But one thing is certain—something alive was in the water. That much I know. I know that. Something alive that come from the river.
My guess is it’s still there. Wherever it came from, it’s still out there somewhere. Waiting, maybe?
You get these little hints at Miller’s, like maybe a few other people have been through something, too, but they have decided to keep quiet.
There’s a thought could make anyone afraid.
Carrie’s been on my mind a lot lately. In my quiet times. Her and those ice-blue eyes and all the passing years. And what I thought was lifelong innocence. And always I’m left with the questions that keep coming back. What did she know? What did she do? And why?
And the question of questions—what took her?
Well, whatever came for them out of the river, whatever it was that happened to them both, John did love her, no matter the cost to him in the end. He hung on like a man, too, and you can’t ask for more than that. Even if he died because of her, because of something she did, I believe he still loved her. I do.
And maybe, at the last, that’s partly why I’m so troubled by the whole story myself, why I have so many questions, why I feel so much dread.
I loved her too, you see.
THE PURPLE DEATH
BY GUSTAV MEYRINK
THE TIBETAN FELL SILENT. THE EMACIATED FIGURE STOOD quietly for a while, erect and unmoving, then disappeared into the jungle.
Sir Roger Thornton stared into the fire: if the Tibetan had not been a Sannyasin and a penitent to boot, if he had not been making his pilgrimage to Benares, then not a single word would have been believable. But a Sannyasin neither lies nor can be lied to.
And yet, that horribly malicious expression that had flickered in the Asian’s face! Or was it just a trick of the flickering firelight that reflects so strangely in Mongolian eyes? The Tibetans hate the Europeans and jealously guard their magical secrets, with which they hope one day to exterminate the haughty, pompous foreigners, one day, when the great day dawns.
He, Sir Hannibal Roger Thornton, himself one of these hated Europeans, must see with his own eyes whether supernatural powers really rested in the hands of these remarkable people. But he would need companions, brave men whose wills cannot be broken, even if they were pursued by the very screams of hell.
The Englishman assessed his companions: there, the Afghan, the only one who could be considered an Asian, fearless as a panther, but superstitious. That left only the European’s servant. Sir Roger roused him with a nudge from his walking stick (Pompeius Jaburek had been completely deaf since the age of ten, yet he understood every spoken word, fantastic as it may seem, by reading lips).
Sir Roger explained, with frequent gestures, what he had learned from the Tibetan: About twenty days ride from here, near the Himavat, lay a very strange land, surrounded on three sides by sheer rock walls. The sole passage led through poisonous gas, which flowed out of the ground and would instantly kill any living thing which passed by. In the ravine itself, which was about fifty square English miles in extent, there lived a small tribe in the thick of the rankest vegetation. These people were of Tibetan stock, wore pointed red caps, and rendered worship to an evil, satanic being in the form of a peacock. This devilish entity had, over the course of centuries, instructed the inhabitants in the ways of Black Magic and imparted such secrets as could turn the whole earth upside down and kill even the strongest man in the blink of an eye.
Pompeius smiled mockingly.
Sir Roger explained that he planned to use diving helmets and aqualungs to pass through the poisonous plane to penetrate the mysterious ravine.
Pompeius Jaburek nodded in agreement and rubbed his dirty hands together gleefully.
* * *
The Tibetan, indeed, had not lied: there, below, in the midst of vibrant greens, lay the strange ravine, a gold-brown desert-like belt of weather-beaten earth. It was roughly an hour’s walk in length, and then the entire area disappeared from the outside world.
The gas, spiraling up from the earth, was pure carbon dioxide.
Sir Roger Thornton, who had surveyed the width of this belt from the safety of a hilltop, decided that they would begin the descent on the following morning. The diving helmets, sent from Bombay, worked perfectly.
Pompeius carried both repeating rifles and various equipment which His Lordship had considered indispensable. The Afghan, on the other hand, had stubbornly and fearfully refused to join the expedition, explaining that he would sooner climb into a tiger’s lair. He must, he objected, weigh the risks very carefully, since even his immortal soul might well hang in the balance. So, in the end, only the two Europeans dared the venture.
* * *
The diving helmets were functioning flawlessly. Their copper globes gleamed in the sun and threw fanciful shadows on the spongy ground, from which the lethal gas swirled up in tiny geysers. Sir Roger had chosen a fast pace so that the compressed air would last them long enough to pass through the entirety of the gas zone. He saw everything before him shift unstably, as if through a thin film of water. The sunlight rose in ghostly green and colored the distant glaciers, the “Roof of the World” with its gigantic profile, like an eerie dead landscape.
Soon we found that he and Pompeius had emerged onto a fresh grassy field, and he lit a match to test the atmospheric quality first. Then he doffed his helmet and unencumbered himself of his air tank.
Behind him lay the wall of vapor, shimmering like a living mass of water. The scent of amberia blossoms in the air was overwhelming. Shimmering butterflies, strangely marked and as large as a man’s hand, rested like open magical tomes upon the unmoving blossoms.
The pair walked at a considerable distance from one another towards the west in the direction of the forest which obscured their field of vision. Sir Roger signaled his deaf servant; Pompeius cocked his rifle.
They walked along the forest edge, and before them lay a clearing. Barely a quarter of an English mile ahead of them, a group of men (clearly Tibetans, with red, pointed caps) formed a semi-circle. They had obviously been waiting for the intruders. Fearlessly Sir Roger advanced to meet the crowd, Pompeius only a few steps from his side.
Only the customary sheepskin costumes of the Tibetans seemed familiar. Otherwise, they scarcely even seemed human: expressions of hideous hate and supernatural, terrifying evil had distorted their countenances beyond recognition. At first they let the pair draw near. Then, as one, obeying their leader’s signal, they clapped their hands over their ears in one lightning-fast motion and began screaming at the top of their lungs!
Pompeius Jaburek looked questioningly at His Lordship, then raised his rifle: the bizarre actions of the crowd suggested imminent attack. But what happened next sent his heart straight for his throat. A trembling, swirling gas cloud began to gather about His Lordship, somewhat resembling the fumes they had walked through earlier. Sir Roger’s shape began to blur, to grow indistinct, as if its contours had been eroded by the whirling funnel. The man’s head seemed to elongate to a point, the entire mass collapsing onto itself as if… melting. And on the very spot where only moments before the Englishman had stood was a pale violet cube, about the size and shape of a small sugarloaf.
The deaf Pompeius shook with a terrible rage. As the Tibetans kept up their screaming, he squinted to focus on their dancing lips and read whatever it was they might be saying. It was always the same word, over and over again. At once the leader came forward, and the rest left off screaming, took their hands off their ears, and rushed toward Pompeius. At this, he commenced firing wildly at the crowd with his repeating rifle, which halted them momentarily.