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The Dark Crystal
Thought Heroin Was Bad?
Well, There's A New Demon In Town,
And It's Caught Everyone By Surprise:
Crystal Meth Produces Schizophrenia-Like Symptoms
Jake remembers the first time he saw the army people. High on crystal meth, he was well into his third day without sleep. Along with the boundless energy and heightened sense of alertness came the mind-bending hallucinations. "One day I was so delusional... There were these trees on top of this overpass, and they looked like army people, dressed up with guns, marching down," the 19-year-old says between faint smiles and sips of strong coffee. "It was in the middle of the day, and I asked this truck driver, 'What's with all those army people?' He just looked at me. He was, like, 'What?' It was actually fun for me. I enjoyed the hallucinations."
But Jake started to notice that those visions kept happening even when he wasn't using meth, aka speed, glass, jib, crank, shards, and peanut butter. That's when he started getting scared.
"When the symptoms don't go away after you do it, it's no fun. That's when you know you're kinda hooped."
Jake is sitting in a hotel coffee shop in Tsawwassen on a deadly hot summer morning. He's just called local psychiatrist Bill MacEwan, asking for a refill of his antipsychotic and antidepressant medication. He'll take anything to counter the paranoia and delusions that continue to poison his thinking. Jake wasn't always so anxious. But that was years ago, before he started using crystal meth.
The soft-spoken youth started using cocaine when he was 13. He switched to meth at 16, looking for something more powerful, a high that would enable him to stay up for parties that lasted days. That's one of meth's draws: you don't sleep. Then there's the hallucinatory effect. Jake would think a group of people was standing in front of him. He'd walk up to them, only to see the figures dissolve before his eyes into the bushes they really were.
Wearing a baseball cap, baggy pants, and loose shirt, Jake shifts his tired chestnut eyes away when he talks about his methamphetamine addiction. He doesn't want his name printed, although his parents and friends are well aware of the dark place he's in.
"The paranoia kicked in," Jake says. "I'd be so lonely and paranoid. It was a horrible feeling....I'd be looking out my window every five minutes to see if someone was out there. The trees I had always seen looked like people. I was so freaked out one night; I swear to God there were people out there. I hopped out my window in my boxer shorts looking for these people. I couldn't find them, so I got dressed and walked around the block looking for people in bushes. Thank God my parents caught on."
Meth is an extremely dangerous drug. It's cheap, highly addictive, easily accessible, and can be made at home, providing you have toxic chemicals like Drano and battery acid on hand. It can cause structural changes to the brain and induce psychotic symptoms that resemble those of schizophrenia: paranoia, disorganized thinking, delusions, and impaired memory. In some people, those effects will never go away, even long after they stop using. It's also Vancouver's new demon.
The city's problem is so extreme that last November, on their own initiative, about 120 people from a vast range of professions and interests formed a group called the Methamphetamine Response Committee. It consists of psychiatrists, doctors, nurses, social workers, cops, and bureaucrats. There are representatives from high schools, custody centres, and safe homes, and users themselves. They all say meth use in town has risen dramatically over the last two years. And they're worried.
If the very existence of MARC doesn't speak to the urgency of Vancouver's problem, perhaps Steven Smith does. He's program coordinator of Dusk to Dawn, the street-youth resource centre run by Family Services of Greater Vancouver. It's located in a rundown building at the back of St. Paul's Hospital and offers food, showers, and lockers for kids under 22. Teens can't use drugs in the centre, but they're not turned away if they're high.
"Every single social-services agency has had to sit down in the last year and say, 'Meth has affected us. We have to talk about this,'" Smith explains in his office. "Everyone's on a fast-track learning curve. There's not a whole lot of information out there. There's no denying there's a meth epidemic, and we don't have the resources to address it. I think it caught everyone by surprise."
Meth came to prominence during the Second World War, when Japan, Germany, and the United States gave the drug to military personnel to increase endurance. Later, doctors prescribed it to treat depression, obesity, and heroin addiction. Illicit laboratories emerged in San Francisco in the 1960s, and from there it spread up and down the Pacific Coast. In the '80s came a new method of the drug's production, which led to crystal meth, a crystallized, smokable, and even more potent form of MA. Now, no city or town seems free of meth's tentacles. News stories are emerging about the drug's prevalence in places like Smoky Lake, Alberta; New York City; and the state of Hawaii.
According to the World Health Organization, methamphetamine is the most widely used illicit drug in the world after cannabis.
On local turf, there are countless youths who hang out downtown, like Jake used to, and spend as little as $5 for a high whose effects can last days. The Granville-Davie corridor is notorious for meth. It's the drug of choice for street kids: because it keeps users awake, they can guard their stuff at night; the drug also saps their desire to eat, which is convenient for those with no cash for food.
Although it may have gained popularity at raves, meth has moved well beyond that culture. This doesn't mean ravers aren't still using it--they might just not know it. Analysis by the RCMP's Vancouver-based drug-awareness program shows that almost 60 percent of ecstasylike pills seized locally contain meth. The tablets, a random and dizzying concoction of chemicals, often contain such additional ingredients as cocaine, ephedrine, pseudoephedrine, and ketamine, an anaesthetic used on animals.
According to the Pacific Community Resources Society's 2002 "Lower Mainland Drug Use Survey", which interviewed about 2,000 youth aged 12 to 24, 19 percent had tried meth and nearly eight percent had used it within the past 30 days. The average age of first use was 14.5, and 45 percent of respondents said they could obtain the drug within 24 hours. Family Services of Greater Vancouver reported that in a six-month period in 2001, 14 to 34 youths sought detox for crystal meth. A year later, that figure jumped to 32 to 59 for the same period.
MARC members note that some adolescent girls are taking meth to lose weight, ending up not just skinny but skeletal. It's increasingly popular among the gay/bisexual/lesbian/transgendered community, and even with so-called soccer moms, some of whom take it to keep up with the demands of working and parenting. There are also stories of everyone from lawyers to software developers to longshoremen using meth.
A SYNTHETIC CENTRAL-nervous-system stimulant, meth increases stimulation of the dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine receptors in the brain. It can be swallowed, smoked, injected, or snorted. It provides a sense of focus and euphoria. Meth can cause hallucinations like the ones Jake described; users may also hear voices telling them to harm themselves or others, or think people are following them. Coming down, users often experience an intense craving for the drug, anxiety, confusion, fatigue, headaches, and profound depression. They may be irritable, unpredictable, and suddenly violent.
"Aggression wasn't really a problem on the streets a few years ago," Smith says. "You need a whole new bag of tricks dealing with kids on crystal meth. Psychosis is one thing, but drug-induced psychosis is another."
Drug-induced psychosis is what interests Bill MacEwan. He started the Fraser Health Authority's Early Psychosis Program (www.psychosissucks.ca/) and, like so many other health professionals, has been seeing more and more kids on meth.
"I have patients who are 16 years old, in high school, who are psychotic," MacEwan says at a downtown restaurant. "They hear voices when they're partying, but those voices haven't gone away. It's very frightening, and the numbers are rapidly rising. It's not like cocaine or heroin....Methamphetamine causes symptoms that are almost exactly like [those of] schizophrenia."
What puzzles people like MacEwan is this: does crystal meth trigger psychosis in those who are already prone to mental illness (perhaps schizophrenia runs in the family), or does its use cause psychosis? It's a classic chicken-or-the-egg mystery.
A 2001 publication by the WHO, "Systematic Review of Treatment for Amphetamine-Related Disorders", found that five to 15 percent of meth users who develop a related psychosis fail to recover completely. Most users, the organization also reports, become psychotic within a week after continuous meth administration.
Making matters worse is that users who need medical help tend to fall through the cracks. "What do we do with the kid who's psychotic on the street?" asks Dr. Ian Martin, who splits his time between Vancouver Hospital, Dusk to Dawn, and Three Bridges Health Clinic. That clinic (1292 Hornby Street) is located in the heart of the Vancouver's crystal-meth central. He sees kids who snort meth, "hoop" it (insert it rectally), or "parachute" it (wrap it in a rolling paper and swallow it).
Those who have hit the bottom are often stuck there, Martin explains in a West End coffee shop. If a user in a psychotic state goes to emergency, he'll likely be sent right back out a few hours later because he's high. But most detox centres and mental-health organizations lack the resources and knowledge to handle meth-induced psychosis. In response, Martin has started giving seminars to health professionals on how to deal with users. (He also formed a crystal-meth-anonymous group.)
"There may be tactile hallucinations; they [users] have a sense of bugs crawling on their skin," Martin says. "They'll say, 'Look doc, it's right here,' and they're pointing to a hair on their arm, thinking it's a spider. They think they have scabies so they will pick at their skin." Consequently, users are prone to skin infections. They're also susceptible to tooth decay. Users grind their teeth, and the drug decreases the saliva's pH level, allowing more bacteria to grow in the mouth. "I had one 21-year-old patient who had had all her teeth taken out. They were all rotten."
When the high starts to fade, the accompanying depression can be severe to the point of suicide. What also distresses Martin is that meth use significantly boosts the chances of contracting HIV, AIDS, and other sexually transmitted illnesses. The drug delays ejaculation, often leading to rougher sex as a result. (Infection spreads easily when skin is torn.) "And if someone's high, they might not engage in safe sex," Martin says.
He notes that even though the amount of anecdotal evidence related to meth is staggering, more research is needed. But getting hard facts can be tough. It's difficult to get people with an addiction and a mental illness to take medication regularly and comply with doctors' orders. "If they get better, we never see them again. If they get a lot worse, we never see them again," Martin says.
In 2002, UCLA School of Medicine neurologist Linda Chang published "Perfusion MRI and Computerized Cognitive Test Abnormalities in Abstinent Methamphetamine Users" in Psychiatry Research Neuroimaging. The study found that ex-users were up to 30 percent slower to complete tasks requiring working memory than nonusers.
"The slower reaction times on the computerized tasks...are suggestive of subclinical Parkinsonism in individuals who abused meth," Chang's study stated.
DIFFICULTY REMEMBERING things is a consequence of meth use to which 18-year-old Vancouver resident Kasper can testify. Although he quit meth more than a year ago, he says his memory is shot. He can't recall anything he learned in school.
Wearing a studded leather jacket, a ring in his nose, and black from head to toe, the burly youth looks older than his years. When he's not at his Chinatown apartment taking care of his pet rat, Shithead, he hangs around at Dusk to Dawn. He started using meth when his mom kicked him out of the house; it was the middle of winter and his brother suggested the drug to stay warm. "It had a crab-apple taste, like crab apples right off the trees," the amiable Kasper says at the youth centre. "I liked it because of its taste. If you like it, you want to do it more and more and more. The next thing I know, I'm in Vancouver making it in my hotel."
He continued using for two or three years--he couldn't keep track of what year it was--until, after so much sleep deprivation, he hit a breaking point.
"I put an eighth of weed and a point of crystal meth on the table," he says. "I thought, 'Do I smoke this weed and get baked out of my fucking tree, or do I smoke this meth and stay up for two days and do something I think is constructive but that's just a big fucking waste of my time?' I ended up flushing the meth down the toilet and smoking myself stupid. When I see people doing meth now, I just tell them to do that.
"Getting drunk and smoking pot is a lot better than crystal meth. I've seen people make it in their bathtubs. They pour Drano, ammonia, battery acid, and all this other crap in there. You end up coughing up blood and puking blood up. I'd recommend heroin a lot more than crystal meth. And I did not enjoy heroin."
Kasper isn't exaggerating when he says crystal meth is full of crap. Mixed together, the substances can explode or give off toxic fumes that attack mucous membranes. Yet the drug isn't that hard to make. Mom-and-pop labs can be set up in high-rise apartments, storage sheds, and basements. Recipes downloaded from the Internet call for ephedrine (found in cold medication and decongestants), rubbing alcohol, methanol, lithium, and ammonia, among other ingredients. Take this excerpt from an on-line source:
"Dilute HCl--also called Muriatic acid--can be obtained from hardware stores, in the pool section. NaOH--also called lye--can be obtained from supermarkets in the 'drain cleaner' section....Ethyl Ether--aka Diethyl Ether--Et-O-Et--can be obtained from engine starting fluid....Desoxyephedrine--can be obtained from 'VICKS' nasal inhalers....Distilled water--it's really cheap, so you have no reason to use the nasty stuff from the tap. Do things right."
Given the prevalence of meth in Vancouver, the city is a prime spot for more research. UBC clinical psychologist Tania Lecomte is applying for funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to study methamphetamine and psychosis. Her team will do magnetic-resonance-imaging scans to see if there are structural changes or neural damage in meth users' brains; it will also explore psychosocial rehabilitation.
"I worked in first-episode psychosis for a while, and I would work with clients and do diagnostic interviews," Lecomte says in a phone interview. "In a lot of cases, crystal meth is what caused them to come to the hospital. It seems to have totally changed the personality and behaviour of street youth."
The Vancouver Agreement (a partnership of the federal, provincial, and local governments to foster the city's development) has funded a small study to get input from users. Theo Rosenfeld, who runs Pala Community Development, which supports harm reduction, is conducting the review. In a phone interview, he explains he has tried meth and although he never got hooked, he can see why so many kids are.
"Given the housing options, if I didn't have a place to sleep I don't know if I could be off speed," Rosenfeld says. "It feels as if life is worth living....You're not going to give that up if you've never felt that way before."
Rosenfeld says he was surprised at MARC's efficiency during that first November meeting.
"It was the most intelligent, collaborative response to a drug issue I've ever worked in, in any city I've ever been," he remarks. "Usually these meetings are full of catcalling, booing, and hissing. People are genuinely concerned."
One of the most pressing concerns is treatment. A combination of antidepressant and antipsychotic medication seems to have promising results, but other possibilities need investigation. Then there's the lack of funding, resources, and staff, thanks largely to government cutbacks.
"If you cut off your hand, you go to the hospital and they'll fix it. I'd like to see [drug] treatment work like that," Dusk to Dawn's Steven Smith says. "Youth should be able to say, 'I need help and I need it now.'...It's a really hard drug to quit. They need a lot of support and care, and it's just not there."
There are 10 beds allocated to youth detox services in Vancouver.
SINCE NOVEMBER, MARC members have formed subcommittees that meet every two months. Jennifer Vornbrock, who's heading the group's treatment-and-prevention arm, says the next step is to see what can be done with existing resources. Because those involved recognize the seriousness of Vancouver's problem, there's no room for politics or self-interest.
"This isn't the speed your parents took," says Vornbrock, the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority's manager of youth, women's, and population health. "It's 10 percent ephedrine and 90 percent ammonia. It's not a drug you want to play around with."
Back in Tsawwassen, Jake has no shortage of tales about the damage crystal meth has done to his own life. He sold a new truck for a pitiful sum to get drug money, dropped out of school in Grade 10, and has essentially lost his youth.
"When we were kids, we used to have fun," Jake says. "Now I've lost all my friends to drugs. You can't keep friends because you're antisocial and paranoid."
Perhaps the lingering delusions are the saddest part of Jake's story. Not even 20, he can't make it through a day without antipsychotics.
"They calm me down," he says. "I thought I could detox on my own. Now it's about staying clean one day at a time. It's about staying alive."
Story by: By Gail Johnson
Reprinted with permission from the Georgia Straight newspaper
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From America's Most Wanted, Oct 2007 Cops:
Hunt Continues For Transgender Fugitive
Overview: Some of Zalia's spiritual services include "Third Eye Mastery" and "Ghostbusting."
When Portland police responded to a disturbance call in the 5700 block of North Kerby Avenue on May 4, 2007, they discovered something far worse than the reports of someone in need of assistance; what they found was a murder scene.
Cops arrived at the apartment of Frank Johnson and found the 51-year-old dead inside. They later determined that Johnson had died from blunt force trauma to the head. Not at the scene was authorities' main suspect, 48-year-old David Wayne French, Johnson's roommate of five years. Detectives believe that it was an argument over the pair's living arrangements that lead to the murder. Furthermore, police tell AMW that as they were forcing open the front door, French was making his getaway by leaping out of the apartment's third story window. It is not known if French was hurt in the jump. Authorities say that an arrest warrant has been issued for French who is described as transgender, 5'6", 130 lbs., with shoulder length brown hair. French also goes by the alias Zalia Crizta or simply "Z".
AMW has also learned that French maintained an internet business and made a living as a self-proclaimed psychic offering spiritual and metaphysical guidance. Portland police believe that French has left the Portland area and may be on the run somewhere along the West Coast.
Wanted For: Information valid as of last update. Homicide, Portland, OR; May 04, 2007 Related Links Television Airings November 03 2007 AMW Radio November 02 2007 May 30 2007
AMW CAPTURE DATA FILE FOR Report a Tip David Wayne French
Captured, Nov 15, 2007
Transgender Murderer Caught in S.D. Just two weeks after being profiled on AMW, notorious transgender accused murderer David Wayne French was captured in the Rapid City, S.D. storage shed he called home. As part of their investigation, Portland, Ore. police sought French in cities he once lived, including Rapid City. Cops in South Dakota canvassed French's old neighborhood and the owner of the storage facility recognized French based on fliers the police were circulating in the area. The storage facility owner contacted police and French was arrested without incident on Thursday, November 15 and is expected to be extradited back to Portland soon.
AMW CAPTURE DATA FILE FOR Report a Tip David Wayne French Captured, Nov 15, 2007
Traits & Habits | Possible Locations | Profile Aliases Zalia Crizta, Z Sex Male Race White Age Now 48 Height 5'6" Weight 130 lbs. # Hair (Color, Description, Facial Hair) Brown # Shoulder length brown hair # Eyes (Color and Correction) Brown #
Other Physical Characteristics French is transgender and often looks androgynous. # Wears sunglasses at all times, even inside and at night.
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RAPID CITY -- An Oregon murder suspect featured on the Nov. 3 television episode of "America's Most Wanted" was arrested Thursday afternoon in Rapid City after a citizen tipped off authorities.
David Wayne French, 48, who has ties to the Rapid City area, is suspected of beating his roommate to death in May in Portland, Ore. Rapid City Police Capt. Deb Cady said an anonymous tip Tuesday alerted authorities that French might be in Rapid City. After police verified he was in Rapid City, they caught him with the help of the Pennington County Sheriff's Office and the U.S. Marshals Service. He was arrested shortly after 3 p.m. in the parking lot of Albertson's, at 855 Omaha St. French was taken into custody without incident.
French is suspected of killing his roommate, Frank Johnson, 51, who investigators determined died from blunt-force trauma to the head. According to "America's Most Wanted," French is a transgender man who dresses as a woman and goes by the name "Zalia Crizta" or "Z." When authorities responded in May to the apartment French and Johnson shared in Portland, French escaped through a window and has been on the run since. Cady said Rapid City authorities began working with Portland authorities in May in an attempt to find French, who lived in Rapid City as recently as 2001.
French is in custody at Pennington County Jail and will most likely be extradited to Portland. Contact Katie Brown at 394-8318 or katie.brown@rapidcityjournal.com
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The Masque of the Red Death
by Edgar Allan Poe
by Edgar Allan Poe
THE "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal -- the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.
But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the "Red Death."
It was toward the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion, and while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad, that the Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence.
It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But first let me tell of the rooms in which it was held. There were seven -- an imperial suite. In many palaces, however, such suites form a long and straight vista, while the folding doors slide back nearly to the walls on either hand, so that the view of the whole extent is scarcely impeded. Here the case was very different; as might have been expected from the duke's love of the bizarre. The apartments were so irregularly disposed that the vision embraced but little more than one at a time. There was a sharp turn at every twenty or thirty yards, and at each turn a novel effect. To the right and left, in the middle of each wall, a tall and narrow Gothic window looked out upon a closed corridor which pursued the windings of the suite. These windows were of stained glass whose color varied in accordance with the prevailing hue of the decorations of the chamber into which it opened. That at the eastern extremity was hung, for example, in blue -- and vividly blue were its windows. The second chamber was purple in its ornaments and tapestries, and here the panes were purple. The third was green throughout, and so were the 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 material and 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 color. Now in no one of the seven apartments was there any lamp or candelabrum, amid the profusion of golden ornaments that lay scattered to and fro or depended from the roof. There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the suite of chambers. But in the corridors that followed the suite, there stood, opposite to each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire that protected its rays through the tinted glass and so glaringly illumined the room. And thus were produced a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. But in the western or black chamber the effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered, that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all.
It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to hearken to the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while the chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confused reverie or meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased, a light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked at each other and smiled as if at their own nervousness and folly, and made whispering vows, each to the other, that the next chiming of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion; and then, after the lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace three thousand and six hundred seconds of the Time that flies,) there came yet another chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation as before.
But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent revel. The tastes of the duke were peculiar. He had a fine eye for colors and effects. He disregarded the decora of mere fashion. His plans were bold and fiery, and his conceptions glowed with barbaric lustre. There are some who would have thought him mad. 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 directed, in great part, the movable embellishments of the seven chambers, upon occasion of this great fete; and it was his own guiding taste which had given character to the masqueraders. Be sure they were grotesque. There were much glare and glitter and piquancy and phantasm -- much of what has been since seen in "Hernani." There were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies such as the madman fashions. 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. To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams. And these -- the dreams -- writhed in and about, taking hue from the rooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps. And, anon, there strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of the velvet. And then, for a moment, all is still, and all is silent save the voice of the clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand. But the echoes of the chime die away -- they have endured but an instant -- and a light, half-subdued laughter floats after them as they depart. And now again the music swells, and the dreams live, and writhe to and fro more merrily than ever, taking hue from the many-tinted windows through which stream the rays from the tripods. But to the chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven, there are now none of the maskers who venture; for the night is waning away; and there flows a ruddier light through the blood-colored panes; and the blackness of the sable drapery appals; and to him whose foot falls upon the sable carpet, there comes from the near clock of ebony a muffled peal more solemnly emphatic than any which reaches their ears who indulge in the more remote gaieties of the other apartments.
But these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them beat feverishly the heart of life. And the revel went whirlingly on, until at length there commenced the sounding of midnight upon the clock. And then the music ceased, as I have told; and the evolutions of the waltzers were quieted; and there was an uneasy cessation of all things as before. But now there were twelve strokes to be sounded by the bell of the clock; and thus it happened, perhaps, that more of thought crept, with more of time, into the meditations of the thoughtful among those who reveled. And thus, too, it happened, perhaps, that before the last echoes of the last chime had utterly sunk into silence, there were many individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of the presence of a masked figure which had arrested the attention of no single individual before. And the rumor of this new presence having spread itself whisperingly around, there arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or murmur, expressive of disapprobation and surprise -- then, finally, of terror, of horror, and of disgust.
In an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted, it may well be supposed that no ordinary appearance could have excited such sensation. In truth the masquerade license of the night was nearly unlimited; but the figure in question had out-Heroded Herod, and gone beyond the bounds of even the prince's indefinite decorum. There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made. The whole company, indeed, seemed now deeply to feel that in the costume and bearing of the stranger neither wit nor propriety existed. The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet all this might have been endured, if not approved, by the mad revelers around. But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood -- and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.
When the eyes of Prince Prospero fell upon this spectral image (which with a slow and solemn movement, as if more fully to sustain its role, stalked to and fro among the waltzers) he was seen to be convulsed, in the first moment with a strong shudder either of terror or distaste; but, in the next, his brow reddened with rage.
"Who dares?" he demanded hoarsely 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 have to hang at sunrise, from the battlements!"
It was in the eastern or blue chamber in which stood the Prince Prospero as he uttered these words. They rang throughout the seven rooms loudly and clearly -- for the prince was a bold and robust man, and the music had become hushed at the waving of his hand.
It was in the blue room where stood the prince, with a group of pale courtiers by his side. At first, as he spoke, there was a slight rushing movement of this group in the direction of the intruder, who at the moment was also near at hand, and now, with deliberate and stately step, made closer approach to the speaker. But from a certain nameless awe with which the mad assumptions of the mummer had inspired the whole party, there were found none who put forth hand to seize him; so that, unimpeded, he passed within a yard of the prince's person; and, while the vast assembly, as if with one impulse, shrank from the centres of the rooms to the walls, he made his way uninterruptedly, but with the same solemn and measured step which had distinguished him from the first, through the blue chamber to the purple -- through the purple to the green -- through the green to the orange -- through this again to the white -- and even thence to the violet, ere a decided movement had been made to arrest him. It was then, however, that the Prince Prospero, maddening with rage and the shame of his own momentary cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six chambers, while none followed him on account of a deadly terror that had seized upon all. He bore aloft a drawn dagger, and had approached, in rapid impetuosity, to within three or four feet of the retreating figure, when the latter, having attained the extremity of the velvet apartment, turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer. There was a sharp cry -- and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which, instantly afterwards, fell prostrate in death the Prince Prospero. Then, summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the revelers at once threw themselves into the black apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave-cerements and corpse-like mask which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form.
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 revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.
Y
The Phantom of The Opera
at
the Masquerade
as
The Masque of Red Death
"It's in your soul that the true distortion lies..."
- Christine Daae, The Phantom of the Opera
at
the Masquerade
as
The Masque of Red Death
"It's in your soul that the true distortion lies..."
- Christine Daae, The Phantom of the Opera
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