The Drunkard's Dream Page #2

"The Drunkard's Dream" is a short story by Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu, an influential Irish writer known for his contributions to the gothic and supernatural genres. This tale explores themes of intoxication and the surreal, as it follows the experiences of a man who, in a drunken stupor, becomes ensnared in a vivid and nightmarish dreamscape. Through a blend of eerie imagery and psychological depth, Le Fanu delves into the darker aspects of human nature and the consequences of escapism, creating a compelling narrative that reflects the complexities of addiction and the blurred lines between reality and illusion.

• Fiction

								

result to have proved uniformly the same. A young mind, to which joy and
indulgence have been strangers, and to which suffering and self-denial
have been familiarised from the first, acquires a solidity and an
elevation which no other discipline could have bestowed, and which, in
the present case, communicated a striking but mournful peculiarity to
the manners, even to the voice, of the child. We paused before a narrow,
crazy door, which she opened by means of a latch, and we forthwith began
to ascend the steep and broken stairs which led upwards to the sick
man's room.

As we mounted flight after flight towards the garret-floor, I heard more
and more distinctly the hurried talking of many voices. I could also
distinguish the low sobbing of a female. On arriving upon the uppermost
lobby these sounds became fully audible.

'This way, your honour,' said my little conductress; at the same time,
pushing open a door of patched and half-rotten plank, she admitted me
into the squalid chamber of death and misery. But one candle, held in
the fingers of a scared and haggard-looking child, was burning in the
room, and that so dim that all was twilight or darkness except within
its immediate influence. The general obscurity, however, served to throw
into prominent and startling relief the death-bed and its occupant. The
light was nearly approximated to, and fell with horrible clearness
upon, the blue and swollen features of the drunkard. I did not think it
possible that a human countenance could look so terrific. The lips were
black and drawn apart; the teeth were firmly set; the eyes a little
unclosed, and nothing but the whites appearing. Every feature was fixed
and livid, and the whole face wore a ghastly and rigid expression of
despairing terror such as I never saw equalled. His hands were crossed
upon his breast, and firmly clenched; while, as if to add to the
corpse-like effect of the whole, some white cloths, dipped in water,
were wound about the forehead and temples.

As soon as I could remove my eyes from this horrible spectacle, I
observed my friend Dr. D----, one of the most humane of a humane
profession, standing by the bedside. He had been attempting, but
unsuccessfully, to bleed the patient, and had now applied his finger to
the pulse.

'Is there any hope?' I inquired in a whisper.

A shake of the head was the reply. There was a pause while he continued
to hold the wrist; but he waited in vain for the throb of life--it was
not there: and when he let go the hand, it fell stiffly back into its
former position upon the other.

'The man is dead,' said the physician, as he turned from the bed where
the terrible figure lay.

Dead! thought I, scarcely venturing to look upon the tremendous and
revolting spectacle. Dead! without an hour for repentance, even a moment
for reflection; dead I without the rites which even the best should
have. Is there a hope for him? The glaring eyeball, the grinning mouth,
the distorted brow--that unutterable look in which a painter would have
sought to embody the fixed despair of the nethermost hell. These were my
answer.

The poor wife sat at a little distance, crying as if her heart would
break--the younger children clustered round the bed, looking with
wondering curiosity upon the form of death never seen before.

When the first tumult of uncontrollable sorrow had passed away, availing
myself of the solemnity and impressiveness of the scene, I desired the
heart-stricken family to accompany me in prayer, and all knelt down
while I solemnly and fervently repeated some of those prayers which
appeared most applicable to the occasion. I employed myself thus in a
manner which, I trusted, was not unprofitable, at least to the living,
for about ten minutes; and having accomplished my task, I was the first
to arise.

I looked upon the poor, sobbing, helpless creatures who knelt so humbly
around me, and my heart bled for them. With a natural transition I
turned my eyes from them to the bed in which the body lay; and, great
God! what was the revulsion, the horror which I experienced on seeing
the corpse-like terrific thing seated half upright before me; the white
cloths which had been wound about the head had now partly slipped from
their position, and were hanging in grotesque festoons about the face
and shoulders, while the distorted eyes leered from amid them--

          'A sight to dream of, not to tell.'

I stood actually riveted to the spot. The figure nodded its head and
lifted its arm, I thought, with a menacing gesture. A thousand confused
and horrible thoughts at once rushed upon my mind. I had often read
that the body of a presumptuous sinner, who, during life, had been the
willing creature of every satanic impulse, after the human tenant had
deserted it, had been known to become the horrible sport of demoniac
possession.

I was roused from the stupefaction of terror in which I stood, by the
piercing scream of the mother, who now, for the first time, perceived
the change which had taken place. She rushed towards the bed, but
stunned by the shock, and overcome by the conflict of violent emotions,
before she reached it she fell prostrate upon the floor.

I am perfectly convinced that had I not been startled from the torpidity
of horror in which I was bound by some powerful and arousing stimulant,
I should have gazed upon this unearthly apparition until I had fairly
lost my senses. As it was, however, the spell was broken--superstition
gave way to reason: the man whom all believed to have been actually dead
was living!

Dr. D---- was instantly standing by the bedside, and upon examination he
found that a sudden and copious flow of blood had taken place from the
wound which the lancet had left; and this, no doubt, had effected his
sudden and almost preternatural restoration to an existence from which
all thought he had been for ever removed. The man was still speechless,
but he seemed to understand the physician when he forbid his repeating
the painful and fruitless attempts which he made to articulate, and he
at once resigned himself quietly into his hands.

I left the patient with leeches upon his temples, and bleeding freely,
apparently with little of the drowsiness which accompanies apoplexy;
indeed, Dr. D---- told me that he had never before witnessed a seizure
which seemed to combine the symptoms of so many kinds, and yet which
belonged to none of the recognised classes; it certainly was not
apoplexy, catalepsy, nor delirium tremens, and yet it seemed, in
some degree, to partake of the properties of all. It was strange, but
stranger things are coming.

During two or three days Dr. D---- would not allow his patient to
converse in a manner which could excite or exhaust him, with anyone;
he suffered him merely as briefly as possible to express his immediate
wants. And it was not until the fourth day after my early visit, the
particulars of which I have just detailed, that it was thought expedient
that I should see him, and then only because it appeared that his
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