Hypnos | Page 4

in
the blackness, more of stark, teeming, brain-shattering fear than all the rest of heaven and
earth has ever revealed to me.
No word was spoken amidst the distant sound that grew nearer and nearer, but as I
followed the memory-face's mad stare along that cursed shaft of light to its source, the
source whence also the whining came, I, too, saw for an instant what it saw, and fell with
ringing ears in that fit of shrieking epilepsy which brought the lodgers and the police.
Never could I tell, try as I might, what it actually was that I saw; nor could the still face
tell, for although it must have seen more than I did, it will never speak again. But always
I shall guard against the mocking and insatiate Hypnos, lord of sleep, against the night
sky, and against the mad ambitions of knowledge and philosophy.
Just what happened is unknown, for not only was my own mind unseated by the strange
and hideous thing, but others were tainted with a forgetfulness which can mean nothing if
not madness. They have said, I know not for what reason, that I never had a friend; but
that art, philosophy, and insanity had filled all my tragic life. The lodgers and police on
that night soothed me, and the doctor administered something to quiet me, nor did anyone
see what a nightmare event had taken place. My stricken friend moved them to no pity,
but what they found on the couch in the studio made them give me a praise which
sickened me, and now a fame which I spurn in despair as I sit for hours, bald,
gray-bearded, shriveled, palsied, drug-crazed, and broken, adoring and praying to the
object they found.
For they deny that I sold the last of my statuary, and point with ecstasy at the thing which
the shining shaft of light left cold, petrified, and unvocal. It is all that remains of my
friend; the friend who led me on to madness and wreckage; a godlike head of such marble
as only old Hellas could yield, young with the youth that is outside time, and with
beauteous bearded face, curved, smiling lips, Olympian brow, and dense locks waving
and poppy-crowned. They say that that haunting memory-face is modeled from my own,
as it was at twenty-five; but upon the marble base is carven a single name in the letters of
Attica - HYPNOS. 2 RTEXTR*ch

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