“The Cobra in the Dream”

Published in Weirdbook One, 1968.

“I dare not sleep!”

I gazed at the speaker in amazement. I had known John Murken for years, and knew that he was a man of steely nerves. An explorer and adventurer, he had travelled all over the world, had faced all manner of perils in the waste places of the earth; and while I could not condone many of his acts, I had always admired his ruthless courage.

But now, as he stood in my apartments, I read real terror in his eyes. He was a tall rangy fellow, athletic and hard as steel and whalebone, but now he seemed trembling on the verge of a mental and physical collapse. His face seemed wasted away, and his sunken eyes gleamed unnaturally. His fingers worked incessantly as he talked.

“Yes, I am threatened with danger—terrible danger! But not from without! It is in my own brain!”

“Murken, what do you mean? Are you insane?”

He laughed jerkily and almost fiercely. “I don’t know. I will be if this keeps on. I have walked the streets for the past two nights, keeping myself awake by the force of motion. Yesterday I had to shoot myself full of dope to keep from going to sleep, and tonight that’s failing me. I am in a terrible predicament. If I don’t get some sleep, I’ll die; and if I do sleep—” he broke off with a shudder.

I gazed at him in a kind of horror. It is an eery thing to be awakened at two o’clock in the morning and listen to a tale like that. My gaze wandered to his jerking fingers. They were bloody, and I saw innumerable small cuts on them. His gaze followed mine.

“When I have had to stop and rest a few moments, I’ve fastened my penknife beneath my hands so that when I began to sink into sleep against my will, my relaxing hands would be cut by the blade and so spur my drugged senses into wakefulness.”

“For the love of heaven, Murken,” I exclaimed, “give me some idea of what this is all about! Are you being haunted by some crime you have committed, are you afraid of being murdered in your sleep, or what?”

He sank down in a chair. For the moment he seemed wakeful enough, but the lids drooped wearily over his eyes in the manner of a man who is swiftly approaching nervous exhaustion.

“I’ll tell you the whole story, and if it sounds like the ravings of a maniac, remember there are many dark regions of the brain which are unexplored, and anything may be possible! The Dark Continent! Not Africa, but the brain of man!” he laughed wildly, and then continued more calmly:

“Several years ago I was in a portion of India which is little frequented by white man. My reason for being there has nothing to do with my story. But while there I learned of a treasure which the great bandit Alam Singh was purported to have concealed in a cavern in the foothills. A Hindu renegade swore that he had been one of the outlaw’s men, and that he knew the cavern wherein the treasure had been hidden some twenty years before. As events proved, he was not lying. I think he intended getting the treasure with my aid and then murdering me and taking all of it himself.

“At any rate, the two of us went up into the low, densely-treed hills where the gayly-plumed birds flew through the intertwining branches, and the monkeys kept up an incessant chatter; and after considerable searching we came upon the cavern which my companion swore was the one we sought. It was a large affair, opening out on the hillside, but the entrance was partly screened by vines. The Hindu did not think that anyone knew of it but himself, for most of Alam Singh’s men had been hung long ago, and the chief himself killed in a border raid; so we went boldly in.

“Instantly we found we had made a mistake. As we pushed through the clinging vines, dark forms leaped on us from every side. There was no opportunity for resistance. The Hindu they stabbed to death instantly, and me they bound hand and foot; and they carried me back into the cave, where they lit an oil lamp. Its light flung eery shadows on the bare walls and dusty floor of the cave, and on the bearded faces leering over me.

“ ‘We are the sons of the men that rode with Alam Singh,’ they said. ‘We have watched this treasure for twenty years, and will guard it for twenty years more, if necessary. We hold it for Alam’s sister’s son, who will take his great uncle’s place some day and free us from the English swine.’

“ ‘You will be hanged like Alam Singh’s men if you kill me,’ I answered.

“ ‘No one will know,’ they replied. ‘Many men have vanished in these hills, and even their bones are never found. You came at a good time, sahib; we had already decided to move the treasure elsewhere. You can have the cave to yourself!’ They laughed meaningly.

“I knew my doom was sealed. But the consumation of my fate was more horrible than I imagined—” a shudder shook my friend’s powerful frame.

“They bound me hand and foot to pegs driven in the floor. I could not move, I could not stir; I could only turn my head. Then they brought in the largest cobra I have ever seen in my life, handling him with prongs—you know how snake tamers use them, so the snakes cannot strike the men.

“They fastened a thin noose of uncured hide about the hideous hood of the thing, and made the other end of the thong fast to a niche in the wall. Of course the reptile began striking at me instantly, but I was several inches out of reach. They hung a jar over the thong which held the snake, and the jar was filled with water. A small hole in the bottom allowed the water to escape, a drop at a time. Each drop fell on the stiff hide. As you know, when uncured hide is dry, it is hard and inflexible, but when it is wet, it will stretch a great deal. Dry, the thong was too short to allow the cobra to reach me, but as the water dropped on it, it slowly became saturated with moisture, and each time the snake struck at me, he stretched it slightly. There they left me, bearing with them a heavy chest—the treasure, no doubt.

“How long I lay there, I have no idea. Seconds melted into minutes, minutes into hours, hours into Eternities. The entire Universe faded, narrowed, and centered to a pinpoint which was the cave wherein I lay. I gazed in terrible fascination at the long sinuous body which rippled toward me and receded in almost rhythmic regularity—at the evil head with its burning eyes, and the broad marked hood just below. I struggled, I screamed. But my bonds held me firm, and my cries echoed emptily through the cavern. It was hot, but cold sweat stood out on my brow. In my agony I cursed the dead Hindu and my torturers alike; cursed my own avariciousness, and in a burst of senseless frenzy cursed all things and all men.

“Then I lay exhausted and silent, watching the captive snake with eyes as unwinking as his own. I sought to turn my head, to refuse to look at my fate, but always my gaze was drawn back and held there. I decided upon the exact place where he would strike me when he finally reached me; my left wrist was nearest to him, and he would strike there, on the outer side, just above the hand.

“Time passed; the great snake kept striking on with a persistence and endurance that amazed me. He did not strike so often now, but he struck regularly. Little by little, very slowly but very surely, the hide thong was stretching. Now he was within a few inches of my wrist. My flesh crawled and shrank, my blood seemed to freeze at the nearness of my approaching doom. A violent nausea seized me. Suddenly the oil lamp guttered and went out.

“A new horror took hold of me; death in the dark is worse than death in the light, even in the light of an oil lamp. I screamed again and again, until my voice failed me. Now I could hear the creaking of the thong as it stretched—stretched—now I could feel the loathsome fetid breath against my wrist. Yet he still could not reach me! A few more strokes—then suddenly the cavern was flooded with light, men shouted, a pistol cracked, and I sank into a dead faint.

“I lay raving in delirium for days afterward, living over again my hideous experience. My hair had turned white at the temples. My escape was so narrow that I could not believe it, and during my delirium I thought that I was going through the hallucinations which sometime accompany death.

“A party of tiger hunters—white men, whom I did not even know were in the country—had heard my last burst of screaming and had arrived just in time. They swept the cave with electric torches, and one of them shot the cobra which I verily believe would have reached me with one more stroke.

“I left India as soon as I could, and even today the sight of a snake nauseates me. But it was not over. After several months I began to dream at irregular intervals, several months apart, and always the dream would be vague and chaotic. I would awake in a cold sweat and often be unable to sleep for the rest of the night.

“Then the dreams began to grow in clarity. They became extraordinarily vivid; they began to recur more often. They shadowed my whole life. In each dream, every small detail stood out amazingly clear.

“Since that time, I have dreamed that same dream hundreds of times, and each time it is the same. The dream starts abruptly; once more I am lying alone on the dusty floor of Alam Singh’s cave, with the oil lamp flickering and guttering above me, and that scaly fiend darting his frightful length at me again and again. Until recently, however, the dream breaks abruptly just before the oil lamp goes out. But I can see the thong stretching—and I tell you, it stretches more with each dream! The first few times I dreamed it, the snake was a fairly good distance from me; the thong had not stretched at all. Then it began to give slowly, but it took thirty or forty dreams for the serpent to get an inch nearer me. But of late it has been stretching with fearful speed.

“The other night I dreamed it last—and for the first time I felt, as I felt in reality, the cold fetid breath of the monster against my wrist. The lamp on the wall flickered—I awoke with a scream and a realization of my doom. Costigan, in my dream that snake will strike me, and I will die in reality!”

I shuddered in spite of myself.

“Murken, this is insanity! You were rescued in reality, in the event of which you dream—why should you not dream of your rescue?”

“I don’t know. I’m no psychologist. But I’ve never dreamed of either the events leading up to the point of my being struck at, nor the events which really follow. Always it is the snake and I, alone. I believe that the affair was grooved so deeply into my brain that it struck into some of those dark corners of which I told you, implanting in my subconscious mind or whatever it is, the cognizance of impending doom. They say—some of the psychologists say—that certain parts of your brain work out thoughts transmitted them by the higher brain. All except fear and the certainty of death was crowded out of my mind. When the hunters burst in and saved me, I was delirious; I do not believe that my lower brain even recognized the rescue, for it was filled with the thoughts of my coming death. That explanation is hazy and vague; I cannot explain why I know it, but I know that if I dream that dream again, I’ll die! That dark subconscious mind which works only when the higher mind is at rest will work out the terrible drama as it would have worked out in reality had not those men chanced along, and the culmination of it will blot out my physical life!”

“On the other hand,” said I, “I believe that if you will dream the dream through, you will rid yourself forever of the hallucination. The hunters will rush in, the dream snake will die, and you will find yourself again.”

He shook his head, letting his hands drop in a hopeless manner.

“I am marked by death,” he said, and I could not move him from his fatalistic mood.

“Telling this tale has resigned me somewhat,” he said. “I will sleep; if you are right, I will awake, myself again, freed of this curse. But if I am right, I will not awake in this world.”

He then bid me leave the light burning, and lay down on my couch. He did not fall instantly into slumber. He seemed unconsciously to fight against sleeping, but at last his lids sank and he lay still. His face in the light looked horribly like a skull, with its sunken cheeks and sallow parchment-like skin. The nightmare had evidently taken a terrific toll of mind and body. Time dragged on. I, too, grew sleepy. I found it almost impossible to hold my eyes open and wondered at the endurance which had kept John Murken awake for nearly three days and nights.

Murken muttered in his sleep, and moved restlessly. The light shone full in his eyes, and I decided that it was disturbing his slumber. I glanced at the clock on the mantel. The hands stood at five. I turned the light off and took a single step toward my bed.

There in the darkness, I do not know whether or not John Murken’s eyes opened in his last moment, but he gave one ghastly cry: “Oh God, the lamp has gone out!” And there followed a scream which froze the blood in my veins.

Cold sweat standing on each trembling limb, I turned on the light. John Murken lay dead, and the distortion of his face was hideous to see. There was no wound on him, but his right hand was clenched in a desperate death-grip about his left wrist.

“The Cobra in the Dream”

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