“Song of my soul, my voice is dead,
“Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
“Shall dry and die in
“Lost Carcosa.”
(“Cassilda’s Song”, The King In Yellow – Act I, Scene 2)
I awoke that morning from a fitful and restless sleep, panoplied with wild and cacophonous visions of the spired and minareted towers of dim-litten Carcosa squatting silent and batrachian beside the star-dappled waters of the Lake of Hali.
As I rose from my slumber and rubbed the sleep from my eyes, the carnival of dreams born from my reading of The King In Yellow continued to dance through my mind, unbidden and disturbing.
I went mechanically through my usual morning ablutions like an automaton, numbly scraping the stubble off my chin with a three day-old razor and dully swiping a comb through my hair. The curious, haunting images of the play would not leave my thoughts. I was frighteningly consumed with it.
Hastur, Aldebaran, and the mystery of the Hyades…Cassilda and Camilla…the cloudy depths of Dehme and the Lake of Hali…the scalloped tatters of the King in Yellow that must hide Yhtill forever…
Naotalba and Aldones, Uoht and Thale… The Last King, and the Phantom of Truth…
The Yellow Sign…and the Pallid Mask…
Padding into the kitchen like a somnambulist, I fixed and ate a quick breakfast – for the lure of the play was drawing me inexorably back to it, like a Siren serenade against who’s call I had no wax to stuff my ears.
I was able to resist the impetus to immediately start tearing into the Second Act long enough to boot up my laptop and do a quick Google search on the work.
Obscure was not the word for what this thing was. For all of that, some diligent digging did manage to bring up some few scattered pieces of information regarding it.
The author of the text was indeed unknown. It surfaced in France in 1895, as the publishing imprint had declared. Oddly enough, it had only circulated in written form amongst the aesthete set of the Parisian cafes. It had never seen production on the stage. A single English translation was made, and saw a small run in print soon after. Around 1898, the work was banned in France after an apparent rash of suicides and cases of insanity connected with the perusal of the play. A long list of names glowed out at me from my laptop screen. All affected, horribly, by their encounter with this beautifully haunting and insidiously damnable work.
I softly shut the lid on my computer and sat back on the couch. Even forewarned and forearmed as I was by what I had found regarding the text, I found my hand reaching out to take up the cracked black leather of the antique folio and delve within its pages again.
Clumsily lighting up a cigarette with fingers trembling in fear and anticipation both, I leaned forward and opened the tome to the Second Act. Drawing in a tremulous breath, I let my gaze drop to the vellum parchment and my fevered eyes began to read.
(CASSILDA is talking to the STRANGER, front left. CAMILLA watches from the balcony, unobserved. Carcosa and the Hyades behind her; the moon has vanished.)
STRANGER: There, Princess, you see that there has been
No sending, and there will be none.
The Pallid Mask is the perfect disguise.
CASSILDA: How would we know a sending if it came?
(CAMILLA descends and joins them.)
STRANGER: The messenger of the King drives a hearse.
CAMILLA: Oh ho! – half the population does that.
It is the city’s most popular occupation
Since the siege began. All that is talk.
STRANGER: I have heard what the Talkers were talking – the talk
Of the beginning and the end;
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
CASSILDA: But…the sending? Let us hear then.
STRANGER: Also, the messenger of the King is a soft man.
Should you greet him by the hand, one of his fingers
Would come off to join yours.
(CASSILDA recoils in disgust. NAOTALBA, who has been circling closer and closer to the group, like an errant vulture, now joins them.)
NAOTALBA: A pretty story, to be sure.
You seem to know everything. I think perhaps
You could even tell us, given gold,
The mystery of the Hyades.
STRANGER: He is King there.
NAOTALBA: As everywhere. Everyone knows that.
STRANGER: He is not King in Aldebaran. That is why
Carcosa was built. It is a city in exile.
These two mighty stars are deep in war,
Like Hastur and Alar.
NAOTALBA: Oh, indeed?
Who then lives in Carcosa?
STRANGER: Nothing human.
More than that, I cannot tell you.
NAOTALBA: Your springs of invention run dry
With a suspicious quickness.
CAMILLA: Be silent!
Stranger – how do you come by all this?
STRANGER: My sigil is Aldebaran. I hate the King.
NAOTALBA: And yet you bear the Yellow Sign,
Which you mock Him by flaunting before the world.
I will tell you this:
He will not be mocked. He is a King
Whom Emperors have served; and that is why
He scorns a crown. All crowns are His.
This is in the Runes.
STRANGER: There are great Truths in the Runes.
Nevertheless, my goodly priest, Aldebaran
Is His evil star. Thence comes the Pallid Mask.
NAOTALBA: Belike, belike. But I would rather be
Deep in the cloudy depths of Dehme
Than to wear what you wear upon your chest
When the King opens wide his mantle –
(Somewhere in the palace, a deep-toned gong begins to strike.)
A sudden sound broke me from my perusal with a start. A low, leaden, insistent knocking sounded upon my door like the fall of a hammer upon the lid of a coffin.
I looked up and stared in its direction, rapt in a sort of muted horror. A mixture of apprehension coupled with a nameless dread at what might lie beyond the portal seized my senses and choked my imagination. An insensate delirium conjured up all manner of formless nightmare that might lurk waiting upon my threshold.
Shaking my head, I stubbed out my cigarette and chided myself for a fool. With a dispelling laugh at my wild thoughts, I hopped up from the couch and crossed over to the door.
I paused before unlatching the bolt and called out, “Yeah?... Who is it?”
There was a moment of silence, laden with portent, before a heavy voice – intoned with a pitch like gravel being poured over a tombstone – answered back:
“Have you seen the Yellow Sign?...”
(Finis Part 4)
