The Scourge

The Curator is pleased to admit you for a twentieth viewing.

You will come in out of the cold to the gatehouse of a great citadel-house, the seat of a terror, on the last night when the black cap is set and the first fear struck and the name raised to the roll of the dreaded, all warm high hall and lamplight and the black seat of estate on its dais and the ranked candles lit and the household's low word of it is the scourge, be afraid, where every soul that could not bear to be the one no one would ever fear is dreaded at last. There is a cap kept for you on its white cloth, a name already on the roll of the dreaded and a whole household ready to go cold at your step, and the shutting of the house around you, and a custody that has learned by heart the one terror it could not do without. One reminder, with our compliments: the way off is real, and this time it asks whether you can let your name be struck from the roll of the dreaded, your black cap broken and burned, and walk out feared by no one, with no back ever gone cold at your step again, to an ending that is wholly your own, mortal and your own.