We filed up the
stairs, up and up, endlessly, until at last we emerged through the
gaping hole in the stone flags and proceeded, a dark, silent company,
back through those interminable corridors. The surroundings began to
grow strangely familiar, and suddenly I recognized them. We were in the great burial vaults below the castle, where the Barons
Kralitz were ceremoniously entombed. Each Baron had been placed in his
stone casket in his separate chamber, and each chamber lay, like beads
on a necklace, adjacent to the next, so that we proceeded from the
farthermost tombs of the early Barons Kralitz toward the unoccupied
vaults. By immemorial custom, each tomb lay bare, an empty mausoleum,
until the time had come for its use, when the great stone coffin, with
the memorial inscription carved upon it, would be carried to its place. It was fitting, indeed, for the secret of Kralitz to be hidden here. Abruptly I realized that I was alone, save for the bearded man with the
disfiguring scar. The others had vanished, and, deep in my thoughts, I
had not missed them. My companion stretched out his black-swathed arm
and halted my progress, and I turned to him questioningly. He said in
his sonorous voice, "I must leave you now. I must go back to my own
place." And he pointed to the way whence we had come. I nodded, for I had already recognized my companions for what they were. I knew that each Baron Kralitz had been laid in his tomb, only to arise
as a monstrous thing neither dead nor alive, to descend into the cavern
below and take part in the evil saturnalia. I realized, too, that with
the approach of dawn they had returned to their stone coffins, to lie in
a death-like trance until the setting sun should bring brief liberation. My own occult studies had enabled me to recognize these dreadful
manifestations. I bowed to my companion and would have proceeded on my way to the upper
parts of the castle, but he barred my path. He shook his head slowly,
his scar hideous in the phosphorescent gloom. I said, "May I not go yet?" He stared at me with tortured, smoldering eyes that had looked into hell
itself, and he pointed to what lay beside me, and in a flash of
nightmare realization I knew the secret of the curse of Kralitz. There
came to me the knowledge that made my brain a frightful thing in which
shapes of darkness would ever swirl and scream; the dreadful
comprehension of _when_ each Baron Kralitz was initiated into the
brotherhood of blood. I knew--_I knew_--that no coffin had ever been
placed unoccupied in the tombs, and I read upon the stone sarcophagus at
my feet the inscription that made my doom known to me--_my own name,