple, like the pictures I have seen in books, with great heavy pillars, and beautiful pictures painted on its walls.”
“This was a very interesting dream, Lionel; tell me in what sort of city this temple stood.”
It was quite useless; I could not mislead him. The inevitable answer came, as I knew it would:
“Not in a city at all, sir; it was in the middle of a great plain of sand, like the Sahara desert in our geography books; and I could see nothing but sand all round, except far away on the right three nice tall trees with no branches, such as we see in the pictures of Palestine.”
“And what was your temple built of?”
“Of shining black stone, sir; but the great flight of steps in front looked all red, like fire, because of the sun shining it.”
But how could you see all this when you were inside, boy?”
“Well, sir, I don’t know; it was odd, but I seemed somehow to be outside and inside too; and though I could not move all the time, yet I seemed to go and look at all the beautiful pictures on the walls, but I could not understand how it was.”
And now at last I asked the question that had been in my mind from the first—which I longed, yet dreaded, to put:
“Did you see any men in this strange dream, Lionel?”
“Yes, sir” (looking up brightly) “I saw you; only you, no other men.”
I tried to laugh, though I am conscious it must have been but a feeble attempt, and asked what I had appeared to be doing.
“You came in sir, when I was in the room, you put your head round the door first and when you saw me you looked surprised, and stared at me ever so long; and then you came in, and walked slowly up to the foot of my bed. You took hold of your left arm with your right hand, and seemed to be pulling and pinching at it. Then you leaned your arms on the bedstead, and stood like that all the while we were in that strange temple, and while I saw the pictures. When they were gone you took hold of your arm again, and then you came slowly along the side of the bed towards me. You looked so wild and strange that I was quite frightened.” (‘I have no doubt I did,’ thought I, ‘I certainly felt so’). “Then you came and stooped down till your face nearly touched mine, and still I could not move. Then suddenly you seemed to give a spring, and catch at me with your hands; and that woke me, and 1 found I was lying safe in my own bed at home.”
As may readily be imagined, this exact confirmation of my own experience, and the strange way in which the boy had evidently seen me doing, even in the merest details, just what I seemed to myself to do, had a very eerie effect on my mind as it was poured out to me in innocent childish frankness, while we passed through the weird moonlight and the deep shadows of the great trees on that lonely road; but I endeavoured to confine myself to ordinary expressions of astonishment and interest, and to this day Lionel St. Aubyn has no idea how remarkable an experience his ‘curious dream’ really was.
I have stated these facts with scrupulous exactness just as they occurred. How are they to be explained? Two possibilities occur to me, but there are difficulties about both of them. The experience may be an instance of the phenomenon called double dreaming, wherein two persons have simultaneously exactly the same dream. It is probable that when that happens, only one of the persons really actively dreams, and the pictures which he sees or evokes are somehow reflected into the brain of the other, or even hypnotically impressed thereupon. In such cases the two partners in the experience usually see and do exactly the same things; but this time, though both saw the same objects and both had the singular experience of double consciousness, our actions were quite different, and each saw the other as that other imagined himself to be.
The other hypothesis is that Lionel was really in my room in his astral body, and that either he was materialised, or my sight was somehow temporarily opened so that I could see him; that we did actually somehow journey together in astral bodies through space to that forsaken temple in the far-off desert, and there go through together a very strange experience. This theory also presents difficulties, and to those who have never studied these matters it will appear far more improbable than the other; yet I myself believe it to be at least partially true. I believe that Lionel was brought astrally into my room, and that I really saw him there; though it is possible that the vision of the forsaken temple may then have been impressed upon us both by some will stronger than our own.
I have always had a suspicion that a third will was concerned in the affair, and that the words spoken by the mysterious voice were the raison d’être of the whole. For an adult member of the choir, who had heard of our successful séances, was keenly anxious to try his alleged mesmeric powers upon Lionel, asserting that so good a medium would probably be clairvoyant in trance. My instinct was strongly against this, though I had no reason to give for it, I should probably have yielded to persuasion; but after this curious occurrence I refused quite definitely to sanction any experiment of that kind, holding that after such a warning it would be the height of folly. Now, the giving of that warning may have been the object of the vision, and all the rest of the display may have been simply intended to impress the order strongly on our minds—as it certainly did.
THE DOOM OF AL ZAMERI, by Henry Iliowizi
Nothing is known in nature which, in awful impressiveness, compares with the overpowering scenery forever associated with God’s revelation to man. That arm of the Indian Ocean called the Red Sea bifurcates into the westerly gulf of Suez and the easterly one of Akabah, and the triangular peninsula thus formed embraces the region that bears the name of the sky-consecrated Mount Sinai. He who, from an overtopping height, once surveys those prodigies of this globe’s eternal framework, pile on pile, varied by solitary peaks raising their heads above the clouds, amidst a confusion of innumerable gorges, wadys and ravines, the red of the stupendous mass interspersed with porphyry and greenstone, will, apart from their spiritual reminiscences, bear the impression to the end of his days that he has been in the very heart of creative omnipotence. About the entire system there is such a ghostly air, such a terrific frown, as is recalled by no other chain of crests and cliffs, however bold or life-deserted. If the bleaker rocks that encompass the basin of the Dead Sea are more deterring, those of Horeb are of a thrilling sublimity; and if this is true in broad daylight, night invests them with an inexpressible mystic awe, intensified by an inexplicable rumbling and roaring not unlike distant thunder. But all other feelings are merged in the one of terror when, as it sometimes happens, a heavy thunderstorm breaks over the wilderness of Sinai. Rendered impervious by a rarely disturbed aridity, the barren rocks retain little more water than would the glazed incline of a pyramid, so that the mountain torrents rush down with cyclonic impetuosity, uprooting trees and sweeping off settlements, with no trace left of what man and nature combine to produce.
It was in one of those spasmodic storms that, in the year 1185 after Mohammed’s flight from Mecca, a muffled figure moved cautiously in the heart of a cloudburst which was accompanied by blinding flashes of lightning and such thunderbolts as shook the very bedrock of the mountainous desolation. The Bedouin’s watch-fires, nightly seen all along the gentler acclivities, vanished before the elemental fury; and though the plain of al-Rahe opened before him, the lonely wanderer turned his face toward Jebel Musa, or Mount of Moses, betraying his anxiety to remain unrecognized. Wind and rain forced the man to seek shelter somewhere, but he seemed to prefer a dark hollow to the sure hospitality of the Arab’s tent. From the heights the torrents came roaring like waterfalls, carrying along piled up masses of uprooted tamarisks, palm-trees, struggling sheep and goats; even bowlders were swept down like pebbles.
While stopping for a moment, irresolute as to the direction he should take, the muffled figure discerned a human form stranger than his own, whelmed by the flood and on the point of being either engulfed or crushed to death by the wreck-encumbered torrent. With a rush which endangered his life, the mysterious wanderer caught hold of the forlorn victim, tearing him out of the destructive tide, and as it happened landing him near a cave which he had not before seen. “Touch me not!” cried the rescued creature in a voice that startled his preserver. Yet compared with the rest of his individuality, the voice was the least appalling of his features. There stood a bare-headed being, bent with age, pale as a ghost, lean as starvation, wrinkled as a shriveled hag, shaggy as a bear, his beard descending to his knees, and his hair to his waist. Death stared from his eyes, misery from his face; in all an image of hopelessness, tottering toward the grave. Barely strong enough to drag his limbs, the wretch waddled into the rayless hole, whining and groaning.
The weather’s inclemency would have hardly induced the other to divide the cave with one whose aspect suggested the tenant of the graveyard, but the tramp of approaching horses left no time for reflection. Like a shadow the muffled figure disappeared just in time to escape the notice of two Mamlooks on horses, who, perceiving the hole, drew in the reins with an oath: “Allah tear the devil!— If it were not for my poor horse I would crawl into that black pit to get out of this infernal tempest. —See this cataract! Why, this beats the Nile!—And the hawk we are looking for may as well be leagues out of this wilderness as within it. If we do not hurry to Wady-Feiran, the fever will settle in my belly. I feel cold about the heart,” said one of the horsemen.
“Give up the thousand purses set on Ali Bey’s head?” asked his fellow.
“Give up the chase of the devil!—The slave-Sultan in not within these black reaches, I say, and we are fools to follow our noses until the breath is out of our stomachs,” answered the other impatiently.
A red zigzag flash tore the clouds; the crash threw the horses on their haunches. Had not the astounded Mamlooks scampered off like the wind, the lightning would have revealed to them the object of their hunt, Egypt’s celebrated Sheykh el-Beled, a title tantamount to the power and dignity of Caliph. Such was Ali Bey who, at the close of a career of adventure and romance, was a fugitive in the wilds, with a price set by his enemies upon his head.
“The bloodhounds have lost the spoor of the game, and if my messengers reach Acre safely, my friend Daher will be out in force; but where hide till then?” thought Ali Bey, and proceeded to close up the entrance to his retreat by a pile of rubbish near at hand, darkness favoring the operation.
“Unless there a
re snakes in this hole, I shall have an hour’s rest,” said Ali to himself, having completed the hiding wall. A moaning ululation in the dark reminded him of the other presence he had enclosed with himself, and his alarm was not lessened by the sudden glimmer of a something which broke the gloom of the den. Coming as it did from the deep of the hollow, it could not be mistaken for a flare of lightning from without. Another glimmer left no doubt as to its source.
Ali Bey was not a man to quail before anything another man could face; but here was a phenomenon to stop the pulsation of the stoutest heart. A burning jewel, not in the palsied hand of a decrepit dotard, but in the hold of one in the prime of manhood, who resembled the other as closely as a heifer does its dam. Who was he? A son of the former? Or had there occurred the miracle of instantaneous rejuvenescence? Or was it Satan bent on some diabolical performance?—“Man or demon, good or evil power, whoever thou art, I demand of thee in Allah’s name to unfold thy mystery to me. Art thou he whom I saved from the fury of the elements? He was nearer a hundred than thirty years; nearer death than life. Thou lookest like him, but couldst be his grandchild as to age and vigor. Art thou and he the same? Or art thou an illusion—peradventure the spirit of this mountain? If thou art a spirit, thou knowest who I am; if thou art human I charge thee to speak to Ali Bey, the Sheykh el-Beled of Egypt, who is waiting for assistance to defeat the conspiracies of his enemies,” spoke Ali with the firmness of despair.
“Sheykh el-Beled,” answered the one spoken to in a tone as changed as his form, “there is less of spirit in me than in thee, yet am I less human than man ever was, deathless yet mortal, tossed about on the ocean of time from age to age, century to century, cycle to cycle, millennium to millennium; denied the peace of soul, the comfort of hope, the blessing of prayer, the nepenthe of oblivion, yea, the rest of the grave. Tremble not at the sound of my name. I am Al Zameri, the accursed roamer of the times, doomed since the making of the golden calf to begin, rejuvenated after a lapse of every hundred years, anew my unblest career—homeless, godless, hopeless, shunned, feared and hated!”
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