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The King in Yellow

By: TamLin01



"Books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No force can abolish memory."

-Franklin Roosevelt

***

It started with a play.

If I had never heard of the play then none of this would have happened, and no one would have been hurt, and I wouldn't be writing this knowing that it's probably the last thing I'll ever do. But now it's much too late.

And, in the beginning, it wasn't even about the play at all. Really it was just about the girl, and it was for the sake of meeting her that I was willing to do anything. Her name was Melissa Folger, and I can honestly say I loved her from the first moment I saw her, all blue eyes and full smile and hair such a pale blond that it was almost white. Hair like asphodels, that's what it was.

But she had no idea who I was and at first I didn't know how to approach her. Then an opportunity came, in Professor Chambers' seminar on literary censorship, one of the two classes I shared with Melissa. Chambers was lecturing about an old play: It was called "The King in Yellow."

"It's perhaps the most widely censored work ever written, in any language," Chambers said. "When its author put it forth 1895 the governments of Europe fell over each other to ban it. The first copies printed in Paris were immediately seized and the writer jailed. He killed himself two weeks later and the efforts to suppress his work were so ruthless that no one today even knows his name.

"But the play didn't die with its creator," Chambers went on. "No one is sure who translated it, but in 1896 the play somehow surfaced in England, and that country eventually outlawed it too. Even in America the government would not allow it to be publicly circulated."

A hand went up: "What was so bad about it?" a student asked.

"Well, the complex relationship between sex, power, and violence in the play offended the moral guardians of the age. In fact, the play's content, whatever it was—because today we have only fragments from which we can formulate guesses about the material—was so shocking that it was considered downright evil. The play, it's said, was cursed."

The class murmured a little, and Chambers grinned. 

"'The King in Yellow' is a book of great truths,' wrote one of the judges who issued the original warrant for the author's arrest, 'but they are truths which send men frantic and blast their lives. I don't care if the thing is, as they say, the very supreme essence of art: It is a crime to have written it.' Perfectly sane men have gone mad reading it—or so the rumors say. And it was connected to outbursts of mania, mass hysteria, and violence everywhere that it went."

Another hand: "Are any of the stories true?"

Chambers shrugged. "No one knows," he said. "But one way or the other, we may have finally disproved that old idiom about there being no such thing as bad publicity."

He went on like that for a while but I honestly didn't pay much attention. And I probably would have kept on caring less about "The King in Yellow" if I hadn't overheard Melissa telling a friend that she had heard of the play before, and that she thought it was tragic that great art had been ruined by narrow-minded censors, and how much she wanted to study the fragments that were left. She spoke with so much enthusiasm for the subject that I made up my mind that if Melissa was interested in "The King in Yellow" then it was a subject worth studying. If I could learn anything interesting about the play, it might give me the chance to make an impression on her that would really last. 

Which, all things considered, it certainly did.

So I did some reading. Almost nothing of the original play survived the 19th century. Men like Professor Chambers have chronicled all of the scraps that remain and produced a catalog of names and phrases related to it: a city called Carcosa, a woman named Camilla and another named Cassilda, and some strange, opaque phrases like "The Phantom of Truth" and "The Pallid Mask" which no one really understood. But of the story itself there was nothing at all.

Of course, a play with a reputation like that gave birth to plenty of pretenders. Pulp magazines, basement publishing houses, and of course the Internet teemed with dozens of scripts claiming to be the one true version of "The King in Yellow," all of them obvious frauds from amateur playwrights trying to trade on its reputation. Most were almost unreadable. But poor imitators though they were, I thought that these fakes might give me something to work with. 

A sufficiently well-written fraud, I reasoned, might contain "insights" into the real thing. It was thin, but it was enough to possibly interest Melissa. So one day I summoned up all of my courage and, when class was over, introduced myself, told her about my research, and asked if she would be interested in looking at something, the first Act of a play that was, I claimed, probably the closest thing to the original text of "The King in Yellow" that still existed.

To my surprise, she was very interested. I remember the look on her face when I showed her the manuscript; like a kid on Christmas morning. She took it, and smiled, and thanked me, and told me how much she admired my fastidiousness. I was putty in her hands. Only later did I realize that this was where it all started. As soon as the pages passed from my hands to hers, there was no going back.

At ten o'clock that night I was lying in bed in my one-room dorm, staring at the ceiling and thinking about Melissa. I wondered what she thought of the play. It was such a strange story, surreal and macabre and terrible. I was glad it was unfinished. If there was a second Act, I didn't want to read it. I thought about the Phantom of Truth, the ghostly figure that haunted the play's heroine, about its frayed robe and pale white mask, and how it pointed its accusing finger at everyone who passed, though only she could see it. I shivered.

I jumped when someone knocked on my door. When I answered Melissa walked right past me without saying a word. I was so surprised that I almost fell over. She didn't even look at me and instead just dropped a stack of loose pages onto my bed and then stared at them like she had never seen them before. She was pale and shaking, and although we had spoken only six hours ago she had bags under her eyes like she hadn't slept in days. She looked like she had just come from her own funeral.

Before I could ask what was wrong or what she was doing here she began reciting words, words that I recognized, though she said them in a way that almost obliterated that recognition:

"Strange is the night where black stars rise,

And strange moons circle through the skies.

But stranger still is 

Lost Carcosa."

It was Cassilda's song from Act 1, Scene 2. Except it wasn't: It was the same lines, certainly, but when I had read them on the page they had not filled me with the kind of dread that I felt then. It was like falling down a very dark hole and being absolutely certain there was no bottom. Even worse was the dull, flat look in her eyes, and the droning monotone of her voice. "It's beautiful, isn't it?" she asked.

I tried to talk but my tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth. After a few seconds I managed a noise that sounded somewhat affirmative, although I'm not sure that agreeing was really what I wanted to do.

"It's just like I thought it would be," she continued, "only better. And worse. It's like one of those dreams that you forget as soon as you wake up. I can't believe you found it."

"Found what?" I said.

She looked at me like I was an idiot. "The play: You found 'The King in Yellow.'"

I shook my head. "No, Melissa, that play I gave you is a fake. There's no way—"

"It's real," she said. "Oh, but of course, you won't realize it until the end. It's fine. It's the way things have to be. Tell me, what do you think it was about?" 

Her eyes looked like two bright blue chips of ice as she waited for my answer. 

I hesitated, then said: "Um...it's hard to say."

"That's fine," she said. "I'll show you." And then she began to undress.

I would like to be able to say that at this point I stopped her, pointing out that she was obviously not in her right mind and that she was maybe under the influence of something and in any case that this is not the way I wanted this to happen. 

But no matter how strange she was acting, this was the girl of my dreams, alone in my room in the middle of the night and apparently quite intent on being naked in front of me. If I was slightly less honorable with my handling of the situation than I should have been, well, really, can you blame me?

In seconds she stripped down to her bra and panties, and she stood less than a foot away. She put her hand on my chest and closed her eyes, and I watched her sway in time to the erratic beating of my heart. I was frozen in place, afraid that if I moved or said anything that the moment would somehow shatter like brittle glass.

"Do you want me?" she said.

I swallowed. "Yes."

"What will you give me?"

I bit my tongue. "What?"

"If you want me you'll have to give up something. What should it be?"

I was now almost completely certain that I was having a nightmare.

When she saw that I wasn't going to answer, she said: "Why don't you do something for me? Why don't you find the Yellow Sign?"

She obviously thought I should know what that meant, but I didn't have the first idea, any more than I expect you do now. Even so I nodded, and then she kissed me and all of my worries disappeared for a while.

There was something about the way that she took my clothes off that made me feel studied. She ran her hands over my bare limbs and naked chest like she was mapping it all out. She kept her eyes on what she was doing, only looking me in the face when she had finished the examination, apparently satisfied with whatever she had found. Then she pushed me onto the bed and climbed on top, catching me between her thighs. She rubbed against my naked, swollen cock once and I gasped. She looked placid.

I had trouble speaking: "Melissa, wait. Before we go any further, you should know, I mean, I've never, I've never actually—"

"That's okay," she said, face softening just the tiniest degree. "I'll help." 

Then she slid down, taking me in her hand and guiding me into her mouth, and for a second I thought I might pass out. It wasn't just the feel of her lips gliding down over me or her soft tongue teasing the underside of my cock that nearly pushed me over the edge (although, that too...), it was the sudden and unexpected reality of what was happening. 

I had only ever kissed a girl once. Physical intimacy was altogether foreign to me, and sex seemed like a distant shore on the other side of an enormous ocean. Even as I ran my fingers through her hair it was impossible to believe that this was real, and the contrast between what was happening now and what I could ever have hoped would happen when I approached her that afternoon was nearly impossible to reconcile.

She took me all the way to the opening of her throat, pursing her lips around the base of my cock and then sucking wetly while her tongue swirled around. My fingers knotted so tightly in her hair that I worried I might hurt her, but she never objected. She was making a gulping noise that seemed particularly obscene but still made me quietly ecstatic. 

Of course, I was young and it was my first time, and although she was only a year older than me it was very clearly not her first time, and before long she had pushed me much further than I was able to go. I gasped out a warning as I felt it roil up inside of me, but either she didn't hear or didn't care because her only response was to slide my cock halfway out of her mouth and lick the head, which of course was all it took. I cried out as I came, squirting onto her tongue, body shuddering. She only me out when I was spent, her strawberry lips painted with the aftermath. 

I grunted an apology, embarrassed by my lack of stamina and sure that she would be disappointed. Instead she climbed on top again, kissing the side of my neck and telling me not to worry and that it was just what she had wanted. 

She reached behind her back and unhooked her bra, tossed it away, then pressed my face to her breasts, where my lips found their way to her soft pink nipples. She whispered to me as my tongue flicked over them, and although her voice was still vacant there was a restrained undertone of affection under her iciness. She was patient with me while we waited for it to come back, and sure enough after a time I was ready again. She lay on the bed, pulling me down with her, holding me in place between her splayed legs. I muttered something about protection but she said not to worry (which I guess is exactly the kind of thing that should have made me worry more, but somehow when she said it it seemed okay). Then she put her arms around my neck and, coaxing with little twitches of her hips, let me in. 

To be honest, from that point on, there's not much in the way of linear, coherent memory. I couldn't tell you how long it lasted or what we said or what I was thinking. All I remember is a long, slow, hot hour alone (together) in the dark. I tried to pull out at the end but she held me in, and I felt something pass between us, and the moment was suddenly broken, and I was back to myself, sweating, panting, naked, and sore. And Melissa opened her eyes and looked at me with that icy flatness, and I felt chilled all over, and I knew that whatever affection she felt for me just seconds ago was gone now. 

And then she left. 

She dressed and went without saying a word, and as soon as she was gone I started to wonder if any of it had really happened. But then I saw the pages scattered on the floor and I realized that yes, it must have been. And it was when I began gathering the pages up that I noticed something else strange: Although I had given Melissa only the first Act of an unfinished play, somehow she had returned a manuscript complete with a second Act. Where had it come from? I was too tired and too confused to consider an answer, so I stuck the whole thing in a drawer and hoped that when I woke up in the morning it would all make sense. Of course, it didn't. 

I was relieved when she was absent from class the next day. I stared at her empty chair, remembering the warmth of her naked body but unable to enjoy it because the competing memory of her blank, emotionless glare kept crowding it out. I might have sat there all day thinking about it if I hadn't been startled by what at first sounded like the call of a deranged hyena but instead turned out to be:

"Let the red dawn surmise

What we shall do,

When this blue starlight dies

And all is through."

Cassilda's song again, I realized, snapping my head up. Professor Chambers stood at the lectern looking pale, his eyes wild, hair tangled, and mouth hanging open. His clothes were disheveled and from where I sat I thought I could see spots of blood in his beard. He looked like he had just been in a car accident, and when he spoke the next verses he drew handfuls of papers out of his briefcase and flung them into the front row of desks. I didn't even need to look at them to know what they were. 

Of course Melissa would have showed the play to Chambers. Probably even before she came to see me. Maybe before she finished reading it herself. I guess he must have liked it, because he tried to quote the whole thing.

I looked around the room; a few of the other students were laughing and one or two seemed to think this was some sort of particularly unorthodox lecture, but most appeared uncomfortable. Chambers' voice grated like a saw while his recitations became less and less coherent. After ten minutes campus security escorted him out of the room and off to an ignominious early retirement and within an hour everyone had heard what happened. Most of the student body found the incident hilarious: Had he been drunk, or is this just what happens after too many tenured years without a vacation?

Although a few people had saved the pages he threw around, no one recognized them, and no one made any connection between the professor's sideshow and "The King in Yellow." No one but me, of course. The combination of Melissa's spectral visit to my room and the professor's performance in class set an unnamable terror in my heart. But it couldn't be that the play was to blame? I didn't believe those ridiculous old ghost stories about a cursed play that drove people insane. Besides, the play I had shown Melissa was a fraud, of that I was certain. Even so, when I got back to my dorm I hid the pages in my mattress and I told no one about them. I was sure that if I just kept my head down that this would all blow over, and things would be back to normal in no time at all.

Three days later Chambers was dead. So was Melissa. 

They hung themselves side by side from the statue of the Fates in front of the arts building. A 30 page suicide note in both of their handwriting was found scribbled on the back of Act 1 of "The King in Yellow." Police found over a hundred photocopied manuscripts in the trunk of Chambers' car, held together with rubber bands, and they seized the whole lot of them as evidence.

Classes were cancelled. The rumor mill was spinning from the moment the bodies were found: A nervous breakdown in class was one thing, but now suicide too? Double suicide, with a student? And what about this mysterious play the cops found? What did it all mean? All the week long the people talked, and speculated, and gossiped, and wondered while I was in mortal terror of the police or anyone else connecting the dots between Chambers, Melissa, the play, and me. I considered throwing out the pages I had hidden, but something wouldn't let me. I suppose it was the belief that I would never understand what had happened unless I read it. When I got the news that Melissa was dead, I went numb inside, and I thought that the only thing that would shake the feeling away was might be in that strange second Act she had brought me. Really, it was all I had left of her now.

But I didn't read it. I was scared to even touch it. And it was about then that the bad dreams started. In my sleep I saw the Phantom of Truth, who pointed an accusing finger at me, and I heard a voice—often Melissa's, but just as often not—and it said:

"Have you found the Yellow Sign?"

But when I awoke I still did not know what it meant.

When classes finally started again I thought I could put the whole thing behind me. But as I walked to the Humanities building I heard something that made me wonder if I was dreaming still:

"You, sir, should unmask."

It was Camilla's line from the end of the masquerade, Act 1, Scene 2. I saw a knot of people clustered at the foot of the hill. Elbowing my way through the crowd, I saw someone dressed in an elaborate yellow gown and a gold Mardi Gras mask. It was Tessa Solomon, a girl I had known and briefly flirted with in my civics class before I met Melissa. Opposite her, playing the Stranger (revealed at the end of Act 1 to be the Phantom of Truth), was a tall man costumed in a faded bathrobe (his version of the Tattered Raiment) and a fencer's hood (standing in for the Pallid Mask). I later learned that he was her boyfriend, Louis Castaigne, a theater major. 

They had marched unannounced across the green to the top of the hill ten minutes earlier and begun their performance. No one there but me could possibly have known what play it was, but a clamor of excitement went through the audience as the first people made the connection between their lines and the phrases referenced in Professor Chambers' last lecture. Dazed, I watched the scene unfold. 

"I said, you should unmask," said Tessa-as-Camilla.


The King in Yellow: Opening Night



A man and a woman sit in the dark, side by side in the third row. They believe they are alone in the theater. They do not see the third figure, watching from the aisle. They wait for the curtain to rise.

"I don't remember buying tickets to this," the man says.

The woman looks at the stub in her hand. "We didn't buy them, they came in the mail. They say 'Special invitation only.'"

The man looks at the empty seats. "Then why were we the only ones invited?" 

The woman does not know. She reads the program:

The King in Yellow

A play in two Acts.

Author anonymous. Translated from the original French by George Caplan.

Dramatis Personae:

CAMILLA, a courtesan.

CASSILDA, her sister, also a courtesan.

THALE, an artist, engaged to Cassilda.

ALDONES, a lord, ex-lover of Camilla.

MESSENGER, a servant of the King in Yellow.

THE STRANGER, a masked apparition, the Phantom of Truth.

THE KING IN YELLOW, Camilla's mysterious patron.

Also: Servants, lords, ladies, guardsmen.



Place: The city of Carcosa. 

"You know," says the woman, "I feel like we've seen this before."

"Couldn't have," says the man, "this is opening night." 

He shifts in his seat, and coughs. It echoes. "I hope they're starting soon."

The man and the woman believe they are alone, but there is a third figure in the theater, a man in a mask, who watches them from the aisle. The man in the mask knows when the curtain will rise. He knows what the actors will say. He knows what the man and the woman in the audience will say after. He is the only one who knows. 

But he says nothing, and goes unnoticed.

***

Act 1, Scene 1:

(Curtain rises on the sitting room in CAMILLA and CASSILDA's apartments. It is small but well-appointed, the furnishings comfortable, the decor homey. At left a balcony opens, overlooking the backdrop of a dark city. The door at stage right marks the entrance.)



(CASSILDA, older of the two, stands at a mirror at center, dressed in her nightgown and brushing her hair. She is pretty and reserved, affecting sincerity and propriety.)



(CAMILLA, younger and prettier but also more temperamental than her sister, stands on the balcony, looking out at the city and sulking.)


Camilla: People in other cities say the stars in Carcosa are black.

Cassilda: The stars are the same color here as any other place, you just can't see them because of the factory smoke.

Camilla: In other cities they say that spirits walk the streets of Carcosa at night and steal anyone they find wandering out.

Cassilda: We've wandered after dark lots of times, and no one has stolen us.

Camilla: But people do go missing. Who's to say that spirits didn't take them? And there's a kind of spirit that's stealing you away from me.

Cassilda: Don't start that please. (She goes the balcony and brings CAMILLA inside. CAMILLA allows herself to be led, looking at her own bare feet rather than her sister's face.)

Camilla: I'm sorry. I just hate the idea of being left alone here.

Cassilda: You don't have to stay. You could come with us to England.

(They sit on the couch, CAMILLA hugging her herself, CASSILDA hugging her.)

Camilla: And what would I do there? Spin? Garden? There's no place in a hamlet for a courtesan. 

Cassilda: But when we're there we won't have to be courtesans anymore.

Camilla: I've never been anything else; I would not know how to start now. Maybe it's fine for you, just being the wife of a painter without two coins to rub together.

Cassilda: Thale is the richest man I know.

Camilla: Richly wived, perhaps.

(CASSILDA takes her hands away, crossing her arms in front of her chest.)

Cassilda: Don't you like him?



Camilla: (Apologetic) Of course I do, he's wonderful. I wish I had someone like him.


Cassilda: (Slowly) We're going to Lord Aldones' costume ball tomorrow. I never liked him, but he made you happy once. Maybe-

Camilla: Aldones is a pig. I wouldn't line a cowshed with his affections. If it weren't for you I would never go anywhere near one of his balls again.

(CASSILDA looks like she's about to laugh.)

Camilla: Oh, you know what I mean!

(They both giggle, and relax a bit.)

Cassilda: Well, you don't have to go with us if you don't want to.

Camilla: If I don't go Aldones will be put out, and then who knows if Thale will ever get the money he's owed for that painting Aldones commissioned. 

Cassilda: I'm sure we can manage Aldones without you. (Suddenly) Camilla, have you ever thought about what it would be like to be a parent?

Camilla: (Distracted) I think children can get along fine without parents. We did.

Cassilda: But what if we had known mother or father, and-

(There's a knock on the door. Both women look surprised. CASSILDA puts on a cloak to cover her nightgown as CAMILLA opens the door at right.)

(Enter the MESSENGER, a short, dark man dressed all in black. He doffs his hat and cloak, and bows more deeply than is necessary.)

Messenger: Good evening, ladies. 

Cassilda: Sir, whatever business you've come on, can't it can wait until morning? 


Messenger: A thousand pardons gentle maiden, but I was sent here on the orders of my master. He specifically instructed me to call on you at this hour. He is very strict.

(He bows several more times. CASSILDA looks suspicious, her mouth a hard line, but CAMILLA seems amused.)



Camilla: Who is your master?

Messenger: A great and powerful lord who wishes to make the acquaintance of the lovely and virtuous woman they call Camilla. And if I am not mistaken, you are she? 

Camilla: I am Camilla, and I am most delighted to receive your master's regard, even if he does call at strange hours.

Messenger: My master has heard of your beauty, grace, and wit, and wishes to know you better.

(CAMILLA's smile widens. CASSILDA watches the MESSENGER closely.)

Camilla: Well, I am certain I can entertain him.

Messenger: Ah, but he does not wish to meet you yet. But he has expressed a desire to see you, tomorrow, at Lord Aldones' costume ball? See you, you understand, in the ocular sense, but not meet you, not yet.

Camilla: A curious request, but I have heard stranger. How will your lord know me when he sees me?



Messenger: Your beauty burns like the thousand lamps on the shores of the lake Hali and-

Cassilda: There will be an awful lot of lamps and girls burning tomorrow, and they'll all be wearing masks. How is your master to tell my sister from the others?

(CAMILLA almost laughs, but bites her tongue. The MESSENGER remains placid.)

Messenger: He hopes you will wear this.

(He holds out a gold pendant).

Camilla: It's beautiful! This mark on it, is it your master's seal?

Messenger: No lady, it is yours. 

Cassilda: (Aside) She should not accept it...

Messenger: And now, sweet Venus, I will bring this joyous news back to my master.

Camilla: Wait! Who is he? To whom do I owe my gratitude for this gift and these compliments?

Messenger: Few know his true name, but to the world he is known as the King in Yellow.

Cassilda: (At the same time) The what?

Camilla: (At the same time) The King in Yellow?

Messenger: Indeed madam. But it is not a title to be invoked lightly, so please, exercise discretion. 

Cassilda: But what kind of a title is that?

Messenger: His title, lady. That is all I may say, for now. Things will be made clear to you in time. For tonight, adieu.

(The MESSENGER opens the door, but then stops in place, seemingly frozen. CASSILDA, too, is motionless all of a sudden. Only CAMILLA remains animate, and she appears confused by the behavior of the other two.)

(Enter the STRANGER through the open door at right. He is a tall, silent specter dressed in a ragged robe, face hidden by a corpse-like mask. CAMILLA gasps at the sight of him. He points an accusing finger at her, and she swoons, holding herself up by the bedpost.) 

Camilla: Who are you? What are you doing here?

(The STRANGER says nothing, exiting right, and as soon as he is gone the MESSENGER and CASSILDA become animate again, apparently unaware of what has just happened.)

Messenger: Adieu, and au revoir, sweet ladies. (Exits.)

Cassilda: I suddenly feel the need to change the air in here.

Camilla: Did you see that?

Cassilda: That toad-like little man with his obsequious flattery? Yes, I saw him.

Camilla: No! The other one, the man in the mask!

Cassilda: (Frowns) I saw no masked man.

Camilla: But he was right here! He had a robe, and a mask, and he pointed at me, and then he was gone! (She begins to cry.)

Cassilda: (Embracing CAMILLA) It must have been your imagination dear. If there was someone else there I'm sure I would have seen it. 

Camilla: (Doubtful) I suppose.

Cassilda: Probably that messenger upset your nerves. You should throw away that pendant Camilla; a worthwhile patron would not rely on nonsense to win your attention.

Camilla: (Breaking away) I cannot afford to turn away good business. 

Cassilda: I know you can manage your own affairs, but something about that man made me frightened for you. If I were you, I'd have nothing to do with this nameless lord.

Camilla: (Holding up the pendant) It's so beautiful.

Cassilda: (Leaning on the mantle, suddenly looking very tired) I've seen something like it before, but I can't remember where.

Camilla: I know! Do you remember the mansion with the Gothic courtyard, the one by the river? We once saw a carriage leaving it, and it had this mark on the door.

Cassilda: Are you sure?

Camilla: I'm positive. For some reason I've often thought about it.

Cassilda: Well, this "king" must be a rich man indeed if that's his dwelling.

Camilla: (Holding the pendant very tightly) I don't care if he's rich. I just hope he's a good man, like Thale. (Aside) And that he will not leave...

(For a second, CASSILDA looks like she may cry. She turns away to disguise this.)

Cassilda: We'll see tomorrow. Good night, Camilla.

Camilla: Good night.

(CASSILDA exits center. CAMILLA crosses to the balcony at left, admiring the pendant and smiling.) 

Camilla: A very good night, I hope. 

(From right, the STRANGER watches her, unnoticed.)



(Curtain falls.)

***

A man and a woman sit in the dark. Although they were seated side by side when the play began, now there is one seat between them. They do not remember moving. Sitting in that seat is a man in a mask and a tattered robe, but they do not notice that he is there.

The woman whispers, "Whoever this king is he has no taste at all. I think the older one is much prettier."

"But she's spoken for," the man says.

The woman tsks. "That sort of man wouldn't care."

"You're acquainted with that sort of man, are you?

The woman does not answer. The masked figure stirs, but says nothing.


 The man frowns and looks at his program. "I'm having trouble remembering which is which. 'Camilla', 'Cassilda', their names sound the same."

"Cassilda is the older one who's getting married. You can remember because 'S' stands for 'senior.'"

"And secret, and seduce, and swindle," he says, but does not know why. The masked man stirs again, but as the next scene is about to begin neither man nor woman pay him any mind.

***

Act 1, Scene 2: 

(Curtain rises on LORD ALDONES' ballroom. The room is gaudy, with an emphasis on red velvet and polished brass. At center there is a dance floor, at left a banquet table. THALE's painting sits with a red velvet cloth draped over it at center rear, waiting for the unveiling. There are doors at left, right, and center.)



(Well-dressed lords and ladies fill the stage. They are all fantastically costumed, the ladies in elaborate dresses, the lords in expensive vests or waistcoats. Men and women alike are covered in jewelry, and everyone, even the servants, wear masks.)



(Enter CAMILLA and CASSILDA at right, dressed in similar gowns, CAMILLA'S yellow and low-cut, CASSILDA's blue and more conservative. CASSILDA's domino mask is plain white and unadorned, CAMILLA'S black and decorated with sequins and feathers.)

Cassilda: This lord of yours won't be able to see his pendant if you keep it tucked away like that.

Camilla: I want to see if I can spy him first. What do you think he looks like?

Cassilda: Jaundiced?

Servant: (To Cassilda) Excuse me madam, but Lord Aldones has asked that you might provide a diversion for the guests by singing.

Cassilda: Excuse me?

Servant: He says the evening would not be complete without your divine voice, and that he will gladly join you on the harpsichord. He was very specific with his instructions.

Cassilda: And how do you know I am the one he meant?

Servant: (Hesitates) He said you would be the only one with the nerve to wear white. I'm sorry madam, but that is what he said.

Camilla: It's just one of his games, sister. You knew he would do something like this when you agreed to come. 

Cassilda: I suppose. Where is Thale when I need him? Wait for me here.

(Exit CASSILDA, center. CAMILLA looks around, trying to spot her patron.)

Camilla: (To SERVANT) Excuse me, but would you happen to know if-

(Enter the STRANGER, left. He still wears the tattered robe and the corpse-like mask. As before, upon his entrance everyone but CAMILLA freezes.)



(CAMILLA is confused, but then she sees the STRANGER and gasps. Again he points an accusing finger at her. The STRANGER then exits left, and everyone else in the room springs back to life.)

Camilla: (Clutching SERVANT's arm) That man! Do you see him? (She points.)

Servant: You mean Duke Naotalba, dancing with- (Looks closely) -a woman who is not Duchess Naotalba?

Camilla: No, that man in the horrible mask!

Servant: Duke Naotalba's mask is a bit out of fashion miss, but I do not think it is polite to point.

(CAMILLA sags as if about to faint. The SERVANT steadies her and leads her to a couch at left, where she fans herself and tries to regain her bearings.)



(CASSILDA and ALDONES enter from center, the latter rolling in a large harpsichord. He is wearing an eagle mask that covers his entire face, and is dressed entirely in white, accented with silver jewelry. He wears a decorative rapier with a gold hilt at his hip. The guests applaud politely at their entrance.)



(CASSILDA sings the next verses, while ALDONES plays the harp.)



Cassilda: 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.

(She bows, and the guests applaud enthusiastically. ALDONES removes his mask, grinning, and bows alongside her, to even greater applause.)



(Enter THALE, right. He walks past the SERVANT without thinking to check his cloak. He is dressed a bit haphazardly for the occasion, and seems to have forgotten his mask. When CASSILDA sees him her smile becomes bright and sincere, and the two half-run to each other, leaping into one another's arms.)

Cassilda: At last!

Thale: I am sorry you had to wait. I couldn't-

Aldones: Ah, Thale! I'm afraid you've just missed your bride-to-be's lovely voice. I swear I envy you more every day. 

Cassilda: (Coldly) You flatter me, Lord Aldones.

Thale: (More sincere) And me, Lord Aldones. I cannot thank you enough for all that you've done. If you had not commissioned this new painting we could never afford to be married. In some ways I think of you as the patron of our union.

(CASSILDA gives him a dirty look.)

Aldones: Well, they say everything has a price in Carcosa, and if you have purchased a happy marriage with a new painting then I am glad to have been the other end of the transaction. I do hope you'll be unveiling the piece soon though, Thale?

Thale: Momentarily, Lord Aldones.

Aldones: I am not used to delaying what I want this long. It does very bad things for my complexion. Tell me Cassilda, where is your darling sister? She did come, didn’t she? 

Cassilda: I don’t think-

Aldones: Ah, I see her! 

(ALDONES crosses left, stopping along the way to chat with his guests. CASSILDA and THALE move a bit to right, huddling together.)

Cassilda: (Whisper) I wish you wouldn’t fawn over him like that. “Patron of our union” indeed!

Thale:(Whisper) I’m sorry, but we have to keep him happy. He could still withhold payment, and then we’d be stranded here without a penny to our names.

Cassilda: (Sighs) You're right. I just hate dealing with him. After what he did to Camilla...

Thale: I know. That’s why we’re leaving Carcosa, so that we can live in peace and not be beholden to people like him. As soon as he pays we'll book passage for England and put all of this behind us.

Cassilda: (Kissing him) I will tolerate this evening then, for the sake of our better future.

Thale: Not just ours. (He puts his hand to her stomach) I think I can feel him.

Cassilda: Silly, it’s too early for that. (Pause) Thale, you know I never knew either of my parents. What about yours? Were they like us? Did they feel like we do now?

Thale: I am certain they did not, for which I am grateful. Have you told Camilla?

Cassilda: Not yet. I was going to, but then the strangest thing happened. A man showed up at our door in the middle of the night...



(They cross to the right, whispering, as ALDONES arrives at the couch, left. He has put his mask back on.)

Aldones: Normally I would object to someone reclining on my couch so suggestively, but now I find that if anything I simply envy the furniture.

Camilla: An eagle Aldones? It does not suit you. I would suggest a vulture.

Aldones: (Taking off the mask) And you, my dear, should masquerade as nothing else so fitting as a vixen, or a shrew, but for the sake of good society I will suggest a dove. Yes, a dove, to match your mild temper.

Camilla: (Opening her fan) I was mild with you once, but now am so only in my affections. I do not find your company agreeable Aldones, so on your honor as a gentleman I'll ask you to leave me be.

Aldones: You are most cruel Camilla, and yet I cannot deny that I deserve it. The last time we talked I said unpardonable things, and in truth, I very much regret them now.




The King in Yellow: Opening Night



Camilla: Would you have me believe you did not mean what you said?

Aldones: I always mean what I say, but I do not always continue to mean it. Tonight I find those words might as well belong to another man.

Camilla: (From behind her fan) I have trouble thinking of you as two men Aldones. I have yet to see you manage to even be one.

Aldones: Everyone is selling everything, whether they know it or not, isn't that what you told me when we first met? What's the price of your forgiveness, Camilla? Is it my heart? Say so, and I will pay you gladly.

Camilla: I'm afraid you are too late, someone else-

(She is about to say more, but the STRANGER enters, this time at right. Everyone but CAMILLA freezes.)

Camilla: Again? Who are you?

Stranger: The scalloped tatters of the King in Yellow must hide Yhtill forever.

Camilla: What? What does that mean? 


(Exit the STRANGER, right, returning everyone to normal.)

Aldones: (Genuinely concerned) Camilla? What's wrong?

Camilla: (Shaken) I'm fine. (Aside) Who is he? Could he be the King in Yellow? (To Aldones) Your conversation has unnerved me. If you have any respectability as a gentleman left, take me to my sister.

(ALDONES frowns, but guides CAMILLA to center, where THALE and CASSILDA cross to meet them. CAMILLA seems unsteady on her feet. She drops her fan but does not pick it up, or notice. CASSILDA frowns.)

Aldones: May I have your attention, ladies and gentleman? As a special treat for my guests, we are unveiling a new piece in my collection tonight. No one has seen it yet, but the artist is right here, so if it does not pass critical muster you all know whom to accost (Pauses for laughter). And now Thale, without further ado?

(Thale pulls the curtain off of the portrait, revealing a life-size oil painting of a figure that looks exactly like the STRANGER. The crowd murmurs their approval. CAMILLA looks horrified, and only CASSILDA's hand on her arm keeps her from screaming.)

Aldones: Most intriguing. What do you call it?

Thale: It is "The Phantom of Truth." 

Aldones: Is it? But tell me, why did you paint the truth wearing a mask?

Thale: Because the truth is often disguised, and so often goes unnoticed. The Pallid Mask, as I call it, represents the assumptions that hide the truth from us.

Aldones: I see. And why is the truth dressed so raggedly?

Thale: That is the Tattered Raiment, for the truth is much abused, but it does not care.

Aldones: I see you have an answer for everything. Well, I am very pleased with it. And now, since midnight is almost upon us-

(The STRANGER enters from center. This time everyone else remains animated, and his arrival causes quote a commotion among the guests. Some gasp, some cry out, and one man even flees.)

(THALE and ALDONES part as he steps between them. Both looking astonished. The STRANGER stands before the portrait, arms spread, the Tattered Raiment stirring in an undetectable breeze.)

Camilla: Do you see it? Do you see?

Cassilda: Of course, we all see it! But where did he come from?

Aldones: (Regaining his composure) Well, I do admire a man who can make an entrance, but I admire him less when he is not me. And just who are you, good sir?

Stranger: I am the Truth.

Aldones: Oh? I do not think we have ever been acquainted.

Stranger: I am a stranger to many here.

Aldones: I should say you are! Thale, you have outdone yourself this time. I suppose this is one of your actor friends, here to accompany your painting with a little performance art? How delightful.

Thale: This is not my doing! Who are you?

Stranger: I am the Truth. You may know me.

Camilla: (Whispers) Can you hear it? Is it real?

Cassilda: Yes Camilla, it's real, we all hear it.

Aldones: (Covering) Well, I think too much truth at a social gathering is bad manners, but we thank you for this necessarily brief appearance. Now, since it is midnight, it's time for us to unmask! Everyone, lay aside your disguises!

(The party guests all remove their masks, reacting with amusement.)

Aldones: And now-

Camilla: (To the STRANGER) You, sir, should unmask.

Stranger: Indeed?

Camilla: It's time. We have all laid aside disguise but you.

Stranger: I wear no mask.

Camilla: No mask? No mask!

Aldones: (Frowns) You seem to be upsetting my guests. I must insist on knowing who you are.

(ALDONES removes the STRANGER's mask. The STRANGER turns away so that neither the audience nor any character but ALDONES can see his face. ALDONES cries out, then stumbles away, horrified, exiting center. In his rush, he drops his rapier.)



(The STRANGER replaces his mask, then turns to face the others. The guests all back away.)

Stranger: This that you see is my true face. What I wear underneath is my disguise. 

Camilla: Who are you really? Why have you been following me?

Stranger: I am the Truth. You may know me. The scalloped tatters of the King in Yellow must hide Yhtill forever.

Camilla: What does that mean? Who is the King in Yellow, do you know?

Stranger: You may know.

(CAMILLA picks up ALDONES' dropped rapier. She draws it and holds the point to the STRANGER's chest.)

Camilla: Give me a proper answer!


Cassilda: Camilla, no!

Thale: Camilla!

Camilla: Who are you?

Stranger: I am the Truth.

(The STRANGER steps forward and runs himself through on the sword. CAMILLA lets go, several guests scream, but the STRANGER does not react at all. He calmly exits through center, with the rapier still protruding from his body.)



(CAMILLA stares, stunned. CASSILDA and THALE rush to her side. The assorted guests and servants all murmur, horrified, and they exit in a rush to the left and right.)

Thale: What in the world was that?

Cassilda: Camilla, are you alright?

Camilla: Was it real?

Thale: I confess, I do not know.

(CAMILLA regains her composure and crosses right.)

Cassilda: Where are you going?

Camilla: To find answers. Whoever that man is, he's been following me since last night. (Taking out the pendant) I heard him mention the King in Yellow twice. They must be connected somehow.

(CAMILLA exits right.) 

Cassilda: Camilla, wait!

Thale: Let her go! It's too late. 

Cassilda: What do you mean?

Thale: That pendant, I've seen it before. It's an omen, Cassilda. There's nothing we can do to help her.

Cassilda: Is she in danger?

Thale: Very much.

Cassilda: Then I'm not leaving her alone!

(CASSILDA exits right, and THALE, after hesitating a moment, goes after her. From left, the STRANGER watches them, unseen, his shadow now the only occupant of the empty ballroom.)



(Curtain falls.)

***

A man and a woman sit in the dark. The lights come up. Intermission has begun.

Although they were seated side by side when the show began, now there is an entire row between them. He sits in the second, she in the fourth. Neither remembers moving. In the third row, between them, sits the man in a mask. 

"Was it real?" asks the woman.

"Was what real?" the man says.

"The man in the mask."

"Of course not"

The masked figure stands. Neither see him.

"How do you know?" asks the woman.

"Because it's a play. Nothing in it is real."

The woman pauses. "What do you think was under the mask?"

"An actor."

The man in the mask moans, and it echoes off of the empty seats, but the man and the woman do not hear it.

The woman pauses. "Are you frightened?"

"Of what? The play?"

"Of anything..."

The man considers this, but before he can answer the lights dim, and the second Act begins.

***

Act 2, Scene 1:

(Curtain rises on the Gothic courtyard adjoining the street, outside of the King in Yellow's palace. There is a high gate and a capped wall. CAMILLA paces the flagstones, her party clothes concealed under a cloak with a hood.)



(She clutches the pendant in her hand, and paces more. The voice of the STRANGER calls out from the wings:)


Stranger: (Voice) Have you found the Yellow Sign?

Camilla: (Looking around) Where are you?

Stranger: (Voice) Have you found the Yellow Sign?

Camilla: I don't know what that means. And I don't know who you are. And I don't know...what's happening anymore. Please, at least come out where I can see you?

(There is silence, and then the sound of wind whipping down the street and the rustle of dry leaves. CAMILLA hugs her cloak around her body.)



(Enter the GUARDSMAN, right.)

Guardsman: You there, what are you doing about?

Camilla: I have business with the lord of this manor.

Guardsman: You don't think I'll be taken in by that, do you? Cast off, you slut! Pedal yourself somewhere else!

Camilla: (Incensed) I tell you I have business with the lord of this manor, and if you don't believe me, then look at this!

(CAMILLA holds up the pendant. When the GUARDSMAN sees it he begins to tremble and stammer.)

Guardsman: I-I'm sorry! I didn't know. Please don't tell him that I, well, please don't tell him anything!

(Exit the GUARDSMAN, right, running. CAMILLA looks surprised, confused, and quietly pleased.)

Cassilda: (Offstage) Camilla!

Thale: (Offstage) Camilla!

Camilla: I'm here!

(Enter CASSILDA and THALE, left. We can tell from their dress that they too have come straight from the party.)

Cassilda: We've been looking all over for you!

Camilla: This is where we saw the carriage with the marking. Whoever the King in Yellow is, he must live here.

Cassilda: But that's just it; Thale knows the King in Yellow!

Camilla: You do?

Thale: I have never met him, and I do not know that title, but I recognized the symbol on that pendant. They call it the Yellow Sign. It's an evil thing Camilla, and if you keep it you'll be in danger.

Camilla: (Turning away) If so, it will not be the first time. I can take care of myself.

Thale: I've known people who were sent the Yellow Sign; traders and artists and debtors and street girls. Always it was followed by a period of fear and confusion and violence in their lives. And then...

Camilla: And then what?

Thale: They are never heard from again. If this King in Yellow is the man who sends the sign, then he means nothing good by you.

Cassilda: Camilla, we're going to leave the city, tonight, right now.

Camilla: Now? But you've booked passage for-

Cassilda: No, we haven't. Aldones refuses to pay the money he promised Thale.

Camilla: (Furious) Why?

Thale: He seems to have gone half-mad. He demands to see you. He will speak of nothing else.

Camilla: What if I don't?

(THALE hesitates.)

Camilla: Tell me!

Cassilda: He won't give us the money. And...he says he will send the guards to our rooms tomorrow with an arrest warrant. (Quieter) For prostitution...


Camilla: And how does he plan to have me prosecuted without implicating himself as my patron?

Thale: The warrant isn't for you. It's for Cassilda.

Camilla: What?!

Cassilda: Camilla, don't go to him. If you do, he'll control our lives forever!

Thale: We're going to leave, right now. I don't know where we can go, but anywhere is better than here. Camilla, please, come with us. You won't be safe here.

Camilla: But will I be safe anywhere? If I leave with you, Aldones will follow, but if I stay, Aldones will forget about you. And two can travel faster than three. I would only put you in danger. 

Cassilda: I...

Camilla: (Kisses CASSILDA on the cheek) Goodbye sister. You have your life, but you must leave me to live mine however I can. (Kisses THALE on the cheek) Goodbye Thale. I would let you save me from this if I could. 

(THALE looks grim but resigned. CASSILDA is on the verge of tears. Together they cross left, she clutching at his sleeve.)

Camilla: (Once they're out of earshot) And goodbye to you who have not arrived in the world yet. I am sorry I will not know you.

(Exit THALE and CASSILDA. Enter the MESSENGER, center, behind the gate, unlocking it and stepping out.)

Camilla: At last. I wish to speak with your master.

Messenger: But he has not sent for you, and you have made no appointment?

Camilla: Opportunity does not wait, and I am a rare opportunity indeed. Your lord would be foolish to put me off, as I may not knock twice.

Messenger: Radiant maiden-

Camilla: Your compliments have grown tiresome. I want answers, not flattery. Your lord, has he sent someone to follow me, a man in disguise?

Messenger: No, he has not. Although he has ways of knowing your comings and goings, you have not been followed.

Camilla: (Hesitates) What is the Yellow Sign?

Messenger: My master's calling card.

Camilla: Is it true that people who receive the Yellow Sign disappear?

Messenger: Sometimes, if they have been poor traders. My master's business is of a singular nature.



Camilla: I'm not sure I like the sound of your lord's business, or how he conducts it.

Messenger: I have a message from my master for you; perhaps it would ease your mind?

Camilla: I'm listening.

Messenger: The King in Yellow has seen you and finds that all of the stories of your beauty are true. Therefore, he makes this offer: Spend just one night with him, and he will give you everything you ever wanted.

Camilla: Everything?

Messenger: Do you desire a house as magnificent as this? It will be built. Do you want servants to staff it? They will be hired. If you desire money, we can-

Camilla: I desire none of this, and even if I did, I am no longer confident that I could collect them in safety. I have seen strange things since accepting your master's token, and I do not wish to continue seeing them.

(She starts to take off the pendant.)

Messenger: What about your sister's freedom?

(CAMILLA stops.)

Messenger: What about protection from prosecution, passage to another land, and money to establish her and her new husband there? Surely that is important to you, surely that is worth any price?

Camilla: Your lord, he can do this?

Messenger: As easily as moving the littlest finger of his hand. What say you?

(CAMILLA hesitates, lost in thought. A particularly strange look comes over her features.)

Camilla: Your master, he can provide anything I want? Even something...unspeakable?

Messenger: It is his specialty.

Camilla: Then tell your lord I consent to his bargain, on one last condition; bring me Lord Aldones' heart. Present it to me in a golden chalice.

Messenger: (Startled) Miss?

Camilla: That is my price. 

Messenger: (Horrified) But why? If we are already protecting your sister-

Camilla: (Smiling, removing her opera gloves one at a time) Because he offered it to me tonight, but I think he is the sort who would renege. Business, as they say, is business.

Messenger: (Shaken, voice quavering) I will take your message to my master and...I am sure he will consent. Be here at this time tomorrow, and you will have what you ask for, and more.

(Exit the MESSENGER, locking the gate behind him.) 



(From offstage, the voice of the STRANGER floats in.)

Stranger: I am the Truth. You may know me.

Camilla: (Taking off her cloak) But I do not want to.

(Exit CAMILLA, right. Curtain falls.)

***

A man and a woman sit in the dark. Now they are on opposite ends of the theater, he in the front row, she in the back, he on the left, she on the right. They shout across the span so that they can be heard, but still they do not realize how far apart they are. The masked figure sits between them.

"It must be hard for her," says the woman.


 "Who, the actress?" says the man.

"No, Camilla!"

"I don't see the difference," says the man.

The man in the mask says, "There is no difference." But neither hear him.

"Soon she'll be all alone," says the woman.

"Happens to everyone sooner or later," says the man.

"I hope I'm never alone like that," says the woman, from her seat at the back of the theater.

"I haven't been alone in years," says the man to the empty chairs on every side. "I miss it."

The final scene begins.

***

Act 2, Scene 2:

(Curtain rises on a bedchamber in the King in Yellow's palace. Everything here is fine and expensive, but it has a hard look, with sharp edges and corners. At center there is an enormous bed, and behind it hangs an oil panting of a man and a little girl. At right there is a long table, and on it there is a covered silver dish.)



(Enter CAMILLA from right, dressed in a form-fitting, low-cut gown, her hair elaborately coiled on her head and secured with gold pins. Her lips are very, very red. The MESSENGER enters with her.)

Messenger: You saw your sister and her new husband off?

Camilla: Yes.

Messenger: And you heard the news of Lord Aldones' death?

Camilla: (Sitting on the bed, crossing her legs) I did. I heard that it was suicide, that he threw himself off of his balcony. 

Messenger: We sent him the Yellow Sign.

Camilla: I don't understand?

Messenger: Then perhaps this will satisfy you.

(He uncovers the silver dish, and on it is a gleaming golden goblet, stained with blood.)



(CAMILLA rises, crossing to the table.) 

Camilla: Is it-?

(She touches the heart with the tip of one finger, puts the finger to her mouth, and then laughs a little.)

Messenger: (Uneasy) Are you satisfied?

Camilla: I am. You can take this away.

Messenger: Yes, m'lady.

(Exit MESSENGER right, with goblet, looking ill. CAMILLA lounges on the bed, running her hand over the rich golden fabric of the comforter.)

Stranger: (Voice) Sins hang upon the sinner, like weights in the water.

Camilla: (Nonchalantly) I have so many already, what's one more?

Stranger: (Voice) The sins of the father...

Camilla: But I have no father.

Stranger: (Voice) Have you found the Yellow Sign?

Camilla: Yes. I had it the whole time. (Glances at the portrait.) A very handsome lord. 

Stranger: (Voice) The girl.

Camilla: A sweet little thing. His daughter I suppose. I wonder if he has a wife? 

(She appears suddenly startled. She stands on the bed to look closer at the painting.)

Camilla: Look, the little girl's pendant, it's the same!

Stranger: (Voice) The sins of the father...

Camilla: Don't you see? I've found the Yellow Sign! It was right here. She's a very pretty child. She has blue eyes.




The King in Yellow: Opening Night



Stranger: (Voice) Like yours.

Camilla: And that hair, so dark and curly.

Stranger: (Voice) Like yours.

Camilla: And she has (pause), a birthmark on her...on her cheek...

Stranger: (Voice) Like yours.

(CAMILLA stares at the painting, then cries out, almost falling, catching herself, wheeling away from the portrait, hand to her mouth.)



(Enter THE KING IN YELLOW from left, a handsome older gentleman, immaculately dressed. His cloak is gold, as are his gloves, and his boots, and his sash, and the buttons on his coat. He bows very deeply to CAMILLA, who tries to regain her composure, and then he kisses her hand once, tenderly.)

King: At last.

Camilla: Are you...are you my patron?

King: For longer than you have known.

Camilla: That man in the painting, he is you?

King: When I was much younger, yes. I often think that I was then a different man entirely.

Camilla: And that girl?

King: My youngest daughter. That portrait was painted twenty years ago, when she was but three years old. I have not seen her since.

Camilla: (Voice shaking) But that's me, isn't it? And that's why I'm here?

King: (Smiling) A happy reunion at last.

(Camilla sinks down into a chair, dazed. The KING removes and hangs his cloak, waistcoat, gloves, sash, and boots one by one as he speaks his next lines.)

King: Of course you're shocked. I was too when I realized I had finally found you after all these years. But here we are, Camilla. Or should I call you Ythill? That was your name before your mother changed it.

Camilla: (Dazed) Yhtill? My mother?

King: Ah, she was an incomparable woman, even more beautiful than you. She married me not knowing the truth about where my money and influence came from. When she found out, she left with you and your sister, saying she could never raise her daughters on the wages of sin. 

Camilla: She took us away?

King: (Sits opposite CAMILLA) Yes. I tried to reason with her, but she was beyond it. 

Camilla: But I never knew my mother?

King: I found out that she died shortly after leaving, and because she refused to accept anything from me you and your sister were left with nothing. She had changed your name, and hers, and left no trace of where to find you, and ever since then I‘ve never stopped looking.

Camilla: Why didn't you tell me from the beginning?


King: Because I wanted to see what kind of woman you had grown into, what sort of life you had made, by yourself, with no one else to rely on. I saw everything, through this. (He touches the Yellow Sign) Wherever my symbol goes, I go with it. I saw you last night. I could not be more proud.

Camilla: Proud?

King: I admire the way you handled Aldones. I couldn't have taught you better myself.

Camilla: Aldones? (Slowly, as though realizing for the first time) You killed him. Because I asked you to?

King: Yes, that is what I do, that is where my fortune comes from; when people want something terrible they come to me, because I will get it for them. Do you feel remorse? That's normal. The first time is always the hardest. Soon you won't care about such things anymore. To live is to desire, to desire is to destroy.

Camilla: Why did you send only for me? Why not Cassilda too?

King: Perhaps I will, but now she has her own life, and I would leave her to it for a time. I am principally interested in you, and in your just reward: Everything you ever wanted.

Camilla: Everything?

King: Everything. (Pause) Provided you pay the price, of course.

Camilla: What do you mean?

King: We have an agreement. I will fulfill your every wish, if you spend one night with me first. Everything in Carcosa has a price, and that is mine.

(For a moment CAMILLA cannot speak, then she bolts to her feet, backing up against the wall. The KING watches, his face neutral.)

Camilla: No! You can't mean it!

King: Did you not find the offer reasonable when you agreed to it?

Camilla: But I'm your daughter! Your own daughter, by blood!

King: And I am the king of all that is forbidden, and taboo. What are rules to me? 

Camilla: You can't mean that?

King: (Blandly) Leaving is the price of arriving. Forgetting is the price of knowing. Dying is the price of living. Nothing is permanent, and man's laws are as impermanent as his nature. 

Stranger: (Voice) The sins of the father...

Camilla: It's horrible!

King: More horrible than asking for your ex-lover's heart? 

(CAMILLA breaks down, sobbing.)

Camilla: I will not consent!

King: Consent is not necessary. (Forcefully) Stop crying.

(CAMILLA stops crying.)

King: Stand up.

(CAMILLA stands up, looking confused as she does.)

Camilla: What is this?

King: It is the Yellow Sign. Didn't you know? When you accept my seal, it puts you in my power. It is how I dealt with Aldones, and with those who displease me. Weak-minded people never know what they want, so my desires become theirs. 

Camilla: (Breathing heavily) Aldones...did I ask for him to be killed, or did you make me?

King: You really don't know? If only you knew what you wanted it would be easy to figure out, but you don't. That is why I could not send Cassilda the Yellow Sign. Only you.

Camilla: I don't care. I won't pay your price.

Stranger: (Voice) The Truth will set you free.

King: (Forcefully) Go to the bed.

(CAMILLA walks to the foot of the bed.)

King: Lie down.

(CAMILLA trembles, but does not move.)

King: (Angry) Lie down!

Camilla: No.

King: Obey me!

Camilla: I will not.

(Still trembling, she wrestles with the pendant, eventually tearing it off and throwing it onto the bed. The KING looks shocked, but also oddly pleased. He takes a few steps closer to CAMILLA, who backs away.)

King: Well. It seems you do know what you want after all?

Camilla: No. But I know what I don't want. 

King: We made a deal, and I held up my end of it. You will renege?

Camilla: I will.

King: (Resigned) Well. 

(He goes to a jewelry box on the nightstand and removes a second golden pendant and chain, holding it up for her to see.)

King: Do you recognize this? You saw it first when you were three years old. It was a jeweler's mistake, a miscast locket, but for some reason you loved the shape of it and begged me to buy it for you. When I lost you, I adopted it as my seal, as a remembrance. It is only right that you should have it back now.

(He holds it up, and she flinches.)

King: It's all right, it can't harm you now. I only wanted you to have something to remember me by.

(He moves behind her, putting the chain around her neck.)


King: There. And now, dear daughter, business is business...

(The KING pulls on the chain and begins to strangle CAMILLA with it. She fights, but he overpowers her, pushing her to her knees in front of him. She claws at her throat, gasping, and he stares ahead, cold-eyed, expressionless.)

King: I thought you took after me, but I see now that you're just like your mother, willful and defiant.

(CAMILLA gasps and struggles, to no avail.)

Stranger: (Voice) The Truth will set you free.

King: It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living god. If it's any consolation, I'm actually proud of you. 

(CAMILLA is becoming weaker, her frame drooping, eyes rolling back. The KING's knuckles are white and his arms shake with exertion.)

Stranger: (Voice) But there will be a price. Everything has a price.

King: At least I have one daughter still. It will be harder to manipulate her, but I'm sure it can be done, once the husband is disposed of. Unless of course you're having second thoughts?

(CAMILLA is fading.)

Stranger: (Voice) Will you pay the price? Will you?

King: This is your last chance.

(The KING's grip slackens a bit, allowing CAMILLA to gasp out response:)

Camilla: (Weakly) I will pay the price...

King: Yes. You will.

(Enter the STRANGER, left. He still carries Aldones' rapier. The KING releases CAMILLA, who falls to the floor, and confronts the intruder.)

King: Who are you? How did you get in here? 

(The KING reaches for the silver bell on the nightstand, ringing it once before the STRANGER stabs him through the heart. He screams and collapses, bleeding, onto the bed.)

(The KING writhes in pain. He looks at the STRANGER, wild-eyed.)

King: You! I know you...

Stranger: You do.

King: Camilla...

(He dies. The STRANGER looks on. CAMILLA stirs, pulling herself up by the bedpost, clutching her throat. When she speaks her voice is hoarse. She gasps.)

Camilla: You killed him?

Stranger: It was the price.

(Enter the MESSENGER, right, carrying a tray.)

Messenger: You rang, m'lord? (Drops the tray) What have you done?

Camilla: No! It wasn't me! It was-

Messenger: Guards, guards! (Exits right.)

Stranger: Every sin hangs upon the sinner, like weights in the water.

Camilla: Who are you, really?

Stranger: I am the Truth. You may know me.

Camilla: May I?

(She reaches for the STRANGER's mask, and the STRANGER takes it off. The STRANGER turns so that the audience can see it is CAMILLA's own face underneath.)

Stranger: This (handing the mask to CAMILLA) is my real face. This (points to face) is my disguise. Do you see?

Camilla: I-I-

(The STRANGER exits left. CAMILLA chases after, snatching at the edges of the ragged robe, but it comes off, leaving her standing alone onstage, clutching the Tattered Raiment and the Pallid Mask. She opens her mouth, but has nothing to say.)



(Enter from right the MESSENGER, FIRST GUARDSMAN and SECOND GUARDSMAN.)

Messenger: That's her! 

Camilla: No! It wasn't me, it was the Truth!

Second Guardsman: The truth?

Camilla: Yes! The Truth is-

First Guardsman: Why don't you give us the truth, Miss?

(CAMILLA is about to say something more, but then stops. She lays the Tattered Raiment on the bed, and then hands the Pallid Mask to the FIRST GUARDSMAN. Then, without a word, she lets the SECOND GUARDSMAN lead her away, exiting right, with the MESSENGER.)



(The FIRST GUARDSMAN looks at the mask, then at the KING's body. He seems disturbed, and unsure what to do. There is a flutter of movement at stage left, and he looks suddenly frightened. He throws the mask down on the bed, and exits after the others.)



(The stage goes dark except for a spotlight on the bed, illuminating the sword, the robe, the body, and the mask. The spotlight dwindles down to a small circle on only the mask, and then it disappears entirely, and everything is dark.)



(Curtain falls.)



(Fin.)

***

A man and a woman sit in the dark. He is in the orchestra pit, she is at the back of the highest balcony, They shout at each other across the void, and they do not see the man in the mask who stands between them.

The man checks his watch. "Well, I thought it was quite good, all things considered," he shouts. "But I don't see what the big deal is. Why should people have been so afraid of a story like that?"

"I thought the ending was awful!" the woman shouts back.

"Well, I suppose the incest theme was crass, but-"

"Incest?"

"Yes. The King in Yellow was her father, and when she would not sleep with him he tried to kill her, and then the Stranger killed him. We just saw it?"

"That's not how it ended!" the woman shouts back. "The King in Yellow was Thale! It was all a ruse of his to seduce Camilla and convince her to murder Cassilda for him! But the Stranger tells Cassilda, and she poisons them both thinking that Camilla is in on it, and then she goes off to the convent to have her baby, and kill herself after. We just saw it?"

The man frowns. "But that's now how it happened at all!" he shouts.

"It was!" she shouts back.

And so it goes. And though they argue long and loud, they cannot agree. Finally she comes down from the balcony, and he up from the orchestra, and they meet, but when they try to leave they see the man in the mask blocking the door.



"Do you see that?" asks the man.

"I do," says the woman, "but I don't know who it is. Do you?"

"I don't know him at all," says the man.

And so neither of them knew the Truth.

Instead of leaving, they sit down, side by side, in the third row. 

"I don't remember ever buying tickets to this," the man says.

The woman looks at the stub in her hand. "We didn't buy them, they came in the mail. They say 'Special invitation only.'"

The man looks around at the empty seats. "Then why were we the only ones invited?" 

The woman does not know. 

And the play began again, and again, and again, and each time it ended, they still could not agree, and they were always in the dark, and they moved further and further apart but never realized it. 

And they never knew the Truth.



The King in Yellow



"Indeed?" said the Stranger.

"It's time. We have all laid aside disguise but you.

"But I wear no mask."

"No mask? No Mask!" Tessa threw down her Mardi Gras mask so that the audience could appreciate her horrified expression. It was a good performance, but something about it felt off to me. It was her eyes: They looked like Melissa's that night I found her at my door. 

Louis pointed an accusing finger at the crowd, and although I knew it was all part of the show it was too much like my dreams. As I turned away, I saw Tessa bring out the sword. I knew what was coming next and I preferred not to watch the scene play out. But when I heard Louis scream I turned back: In the play, of course, the Stranger isn't hurt by Camilla's sword; but I guess this was one vein in which Louis' final performance wasn't quite as authentic as he had hoped.

Early speculation was that Tessa had somehow mistaken a real sword for a prop, but as the police report later revealed, the weapon she killed Louis with WAS a prop. The blunt metal stave went through him with so much force that it broke in half, and broke Tessa's wrist along with it. Even as Louis lay there, bleeding and screaming, and the audience all scattered in a panic, Tessa never stopped reciting her lines. When Louis wasn't there to say his line in response, she just repeated the cue line over and over again until the police took her away. As far as I know she's still institutionalized.

After that the campus was closed until further notice. The students lived in a strange no-man's land. Some left. Others stayed. They wandered between bars and parties, and they talked about what had happened, and increasingly they talked about "The King in Yellow." Was the play real? Had Chambers read it? Had Tessa? Could it really drive a person insane? Where had it come from?

Speculation and gossip gave way to myth. Soon everyone knew someone who knew someone who had read it. It became a fad. Everywhere you went people asked: "Have you read it?" and "Do you know anyone who read it?" and "Where can I read it?"

Where indeed? Where, I wondered, had Tessa and Louis gotten the script for the scene they performed that day? Melissa must have given it to them. I remembered the hundred copies found in Chambers' car. I wondered how many others the police hadn't found because they had been given away first, and who might be reading them now, and what they might do?

Two weeks after Louis' death I attended a frat/sorority mixer billed as a "Carcosan Ball," where the Theta Phi girls dressed in corsets and masks and long gowns like Carcosan courtesans, peeking out from over the top of decorative fans at the guys from Alpha Chi Omega, and every third person quoted "The King in Yellow" in conversation, or pretended to. A friend had invited me on the pretense of cheering me up (had he known why I was depressed he probably wouldn't have bothered), and I hadn't known the theme when I, for the sake of politeness, agreed to attend. Watching the partygoers, I thought of them all as silly, thoughtless children. To them "The King in Yellow" was still fun, and an excuse for a second Halloween or Mardi Gras, but I wondered if any of them were thinking about the three people who had died and the one laying in a hospital.

By midnight I was ready to leave, but then a group of laughing Thetas climbed onto the dining room table and shouted for everyone's attention. My heart jumped when I saw them passing printed pages around. A tall blonde, clearly many drinks for the worse, read in a wavering voice from the sheet in front of her:

"Along the shore the cloud waves break,

The twin suns sink beneath the lake,

The shadows lengthen 

In Carcosa."

She giggled and passed the page to one of her friends, who continued the verse:

"Strange is the night where black stars rise,

And strange moons circle through the skies

But stranger still is 

Lost Carcosa."

The effect that these words had on the crowd was astonishing: They surged forward to hear more, and when each girl finished reading a page she would fling it into the mass of them, where it would sometimes be torn to shreds by too many hands groping for it. 

At first the girls had apparently been acting on a lark, their drunken recital full of giggles and winks. As they went on, though, their demeanor sobered, and each of them got a faraway look. When one of them lifted up her voice and shrieked:

"The scalloped tatters of the King in Yellow must hide Yhtill forever!"

—it elicited such a horrible cry of elation from the audience that I felt I had to leave. I pushed my way through the dumbstruck Alphas who stood shoulder to shoulder in the doorway, hurrying upstairs to find my coat and get out of that place before I had to hear anymore of those horrible words.

I only made it as far as the first open door in the hall before I stopped. I stood staring into the dimly lit room, just as dumbfounded as those downstairs who were transfixed by the recitation. Scattered over the floor were the various pieces of girls' costumes and lolling on the bed, half-naked in each other's arms, were two Thetas, busily kissing, groping, and fondling each other.

A girl with dark curls piled up on her head struggled with the laces of her corset, finally loosening them enough to allow her breasts out so that her partner could lick the erect nipples. She lounged against a pile of pillows, fingers stroking the other girl's hair, eyes half-open and tongue set between her teeth, inhaling with little hissing noises and then exhaling with lazy sighs. 

The other girl closed her eyes, strawberry lips and cherry-red tongue licking and lapping. She shifted her gaze to me, and I was afraid she might scream, but instead she regarded me with cool indifference, or perhaps a complete lack of acknowledgment that I was there at all. The moment didn't seem real. In fact, I was sure that it wasn't. Because it was not the sight of female bodies entwined that fixed my attention; it was that one of them, the girl with the dark curls, looked exactly as I imagined Camilla, the heroine of "The King in Yellow," to look. 

It's a strange thing, a resemblance to the fancied image of a fictional person, but when I first read the play a picture of Camilla's face emerged very prominently in my mind, to the point that I felt I could pick her out of a crowd. And now here she was, or at least, someone who looked so much like her that I could only assume I was once again dreaming, or that the difference between dreams and waking was not as pronounced as it should be.

I might have stood rooted to that spot all night if "Camilla" had not pushed the other girl away, stood, and walked across the hall, stopping to stroke the side of my face and trail her hand over my shoulders. She was naked except for fishnets, long black opera gloves, and costume jewelry, but she walked right up to me, touched me, and then retreated into the darkened doorway of the room on the opposite side. A pair of long white arms with lacquered nails emerged from the shadows of that room and drew "Camilla" in.

The other Theta, a short, petite Vietnamese girl, followed, stopping only to kiss my cheek, touch my wrist, stroke my thigh, and trail her fingers along my arm. Her movements were languid, like a passing mirage. I was still not sure if any of this was real, but her touch felt solid enough. She looked over her shoulder as she disappeared into the impenetrable blackness of the other bedroom and gestured, once, for me to follow.

"Hello?" I said, approaching the open door and peering in. I could see nothing, but the same arms, belonging to the unseen third person in this rendezvous, slipped out of the shadows and, taking me by the wrists, drew me in. The door closed behind us. 

I felt a hand on my shoulder, and I allowed myself to be drawn through the dark, to the bed. My unseen partners made no noise at all, and when I lay down it seemed that the weight of only one caused any depression on the mattress. But then I felt their hands on me, one's touch gentle and reassuring, one's fast and insistent, the last a measured compromise. They never said a word, to me or each other, but they worked in perfect tandem, stripping me, laying me back, and ministering their affections one at a time.

Certain things about that night will always stand out to me: I remember hearing the bedsprings creak, and the sound of fabric rustling, and of zippers and buttons and catches being undone as the last vestiges of costumes were dismissed. I remember hearing long hair sweeping over bare shoulders, and the sound of lips brushing together. I remember sighs, and moans, and little laughs so soft they almost weren't there. And from below I could still hear the awful grind of words from many mouths. The impromptu chorus had reached the masquerade scene, and again I heard Camilla's fateful line:

"You, sir, should unmask."

Those words were a throbbing pulse that ran through the whole house, like a gigantic heartbeat, and we all fell into their rhythm.

I smelled perfume, and chapstick, and clean sheets, and the scent of wildflowers. I smelled musk, hot flesh, and sweat. I smelled lust, want, need, and indulgence. I remember the taste of lips, and tongues, and soft necks, and bare shoulders, and exposed breasts. Each kiss left a sweet taste behind that never quite went away. Later, I tasted the wetness of their bodies, my lips dancing across the smooth plane of each of their thighs and then between them.

"You, sir, should unmask."

And of course, I felt. I felt everything: one set of lips against mine, long hair hanging around her face and tickling my cheek while our tongues met. Another mouth ran down my bare chest, over my ribs, and back up again. Further down, a pair of hands wrapped around my cock, holding me while she sat above me, and then down on me. The kissing girl bit my lip at the same moment I entered, and then she pushed my face to her breasts as her friend began to ride me.

"You, sir, should unmask."

I felt the pain and the grief and the coldness of the last weeks drop away. I felt myself forget everything, down to even who I was. 

"You, sir, should unmask."

They still didn't say anything. Each time I came they waited patiently for me to recover, teasing me with light kisses and touches until I was ready again, and then it was time for another round, a sea of hot bodies, thrusting hips, and quivering thighs, all while many hands clutched at me and many voices moaned and sighed.

"But I wear no mask..."

After, I lay in the dark, shivering, somehow feeling alone. The girls said nothing, and when I reached out I found the bed unexpectedly empty. Then I felt my clothes drop onto my chest, and I took the hint. After dressing in a hurry I reached for the light, but someone beat me to it, closing her hand over mine and pushing it away. 

The door opened, and with the same gentle force that I had been drawn in I was now expelled. I stumbled to the stairs, allowing myself to look back only once. When I did, I saw the open, lightless doorway, and from inside I heard a voice, and it whispered:

"Have you found the Yellow Sign?"

And then I ran.

I ran down the steps and out of the house. As I passed the living room, I had the impression of some great turmoil there, a riot of shouting and colliding bodies and a horrible noise that may have been a voice still reading "The King in Yellow," although nothing about the voice was recognizably human anymore.

But I ignored all of that, and everyone and everything else I encountered on the way home. It wasn't until I was in my one-room dorm with the door securely locked that I allowed myself to stop running, and then I fell onto my bed and cried, and screamed, and tore at the sheets. 

I did all of this because I knew that I had recognized that voice in the dark, and that it had been Melissa.

After that things started to get really bad. The nightmares came every night. When I was awake I thought about Melissa and when I didn't think about Melissa I thought about the play. I talked to no one if I could help it. I rarely left my room.

On the outside, things were happening. The Thetas and Alphas and assorted hangers-on from the Carcosan Ball set to work. The manuscript from the party was reassembled, then copied, and they began to pass the copies around. Demand was high, especially since the party itself had assumed something like legendary status among those who hadn't been there. Hand to hand, person to person, it spread and spread. Copies of the play in book form, printed and bound in someone's basement, were pushed onto stores by mysterious, anonymous salesmen. Desperate for a hot seller, the shops bought up all they could. It flew off the shelves. Soon everyone was reading "The King in Yellow." 

It was just a trickle of stories at first: suicides, murders, nervous breakdowns. Nothing unusual in themselves. If they were happening a little more often lately, well, maybe it was something in the air. 

When Louis Castaigne's cousin, Henry, threw himself in front of a bus it was chalked up to grief. When an assistant district attorney set fire to himself on the courthouse steps it was blamed on depression and being overworked. A woman drowning her husband at their oldest daughter's swim meet? Postpartum depression. 

As the incidents became more frequent and more graphic, authorities and media analysts noticed that many of those involved had read "The King in Yellow." A few publications ran sidebars highlighting the play's sordid past, but no one seriously considered that it had anything to do with the violence. No one worried yet. Then a week went by, then two, and more stories came in: 

A cab driver who held his fare at gunpoint and forced them to read the play. 

A man who changed the name of his club to "Carcosa" only to have it burnt down by rioters two days later. 

A parish priest who gave a sermon about "The King in Yellow" rather than the Bible, and an hour later, when his horrified parishioners couldn't take it anymore and found they had been locked in, eventually tore the priest limb from limb with their bare hands, telling police after that it was the only way to keep him from driving them all mad. 

The last straw came when a group of Alphas and Thetas set fire to the local library while chanting "Carcosa now!" and then threw themselves off of a freeway overpass. People became scared, and serious questions about play were asked for the first time: Was it mass hysteria? The power of suggestion? Were already psychologically-fragile people drawn to the text because of its reputation and then acting out on it? 

Or could it be that the governments of 19th century Europe hadn't suppressed the play because it offended them, but because they knew what it could do?

No sane person was willingly reading or distributing it at all now, but those who had read it already would not stop trying to spread the gospel. They copied the prologue into the body of emails and sent it to their entire contact list hoping that trusting recipients would open it and read without knowing what it was. They texted individual lines to every person whose phone number they could get their hands on. People downloaded podcasts and found, instead of the content they expected, "The King in Yellow" being read over their earbuds.

Copies with fake covers and titles were smuggled onto store and library shelves, hapless browsers opening them up and finding horror within. In at least half of all cases, we were told, those who had read or heard even a few lines couldn't resist reading the entire thing. Once its hooks were in you, they never came out.

The police tried to step in, even going so far as to close bookstores and libraries for the sake of public safety. But of course, the police had seized Chambers' copies of the play after he died, and the suicide note was written on a copy of the play. At least one of the detectives must have read it during the investigation. And then he would have passed it on to a colleague...

It had been months now and there was no telling how many in the department had read it. So when people noticed that the stores being raided were almost always the ones not actually selling the book, and that a person arrested for distributing had usually never done so but very often started to after being released, well, it was best not to draw attention to oneself by saying anything.

Personal protection guidelines were issued to help us keep ourselves safe. We were encouraged to leave the house as little as possible, to minimize use of all communication devices, and not to read anything that was put in front of us. Be suspicious of anyone you haven't been in constant contact with, we were told. Report anyone exhibiting unusual behavior. Assume that anyone you meet may be a threat. Everyone stopped going to work. Cars were abandoned all over town. People started hiding.

From my window each night I could see the fires burning and the crowd of frenzied madmen running through the streets. During the day normal people left their homes, scavenging what they could before returning to their hiding places. The Tattered Raiment was spread over all of us, and we were afraid.

I stayed in my dorm, leaving only twice a day to use the bathroom down the hall. My door was locked at all other times, and I had covered the windows with duct tape. I never saw anyone else, and no one came looking for me. The more time went by, the less and less I heard from the outside and the fewer unaffected people seemed to be on the streets. 

Occasionally I wondered if I was the last man in the world. Other times I was sure of it.

I remember spending all of one night crouched by my door, my eye pressed to the crack, watching the hall outside for any hint of movement. I was not sure if movement would be a good or bad thing, but I would cross that bridge when I came to it. Hours passed and I kept my vigil. It was almost sunrise (I slept during the day; it was safer) when something passed by. Not only did it pass, but it stopped, and, to my surprise, dropped down to my level, and peered through the same crack I was at. I saw a jaundiced eye shot rolling in its socket as a voice that was something between a whisper and a grunt said:

"Little pig, little pig, let me in."

I froze. There was a pause. Then:

"You're supposed to say: 'Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin.'"

"Is that from 'The King in Yellow'?" I asked.

"Sometimes," was the answer, and then a laugh. "Do you know it?"

I considered this question for some time, as the answer was surprisingly complicated. But eventually I said:

"Yes. In fact, I was the first. And now I might be the last. And everything that's happened is my fault. But it doesn't matter because there's probably not anyone left to blame me, and no one ever knew anyway, and it was nothing I did on purpose, and as embarrassing as it is to admit now, this is all just because I wanted to impress a girl but didn't know how, and I think that's a hell of a fucking thing to end the world over."

Another long pause on the other side. Then:

"When do I get to say 'I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in?'"

"I don't know," I said, voice trembling because I had started to cry. "The second Act?"

The Big Bad Wolf skittered off down the hall to whisper at another door, and I never saw him again. After that I stayed away from the doors and windows entirely.

I counted the minutes as they passed one by one. I did not read the play. I ran out food before I ran out of water. The power went out and stopped coming back on. I considered leaving to find help or supplies, but the thought of what might be waiting out there stopped me. Starvation didn't seem so bad, in a certain light.

If the tape hadn't worn away from the windows I might be in there still. But through a rip I saw the orange light flickering one night, and curiosity got the better of me. I stripped the tape away, and below, in the center of the campus, I saw the great fire being stoked, and around it I saw a mass of people, hundreds of them. At first I thought it was another group of madmen, but then I looked more closely and saw the grim, determined looks on the mob's faces, the faces of people who had been in hiding for weeks and were now ready to burn the cancer of "The King in Yellow" out of their community forever. It turned out I had been wrong, and I was not the last sane man left in the world.




The King in Yellow



I watched as they fed a seemingly endless stream of pages into the fire, emptying box after box full of books and loose manuscripts until the air was black with ash. And then I heard it: a hooting, screaming, cackling noise, and I saw the crowd carrying in something that might have been a person or might have been a scarecrow, but which in either case foamed and gibbered and struggled as six people bore it along. I imagined what it must have been like for this creature who, after weeks of crawling in the gutter and running across rooftops and reciting "The King in Yellow" until it forgot how to feed itself, was now too tired and too sick and too hungry and too insane to resist the hands that held it up and pushed it forward. I knew what was going to happen before it did, so when they threw the struggling stick figure into the fire, and when the madman laughed and leaped and cavorted in the flames, I only nodded, and wondered if he was the Big Bad Wolf. 

And then they brought in the next one.

This went on until dawn, and when the flames began to die someone threw gas onto the fire and the crowd cheered. A blazing plume shot into the sky and the center of that burning mass glowed bright yellow, and in the swirling dance of the flames I thought I saw, and could still see imprinted on my vision even after the explosion faded away, a shape with three points, a symbol entirely alien but which nevertheless communicated to me thoughts and words and ideas so beautiful that I wept. 

And I knew that it was the Yellow Sign, and that I had found it at last. 

And I also knew that despite the mob's efforts, the play would not be destroyed, that I would not run down to them and throw the last (and first) copy of it into that fire, and that even if I did it wouldn't matter, because the essence of it had spread through those flames and shown itself to me. The Yellow Sign taught me that the play more than just paper and words. It had been destroyed before; it would live again. 

I realized that I was no longer alone. My door was still locked, barricaded in fact, but even so a figure in a tattered robe and a white mask stood next to me, pointing an accusing finger. I reached out and touched the fabric of its coarse, billowing gown. It was real. The Phantom of Truth had come for me. And that meant that I should unmask. 

The truth is, I didn't discover "The King in Yellow": I wrote it.

All of my research turned up nothing interesting enough to approach Melissa with, so I took matters into my own hands. Lots of people over the years had tried recreating the lost play. So why couldn't I do the same? 

But not all of it, you see: I only wrote the first Act. Just enough to have something to show her. The second Act that Melissa brought to my room that night, and that Chambers and Tessa and the Thetas and all the others had read? Well, at first I assumed that she had written it herself. But now, as I looked into the Pallid Mask, I realized that wasn't true. Perhaps the second Act was written through her, just as the first had been written through me, but the words belonged to neither of us. They were the words that had been whispered into our ears by the invisible messengers: Camilla, Cassilda, the Stranger, and even the King in Yellow himself. The play was their doorway into the world and we were their key, just as others had been before us.

The Truth hounded me still. It pointed at the place where the manuscript was hidden. I took out the play, arranged it into the proper order, and then I read it. I read it from beginning to end, and when I came to the revelation of the Yellow Sign I laughed. I laughed and laughed and laughed until I was sick, and for all I know I'm laughing still. 

When I was finished, I looked up and said: "Shouldn't you unmask too?" So the Phantom of Truth took off the Pallid mask, and I saw blue eyes and a full smile and hair the color of asphodels. And when we kissed I thought how lucky we were, that on our one night together we had compounded such a child as this, we each contributing one half that somehow became a greater whole. And I felt very proud.

When the mob came to my room they found what they thought was me hanging from the curtain rod. And they clucked their tongues and said what a shame it was. If any of them had read the play, they would know that I am not dead, any more than Melissa is, and that by leaving our bodies behind we've freed ourselves from that prison of flesh.

They did not find the play either. We took it with us. And although this one town has evicted us, we have a whole wide world to find a new home in. "The King in Yellow" will live again, and you, who have read this confession, will be among the first to seek it out. The Pallid Mask sees you, and the accusing finger of the Phantom of Truth now points in your direction, even if you cannot yet see it. 

But tell me friend: Have you found the Yellow Sign?