WHAT THE MOON BRINGS

It was in the spectral summer when the moon shone down on the old garden where I
wandered; the spectral summer of narcotic flowers and humid seas of foliage that
bring wild and many-coloured dreams. And as I walked by the shallow crystal
stream I saw unwonted ripples tipped with yellow light, as if those placid
waters were drawn on in resistless currents to strange oceans that are not in
the world. Silent and sparkling, bright and baleful, those moon-cursed waters
hurried I knew not whither; whilst from the embowered banks white lotos-blossoms
fluttered one by one in the opiate night-wind and dropped despairingly into the
stream, swirling away horribly under the arched, carven bridge, and staring back
with the sinister resignation of calm, dead faces.

And as I ran along the shore, crushing sleeping flowers with heedless feet and
maddened ever by the fear of unknown things and the lure of the dead faces, I
saw that the garden had no end under that moon; for where by day the walls were,
there stretched now only new vistas of trees and paths, flowers and shrubs,
stone idols and pagodas, and bendings of the yellow-litten stream past grassy
banks and under grotesque bridges of marble. And the lips of the dead
lotos-faces whispered sadly, and bade me follow, nor did I cease my steps till
the stream became a river, and joined amidst marshes of swaying reeds and
beaches of gleaming sand the shore of a vast and nameless sea.

Upon that sea the hateful moon shone, and over its unvocal waves weird perfumes
breeded. And as I saw therein the lotos-faces vanish, I longed for nets that I
might capture them and learn from them the secrets which the moon had brought
upon the night. But when that moon went over to the west and the still tide
ebbed from the sullen shore, I saw in that light old spires that the waves
almost uncovered, and white columns gay with festoons of green seaweed. And
knowing that to this sunken place all the dead had come, I trembled and did not
wish again to speak with the lotos-faces.

Yet when I saw afar out in the sea a black condor descend from the sky to seek
rest on a vast reef, I would fain have questioned him, and asked him of those
whom I had known when they were alive. This I would have asked him had he not
been so far away, but he was very far, and could not be seen at all when he drew
nigh that gigantic reef.

So I watched the tide go out under that sinking moon, and saw gleaming the
spires, the towers, and the roofs of that dead, dripping city. And as I watched,
my nostrils tried to close against the perfume--conquering stench of the world's
dead; for truly, in this unplaced and forgotten spot had all the flesh of the
churchyards gathered for puffy sea-worms to gnaw and glut upon.

Over these horrors the evil moon now hung very low, but the puffy worms of the
sea need no moon to feed by. And as I watched the ripples that told of the
writhing of worms beneath, I felt a new chill from afar out whither the condor
had flown, as if my flesh had caught a horror before my eyes had seen it.

Nor had my flesh trembled without cause, for when I raised my eyes I saw that
the waters had ebbed very low, shewing much of the vast reef whose rim I had
seen before. And when I saw that the reef was but the black basalt crown of a
shocking eikon whose monstrous forehead now shown in the dim moonlight and whose
vile hooves must paw the hellish ooze miles below, I shrieked and shrieked lest
the hidden face rise above the waters, and lest the hidden eyes look at me after
the slinking away of that leering and treacherous yellow moon.

And to escape this relentless thing I plunged gladly and unhesitantly into the
stinking shallows where amidst weedy walls and sunken streets fat sea-worms
feast upon the world's dead.