Nightmare Tales

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Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Nightmare Tales

A BEWITCHED LIFE (As Narrated by a Quill Pen)

I. The Stranger’s Story

II. The Mysterious Visitor

III. Psychic Magic

IV. A Vision of Horror

V. Return of Doubts

VI. I Depart – But Not Alone

VII. Eternity in a Short Dream

VIII. A Tale of Woe

THE CAVE OF THE ECHOES. A Strange but True Story2

THE LUMINOUS SHIELD

FROM THE POLAR LANDS (A Christmas Story)

THE ENSOULED VIOLIN

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IV

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VI

Отрывок из книги

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.

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“How so? Even when disbelieving in it?” – I rejoined.

“Even so! One may disbelieve and yet harbor in one’s nature room for doubt, however small that room may be, and thus try one day, were it but for one moment, to open the door of the inner temple; and this will prove sufficient for the purpose.”

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