In Both Worlds

by William H. Holcombe

When I recovered my senses I examined as well as I could the strange place into which I had been plunged. It must have been broad daylight out of doors, for there was a kind of twilight about me that revealed plainly the contour of my dungeon. When evening came on I was shrouded in impenetrable darkness. Such was the only difference between my day and my night.

The chamber was about ten feet square, and its walls rose to a considerable height. It was evidently an old secret dungeon partly underground, damp and mouldy, the scene perhaps of many sufferings and many crimes. There was an opening into this vault, so that I was not literally buried alive. The workmen who had sealed up the space by which I had entered, had left a little square hole like a window about ten feet above the flooring. I could see a brick wall beyond it, so that there was evidently a narrow passage by which some rays of light came to me. When a door, opening into this passage, was left open, the light was considerable.

If I could have reached that window I could have escaped; for it was large enough to admit the head and shoulders of a man, as I soon had occasion to know. I [pg 281]made many frantic efforts to do so, but could barely touch the edge of it with the tips of my fingers. There was not an object in the room to assist me in reaching it. My chamber was perfectly bare—not a stool, not a pallet of straw.

While I was contemplating sadly the frightful fate which was in store for me, a little lid or trap-door in the ceiling about a foot square was opened, and a basket was lowered by a cord. This basket contained a loaf of bread and a bottle of water. I took out the bread and water; the basket rose again by the cord, and the lid was closed. This was the routine, day after day, without variation. Not even an arm or a hand could be detected when the lid was raised. Nothing could be seen or heard.

There was one thing that varied the monotony, and only one. Every day, about noon, the door in the passage was opened, the light admitted, and the ugly face and head of Magistus were protruded through the little window. There he stood gazing at me for some minutes, sometimes for half an hour, on several occasions for one or two hours. He did not speak. He glared at me with a stony malignity which is indescribable. When he had satiated his cruel appetite with a sight of my sufferings, he retired.

Thus passed away week after week, month after month. My sufferings were horrible. I wasted and weakened day by day both in mind and body. The air of the dungeon had become foul and sickening. The bread and water had become tasteless and repulsive. The silence, the solitude, the darkness, were fearful.

Magistus came every day to enjoy with secret satisfac[pg 282]tion the cruel death he was inflicting on me. I regarded him with such repugnance and scorn, that I did not speak to him or even look at him. This no doubt inflamed his hatred. I walked about my narrow prison, whistling or talking to myself until he went away. My insulting indifference did not seem to disturb him in the least. He did nothing to attract my attention. He only looked.

And now a strange and almost incredible thing occurred. I do not believe any one can comprehend what I have to say, unless he has been shut up alone in the dark for weeks and months; with the mind preying morbidly on itself for want of external objects to give it healthful activity; wasted by low diet and a mephitic atmosphere, by silence whose terror is indescribable, and by solitude which of itself can drive to madness.

I did not look at the stony, cruel face of Magistus; but the idea that he was looking at me began to take a singular and painful possession of my mind. I could not get rid of it. I walked, whistled, talked, sang to myself, all in vain. The idea that a hideous face was in the window; that the black, fierce eyes were fixed upon me; that I could not prevent it; hung over my mind like the vultures gnawing at the heart of the chained Prometheus. It became a positive torture.