My imagination was excited, and I began to indulge in some rather overheated fantasies. But the wildest of these was a homely commonplace in comparison with the thing that happened when I took a single step forward in the vacant space immediately between the two boulders. I shall try to describe it to the utmost of my verbal ability.

  Nothing is more disconcerting than to miscalculate the degree of descent in taking a step. Imagine then what it was to find utter nothingness underfoot! I seemed to be going down into an empty gulf, and at the same time the landscape before me vanished in a swirl of broken images and everything went blind. There was a feeling of intense, Hyperborian cold. And indescribable sickness and vertigo possessed me, due, no doubt, to the profound disturbance of equilibrium.

  Also—either from the speed of my descent or for some other reason—I was totally unable to draw breath.

  My thoughts and feelings were unutterably confused. Half the time it seemed to me that I was falling upward rather than downward, or was sliding horizontally or at some oblique angle. At last I had the sensation of turning a complete somersault. Then I found myself standing erect on solid ground once more, without the least shock or jar of impact. The darkness cleared away from my vision, but I was still dizzy, and the optical images I received were altogether meaningless for some moments.

  When I finally recovered enough to view my surroundings with a measure of perception, I experienced a mental confusion equivalent to that of a man who finds himself cast without warning on the shore of some foreign planet. There was the same sense of utter loss and alienation which would assuredly be felt in such a case—the same vertiginous, overwhelming bewilderment, the same ghastly sense of separation from all the familiar environmental details that give color and form and definition to our lives and even determine our very personalities.

  I was standing in the midst of a landscape which bore no degree or manner of resemblance to Crater Ridge. A long, gradual slope, covered with violet grass and studded at intervals with stones of monolithic size and shape, ran undulantly away beneath me to a broad plain with sinuous, open meadows and high, stately forests of an unknown vegetation whose predominant hues were purple and yellow. The Plain seemed to end in a wall of impenetrable golden-brownish mist, that rose with phantom pinnacles to dissolve on a sky of luminescent amber in which there was no sun.

  In the foreground of this amazing scene, not more than two or three miles away, there loomed a city whose massive towers and mountainous ramparts of red stone were such as the Anakim of undiscovered worlds might build. Wall on beetling wall, and spire on giant spire, it soared to confront the heavens, maintaining everywhere the severe and solemn lines of a rectangular architecture. It seemed to overwhelm and crush down the beholder with its stern and crag-like imminence.

  As I viewed this city, I forgot my initial sense of bewildering loss and alienage, in an awe with which something of actual terror was mingled. At the same time, I felt an obscure but profound allurement, the cryptic emanation of some enslaving spell. But after I had gazed awhile, the cosmic strangeness and bafflement of my unthinkable position returned to me. Then, I felt only a wild desire to escape from the maddeningly oppressive bizarreness of this region and retain my own world. In an effort to fight down my agitation, I tried to figure out, if possible, what had really happened.

  I had read a number of trans-dimensional stories. In fact, I had written one or two myself. I had often pondered the possibility of other worlds or material planes which may co-exist in the same space with ours, invisible and impalpable to human senses.

  Of course, I realized at once that I had fallen into some such dimension. Doubtless, when I took that step forward between the boulders, I had been precipitated into some sort of flaw or fissure in space, to emerge at the bottom in this alien sphere—in a totally different kind of space. It sounded simple enough in a way, but not simple enough to make the modus operandi anything but a brain-racking mystery.

  In a further effort to collect myself, I studied my immediate surroundings with close attention. This time, I was impressed by the arrangement of the monolithic stones I have spoken of, many of which were disposed at fairly regular intervals in two parallel lines running down the hill, as if to mark the course of some ancient road obliterated by the purple grass.

  Turning to follow its ascent, I saw right behind me two columns, standing at precisely the same distance apart as the two odd boulders on Crater Ridge. They were made of the same greenish-gray stone! The pillars were perhaps nine feet high, and had been taller at one time, since the tops were splintered and broken away. Not far above them, the mounting slope vanished from view in a great bank of the same golden-brown mist that enveloped the remoter plain. But there were no more monoliths, and it seemed as if the road had ended with those pillars.

  Inevitably I began to speculate as to the relationship between the columns in this new dimension and the boulders in my own world. Surely the resemblance could not be a matter of mere chance. If I stepped between the columns, could I return to the human sphere by a reversal of my precipitation therefrom? And if so, by what inconceivable beings from foreign time and space had the columns and boulders been established as the portals of a gateway between two worlds? Who could have used the gateway, and for what purpose?

  My brain reeled before the infinite vistas of surmise that were opened by such questions.

  However, what concerned me most was the problem of getting back to Crater Ridge. The weirdness of it all, the monstrous walls of the nearby town, the unnatural hues and forms of the outlandish scenery were too much for human nerves. I felt that I should go mad if forced to remain long in such a milieu. Also, there was no telling what hostile powers or entities I might encounter if I stayed.

  The slope and plain were devoid of animal life, as far as I could see. But the great city was presumptive proof of human existence. Unlike the heroes of my own tales, who were wont to visit the fifth dimension or the worlds of Algol with perfect sang froid. I did not feel adventurous. Frankly, I shrank back with man’s instinctive recoil before the unknown. With one fearful glance at the looming city and the wide plain with its lofty, gorgeous vegetation, I turned and stepped back between the columns.

  There was the same instantaneous plunge into blind and freezing gulfs, the same indeterminate falling and twisting that had marked my descent into this new dimension. At the end I found myself standing, very dizzy and shaken, on the same spot from which I had taken my forward step between the greenish-gray boulders. Crater Ridge was swirling and reeling about me as if in the throes of earthquake. I had to sit down for a minute or two before I could recover my equilibrium.

  I came back to the cabin like a man in a dream. The experience seemed, and still seems, incredible and unreal. Yet, it has overshadowed everything else, and has colored and dominated all my thoughts. Perhaps by writing it down I can shake it off a little.

  It has unsettled me more than any previous experience in my whole life.

  August 2nd

  I have done a lot of thinking in the past few days and the more I ponder and puzzle, the more mysterious it all becomes. Granting the flaw in space, which must be an absolute vacuum, impervious to air, ether, light, and matter, how was it possible for me to fall into it? And having fallen in, how could I fall out—particularly into a sphere that has no certifiable relationship with ours?

  But, after all, one process would be as easy as the other, in theory. The main objection is, how could one move in a vacuum, either up or down or backward or forward? The whole thing would baffle the comprehension of an Einstein; and I do not feel that I have approached the true solution.

  Also, I have been fighting the temptation to go back, if only to convince myself that the thing really occurred. But, after all, why shouldn’t I go back? An opportunity has been vouchsafed to me such as no man may ever have been given before. I am certain that the wonders I shall see and the secrets I shall learn are beyond imagining. My nervous trepidation is inexcusably childish under the circumstances.

  I went back this morning, armed with a revolver. Somehow, without thinking that it might make a difference, I did not step in the very middle of the space between the boulders. Undoubtedly, as a result of this my descent was more prolonged and impetuous than before, and seemed to consist mainly of a series of spiral somersaults. It must have taken me minutes to recover from the ensuing vertigo. When I came to, I was lying on the violet grass.

  This time, I went boldly down the slope. Keeping as much as I could in the shelter of that bizarre purple and yellow vegetation, I stole toward the looming city. All was very still. There was no breath of wind in those exotic trees, which appeared to imitate, in their lofty upright boles and horizontal foliage, the severe architectural lines of the Cyclopean buildings.

  I had not gone very far when I came to a road in the forest, a road paved with stupendous blocks of stone at least twenty feet square. It ran toward the city. I thought for a while that it was wholly deserted, perhaps disused. I even dared walk upon it, till I heard a noise behind me and, turning, saw the approach of several singular entities. Terrified, I sprang back and hid myself in a thicket, from which I watched the passing of those creatures, wondering fearfully if they had seen me. Apparently my fears were groundless, for they did not even glance at my hiding place.

  It is hard for me to describe or even visualize them now, for they were totally unlike anything that we are accustomed to think as human or animal. They must have been ten feet tall, and they were moving along with colossal strides that took them from sight in a few instants beyond a turn of the road. Their bodies were bright and shining, as if encased in some sort of armor. Their heads were equipped with high, curving appendages of opalescent hues which nodded above them like fantastic plumes, but which may have been antennae or other sense-organs of a novel type.

  Trembling with excitement and wonder, I continued my progress through the richly colored undergrowth. As I went on, I perceived for the first time that there were no shadows anywhere. The light came from all portions of the sunless amber heaven, pervading everything with a soft, uniform luminosity.

  All was motionless and silent, as I have said before. There was no evidence of bird, insect, or animal life in all this preternatural landscape. But when I had advanced to within a mile of the city (as well as I could judge the distance in a realm where the very proportions of objects were unfamiliar) I became aware of something which at first was recognizable as a vibration rather than a sound.

  There was a queer thrilling in my nerves, the disquieting sense of some unknown force or emanation flowing through my body. This was perceptible for some time before I heard the music. But, having heard it, my auditory nerves identified it at once with the vibration.

  It was faint and far-off, and seemed to emanate from the very heart of the titan city. The melody was piercingly sweet and resembled at times the singing of some voluptuous feminine voice. However, no human voice could have possessed the unearthly pitch, the shrill, perpetually sustained notes that somehow suggested the light of remote worlds and stars translated into sound.

  Ordinarily I am not very sensitive to music. I have been reproached for not reacting more strongly to it. But I had not gone much farther when I realized the peculiar mental and emotional spell which the far-off sound was beginning to exert upon me. There was a sirenlike allurement which drew me on hypnotically, made me forget the strangeness and potential perils of my situation. I felt a slow, druglike intoxication of brain and senses. In some insidious manner, I know not how or why, the music conveyed the ideas of vast but attainable space and altitude, of superhuman freedom and exultation. It seemed to promise all the impossible splendors of which my imagination had vaguely dreamed.

  The forest continued almost to the city walls. Peering from behind the final boscage, I saw their overwhelming battlements in the sky above me, and noted the flawless jointure of their prodigious blocks. I was near the great road, which entered an open gate that was large enough to admit the passage of behemoths.

  There were no guards in sight, and several more of the tall gleaming entities came striding along and went in as I watched. From where I stood, I was unable to see inside the gate; for the wall was stupendously thick. The music poured from the mysterious entrance in an ever-strengthening flood and sought to draw me on with its weird seduction, eager for unimaginable things.

  It was hard to resist, hard to rally my will power and turn back. I tried to concentrate on the thought of danger, but the thought was tenuously unreal. At last I tore myself away and retraced my footsteps, very slowly and lingeringly, till I was beyond reach of the music. Even then the spell persisted, like the effects of a drug, and all the way home I was tempted to return and follow those shining giants into the city.

  August 5th

  I have visited the new dimension once more. I thought I could resist that summoning music; and I even took some cotton-wadding along with which to stuff my ears if it should affect me too strongly. I began to hear the supernal melody at the same distance as before, and was drawn on in the same manner. But this time I entered the open gate.

  I wonder if I can describe that city. I felt like a crawling ant upon its pavements, amid the measureless Babel of its buildings, of its streets and arcades. Everywhere there were columns, obelisks, and the perpendicular pylons of fane-like structures that would have dwarfed those of Thebes and Heliopolis.

  And the people of the city! How is one to depict them or give them a name! I think that the gleaming entities I first saw are not the true inhabitants, but are only visitors—perhaps from another world of dimension, like myself. The real people are giants, too; but they move slowly, with solemn, hieratic paces.

  Their bodies are swart and their limbs are those of caryatids—massive enough, it would seem, to uphold the roofs and lintels of their own buildings. I fear to describe them minutely. Human words would give the idea of something monstrous and uncouth. But these beings are not monstrous. They have merely developed in obedience to laws of another evolution than ours, the environmental forces and conditions of a different world.

  Somehow, I was not afraid when I saw them. Perhaps the music had drugged me till I was beyond fear. There was a group of them just inside the gate, and they seemed to pay me no attention whatever as I passed them. The opaque jetlike orbs of their huge eyes were impressive as the carven eyes of andro-sphinxes, and they uttered no sound from their heavy, straight, expressionless lips. Perhaps they lack the sense of hearing, for their strange, semi-rectangular heads were devoid of anything in the nature of external ears.

  I followed the music, which was still remote and seemed to increase little in loudness. I was soon overtaken by several of those beings whom I had previously seen on the road outside the walls. They passed me quickly and disappeared in the labyrinth of buildings. After them there came other beings, of a less gigantic kind, and without the bright shards of armor worn by the first-comers. Then, overhead, two creatures with long, translucent, blood-colored wings, intricately veined and ribbed, came flying side by side and vanished behind the others. Their faces, featured with organs of unsurmisable use, were not those of animals. I felt sure that they were beings of a high order of development.

  I saw hundreds of those slow-moving somber entities whom I have identified as the true inhabitants. None of them appeared to notice me. Doubtless they were accustomed to seeing far weirder and more unusual kinds of life than humanity. As I went on, I was overtaken by dozens of improbable-looking creatures, all going in the same direction as myself, as if drawn by the same siren melody.

  Deeper and deeper I went into the wilderness of colossal architecture, led by that remote ethereal, opiate music. I soon noticed a sort of gradual ebb and flow in the sound, occupying an interval of ten minutes or more; but by imperceptible degrees it grew sweeter and nearer. I wondered how it could penetrate that manifold maze of stone and be heard outside the walls.

  I must have walked for miles in the ceaseless gloom of those rectangular structures that hung above me, tier on tier, at an awful height in the amber zenith; then, at length, I came to the core and secret of it all. Preceded and followed by a number of those chimerical entities, I emerged on a great square in whose center was a temple-like building more immense than the others. The music poured, imperiously shrill and loud, from its many-columned entrance.

  I felt the thrill of one who approaches the sanctum of some hierarchal mystery, when I entered the halls of that building. People who must have come from many different worlds or dimensions went with me and before me along the titanic colonnades whose pillars were graven with indecipherable runes and enigmatic bas-reliefs.

  Also, the dark colossal inhabitants of the town were standing or roaming about, intent, like all the others, on their own affairs. None of these beings spoke, either to me or to one another, and though several eyed me casually, my presence was evidently taken for granted.

  There are no words to convey the incomprehensible wonder of it all. And the music? I have utterly failed to describe that, also. It was as if some marvelous elixir had been turned into sound-waves—an elixir conferring the gift of superhuman life, and the high, magnificent dreams which are dreamed by immortals. It mounted in my brain like a supernal drunkenness as I approached the hidden source.

  I do not know what obscure warning prompted me now to stuff my ears with cotton before I went any further. Though I could still hear it, still feel its peculiar, penetrant vibration, the sound became muted when I had done this and its influence was less powerful henceforward. There is little doubt that I owe my life to this simple and homely precaution.

  The endless row of columns grew dim for awhile as the interior of a long basaltic cavern; and then, at some distance ahead, I perceived the glimmering of a soft light on the floor and pillars. The light soon became an overflooding radiance, as if some gigantic lamps were being lit in the temple’s heart; and the vibrations of the hidden music pulsed more strongly in my nerves.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17