The Ninth Skeleton

"The Ninth Skeleton" is a short story written by Clark Ashton Smith. It was first published in the September 1928 issue of "Weird Tales". [ [http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?76082{1|{id "{2|{title|PAGENAME"] publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database]

Plot summary

The story is recounted by the narrator, Herbert, in the first person, and concerns an experience he had when seeking out his lover. The narrator, betrothed to the woman Guenevere, relates to an unknown audience that in the past any idea of his marrying her was out of the question due to objections placed by her parents. Going out one morning to meet Guenevere for a lover's tryst in their accustomed spot, Herbert sets out from his cabin in the woods. After he has walked for a while, he looks up as the sky visibly darkens and notices that he has "wandered off the path"; instead of the bright and sunny ridge he should be near, he has wandered into an area with a sky which is a "dun and sinister brown, in the midst of which the sun was clearly visible, burning like an enormous round red ember." The pines are gnarled and the entire world looks dead and sinister. As he continues on, Herbert eventually comes to a graveyard so ancient that the inscriptions upon the tombstones have been effaced. Turning around at a "sinister rattling" noise, the narrator sees eight separate skeletons come through the graveyard, each holding the skeleton of an infant, and each descending into a grave. Anon, a ninth skeleton appears and comes toward the narrator, grabbing him and bearing him towards a hitherto unnoticed open grave. The narrator recounts a sensation of falling and of terror before "coming to" as Guenevere shakes him, telling him he had been in a daze when she happened across him. It is never explained whether the happenings in the narrative are real to Herbert or just some sort of odd daydream.

References

* Definitive version.

Footnotes

External links

* [http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/156/the-ninth-skeleton Text of "The Ninth Skeleton"]
* [http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/bibliography/writings/short-stories/918/the-ninth-skeleton Publication history] at The Eldritch Dark