PHANTASTIC DREAMS – Dream IV: A CASTLE

I dream I am in the entrance hall of a huge castle. The walls, floor, and ceiling are all of stone. There is no one about, and throughout the vast building reigns an omnipotent hush. Confronting me is a broad spiral staircase, which I proceed to ascend. Up, up, up I go, and I am beginning to despair of ever arriving at the summit, when from far below comes the faint sound of footsteps. I pause to listen, and my blood turns to ice. There is something in those footsteps that suggests the grotesque and sinister. Panic-stricken, I assay to run, and my feet seem weighted with iron. The footsteps grow more and more audible. They are no longer walking but bounding bounding prodigiously, three stairs at a time. Wild with terror, I struggle feebly on; the footsteps draw nearer and nearer three stairs two stairs one stair they are on me. I make up my mind I am caught, when behold, they pass me by, and on venturing to look up I see nothing! And yet the sounds are still going on, up, up, up, until they die away in the interminable heights above me and all again is wrapped in silence. After a brief pause I continue my ascent, and presently find myself at the entrance to a long stone corridor, pierced with innumerable doorways. There is something so inconceivably grim in the cold, yellow atmosphere of this passage, something so horribly suggestive of a thousand uncanny possibilities in the aspect of its doors that I stand still, rooted to the ground with terror.Every moment, I expect to see the doors fly open and the horrors they conceal spring out on me. Nothing happening, however, 1 am congratulating myself that my fears are groundless, when, with an unexpectedness that makes my heart almost leap out of my body, every door opens simultaneously and scores of long, yellow feet appear, which, after striking the ground three times in unison, are hurriedly withdrawn. An interval of some seconds follows, after which the doors are once more opened and the most curious, long, thin, yellow faces, half human and half animal, are thrust through with a mechanical and mirthless ” Ha, ha, ha!”These also disappear from view, the doors shutting simultaneously as before. A vast number of footsteps are now heard ascending the staircase, and, almost before I have time to move aside, dozens of tall figures clad in the most fantastic of tight-fitting yellow garments come racing up, and, ranging themselves in two opposite rows right along the corridor, all stamp their feet to the tune of a deep intonated ” Hock, hock, hock!” which they repeat in unison. This strange performance goes on for what to me seems an eternity, and just as I am beginning to think it never will terminate, the figures are suddenly quiet, and there appears in their midst a drummer with an enormous, round head, a huge, gaping mouth, and large, round, pale eyes full of an indefinitely peculiar expression; the very vagueness of which is absolutely terrifying. With the same unfathomable expression he flourishes his drumsticks in the air, and as he brings them down with a mighty, hollow-sounding boom, everything changes, and I find myself with hundreds of other people all apparently equally bereft of reason racing, as if for dear life, down a vast flight of stone steps. Even as I fly I rack my brains for some explanation of the panic, but, whenever I am on the verge of grasping a solution, it eludes me, and my mind sees nothing but a grey awfulness. Again, and in the twinkling of an eye, the scene changes, and I am in the courtyard of the castle, turning the windlass of a well. Up, up, up comes the bucket, unusually heavy I think for water, and I am about to peer over the edge of the well to see what has happened, when, to my surprise, there rises in sight a huge yellow wheel. Rolling on to the ground it bounds away, and here I have ceased wondering at its evolutions, a hand touches me lightly on the shoulder, and I find myself face to face with the drummer. The look in his eyes now terrifies me beyond endurance, and I awake.The yellow in this dream portends treachery; and it is a fact that, shortly after experiencing it, an exceptionally dirty trick was played me by one whom I had hitherto regarded as a friend. The actions and expressions of the dream-people are, at present, enigmatical to me, albeit I cannot help fancying that they are a language in themselves, and that underlying them all, there is much subtle meaning. Wheels and drummers invariably augur ill.