I am subject to dreams, especially one of a curious type in which I
wake on my back, unable to move, my arms pinned to my side, my legs
straight. My paralysis is complete, and a thick darkness pervades my
bedchamber, a darkness of an almost viscous weight, so that I can feel
it pressing upon my face and bearing down against the bedclothes. And
there is something else, as well: a sense of obscure doom falls upon me.
Something worse than death—I am an undertaker, accustomed to death; we
are old friends, death and I—though what it is, I cannot say or guess.
For much of my life, I endured these episodes alone, though I sought help (Dreams are but the product of unconscious desires,
one alienist told me; I will not speak of his further explanation
except to say that I withdrew in distaste). Yet there came a time, and
not so long ago, when I found solace during these attacks of narcoleptic
horror: a wife, very beautiful and some years younger. How I met her is
of no importance, but her loveliness haunts me to this day: the
sonorous fall of her auburn hair, the green eyes set like emeralds in
her heart-shaped face, the complexion of almost pellucid clarity. I
could speak with eloquence on the shapeliness of her body, as well, but
here let us draw the veil of marital decorum that should in all cases
govern such matters.
One more element I have yet to mention of these dreams: the waking
conviction, for so I seemed awake, that could I but move, that could I
so much as twitch a finger, the horror that transfixed me would recede.
And my wife—I will not name her here—would often hear the whimper that
was the scream locked inside my aching jaws, and gently, gently, she
would shake me into awareness. Yet frequently a tearful panic would
linger—it is not meet that a man should admit tears, but I have vowed
complete honesty here—and my lovely wife would ease me in my distress.
There was talk, of course.
When a man of a certain age and means marries for the first
time—especially if he marries a woman still in the springtime of her
years—there is bound to be talk. I knew this when I undertook the
adventure, of course, but there are things one knows and there are
things one knows, if you take my meaning, and in
this case what I knew I did not know. I had prepared myself for
speculation, so it came as no surprise when it was said that a woman of
such youth and beauty could have no real interest in a man so old, so
plain, and so bereft of interesting conversation. She had surely
attached herself to me in the hope of an inheritance, it was said.
