Alternative ending.

 

 What if? 

Figure 9. 

We talked on, unmindful of the gathering shadows, and she was begging me to throw away the clasp of black onyx quaintly inlaid with what we now knew to be the Yellow Sign. But I could not get rid of it, I do not know why I refused it just made me feel powerful and meaningful which guide me through the truth, in my way. As soon as the ‘King in Yellow’ took advantage of my body and willing, my memories blurred after reading the whole book, as opposed to Tessie who fell into a trance. Each time that I looked at her, she seemed to be older and worse than before. She was dying. Concerning me. I am past human help or hope.

My mind led me to Carcosa, where lost souls sag in their pain. I awoke from death sickness among them, and I found myself looking for Sylvia, my true love and yearning. As I write this confession, we committed the worst mistake: talking loudly about the book. Without being aware of what we were doing, we heard some noises. Those came from outside the door. Someone was coming towards us. It was the watchman who broke the locks trying to reach Tessie, making his last effort to save her from me, but it was too late, his infectious and dying spectrum had consumed me and blinded me before her, in an awakening the king himself took revenge on the past and of the future, leaving me once again between bodies and masses that cry for hope. Paying for crimes and other people's feelings.

Analysis

Figure 10.

As its name indicates, the story of ‘The yellow sign’ unfolds between symbolisms and analogies of intertextual understanding. If you do not understand Chambers' literary and mythical universe, the story will be confusing for you. A recurring theme in his works (and particularly in this story) is the idea of the Yellow Mythos. This name has come to refer to the whole fictional universe which resembles the Carcosa Mythos (the ancient past on earth, as does the 'seance' context related to the ruins and graveyard where some characters lay) or the Hastur Mythos, wherein the King is viewed as an identity of the Great Old One Hastur and wrapped into larger mythology (the Cthulhu Mythos) derived from the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, himself influenced in part by Chambers, from whom he became one of the first to 'borrow' elements to lend depth to his cosmology. 

Referencing both the centrality of the King in Yellow, the anthology work of Chambers, a collection of short stories which are particularly loosely connected by three main devices: The entitled book-form of The King In Yellow, a mysterious and malevolent supernatural entity of the same name, and the symbol called ‘The Yellow Sign’, whose power makes those characters who read the book go mad or meet horrible dooms. There are references to it in this story. When Scott is referring to the events in the same collection 'The Repairer of Reputations' he mentions ‘the awful tragedy of young Castaigne’. (Castaigne's fate finishes with The King in Yellow and goes insane) Scott’s past life in 'The Repairer of Reputations' links to the alternate timeline with Sylvia, the model he dated three years ago and died, also whose body is buried in Brenton Forest. He mentions it several times in the story. Once we know this, it gets better to understand what happened to Scott and Tessie’s affair and their doom to insanity for reading the book. Tessie, Scott, and the ‘King in Yellow’ as a corpse end lifeless by the end of the story as they give in to the temptation of knowledge.