In Ghostly Japan

...breakings—and saw the icy fires flicker original: "worm"; likely referring to the crawling movement of phosphorescence or "will-o'-the-wisps" produced by decaying bones. and die, until the rim of the night turned gray, the stars began to fade, and the east began to glow.

Yet they still climbed—fast, fast—ascending by the help of superhuman power. Around them now was the coldness of death and a tremendous silence. . . . A golden flame kindled in the east.

Then, for the first time, the steep slopes revealed their nakedness to the pilgrim’s gaze; he began to tremble, seized by a ghastly fear. For there was no ground at all—neither beneath him, nor around him, nor above him—but only a monstrous and immeasurable heap of skulls, fragments of skulls, and bone dust, with a shimmer of fallen teeth strewn through the piles like the shimmer of shell fragments in the debris original: "wrack"; the line of seaweed and organic matter left on a beach by the tide. of a tide.

"Do not be afraid, my son!" cried the voice of the Bodhisattva Sanskrit: a being who has attained enlightenment but delays entering Nirvana to help others.; "only the strong of heart can reach the place of the Vision!"

The world behind them had vanished. Nothing remained but the clouds beneath, the sky above, and the heap of skulls between them, sloping upward out of sight.

Then the sun rose with the climbers; and there was no warmth in its light, but—