Etidorhpa; or, The End of Earth. / The Strange History of a Mysterious Being and the Account of a Remarkable Journey

by John Uri Lloyd

I turned and faced the gladsome breeze. "'Tis the source of life, I will trace it to its origin, I will leave the accursed desert, the hateful sunshine, and seek the blissful regions that give birth to cool breezes."

I walked rapidly, and the breeze became more energetic and cooler. With each increase of momentum on my part, corresponding strength seemed to be added to the breeze—both strength and coolness.

"Is not this delightful?" I murmured; "my God at last has come to be a just God. Knowing what I wanted, He sent the breeze; in answer to my prayer the cool, refreshing breeze arose. Damn the heat," I cried aloud, as I thought of the horrid day before; "blessed be the cold," and as though in answer to my cry the breeze stiffened and the cold strengthened itself, and I again returned thanks to my Creator.

With ragged coat wrapped about my form I faced the breeze and strode onward towards the home of the gelid wind that now dashed in gusts against my person.

Then I heard my footstep crunch, and perceived that the sand was hard beneath my feet; I stooped over to examine it and found it frozen. Strange, I reflected, strange that dry sand can freeze, and then I noticed, for the first time, that spurts of snow surrounded me, 'twas a sleety mixture upon which I trod, a crust of snow and sand. A sense of dread came suddenly over me, and instinctively I turned, affrighted, and ran away from the wind, towards the desert behind me, back towards the sun, which, cold and bleak, low in the horizon, was sinking. The sense of dread grew upon me, and I shivered as I ran. With my back towards the breeze I had blessed, I now fled towards the sinking sun I had cursed. I stretched out my arms in supplication towards that orb, for from behind overhanging blackness spread, and about me roared a fearful hurricane. Vainly. As I thought in mockery the heartless sun disappeared before my gaze, the hurricane surrounded me, and the wind about me became intensely cold, and raved furiously. It seemed as though the sun had fled from my presence, and with the disappearance of that orb, the outline of the earth was blotted from existence. It was an awful blackness, and the universe was now to me a blank. The cold strengthened and froze my body to the marrow of my bones. First came the sting of frost, then the pain of cold, then insensibility of flesh. My feet were benumbed, my limbs motionless. I stood a statue, quiescent in the midst of the roaring tempest. The earth, the sun, the heavens themselves, my very person now had disappeared. Dead to the sense of pain or touch, sightless, amid a blank, only the noise of the raging winds was to me a reality. And as the creaking frost reached my brain and congealed it, the sound of the tempest ceased, and then devoid of physical senses, my quickened intellect, enslaved, remained imprisoned in the frozen form it could not leave, and yet could no longer control.

Reflection after reflection passed through that incarcerated thought entity, and as I meditated, the heinous mistakes I had committed in the life that had passed, arose to torment. God had answered my supplications, successively I had experienced the hollowness of earthly pleasures, and had left each lesson unheeded. Had I not alternately begged for and then cursed each gift of God? Had I not prayed for heat, cold, light, and darkness, and anathematized each? Had I not, when in perfect silence, prayed for sound; in sheltered caverns, prayed for winds and storms; in the very corridors of heaven, and in the presence of Etidorhpa, had I not sought for joys beyond?

Had I not found each pleasure of life a mockery, and notwithstanding each bitter lesson, still pursued my headstrong course, alternately blessing and cursing my Creator, and then myself, until now, amid a howling waste, in perfect darkness, my conscious intellect was bound to the frozen, rigid semblance of a body? All about me was dead and dark, all within was still and cold, only my quickened intellect remained as in every corpse the self-conscious intellect must remain, while the body has a mortal form, for death of body is not attended by the immediate liberation of mind. The consciousness of the dead man is still acute, and he who thinks the dead are mindless, will realize his fearful error when devoid of motion he lies a corpse, conscious of all that passes on around him, waiting the liberation that can only come by disintegration and destruction of the flesh.

So, unconscious of pain, unconscious of any physical sense, I existed on and on, enthralled, age after age passed and piled upon one another, for time was to me unchangeable, no more an entity. I now prayed for change of any kind, and envied the very devils in hell their pleasures, for were they not gifted with the power of motion, could they not hear, and see, and realize the pains they suffered? I prayed for death—death absolute, death eternal. Then, at last, the darkness seemed to lessen, and I saw the frozen earth beneath, the monstrous crags of ice above, the raging tempest about, for I now had learned by reflection to perceive by pure intellect, to see by the light within. My body, solid as stone, was fixed and preserved in a waste of ice. The world was frozen. I perceived that the sun, and moon, and stars, nearly stilled, dim and motionless, had paled in the cold depths of space. The universe itself was freezing, and amid the desolation only my deserted intellect remained. Age after age had passed, æons of ages had fled, nation after nation had grown and perished, and in the uncounted epochs behind, humanity had disappeared. Unable to free itself from the frozen body, my own intellect remained the solitary spectator of the dead silence about. At last, beneath my vision, the moon disappeared, the stars faded one by one, and then I watched the sun grow dim, until at length only a milky, gauze-like film remained to indicate her face, and then—vacancy. I had lived the universe away. And in perfect darkness the living intellect, conscious of all that had transpired in the ages past, clung still enthralled to the body of the frozen mortal. I thought of my record in the distant past, of the temptations I had undergone, and called myself a fool, for, had I listened to the tempter, I could at least have suffered, I could have had companionship even though it were of the devils—in hell. I lived my life over and over, times without number; I thought of my tempters, of the offered cups, and thinking, argued with myself:

"No," I said; "no, I had made the promise, I have faith in Etidorhpa, and were it to do over again I would not drink."

Then, as this thought sped from me, the ice scene dissolved, the enveloped frozen form of myself faded from view, the sand shrunk into nothingness, and with my natural body, and in normal condition, I found myself back in the earth cavern, on my knees, beside the curious inverted fungus, of which fruit I had eaten in obedience to my guide's directions. Before me the familiar figure of my guide stood, with folded arms, and as my gaze fell upon him he reached out his hand and raised me to my feet.