The House on the Borderland (15 page)

All this time, the days and nights were lengthening, perceptibly.
Already, each day occupied, maybe, some two hours from dawn to dusk. At
night, I had been surprised to find that there were very few stars
overhead, and these small, though of an extraordinary brightness; which
I attributed to the peculiar, but clear, blackness of the nighttime.

Away to the North, I could discern a nebulous sort of mistiness; not
unlike, in appearance, a small portion of the Milky Way. It might have
been an extremely remote star-cluster; or—the thought came to me
suddenly—perhaps it was the sidereal universe that I had known, and now
left far behind, forever—a small, dimly glowing mist of stars, far in
the depths of space.

Still, the days and nights lengthened, slowly. Each time, the sun rose
duller than it had set. And the dark belts increased in breadth.

About this time, there happened a fresh thing. The sun, earth, and sky
were suddenly darkened, and, apparently, blotted out for a brief space.
I had a sense, a certain awareness (I could learn little by sight), that
the earth was enduring a very great fall of snow. Then, in an instant,
the veil that had obscured everything, vanished, and I looked out, once
more. A marvelous sight met my gaze. The hollow in which this house,
with its gardens, stands, was brimmed with snow.
^[7]
It lipped over the
sill of my window. Everywhere, it lay, a great level stretch of white,
which caught and reflected, gloomily, the somber coppery glows of the
dying sun. The world had become a shadowless plain, from horizon
to horizon.

I glanced up at the sun. It shone with an extraordinary, dull
clearness. I saw it, now, as one who, until then, had seen it, only
through a partially obscuring medium. All about it, the sky had become
black, with a clear, deep blackness, frightful in its nearness, and its
unmeasured deep, and its utter unfriendliness. For a great time, I
looked into it, newly, and shaken and fearful. It was so near. Had I
been a child, I might have expressed some of my sensation and distress,
by saying that the sky had lost its roof.

Later, I turned, and peered about me, into the room. Everywhere, it was
covered with a thin shroud of the all-pervading white. I could see it
but dimly, by reason of the somber light that now lit the world. It
appeared to cling to the ruined walls; and the thick, soft dust of the
years, that covered the floor knee-deep, was nowhere visible. The snow
must have blown in through the open framework of the windows. Yet, in no
place had it drifted; but lay everywhere about the great, old room,
smooth and level. Moreover, there had been no wind these many thousand
years. But there was the snow,
^[8]
as I have told.

And all the earth was silent. And there was a cold, such as no living
man can ever have known.

The earth was now illuminated, by day, with a most doleful light,
beyond my power to describe. It seemed as though I looked at the great
plain, through the medium of a bronze-tinted sea.

It was evident that the earth's rotatory movement was departing,
steadily.

The end came, all at once. The night had been the longest yet; and
when the dying sun showed, at last, above the world's edge, I had grown
so wearied of the dark, that I greeted it as a friend. It rose steadily,
until about twenty degrees above the horizon. Then, it stopped suddenly,
and, after a strange retrograde movement, hung motionless—a great
shield in the sky
^[9]
. Only the circular rim of the sun showed
bright—only this, and one thin streak of light near the equator.

Gradually, even this thread of light died out; and now, all that was
left of our great and glorious sun, was a vast dead disk, rimmed with a
thin circle of bronze-red light.

The world was held in a savage gloom—cold and intolerable. Outside,
all was quiet—quiet! From the dark room behind me, came the occasional,
soft thud
^[10]
of falling matter—fragments of rotting stone. So time
passed, and night grasped the world, wrapping it in wrappings of
impenetrable blackness.

There was no night-sky, as we know it. Even the few straggling stars
had vanished, conclusively. I might have been in a shuttered room,
without a light; for all that I could see. Only, in the impalpableness
of gloom, opposite, burnt that vast, encircling hair of dull fire.
Beyond this, there was no ray in all the vastitude of night that
surrounded me; save that, far in the North, that soft, mistlike glow
still shone.

Silently, years moved on. What period of time passed, I shall never
know. It seemed to me, waiting there, that eternities came and went,
stealthily; and still I watched. I could see only the glow of the sun's
edge, at times; for now, it had commenced to come and go—lighting up a
while, and again becoming extinguished.

All at once, during one of these periods of life, a sudden flame cut
across the night—a quick glare that lit up the dead earth, shortly;
giving me a glimpse of its flat lonesomeness. The light appeared to come
from the sun—shooting out from somewhere near its center, diagonally. A
moment, I gazed, startled. Then the leaping flame sank, and the gloom
fell again. But now it was not so dark; and the sun was belted by a thin
line of vivid, white light. I stared, intently. Had a volcano broken out
on the sun? Yet, I negatived the thought, as soon as formed. I felt that
the light had been far too intensely white, and large, for such a cause.

Another idea there was, that suggested itself to me. It was, that one
of the inner planets had fallen into the sun—becoming incandescent,
under that impact. This theory appealed to me, as being more plausible,
and accounting more satisfactorily for the extraordinary size and
brilliance of the blaze, that had lit up the dead world, so
unexpectedly.

Full of interest and emotion, I stared, across the darkness, at that
line of white fire, cutting the night. One thing it told to me,
unmistakably: the sun was yet rotating at an enormous speed.
^[11]
Thus, I
knew that the years were still fleeting at an incalculable rate; though
so far as the earth was concerned, life, and light, and time, were
things belonging to a period lost in the long gone ages.

After that one burst of flame, the light had shown, only as an
encircling band of bright fire. Now, however, as I watched, it began
slowly to sink into a ruddy tint, and, later, to a dark, copper-red
color; much as the sun had done. Presently, it sank to a deeper hue;
and, in a still further space of time, it began to fluctuate; having
periods of glowing, and anon, dying. Thus, after a great while, it
disappeared.

Long before this, the smoldering edge of the sun had deadened into
blackness. And so, in that supremely future time, the world, dark and
intensely silent, rode on its gloomy orbit around the ponderous mass of
the dead sun.

My thoughts, at this period, can be scarcely described. At first, they
were chaotic and wanting in coherence. But, later, as the ages came and
went, my soul seemed to imbibe the very essence of the oppressive
solitude and dreariness, that held the earth.

With this feeling, there came a wonderful clearness of thought, and I
realized, despairingly, that the world might wander for ever, through
that enormous night. For a while, the unwholesome idea filled me, with a
sensation of overbearing desolation; so that I could have cried like a
child. In time, however, this feeling grew, almost insensibly, less, and
an unreasoning hope possessed me. Patiently, I waited.

From time to time, the noise of dropping particles, behind in the room,
came dully to my ears. Once, I heard a loud crash, and turned,
instinctively, to look; forgetting, for the moment, the impenetrable
night in which every detail was submerged. In a while, my gaze sought
the heavens; turning, unconsciously, toward the North. Yes, the nebulous
glow still showed. Indeed, I could have almost imagined that it looked
somewhat plainer. For a long time, I kept my gaze fixed upon it;
feeling, in my lonely soul, that its soft haze was, in some way, a tie
with the past. Strange, the trifles from which one can suck comfort! And
yet, had I but known—But I shall come to that in its proper time.

For a very long space, I watched, without experiencing any of the
desire for sleep, that would so soon have visited me in the old-earth
days. How I should have welcomed it; if only to have passed the time,
away from my perplexities and thoughts.

Several times, the comfortless sound of some great piece of masonry
falling, disturbed my meditations; and, once, it seemed I could hear
whispering in the room, behind me. Yet it was utterly useless to try to
see anything. Such blackness, as existed, scarcely can be conceived. It
was palpable, and hideously brutal to the sense; as though something
dead, pressed up against me—something soft, and icily cold.

Under all this, there grew up within my mind, a great and overwhelming
distress of uneasiness, that left me, but to drop me into an
uncomfortable brooding. I felt that I must fight against it; and,
presently, hoping to distract my thoughts, I turned to the window, and
looked up toward the North, in search of the nebulous whiteness, which,
still, I believed to be the far and misty glowing of the universe we had
left. Even as I raised my eyes, I was thrilled with a feeling of wonder;
for, now, the hazy light had resolved into a single, great star, of
vivid green.

As I stared, astonished, the thought flashed into my mind; that the
earth must be traveling toward the star; not away, as I had imagined.
Next, that it could not be the universe the earth had left; but,
possibly, an outlying star, belonging to some vast star-cluster, hidden
in the enormous depths of space. With a sense of commingled awe and
curiosity, I watched it, wondering what new thing was to be revealed
to me.

For a while, vague thoughts and speculations occupied me, during which
my gaze dwelt insatiably upon that one spot of light, in the otherwise
pitlike darkness. Hope grew up within me, banishing the oppression of
despair, that had seemed to stifle me. Wherever the earth was traveling,
it was, at least, going once more toward the realms of light. Light! One
must spend an eternity wrapped in soundless night, to understand the
full horror of being without it.

Slowly, but surely, the star grew upon my vision, until, in time, it
shone as brightly as had the planet Jupiter, in the old-earth days. With
increased size, its color became more impressive; reminding me of a huge
emerald, scintillating rays of fire across the world.

Years fled away in silence, and the green star grew into a great splash
of flame in the sky. A little later, I saw a thing that filled me with
amazement. It was the ghostly outline of a vast crescent, in the night;
a gigantic new moon, seeming to be growing out of the surrounding gloom.
Utterly bemused, I stared at it. It appeared to be quite
close—comparatively; and I puzzled to understand how the earth had come
so near to it, without my having seen it before.

The light, thrown by the star, grew stronger; and, presently, I was
aware that it was possible to see the earthscape again; though
indistinctly. Awhile, I stared, trying to make out whether I could
distinguish any detail of the world's surface, but I found the light
insufficient. In a little, I gave up the attempt, and glanced once more
toward the star. Even in the short space, that my attention had been
diverted, it had increased considerably, and seemed now, to my
bewildered sight, about a quarter of the size of the full moon. The
light it threw, was extraordinarily powerful; yet its color was so
abominably unfamiliar, that such of the world as I could see, showed
unreal; more as though I looked out upon a landscape of shadow, than
aught else.

All this time, the great crescent was increasing in brightness, and
began, now, to shine with a perceptible shade of green. Steadily, the
star increased in size and brilliancy, until it showed, fully as large
as half a full moon; and, as it grew greater and brighter, so did the
vast crescent throw out more and more light, though of an ever deepening
hue of green. Under the combined blaze of their radiances, the
wilderness that stretched before me, became steadily more visible. Soon,
I seemed able to stare across the whole world, which now appeared,
beneath the strange light, terrible in its cold and awful, flat
dreariness.

It was a little later, that my attention was drawn to the fact, that
the great star of green flame, was slowly sinking out of the North,
toward the East. At first, I could scarcely believe that I saw aright;
but soon there could be no doubt that it was so. Gradually, it sank,
and, as it fell, the vast crescent of glowing green, began to dwindle
and dwindle, until it became a mere arc of light, against the livid
colored sky. Later it vanished, disappearing in the self-same spot from
which I had seen it slowly emerge.

By this time, the star had come to within some thirty degrees of the
hidden horizon. In size it could now have rivaled the moon at its full;
though, even yet, I could not distinguish its disk. This fact led me to
conceive that it was, still, an extraordinary distance away; and, this
being so, I knew that its size must be huge, beyond the conception of
man to understand or imagine.

Suddenly, as I watched, the lower edge of the star vanished—cut by a
straight, dark line. A minute—or a century—passed, and it dipped
lower, until the half of it had disappeared from sight. Far away out on
the great plain, I saw a monstrous shadow blotting it out, and advancing
swiftly. Only a third of the star was visible now. Then, like a flash,
the solution of this extraordinary phenomenon revealed itself to me. The
star was sinking behind the enormous mass of the dead sun. Or rather,
the sun—obedient to its attraction—was rising toward it,
^[12]
with the
earth following in its trail. As these thoughts expanded in my mind, the
star vanished; being completely hidden by the tremendous bulk of the
sun. Over the earth there fell, once more, the brooding night.