Page:Weird Tales Volume 4 Number 2 (1924-05-07).djvu/154
IN THE WEIRD LIGHT
By EDWARD EVERETT WRIGHT
and RALPH HOWARD WRIGHT
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,
The soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar."
—Wordsworth.
"But tell, O restless main!
Who are the dwellers in the world beneath,
That thus the watery realm cannot contain
The joy they breathe.
***
"'Tis vain the reckless waves
Join with loud revel the dim ages flown,
But keep each secret of the hidden caves
Dark and unknown."
—Anonymous.
{{c|CAVERN OF LIGHTNINGS.
CHAPTER I.
WHETHER it really happened, or whether it was a dream—partly vivid and partly confused—I have asked myself a thousand times during the past two years. But why? It must have happened, for I have not only the evidence of my own senses, but evidence of a still more substantial nature. It lies now on the desk before me in the shape of a roll of manuscript containing in shorthand the words of a decidedly unique revelation. If it is difficult for me to accept it—me, the chief actor in its procurement—what can I say to guard against credulity on the part of others?
Nevertheless, the time has come to make it public. I have procrastinated as long as I dare. My hold on mortal existence is slipping slowly but steadily away. My reason for withholding the publication thus long has been the fear that it might be scouted as a mere figment of the imagination. I have engaged in profound research striving to find in science or psychics corroboration of some of the statements therein set forth, but in vain. The world may judge of its merits.
Permit me to introduce him who was at one time my most intimate friend and companion—Victor. Surnames will be of no consequence in this connection, and I shall omit them. Victor, however, was a wonderful man. I have never, before or since, met anyone like him. Like myself, he was alone in the world so far as family ties were concerned. His mother had died but a short time before we met, and for years she had been his last surviving relative. We had both been fortunate, however, in a pecuniary sense.