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Poe was a master storyteller with an insightful understanding of the workings of the human mind. In the eerie tale The Masque of the Red Death, Poe injected a supernatural element into an exploration of the minds of psychologically troubled people.

THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH By Edgar Allen Poe

The Red Death had long devastated the country. No plague had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its beginning and its end—the redness and the horror of blood. First came sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, then profuse bleeding from every pore, and finally death. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the signals which barred him from any aid and sympathy of his fellow men. And the whole seizure, progress, and termination of the disease, lasted but half an hour.

But Prince Prospero was happy and confident and clever. When his kingdom had been half depopulated by the Red Death, he summoned a thousand healthy and light-hearted friends from among the knights and ladies of his court, and with them retired to the deep seclusion of one of his holdings. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, a beautiful, magnificent-looking building that had once been an abbey but which had been transformed into a castle, the creation of the prince’s own eccentric yet dignified tastes. He had the abbey enclosed by a strong and lofty wall with gates of iron. Once all of the royal attendants had entered, the servants brought out furnaces and massive hammers and welded the bolts shut. Prospero was resolved to prevent anyone else from entering, or any of his courtiers from exiting as a result of any sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy.

The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might hide away from any contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was silly to grieve, or even to think. The prince had provided all the tools of pleasure. There were clowns, there were comedians, there were ballet dancers, there were musicians, there was beauty, there was wine. All these and security were inside these walls. Trapped outside was the Red Death.
It was toward the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion, while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad, that Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence.
It was a glorious scene, that masquerade. But first let me describe the imperial suite in which it was held. There were seven rooms in the suite. In many palaces, such suites are set up in a single line, forming a long and straight view. Folding doors that usually divide the rooms are slid back to the walls as far as possible on either side, so that the view of the entire suite is barely impeded. Here the case was very different, as might have been expected from the Prince’s love of the bizarre.

The apartments were so irregularly laid out that the viewer could see little more than one room at a time. There was a sharp turn every twenty or thirty yards, and at each turn an unusual effect had been fashioned. The entire suite was bordered by an enclosed corridor. In the middle of each room, on the left and right walls, a tall and narrow Gothic window looked out upon the corridor. These windows were of stained glass, and their colors matched the monochromatic decorations of the chamber into which it opened. The room at the eastern extremity was hung, for example, only with blue ornaments and tapestries—and vividly blue were its windows. The second chamber was purple in its decor, and here the panes were purple to match. The third was green throughout, and so were the window casements. The fourth was furnished and lighted with orange, the fifth with white, the sixth with violet. The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same hue. But in this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes here were scarlet—a deep blood-like color.

Each room contained golden furniture scattered to and fro, and golden ornaments hung from the ceiling, but not one of the seven apartments held any lamps or candelabra. There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the suite of seven chambers. But in the corridors around the suite, next to each window, stood a heavy tripod bearing a brazier of fire. The braziers projected their rays through the tinted glass, glaringly illuminating the rooms. And thus the light flickering into each chamber produced a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. But in the westernmost, black chamber, the effect of the firelight streaming through the blood-tinted panes upon the dark hangings within was ghastly in the extreme. It produced so wild a look upon the features of those who entered, that few of the company were bold enough to set foot within its confines at all.

It was this chamber that contained a gigantic clock of ebony, standing against the western wall. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made its circuit around the clock’s face, and the hour was about to strike, the clock’s brass lungs issued a sound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical. But it was so peculiar and forceful a note that, upon every hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to momentarily pause in their performance in order to listen to the sound; and thus the dancers were forced to cease their motions; and there was a brief displeasure of the whole carefree company. And, while the chimes of the clock still rang, it was observed that the giddiest partygoers grew pale, and the more aged and dignified revelers passed their hands over their brows as if in some confused recollection or meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased, a light laughter at once spread through the assembly; the musicians looked at each other and smiled as if at their own foolish nervousness, and made whispering vows to each other that the next chiming of the clock would affect them again; and then, after another sixty minutes would lapse (three thousand and six hundred seconds of the Time that flies), there came yet another chiming of the clock, and then the same distress and nervousness and contemplation as before. But in spite of these things, it was a lighthearted and magnificent celebration.

The tastes of the Prince were peculiar. He had a fine eye for colors and effects. He disregarded common conventions of fashion. His plans were bold and fiery, and his designs glowed with barbaric luster. There are some who would have thought him mad, but his followers felt that he was not. It was necessary to hear and see and touch him to be sure that he was not. He had conceived, in great part, the decorations of the seven chambers, upon occasion of this great fête; and it was his own guiding taste which had given character to the masqueraders’ costumes. Be sure they were grotesque. There was much glare and glitter and vibrancy and phantasm. There were intricately costumed figures with limbs and ornamentation that did not match. There were delirious notions that would be expected to have been fashioned by a madman. There was much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust. In the flickering lights, these revelers appeared to be a multitude of dreams.

These dreams stalked to and fro in the seven chambers. They moved in and out, their coloring changing in each room, and the orchestra’s wild music seemed to be the echo of their steps. But then strikes the ebony clock in the velvet hall. And then, for a moment, all is still, all is silent save for the voice of the clock. The dreams become frozen where they stand. But the echoes of the chime die away—the dreams have endured them only for an instant—and a light, half-subdued laughter floats after the chimes as they depart. And now the music swells again, and the dreams live again, and move to and fro more merrily than ever, taking their hues from the many tinted windows through which stream the rays from the tripods. But none of the masqueraders will venture to the westernmost of the seven chambers; for the night is fading away, and the approaching daylight sends a rosier radiance through the blood-colored panes; and the blackness of the sable curtains becomes even more appalling. Those who might set foot upon the black carpet hear a muffled peal from the nearby ebony clock, more solemnly insistent than any other sound that might reach their ears from the merriment in the more remote apartments.

But these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them the heart of life beat feverishly. And the dancing revelers whirled on and on, until at length the clock began to toll midnight. And then the music ceased, as I have told; and the dancing of the masqueraders was stilled; and there was an uneasy pause of all things as before. But now the crowd had to wait for a full twelve strokes to be sounded by the bell of the clock; and thus it happened, perhaps, that with more time to wait, there was more time for the more thoughtful among those revelers to meditate. And thus it also happened, perhaps, that before the last echoes of the last chime had faded completely into silence, there were many individuals in the crowd who became aware of the presence of a masked figure whom not a single individual had previously noticed.

The rumor of this new presence was transmitted through the crowd via whispers. There arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or murmur—first expressing disapproval and surprise—then terror, horror, and disgust. In an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted, it should be clear that no ordinary appearance could have excited such a sensation. In truth, the lack of abandon in the costuming of the night was nearly unlimited; but the figure in question had gone beyond the bounds of even the Prince’s thought-to-be-boundless decorum. Even the most reckless persons must find their hearts capable of being touched with some emotion. Even with the utterly lost, those persons who easily joke about life and death, there are still matters about which no humor can be found. Indeed, the entire crowd now deeply seemed to feel that, in the costume and bearing of the newcomer, there was neither wit nor propriety.

The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in a costume that gave the appearance of a burial shroud. The mask which concealed the figure’s features was made to so nearly resemble the visage of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny would have had difficulty in telling the difference. And yet all this might have been endured—if not approved—by the mad revelers, had the disguised stranger not gone so far as to assume the appearance of the Red Death. His garments were dabbed with blood and his mask was similarly sprinkled with the scarlet horror.

With a slow and solemn movement, the newcomer stalked to and fro among the partygoers, as if to more fully portray the unsettling role. When the eyes of Prince Prospero fell upon this spectral image, the Prince was at first seen to convulse with a strong shudder either of terror or distaste; but in the next moment, his brow reddened with rage.

‘Who dares?’ he hoarsely demanded of the courtiers who stood near him. ‘Who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? Seize him and unmask him—that we may know whom we will hang at sunrise from the castle ramparts!’

It was in the easternmost blue chamber in which Prince Prospero stood as he uttered these words. They rang throughout all seven rooms loudly and clearly—for the prince was a forceful and self-assured man, and the music had ceased at a wave of his hand.

At first, as the Prince spoke, the group of pale courtiers by his side made a slight movement toward the intruder. This was unnecessary because, with deliberate and stately step, the intruder approached the Prince. Due to a certain nameless awe which had infected the whole party as a result of the intruder’s insane attire, none were willing to set a hand on him; so that, unimpeded, he came within a yard of the Prince. Then while the vast assembly, as if as one, shrank away from the center of each room, he turned and made his way uninterrupted, with the same solemn and measured step, through the blue chamber to the purple—through the purple to the green—through the green to the orange—through the orange to the white—and then to the violet, before any decided movement could be made to seize him.

It was then, however, that Prince Prospero, maddened with rage and the shame of his own momentary cowardice, drew a dagger and raised it overhead, then rushed hurriedly through the six chambers. None followed him on account of a deadly terror that had seized them all. When the Prince, with impetuous speed, had approached to within three or four feet of the retreating figure, the latter, having reached the shadow of the ebony clock within the final, velvet apartment, suddenly turned and confronted his pursuer. There was a sharp cry—and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which, instantly afterwards, Prince Prospero fell prostrate—in death. Then, summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the revelers at once raced into the black apartment and seized the mummer, whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock. The courtiers gasped in unutterable horror at finding that the costumed burial shroud and corpse-like mask—which they handled with violent rudeness—were completely empty of anything underneath.

And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revelers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revelry, each dying in the despairing position in which he fell. And the life of the ebony clock expired with the life of the last reveler. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held infinite dominion over all.

©copyright 2006 Strider Nolan Media

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