A shadow passed over Basil's countenance, like a swift sailing cloud.
Darkness supervened, impenetrable, sepulchral.
"Well may you cower," gibbered the shape in its inexorable monotone. "For you came into this life among the death-fed mushrooms that grow where murder rots. The moon-struck wolves howled for three nights, and ill-omened birds flapped for three days around the tower where she who gave you life breathed her last."
A fitful muttering as of souls in pain seemed to pervade the night-wrapped galleries, with sultry storm gusts breathing inarticulate evil. No light save the white flash of the lightning revealed now and then the uncanny form of the speaker. The smell of rotting weeds came through the crevices of the wall.
When Basil, spell-bound, found no tongue, the dark shape continued:
"Wrapped in midnight's cloak, nine witches down in the castle moat sang a baptismal hymn of horror as you saw the light. As mighty brazen wings sounded the roaring of the tempest-churned seas. And above you stood he who holds the keys to thought's dark chambers, he in whose ranks the sullen angels serve, whose shadowy dewless wings cast evil on the world. And I am he whose palace rings with the eternal Never!"
Frozen with terror Basil listened.
The thunder growled ever louder. A vampire's bark stabbed the darkness; the shriek of witches rose above the tempest, there was a rattling of bones as if skeletons were rising from their graves. All round the Emperor's Tomb the ghouls were prowling, and the soulless corpses were as restless as the fleshless souls that whimpered and moaned in the night. Giant bats flew to and fro like evil spirits. The great peals shook the huge pile from vault to summit. The running finger of the storm scribbled fiery, cabalistical zigzags on the firmament's black page. And in every peal, louder and louder as the echoes spread, Basil seemed to hear his name shrieked by the weird powers of darkness, till, half mad with terror, he cried:
"Away! Away! Your presence flings dark glare like glowing lava—"
"I come across the night," replied the voice, "ere death has made you mine! Deserve the doom that is prepared for those who do my bidding. You have shot into my heart a ray of blackest light—"