Devereux's Dream Page #2

"Devereux's Dream" is a supernatural mystery by Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu, published in 1853. The novel follows the titular character, Edward Devereux, who confronts his own past and emerging fears through a series of haunting dreams. As Devereux navigates his nightmares, he becomes entwined in a web of intrigue, love, and spectral encounters, exploring themes of memory, identity, and the uncanny. Le Fanu's atmospheric prose and psychological depth make this work a notable example of Victorian Gothic fiction.

• Mystery

								

talking about him at the Opera, and over the baccarat and bouillotte
at La Topaze's later. To escape him I went to bed and smoked myself to
sleep. And then a queer thing came to pass: I had a dream--I who never
dream; and this is what I dreamed:

"I saw a wide, rich country that I knew. A starless night hung over it
like a pall. I saw a narrow track running through it, straight, both
ways, for leagues. Something sped along this track with a hurtling rush
and roar. This something that at first had looked like a red-eyed devil,
with dark sides full of dim fire, resolved itself, as I watched it,
presently, into a more conventional night express-train. It flew along,
though, as no express-train ever travelled yet; for all that, I was able
to keep it quite easily in view. I could count the carriages as they
whirled by. One--two--three--four--five--six; but I could only see
distinctly into one. Into that one with perfect distinctness. Into that
one I seemed forced to look.

"It was the fourth carriage. Two people were in it. They sat in opposite
corners; both were sleeping. The one who sat facing forward was a
woman--a girl, rather. I could see that; but I couldn't see her face.
The blind was drawn across the lamp in the roof, and the light was very
dim; moreover, this girl lay back in the shadow. Yet I seemed to know
her, and I knew that her face was very fair. She wore a cloak that
shrouded her form completely, yet her form was familiar to me.

"The figure opposite to her was a man's. Strangely familiar to me too
this figure was. But, as he slept, his head had sunk upon his breast,
and the shadow cast upon his face by the low-drawn travelling-cap he
wore hid it from me. Yet if I had seemed to know the girl's face, I was
certain I knew the man's. But as I could see, so I could remember,
neither. And there was an absolute torture in this which I can't explain
to you,--in this inability, and in my inability to wake them from their
sleep.

"From the first I had been conscious of a desire to do that. This desire
grew stronger every second. I tried to call to them, and my tongue
wouldn't move. I tried to spring toward them, to thrust out my arms and
touch them, and my limbs were paralyzed. And then I tried to shut my
eyes to what I knew must happen, and my eyes were held open and
dragged to look on in spite of me. And I saw this:

"I saw the door of the carriage where these two sleepers, whose sleep
was so horribly sound, were sitting--I saw this door open, and out of
the thick darkness another face look in.

"The light, as I have said, was very dim, but I could see his face as
plainly as I can see yours. A large yellow face it was, like a wax mask.
The lips were full, and lustful and cruel. The eyes were little eyes of
an evil gray. Thin yellow streaks marked the absence of the eyebrows;
thin yellow hair showed itself under a huge fur travelling-cap. The
whole face seemed to grow slowly into absolute distinctness as I looked,
by the sort of devilish light that it, as it were, radiated. I had
chanced upon a good many damnable visages before then; but there was a
cold fiendishness about this one such as I had seen on no man's face,
alive or dead, till then.

"The next moment the man this face belonged to was standing in the
carriage, that seemed to plunge and sway more furiously, as though to
waken them that still slept on. He wore a long fur travelling-robe, girt
about the waist with a fur girdle. Abnormally tall and broad as he was,
he looked in this dress gigantic. Yet there was a marvellous cat-like
lightness and agility about all his movements.

"He bent over the girl lying there helpless in her sleep. I don't make
rash bargains as a rule, but I felt I would have given years of my life
for five minutes of my lost freedom of limb just then. I tell you the
torture was infernal.

"The assassin--I knew he was an assassin--bent awhile, gloatingly, over
the girl. His great yellow hands were both bare, and on the forefinger
of the right hand I could see some great stone blazing like an evil eye.
In that right hand there gleamed something else. I saw him draw it
slowly from his sleeve, and, as he drew it, turn round and look at the
other sleeper with an infernal triumphant malignity and hate the Devil
himself might have envied. But the man he looked at slept heavily on.
And then--God! I feel the agony I felt in my dream then now!--then I saw
the great yellow hand, with the great evil eye upon it, lifted
murderously, and the bright steel it held shimmer as the assassin turned
again and bent his yellow face down closer to that other face hidden
from me in the shadow--the girl's face, that I knew was so fair.

"How can I tell this?... The blade flashed and fell.... There was the
sound of a heavy sigh stifled under a heavy hand....

"Then the huge form of the assassin was reared erect, and the bloated
yellow face seemed to laugh silently, while the hand that held the
steel pointed at the sleeping man in diabolical menace.

"And so the huge form and the bloated yellow face seemed to fade away
while I watched.

"The express rushed and roared through the blinding darkness without;
the sleeping man slept on still; till suddenly a strong light fell full
upon him, and he woke.

"And then I saw why I had been so certain that I knew him. For as he
lifted his head, I saw his face in the strong light.

"And the face was my own face; and the sleeper was myself!"

Paul Devereux made a pause in his queer story here. Except when he had
spoken of the girl, he had spoken in his usual cool, hard way. The pipe
he had been smoking all the time was smoked out. He took time to fill
another before he went on. I said never a word, for I guessed who the
sleeping girl was.

"Well," Paul remarked presently, "that was a devilish queer dream,
wasn't it? You'll account for it by telling me I'd been so pestered with
the story of the banker's murder that I naturally had nightmare;
perhaps, too, that my digestion was out of order. Call it a nightmare,
call it dyspepsia, if you like. I don't, because---- But you'll see
why I don't directly.

"At the same moment that my dream-self awoke in my dream, my actual self
woke in reality, and with the same ghastly horror.

"I say the same horror, for neither then nor afterward could I
separate my one self from my other self. They seemed identical; so that
this queer dream made a more lasting impression upon me than you'd
think. However, in the life I led that sort of thing couldn't last very
long. Before I came back from Africa I had utterly forgotten all about
it. Before I left Paris, though, and while it was quite fresh in my
memory, I sketched the big murderer just as I had seen him in my dream.
The great yellow face, the great broad frame in the fur travelling-robe,
the great hand with the great evil eye upon it--everything, carefully

								Rate this book:0.0 / 0 votes