'The Masque of the Red Death,' by Edgar Allen Poe

01The Mask of the Red Death The Red Death had long been feeding on the country.

02No sickness had ever been so deadly, so great a killer, or so fearful to see.

03Blood was its mark, the redness and horror of blood.

04There were sharp pains and a sudden feeling that the mind was rushing in circles inside the head.

05Then there was bleeding through the skin, though it was not cut or broken.

06And then, death.

07The bright red spots upon the body and especially upon the face of the sick man made other men turn away from him, afraid to try to help.

08And the sickness lasted from beginning to end, no more than half an hour.

09But Prospero, the ruler of that land, was happy and strong and wise.

10When half the people of his land had died, he called to him a thousand healthy, happy friends, and with them went far away to live in one of his palaces.

11This was a large and beautiful stone building he had planned himself.

12A strong, high wall circled it.

13This wall had gates of iron.

14The gentlemen, after they had entered it, brought fire to heat the iron of the gates to make them close so firmly that nobody could open them.

15Here they could forget the sickness.

16The red death.

17They would leave the outside world to care for itself.

18Prospero had supplied everything they needed for pleasure.

19There was music.

20There was dancing.

21There was beauty.

22There was food to eat and wine to drink.

23All these were within the wall.

24And within the wall, they would be safe.

25Outside the wall walked the red death.

26It was near the end of their fifth month there that Prospero asked his friends to all come together for a dancing party.

27A masquerade.

28Everyone was asked to come dressed in fine clothes and with his eyes, or perhaps his whole face, covered by a cloth mask.

29It was a scene of great richness, that masquerade.

30There were seven rooms in which Prospero's friends danced.

31In many old palaces, the doors can be opened in such a way that rooms like these seven can be seen all at the same time.

32In this palace, it was different.

33Little more than one of them could be seen at one time.

34There was a turn every twenty or thirty yards.

35To the right and left, in the middle of each wall, was a tall pointed window.

36The windows were of colored glass, of the same color that was used in each room.

37The first room had blue cloth hangings on the wall, and blue were its windows.

38The second room had wall hangings of that blue-red known as purple, and here the windows were purple.

39The third was green, and so was the glass of the windows.

40The fourth had hangings in windows of yellow, the fifth of white, the sixth of violet.

41But the seventh room had hangings on the walls made of a rich, soft cloth which was black, black as night.

42And the floor, too, was covered with the same heavy black cloth.

43In this room, the color of the windows was not the same.

44It was red.

45A deep blood color.

46All the rooms were lighted through the outside windows.

47The resulting light was strange, indeed, as it colored the shapes of the dancers.

48But the light that fell on the black hangings through the blood-colored glass was the most fearful of them all.

49It produced so wild a look on the faces of those who entered, that there were few of the dancers who dared to step within those dark walls.

50In this room stood a great clock of black wood.

51Gently it marked the seconds as they passed.

52And when it was time to mark the hour, the clock spoke with a loud, clear voice.

53A deep tone as beautiful as music, but so strange that the music and the dancing stopped, and the dancers stood still to listen.

54And then, after another sixty minutes, after another three thousand and six hundred seconds of time, of flying time, the clock struck again, and the dancers stopped as before.

55Nevertheless, it was a happy and beautiful masquerade.

56The dancers looked like the forms we might see in troubled dreams.

57And these, the dreams, danced softly through the rooms, taking the color of the rooms as they moved.

58It did not seem that their steps followed the music, but that the music rose from their steps.

59But into the seventh room the dancers do not go, for the red light coming through the windows and the blackness of the wall hangings make them afraid.

60And he who enters hears more deeply the striking of the great black clock.

61But the other rooms are crowded, and in them beats hotly the heart of life.

62And the dance goes on, until at last the clock begins to strike twelve.

63Again the music stopped.

64Again the dancers stood without moving, while the slow striking sound continued.

65Before the clock was quiet again, many in the crowd saw that in the first room, the blue room, there was a masquerader who had not been seen before.

66As they talked softly to each other about him, a feeling of surprise spread through all the dancers.

67Then a feeling of fear and sickening horror.

68In such a group as this, only a very strange masquerader could have caused such a feeling.

69Even among those who laugh at both life and death, some matters cannot be laughed at.

70Everyone seemed now deeply to feel that the stranger should not have been allowed to come among them dressed in such clothes.

71He was tall and very thin, and covered from head to foot like a dead man prepared for the grave.

72His mask which covered his face, or was it really a mask?

73The mask which covered his face was so much like the face of a dead man that the nearest eye could not see the difference.

74And yet all this might have been acceptable.

75But the masquerader, whom no one knew, had made himself look like the red death itself.

76His clothes were spotted with blood, and the mask over his face was covered with the terrible red spots.

77Or perhaps it was indeed his face.

78When Prospero looked upon this fearful form, he was at first filled with terror, and then with anger.

79Who dares, he cried.

80Take him!

81Seize him!

82Pull off his mask, so we may know who we must hang at sunrise!

83Prospero stood in the blue room when he spoke these words.

84They sounded through the seven rooms loud and clear.

85At first, as he spoke, some of the dancers started to rush towards the strange masquerader.

86But they stopped, afraid, and no one dared to put out a hand to touch him.

87The stranger started to walk towards the second room.

88He passed within a few feet of Prospero, who stood still, surprised.

89And while the dancers moved back from the center of the room, the stranger moved quietly, without being stopped.

90With a slow and measured step through the blue room to the purple room, through the purple room to the green room, through the green to the yellow, through this to the white, and then to the violet room.

91As the stranger was entering the seventh room, Prospero suddenly and angrily rushed through the six rooms.

92No one dared to follow him.

93He held a sharp knife high over his head, ready to strike the stranger.

94When he was within three or four feet, the strange masquerader, the stranger, turned and stood, silent, looking firmly into Prospero's eyes.

95There was a cry, and the knife dropped, shining upon the black floor, upon which a moment later, Prospero himself fell, dead.

96The dancers then rushed into the black room.

97The strongest of the men tried to hold the masquerader, whose tall form stood beside the black clock.

98But when they put their hands on him, they found inside the grave clothes no human form, no body, nothing.

99Now they knew that it was the Red Death itself that had come in the night.

100One by one the dancers fell, and each died as he fell, and the fires died, and the clock stopped, and darkness, and decay, and the Red Death ruled forever, over all.

101The Red Death is a very good one.