It was that very night that, having strolled into the shrubbery to smoke my cigar, I fell asleep upon a rustic bench there and awoke to find it was late at night, with the wind moaning as if a storm were brewing in the cloudy heavens.
As I arose to go to the house, something—that was not visible—seemed to come from every quarter at once and smite me. I felt a sharp, electric thrill, which was followed by a sensation as if I had been flung from a height and raised up again, with some of my faculties benumbed by the fall. My hair stood up, but I felt no fear, only a passive wonder, mixed with expectation. Turning, I saw, by a transient gleam of moonlight, the girl Asenath, standing in the path near by, pointing at me with a long, slender rod. The ray passed and left a black Shadow there, which moved slowly away, beckoning to me. I followed.
The Shadow led me out of the shrubbery and along the wide avenue between the two rows of huts occupied by the negroes, and ended at the mansion house. I had no will or thought but to follow it exactly. It stopped before one of the huts and bent itself nearly double. I, too, bent over, involuntarily, and every muscle of my body seemed to become tense. The perspiration started out of me, and my will was like a bar of steel ending in great fingers, which grasped something and pulled upon it with such force that my inner self was a-tremble with weakness when the tension relaxed, which it did at the opening of the cottage door and the coming out of a little lad—a mere child—who looked ghastly, as one of the dead walking. He placed himself beside me, we followed the shadowy woman to another house, dragged at the invisible cords of another human soul, and brought it out into the night. It was a woman, this time, in scantiest of night-robes.
And so we went on, stopping at every door, and from every door some one came forth, except from that of Lucas. There, grasp as it would, the steel fingers clutched nothing, and the door remained shut.
The woman Asenath muttered to herself, and all the crowd of followers muttered, too. With them, my own lips formed words, of which I did not then comprehend the meaning: “Soulless beast!” We went on beyond the quarters, stopped at the mansion, and dragged at something that resisted with all its strength, which was weaker than ours, for it yielded at last, and came slowly, slowly down the steps and stood among us. It was my sister Helen.
Asenath laughed, and ghastly laughter broke from all, even from Helen herself.
I had no feeling of compassion for her, nor of fear for her or myself, but was simply a force which another exerted. The wills of those who followed Asenath were but strands in the cable of her power, and their strength was in her hands for good or ill.
We followed again—out of the plantation, through a forest of pines, over a bridge that spanned slow-crawling, black water, past a fallen church, surrounded by forgotten graves, to the top of a hill where there were stones laid in the form of a serpent—a great cleft stone, like open jaws, forming the head. There Asenath paused and cast down her rod. She stretched out her hands, and in a moment we were formed into a circle about the rod.
And then once again those fingers of steel grasped something—something that all their strength seemed unable to move. Our breath came in gasps, our forms shook like the leaves of the aspen tree, and in the heart was a fear, too great to be measured, of failure. Long, long the effort lasted—lasted until the will seemed to discard its own puerile strength and to fling itself upon the bosom of impersonal force, seize the reservoir of the universal will, and turn its power in a mighty stream upon the burden of one desire—one unyielding demand that the door be opened. And with that borrowed force came the sense of unlimited strength. Faith was born. We stretched out our arms in gestures of which I can only remember that they were first those of invitation, then of welcome. Nature began to pulsate. There was a sound like the slow, regular beating of a heart, in the chambers of which we were inclosed. The inner life throbbed with it so fiercely that the blood seemed almost to leap from my body. All about us were the movements of awakening birds and insects; from afar came the lowing of kine, the crowing of cocks, and the crying of children, as if they were suddenly startled into fear.
In the centre of the circle appeared a square of strange light. We looked upon it and beheld a place of which the darkness and the light of this world are but the envelopes. We saw there, afar off, a vast crystalline globe, from which extended, in all directions, millions of filaments of clear light. The globe scintillated as a diamond does, and its sparks floated away upon the endless filaments of light. Nearer to us, moving about, were beings not human, and not resembling each other further than that they were all gigantic and all possessed of some human attributes. Some were beautiful, some hideous; but upon every one was stamped—in strange characters that I somehow understood—the words “I only am God.” Upon some the writing was fantastic, as if put on in mockery. Upon others it shone with a clear and cruel radiance that pained the sight. Some bore it faded and dim, as if the pretension it set up had fallen like a leaf into the stream of the ages and been almost forgotten. A great awe fell upon us all, so great that all, except the woman Asenath and myself, fell down and seemed as if dead. The woman trembled and murmured to herself, and again my lips formed her words: “Is it worth while, when human desires are so poor, human life so short?”