The Yellow Sign by Robert W. Chambers (part 1)
Time to immerse ourselves in some early cosmic horror courtesy of American author Robert W. Chambers. It’s all the fun of concentrated cosmic dread and none of the dreadful heteronormative exclusion!
Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink behind the lake,
The shadows lengthen
In Carcosa.
Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies,
But stranger still is
Lost Carcosa.
Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa.
Song of my soul, my voice is dead,
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Carcosa.
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Writing/Editing & Narration by Maika
Music by The Parlour Trick
Audio Engineering by Meredith Yayanos
Cover art by Daniel Kern
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Transcript
Gather round and welcome.
Speaker:This is Liminal Flares -
Speaker:bedtime stories from beyond and in-between,
Speaker:readings of eldritch literature drawn from the public domain
Speaker:and amended to be gender-inclusive.
Speaker:My name is Maika,
Speaker:and I am your queer, trans, nonbinary narrator.
Speaker:Today we begin reading "The Yellow Sign"
Speaker:a short story written by American author Robert W. Chambers,
Speaker:which comes from a collection of short stories titled, The King in Yellow,
Speaker:published in 1895.
Speaker:If you aren't already familiar with this book,
Speaker:there are a few things that you should know in order to
Speaker:make events that take place within this particular story more impactful.
Speaker:The King in Yellow is also the title of a fictional play,
Speaker:a mysterious, possibly cursed, but definitely supernaturally powerful play
Speaker:that serves as a recurring motif in the first half of the eponymous book.
Speaker:According to Chambers' mythology,
Speaker:the play first appeared in France,
Speaker:followed by the appearance of an English translation in Britain,
Speaker:where it was banned for its scandalous reputation.
Speaker:We never get to read the entire play.
Speaker:Chambers only shares fragments,
Speaker:and only ever from the first act,
Speaker:which is for the best,
Speaker:because reading the play in its entirety
Speaker:instantly causes the reader to lose their mind
Speaker:in the face of the "irresistible truths" revealed therein.
Speaker:Case in point is a moment in "The Yellow Sign"
Speaker:where our narrator mentions "the awful tragedy of young Castaigne,"
Speaker:which is a reference to the events from another short story from The King and Yellow collection
Speaker:entitled, "The Repairer of Reputations" and narrated by Hildred Castaigne.
Speaker:While recovering from injuries sustained in an accident,
Speaker:Hildred reads the play and, suffice to say,
Speaker:things do not go at all well for them after that.
Speaker:The Yellow Sign itself is a strange and decidedly upsetting symbol,
Speaker:the appearance of which heralds the arrival of the dreaded Yellow King.
Speaker:And yes, that's the same Yellow King
Speaker:referenced in the first season of HBO's True Detective series.
Speaker:The Yellow King is an incomprehensible
Speaker:and intensely malevolent cosmic entity,
Speaker:not unlike an elder god from H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos.
Speaker:The Yellow King is linked with a place called Carcosa,
Speaker:a place where, to quote the play,
Speaker:"black stars hang in the heavens;
Speaker:here the shadows of people's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon
Speaker:when the twin suns sink into the Lake of Hali."
Speaker:The Yellow King does not dwell here on earth,
Speaker:but on those occasions when they make an appearance,
Speaker:they are able to animate the dead
Speaker:and possess those who have fallen under their power.
Speaker:The latter of which is presumably what happens after one reads the play
Speaker:and loses their mind in the process.
Speaker:Intense cosmic horror vibes here.
Speaker:In fact, roughly 30 years after Chambers wrote The King in Yellow,
Speaker:H. P. Lovecraft would incorporate some of the places
Speaker:mentioned in Chambers' fictional play into his own work.
Speaker:And today that accursed play sits menacingly alongside the Necronomicon
Speaker:and other forbidden works of occult literature in the Cthulhu Mythos.
Speaker:But to be fair, Chambers himself borrowed some locations and character names
Speaker:from the work of American author Ambrose Bierce for his own work,
Speaker:including ancient and unfathomable Carcosa.
Speaker:So this is all part of the marvelously disturbed,
Speaker:sometimes problematic,
Speaker:yet engrossing patchwork that is the Cosmic Horror genre.
Speaker:And now, let's begin...
Speaker:The Yellow Sign
Speaker:Written by Robert W. Chambers
Speaker:Published in 1895
Speaker:"Let the red dawn surmise what we shall do,
Speaker:When this blue starlight dies and all is through."
Speaker:There are so many things which are impossible to explain.
Speaker:Why should certain chords in music make me think
Speaker:of the brown and golden tints of autumn foliage?
Speaker:Why should the mass of Sainte Cécile
Speaker:bend my thoughts wandering among caverns
Speaker:whose walls blaze with ragged masses of virgin silver?
Speaker:What was it in the roar and turmoil of Broadway at six o'clock
Speaker:that flashed before my eyes the picture of a still Breton forest
Speaker:where sunlight filtered through spring foliage
Speaker:and Sylvia bent half curiously, half tenderly,
Speaker:over a small green lizard, murmuring,
Speaker:"To think that this is also a little ward of God!"
Speaker:When I first saw the church guard, their back was toward me.
Speaker:I looked at them indifferently until they went into the church.
Speaker:I paid no more attention to them than I had to any other person
Speaker:who lounged through Washington Square that morning,
Speaker:and when I shut my window and turned back into my studio,
Speaker:I had forgotten them.
Speaker:Late in the afternoon, the day being warm,
Speaker:I raised the window again and leaned out to get a sniff of air.
Speaker:That person was standing in the courtyard of the church,
Speaker:and I noticed them again with as little interest as I had that morning.
Speaker:I looked across the square to where the fountain was playing,
Speaker:and then with my mind filled with the vague impressions of trees,
Speaker:asphalt drives, and the moving groups of nannies and holidaymakers,
Speaker:I started to walk back to my easel.
Speaker:As I turned, my listless glance included the figure below in the churchyard.
Speaker:Their face was toward me now,
Speaker:and with a perfectly involuntary movement, I bent to see it.
Speaker:At the same moment, they raised their head and looked at me.
Speaker:Instantly I thought of a coffin worm.
Speaker:Whatever it was about the person that repelled me, I did not know.
Speaker:But the impression of a plump, white grave worm
Speaker:was so intense and nauseating that I must have shown it in my expression,
Speaker:for they turned their puffy face away with a movement
Speaker:which made me think of a disturbed grub in a chestnut.
Speaker:I went back to my easel and motioned the model to resume her pose.
Speaker:After working awhile,
Speaker:I was satisfied that I was spoiling what I had done as rapidly as possible,
Speaker:and I took up a palette knife and scraped the color out again.
Speaker:The flesh tones were sallow and unhealthy,
Speaker:and I did not understand how I could have painted such sickly color
Speaker:into a study which before that had glowed with healthy tones.
Speaker:I looked at Tessie.
Speaker:She had not changed,
Speaker:and the clear flush of health dyed her neck and cheeks as I frowned.
Speaker:"Is it something I've done?" she said.
Speaker:"No. I've made a mess of this arm, and for the life of me,
Speaker:I can't see how I came to paint such mud as that into the canvas," I replied.
Speaker:"Don't I pose well?" she insisted.
Speaker:"Of course, perfectly."
Speaker:"Then it's not my fault?"
Speaker:"No. It''s my own."
Speaker:"I'm very sorry," she said.
Speaker:I told her she could rest
Speaker:while I applied rag and turpentine to the plague spot on my canvas,
Speaker:and she went off to smoke a cigarette
Speaker:and look over the illustrations in the Courrier Français.
Speaker:I did not know whether it was something in the turpentine or a defect in the canvas,
Speaker:but the more I scrubbed, the more that gangrene seemed to spread.
Speaker:I worked like a beaver to get it out,
Speaker:and yet the disease appeared to creep from limb to limb of the study before me.
Speaker:Alarmed, I strove to arrest it.
Speaker:But now the color on the breast changed,
Speaker:and the whole figure seemed to absorb the infection
Speaker:as a sponge soaks up water.
Speaker:Vigorously, I applied palette-knife, turpentine and scraper,
Speaker:thinking all the time what a séance I should hold with Duval,
Speaker:who had sold me the canvas;
Speaker:but soon I noticed that it was not the canvas which was defective,
Speaker:nor yet the colours I purchased from Edward.
Speaker:"It must be the turpentine," I thought angrily,
Speaker:"or else my eyes have become so blurred and confused by the afternoon light
Speaker:that I can't see straight."
Speaker:I called Tessie, the model.
Speaker:She came over and leaned over my chair,
Speaker:blowing rings of smoke into the air.
Speaker:"What have you been doing to it?" she exclaimed.
Speaker:"Nothing", I growled.
Speaker:"It must be this turpentine."
Speaker:"What a horrible colour it is now," she continued.
Speaker:"Do you think my flesh resembles green cheese?"
Speaker:"No, I don't," I said angrily.
Speaker:"Did you ever know me to paint like that before?"
Speaker:"No, indeed!"
Speaker:"Well, then!"
Speaker:"It must be the turpentine, or something," she admitted.
Speaker:She slipped on a Japanese robe and walked to the window.
Speaker:I scraped and rubbed until I was tired,
Speaker:and finally picked up my brushes
Speaker:and hurled them through the canvas with a forcible expression,
Speaker:the tone alone of which reached Tessie's ears.
Speaker:Nevertheless, she promptly began,
Speaker:"That's it! Swear and act silly and ruin your brushes!
Speaker:You have been three weeks on that study, and now look!
Speaker:What's the good of ripping the canvas?
Speaker:What creatures artists are!"
Speaker:I felt about as much ashamed as I usually did after such an outburst,
Speaker:and I turned the ruined canvas to the wall.
Speaker:Tessie helped me clean my brushes and then danced away to dress.
Speaker:From the screen she regaled me with bits of advice
Speaker:concerning whole or partial loss of temper,
Speaker:until, thinking, perhaps, I had been tormented sufficiently,
Speaker:she came out to implore me to button her waist
Speaker:where she could not reach it on the shoulder.
Speaker:"Everything went wrong from the time you came back from the window
Speaker:and talked about that horrid-looking person you saw in the churchyard," she announced.
Speaker:"Yes, they probably bewitched the picture," I said, yawning.
Speaker:I looked at my watch.
Speaker:"It's after six, I know," said Tessie,
Speaker:adjusting her hat before the mirror.
Speaker:"Yes," I replied, "I didn't mean to keep you so long."
Speaker:I leaned out of the window, but recoiled with disgust,
Speaker:for the same young person with the pasty face stood below in the churchyard.
Speaker:Tessie saw my gesture of disapproval and leaned from the window.
Speaker:"Is that the person you don't like?" she whispered.
Speaker:I nodded.
Speaker:"I can't see their face, but they do look fat and soft some way or other,"
Speaker:she continued, turning to look at me,
Speaker:"They remind me of a dream, an awful dream I once had."
Speaker:"Or," she mused, looking down at her shapely shoes,
Speaker:"was it a dream after all?"
Speaker:"How should I know?" I smiled.
Speaker:Tessie smiled in reply.
Speaker:"You were in it," she said,
Speaker:"so perhaps you might know something about it."
Speaker:"Tessie! Tessie!" I protested,
Speaker:"don't you dare flatter by saying that you dream about me."
Speaker:"But I did." she insisted.
Speaker:"Shall I tell you about it?"
Speaker:"Go ahead," I replied, lighting a cigarette.
Speaker:Tessie leaned back on the open window sill and began very seriously.
Speaker:"One night last winter I was lying in bed thinking about nothing at all in particular.
Speaker:I had been posing for you and I was tired out,
Speaker:yet it seemed impossible for me to sleep.
Speaker:I heard the bells in the city ring ten, eleven, and midnight.
Speaker:I must have fallen asleep about midnight,
Speaker:because I don't remember hearing the bells after that.
Speaker:It seemed to me that I had scarcely closed my eyes
Speaker:when I dreamed that something impelled me to go to the window.
Speaker:I rose, and raising the sash leaned out.
Speaker:Twenty-fifth street was deserted as far as I could see.
Speaker:I began to be afraid;
Speaker:everything outside seemed so - so black and uncomfortable.
Speaker:Then the sound of wheels in the distance came to my ears,
Speaker:and it seemed to me as though that was what I must wait for.
Speaker:Very slowly the wheels approached, and, finally,
Speaker:I could make out a vehicle moving along the street.
Speaker:It came nearer and nearer,
Speaker:and when it passed beneath my window, I saw it was a hearse.
Speaker:Then, as I trembled with fear,
Speaker:the driver turned and looked straight at me.
Speaker:When I awoke, I was standing by the open window, shivering with cold,
Speaker:but the black-plumed hearse and the driver were gone.
Speaker:I dreamed this dream again in March last,
Speaker:and again awoke beside the open window.
Speaker:Last night the dream came again.
Speaker:You remember how it was raining;
Speaker:when I awoke, standing at the open window,
Speaker:My night-dress was soaked."
Speaker:"But where did I come into the dream?" I asked
Speaker:"You - you were in the coffin; but you were not dead."
Speaker:"In the coffin?"
Speaker:"Yes."
Speaker:"How did you know? Could you see me?"
Speaker:"No, I only knew you were in there."
Speaker:"Had you been eating Welsh rarebits or lobster salad?" I began, laughing,
Speaker:but the girl interrupted me with a frightened cry.
Speaker:"Hello! What's up?" I said,
Speaker:as she shrank into the embrasure by the window.
Speaker:"The person below in the churchyard; they drove the hearse."
Speaker:"Nonsense," I said,
Speaker:But Tessie's eyes were wide with terror.
Speaker:I went to the window and looked out.
Speaker:The person was gone.
Speaker:"Come, Tessie," I urged, "don't be foolish.
Speaker:You have posed too long. You are nervous."
Speaker:"Do you think I could forget that face?" She murmured.
Speaker:"Three times I saw the hearse pass below my window,
Speaker:and every time the driver turned and looked up at me.
Speaker:Oh, their face was so white and - and soft?
Speaker:It looked dead.
Speaker:It looked as if it had been dead a long time."
Speaker:I induced the girl to sit down and swallow a glass of Marsala.
Speaker:Then I sat down beside her and tried to give her some advice.
Speaker:"Look here, Tessie," I said.
Speaker:"You go to the country for a week or two,
Speaker:and you'll have no more dreams about hearses.
Speaker:You pose all day, and when night comes, your nerves are upset.
Speaker:You can't keep this up.
Speaker:Then again, instead of going to bed when your day's work is done,
Speaker:you run off to picnics at Sulzer's Park,
Speaker:or go to the Eldorado or Coney Island,
Speaker:and when you come down here next morning you are exhausted.
Speaker:There was no real hearse.
Speaker:There was a soft shell crab dream."
Speaker:She smiled faintly.
Speaker:"What about the person in the churchyard?"
Speaker:"Oh, they're only an ordinary, unhealthy, everyday creature."
Speaker:"As true as my name is Tessie Reardon, I swear to you, Mr. Scott,
Speaker:that the face of the person below in the churchyard
Speaker:is the face of the person who drove the hearse!"
Speaker:"What of it?" I said. "It's an honest trade."
Speaker:"Then you think I did see the hearse?"
Speaker:"Oh," I said diplomatically,
Speaker:"if you really did, it might not be unlikely that the person below drove it.
Speaker:There is nothing in that."
Speaker:Tessie rose, unrolled her scented handkerchief,
Speaker:and taking a bit of gum from a knot in the hem,
Speaker:placed it in her mouth.
Speaker:Then, drawing on her gloves,
Speaker:she offered me her hand with a frank,
Speaker:"Good-night, Mr. Scott,"
Speaker:and walked out.
Speaker:This concludes part one of "The Yellow Sign" by Robert W. Chambers.
Speaker:Thank you for listening to Liminal Flares.
Speaker:Our music is by The Parlour Trick.
Speaker:Audio Engineering by Meredith Yayanos.
Speaker:I hope you've enjoyed our time together in this twilit space.
Speaker:If you did and would like to help support our show,
Speaker:subscribe and leave us a rating and a review on your favorite podcast platform.
Speaker:And please share us with others who might enjoy
Speaker:our haunted and haunting, gender-inclusive story time.
Speaker:P.S. If you have a favorite author or a specific piece of writing,
Speaker:a short story, poem, or passage from a book,
Speaker:that's in the public domain in the US,
Speaker:I welcome your requests for future episodes.
Speaker:You'll find links to archives of public domain literature
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Next week,
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we return to continue reading Robert W. Chambers' tale of
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"The Yellow Sign,"
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part Two of Four.