Weird Tales/Volume 8/Issue 4/The Coffin of Lissa

by August W. Derleth

The Coffin of Lissa

By August W. Derleth

 

The horror of the sentence overwhelmed me; it fell upon me as the black cloak of night descending on the earth absorbed the light—so it heralded the expiration of my life. I was dazed, speechless with the portent of the verdict. The black-robed judges seemed blurred to my sight as I rose and was taken from the chamber to make room for another poor wretch. Outside, night had fallen, and the murk of the darkness still further depressed my sunken spirits. Through the pall of gloom I eould discern no ray of hope. I was doomed! Doomed to die by torture, the slow torture of the iron coffin! The final words of the inquisitors reverberated hollowly in the chambers of my benumbed mind.

Slowly the first shock passed, and slowly I became conscious of my surroundings. My captors were leading me through a long passageway. A few candles glimmered feebly in their brackets at the end of the ill-lighted corridor. In a few moments I faced the iron door of the torture chamber. As the heavy door creaked backward on its rusty hinges, the gleam of the flickering candles cast fitful, menacing shadows on the dreaded coffin in the center of the chamber. The sight filled me with renewed horror and I was seized with a fierce desire for freedom. But the futile struggle that I essayed was immediately frustrated by my guards, whose strength far exceeded mine. I was roughly thrown into the instrument of torture, from which the lid had been removed. Suddenly my head struck something unyielding and I lapsed into,unconsciousness.

From then on I knew but hazily what occurred. When I awoke, my sight encountered nought save Stygian darkness. For a space I lay quiet, summoning to my aid all my faculties. Try as I might I could not pierce the blackness. It now seemed to swirl and eddy before my eyes, and often I closed them for the relief of immovable darkness. Now suddenly I bethought myself of moving my arms. But the attempt resulted in a sharp pain at the juncture of arm and shoulder. This, thought I, could be caused by no other agency than the clamps that I had so often heard of from witnesses of an execution. At that preclusion to my efforts the remembrance of the proceedings of some time past came upon me like a huge wave of ocean and swept away all the remnants of thoughts that I had been collecting, leaving nothing but fear, stark terror, despair. I realized where I was and with the realization came the thought of unhindered death. I was in the terrible iron coffin of Lissa, from which no man had ever escaped! I began to breathe heavily, and I could feel cold beads of sweat on my brow. I raved, I shouted in rage, I swore terrible oaths, oaths of vengeance against Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor. But my exertions were too much for me and I was forced to sink back in exhaustion.

Shortly after, a reaction set in and I lay quiet, contemplating my untimely end. I strained my ears for any sounds that might meet them. For a space I heard nought save my irregular breathing, then another sound impinged upon my ears. It was a soft padding sound, a very soft sound, scarcely audible. I listened attentively and attempted to find what occasioned it. It stopped at intervals; it resumed almost at once. Then no sound reached me for some little time, but suddenly I felt a sharp, stinging sensation in my right hand. I strove to draw it toward me, but the sharp pain in my shoulder was augmented with each movement of my arm. I groaned aloud. My arms had been drawn through apertures in the sides of the coffin; they had been chained to the stone floor for the rats to gnaw upon!

Again and again I shrieked, but the more often I did so, the more acutely did I realize the utter futility of my efforts. I should not be heard here, so far underground; even if I were heard, no one would liberate me. I sighed, and once more sank back to my rough bed exhausted. The rats were gone now, frightened, no doubt, by my wild screams of terror. But poignantly I realized that they must eventually return. I lowered my eyelids and began to mumble a silent prayer, but I was rudely interrupted.

A new sound, a sound fraught with more dangers and horrors than any I had heard heretofore, reached my ears. A light sound, barely coherent—yet it was there. A creaking sound, slow, in truth, and not continuous, but its portent flung me again into the wildest throes of terror. The sound of the slow, sure descent of the coffin lid! This was the climax of the ghastly tortures I was to undergo. I raised my head to find if I could touch the oncoming lid. But I could not, and the clawing pain in my shoulders as the steel damps sank into my flesh, caused me to sit back again as quickly as I could. The lid, then, was some distance away, and I had a few hours of grace.

The certainty of death threw open the gates to my memory. I thought of my mistress and of my innocent children, and I sobbed despondently. I traversed and retraversed my entire life from the beginning of my miserable existence to this experience of horror. Gradually my sobs quieted and I had recourse in my God.

For about the space of a glass of sand I lay imperturbably, my lips moving in prayer. Then I became cognizant of the proximity of the lid. I did not again endeavor to reach the cover with my head after my former racking experience, but I resorted to another means of finding its proximity. I summoned what feeble strength I had left and forcibly blew air upward. At once I felt a draft on my face; the air had returned at the propinquity of the lid. At this discovery I sought to compose the feeling of haunting alarm which rose within me, but hardly had I attempted to do so, when a biting sensation in my hands and arms acquainted me with the return of the rats, increased in number. I shrieked and screamed to scare them off, but to no avail, for they attacked me as before.

Simultaneously with these dire occurrences a revolting nausea took possession of my senses. The air had become so foul that it oppressed me s with its obnoxious poison. Cold sweat stood out in great beads upon my forehead. All my strength had deserted me; I could no longer even sob, and my breathing became more and more difficult as the lid came down. My imagination began to conjure up before me horrible visions. I believed that I saw Torquemada laughing delightedly at my sorry plight; I imagined Satan grinning at me, watching greedily for my soul. There were others, too, horrible faces leering at me through the gloom. I shut my eyes hut I could not shut out these damnable sights. They grew upon me, they assumed ghastly proportions, their faces twisted into horrible gargoylesque counterparts; gradually they merged into a vague, indistinct, grotesque mass, and were swirled away by the eddying darkness.

I could feel the lid now, lightly at first, for it advanced but slowly. A space passed, and the pressure began to pain me. Then came to me a last great power, and I shouted and raved, swearing horribly, until the sweat rolled down my cheeks in great drops. The pressure beeame more and more pronounced, the air more obnoxious, the gnawing more persistent, the racking pain in my shoulders more torturous with each twitch, and at length I became oblivious of all.

 

What am I doing here? Was I not in the iron coffin? Have I died and come to life?

The sun easts long patches of light upon the stone floor of my cell, and forms a network of conflicting shadows with the aid of the heavy bars at my window. My clothes are tom, bedraggled. I lack three fingers of the right hand, and one and a half of another of the left.

Why is my food reached toward me at the end of a pole? Why is the door of this room never opened? Why does my keeper hurl disgusting epithets at me every time he nears me? What is the meaning of all this? Why am I called such unbearable, bestial names? Above all, why am I so unjustly called that which is most oft repeated, that which, of all, I deserve the least?

"Lunatic!"

At this word there comes upon me again that horrible nausea that attacked me in the coffin of Lissa, and I shriek in terror as those memories surge over me like the resistless waves of ocean. And as my screams reverberate down the corridor, answering sereams come from other eells—and my keeper laughs and shouts filthy curses at me.