Visions of the Night - Ambrose Bierce

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2:05Sure, you can post your job to some job board, but then all you can do is hope the right person comes along, which is why you should try Zippercrooter for free at zippercrooter.com slash zip. Zippercrooter doesn't depend on candidates finding you. It finds them for you. It's powerful technology identifies people with the right experience and actively invites them to apply to your job. You get qualified candidates fast. So while other companies might deliver a lot of, hey, Zippercrooter, find you what you're looking for. The needle in the haystack. See why four out of five employers who post a job on Zippercrooter get a quality candidate within the first day. Zippercrooter, the smartest way to hire, and right now you can try Zippercrooter for free. That's right. Free at zippercrooter.com slash zip. That zippercrooter.com slash zip, zippercrooter.com slash zip. I hold the belief that the gift of dreams is a valuable literary endowment that if by

3:14some art not now understood, the elusive fancies that it supplies could be caught and fixed and made to serve. We should have a literature exceeding fair. In captivity and domestication, the gift could doubtless be wonderfully improved as animals bred to service acquire new capacities and powers. By taming our dreams, we shall double our working hours and our most fruitful labor will be done in sleep. Even as matters are, Dreamland is a tributary province as witness Kubla Khan. What is a dream, a loose and lawless collocation of memories, a disorderly succession of matters once present in the waking consciousness?

4:18It is a resurrection of the dead, pelmel, ancient and modern, the just and unjust, springing from their cracked tombs, each in his habit as he lived. Pressing forward, confusedly to have an audience of the master of the revel and snatching one another's garments as they run. After? No. He has abdicated his authority and they have their will of him. His own is dead and does not rise with the rest. His judgment, too, is gone and with it the capacity to be surprised. And as he may be and pleased, terrified and charmed, but wonder he cannot feel. The monstrous, the preposterous, the unnatural, these all are simple, right and reasonable.

5:27The ludicrous does not amuse nor the impossible amaze. The dreamer is your only true poet. He is of imagination all compact. Imagination is merely memory. Try to imagine something that you have never observed, experienced, heard of or read about. Try to conceive an animal, for example, without body, head, limbs or tail, a house without walls or roof. But when awake, having assistance of will and judgment, we can somewhat control and direct. We can pick and choose from memory's store, taking that which serves, excluding, though sometimes with difficulty, what is not to the purpose.

6:30A sleep our fancies inherit us. They come so grouped, so blended and compounded. The one with another, so wrought of one another's elements that the whole seems new. But the old familiar units of conception are there and none beside. Making or sleeping, we get from imagination nothing new but new adjustments. The stuff that dreams are made on has been gathered by the physical senses and stored in memory as squirrels hoard nuts. But one, at least, of the senses contributes nothing to the fabric of the dream. No one ever dreamed an odor.

7:31Sight, hearing, feeling, possibly taste, are all workers, making provision for our nightly entertainment. But sleep is without a nose. It surprises that those keen observers, the ancient poets, did not so describe the drowsy God and that their obedient servants, the ancient sculptors, did not so represent him. Perhaps these latter were these, working for posterity, reasoned that time and mischance would inevitably revise their work in this regard, conforming it to the facts of nature. Who can so relate a dream that it shall seem one? No poet has so light a touch. As well try to write the music of an Aeolian harp.

8:34There is a familiar species of the genus Vore, penetrator in Tolerabilis, who having read a story, perhaps by some master of style, is at the pains elaborately to expound its plot for your edification and delight. Then thinks good soul, that now you need not read it. Under substantially similar circumstances and conditions, as the interstate commerce law hath it, I should not be guilty of the like offence, but I propose herein to set forth the plots of certain dreams of my own, the circumstances and conditions, being as I conceive, dissimilar isn't this, that the dreams themselves are not accessible to the reader. In endeavouring to make record of their poorer parts, I do not indulge the hope of a higher

9:42success. I have no salt to put upon the tale of a dream's elusive spirit. Warning, the following Zippercruder radio spot you are about to hear is going to be filled with F words. When you are hiring, we at Zippercruder know you can feel frustrated, for Lauren even. Like your efforts are futile, and you can spend a fortune trying to find fabulous people, only to get flooded with candidates who are just fine. Fortunately, Zippercruder figured out how to fix all that, and right now, you can try Zippercruder for free at zippercruder.com slash zip. With Zippercruder, you can forget your frustrations, because we find the right people for your roles fast, which is our absolute favourite F word. In fact, four out of five employers who post on Zippercruder get a quality candidate within the first day. Fantastic! So whether you need to hire 4, 40, or 400 people, get ready to meet first rate talent. Just go to zippercruder.com slash zip to try Zippercruder for free.

10:45Don't forget that zippercruder.com slash zip. Finally, that zippercruder.com slash zip. Finding great candidates to hire can be like, well, trying to find a needle in a haystack. Sure, you can post your job to some job board, but then all you can do is hope the right person comes along. Which is why you should try Zippercruder for free at zippercruder.com slash zip. Zippercruder doesn't depend on candidates finding you. It finds them for you. It's powerful technology identifies people with the right experience and actively invites them to apply to your job. You get qualified candidates fast. So while other companies might deliver a lot of, hey, Zippercruder, find you what you're looking for. The needle in the haystack. See why four out of five employers who post a job on Zippercruder get a quality candidate within the first day. Zippercruder, the smartest way to hire. And right now, you can try Zippercruder for free. That's right. Free at zippercruder.com slash zip. That zippercruder.com slash zip zippercruder.com slash zip.

11:50Finding great candidates to hire can be like, well, trying to find a needle in a haystack. Sure, you can post your job to some job board. But then all you can do is hope the right person comes along. Which is why you should try Zippercruder for free at zippercruder.com slash zip. Zippercruder doesn't depend on candidates finding you. It finds them for you. It's powerful technology identifies people with the right experience and actively invites them to apply to your job. You get qualified candidates fast. So while other companies might deliver a lot of, hey, Zippercruder, find you what you're looking for. The needle in the haystack. See why four out of five employers who post a job on Zippercruder get a quality candidate within the first day. Zippercruder, the smartest way to hire. And right now, you can try Zippercruder for free. That's right. Free at zippercruder.com slash zip. That zippercruder.com slash zip zippercruder.com slash zip. I was walking at dusk through a great forest of unfamiliar trees.

12:56Wentz and Wither, I did not know. I had a sense of the vast extent of the wood. A consciousness that I was the only living thing in it. I was obsessed by some awful spell in expiation of a forgotten crime committed. Because I vaguely surmised against the sunrise. Mechanically and without hope, I moved under the arms of the giant trees along a narrow trail penetrating the haunted solitudes of the forest. I came at length to a brook that flowed darkly and sluggishly across my path and saw that it was blood. Turning to the right, I followed it up a considerable distance and soon came to a small, circular

13:59opening in the forest, filled with a dim, unreal light by which I saw in the center of the opening a deep tank of white marble. It was filled with blood. And the stream that I had followed up was its outlet. All round the tank, between it and the enclosing forest, a space of perhaps ten feet in breath, paved with immense slabs of marble, were the dead bodies of men. A score. Although I did not count them, I knew that the number had some significant and pretentious relation to my crime. Possibly they marked the time, in centuries, since I had committed it. I only recognised the fitness of the number and knew it without counting.

15:06The bodies were naked and arranged symmetrically around the central tank, radiating from it like spokes of a wheel. The feet were outward, the heads hanging over the edge of the tank. Each lay upon its back, its throat cut. Blood slowly dripping from the wound. I looked on all this unmoved. It was a natural and necessary result of my offense, and it did not affect me. But there was something that filled me with apprehension and terror. A monstrous pulsation beating with a slow, inevitable recurrence. I do not know which of the senses it addressed, or if it made its way to the consciousness

16:08through some avenue unknown to science and experience. The pitiless regularity of this vast rhythm was maddening. I was conscious that it pervaded the entire forest and was a manifestation of some gigantic and implacable malevolence. Of this dream I have no further recollection. Probably overcome by a terror which doubtless had its origin in the discomfort of an impeded circulation, I cried out and was awakened by the sound of my own voice. The dream whose skeleton I shall now present occurred in my early youth. I could not have been more than sixteen. I am considerably more now, yet I recall the incidents as vividly as when the dream was

17:13of an hour's age. And I lie cowering beneath the bed-covering and trembling with terror from the memory. I was alone on a boundless level in the night. In my bad dreams I am always alone and it is usually night. No trees were anywhere in sight, no habitations of men, no streams nor hills. The earth seemed to be covered with a short, coarse vegetation that was black and stubbly, as if the plane had been swept by fire. My way was broken here and there, as I went forward with I know not what purpose by small pools of water occupying shallow depressions as if the fire had been succeeded by rain.

18:14These pools were on every side and kept vanishing and appearing again as dark, heavy clouds drove a thwart these parts of the sky which they neglected, and passing on disclosed again the steely glitter of the stars in whose cold light the waters shone with a black luster. My course laid toward the west, where low along the horizon burned a crimson light beneath long strips of cloud, giving that effect of a measureless distance that I have since learned to look for in Dore's pictures, where every touch of his hand has laid a portant and a curse. As I moved, I saw outlined against this uncanny background a silhouette of battlements and towers,

19:17which, expanding with every mile of my journey, grew at last to an unthinkable height and breadth, till the building subtended a wide angle of vision, yet seemed no nearer than before. Heartless and hopeless, I struggled on over the blasted and forbidding a plane, and still the mighty structure grew, until I could no longer compass it with a look, and its towers shut out the stars directly overhead. Then I passed in at an open portal, between columns of cyclopian masonry whose single stones were larger than my father's house. Within all was vacancy. Everything was coated with the dust of desertion, a dim light,

20:22the lawless light of dreams sufficient unto itself, enabled me to pass from corridor to corridor, and from room to room, every door yielding to my hand. In the rooms it was a long walk from wall to wall, of no corridor did I ever reach an end. My footfalls gave out that strange hollow sound that is never heard but in abandoned dwellings and tenanted tombs. For hours I wandered in this awful solitude, conscious of a seeking purpose, yet knowing not what I sought. At last, in what I conceived to be an extreme angle of the building, I entered a room of the ordinary dimensions, having a single window. Through this I saw the same crimson light still lying along the horizon in the

21:27measureless reaches of the west, like a visible doom, and knew it for the lingering fire of eternity. Looking upon the red menace of its swollen and sinister glare, there came to me the dreadful truth, which years later, as an extravagant fancy, I endeavored to express in verse. Men is long ages dead in every zone. The angels all are gone to graves unknown. The devils too are cold enough at last, and God lies dead before the great white throne. The light was powerless to dispel the obscurity of the room, and it was some time before I discovered in the farthest angle the outlines of a bed, and approached it with oppressions of ill.

22:30I felt that here, somehow, the bad business of my adventure was to end with some horrible climax, yet could not resist the spell that urged me to the fulfillment. Upon the bed, partly clothed, lay the dead body of a human being. It lay upon its back, the arms straight along the sides, by bending over it, which I did with loathing, but no fear. I could see that it was dreadfully decomposed. The ribs protruded from the leather and flesh. Through the skin of the sunken belly could be seen the protuberances of the spine. The face was black and shriveled, and the lips drawn away from the yellow teeth, cursed it with a ghastly grin. A fullness under the closed lids seemed to

23:35indicate that the eyes had survived the general wreck, and this was true. For as I bent above them, they slowly opened and gazed into mine with a tranquil steady regard. Imagine my horror how you can. No words of mine can assist the conception. The eyes were my own. That vestigial fragment of a vanished race, that unspeakable thing, which neither time nor eternity had wholly effaced, that hateful and abhorrent scrap of mortality, still sentient after death of God and the angels was I. There are dreams that repeat themselves. Of this class is one of my own, which seems sufficiently singular to justify its narration. Though truly,

24:45I fear the reader will think the realms of sleep are anything but a happy hunting ground for my night wandering soul. This is not true. The greater number of my incursions into Dreamland, and I suppose those of most others, are attended with the happiest results. My imagination returns to the body like a bee to the hive, loaded with spoil, which reason assisting, is transmuted to honey and stored away in the cells of memory to be a joy forever. But the dream which I am about to relate has a double character. It is strangely dreadful in the experience, but the horror it inspires is so ludicrously disproportionate to the one incident

25:50producing it, that in retrospection, the fantasy amuses. I am passing through an open glade in a thinly wooded country. Through the belt of scattered trees that bound the irregular space, there are glimpses of cultivated fields and the homes of strange intelligences. It must be near daybreak for the moon, nearly as full, is low in the west, showing blood red through the mists with which the landscape is fantastically freaked. The grass under my feet is heavy with dew, and the whole scene is that of a morning in early summer, glimmering in the unfamiliar light of a setting full moon. Near my path is a horse, visibly and audibly cropping

26:53the urge. It lifts its head as I am about to pass, regards me motionless for a moment, then walks toward me. It is milky white, mild of mean and amiable in look. I say to myself, this horse is a gentle soul and paws to caress it. It keeps its eyes fixed upon my own, approaches and speaks to me in a human voice with human words. This does not surprise, but terrifies, and instantly I return to this our world. The horse always speaks my own tongue, but I never know what it says. I suppose I vanish from the land of dreams before it finishes expressing what it has in mind, leaving it no doubt, as greatly terrified by my sudden disappearance

28:01as I by its manner of accosting me. I would give value to know the purpose of its communication. Perhaps some morning I shall understand and return no more to this our world. End of visions of the night. Greenlight helps kids learn about money the way most of us never did by actually using it. It's a debit card and money app that teaches kids to earn, save, and spend in real life. Not just swipe and hope for the best. Learning happens naturally in the moment. Parents can set limits, see spending in real time, and guide better habits along the way, all in one place, without constant check-ins or cash runs. Don't wait. Try green light risk-free today at greenlight.com slash try green light