The Red Death had been in the country for many, many years. No disease had ever been so deadly. People called it the Red Death because it left blood, red horrible blood, on the body and face of each person it visited. And no one, if visited, was ever left alive. Once a person was touched by the Red Death, he immediately felt pains, and soon afterwards started to bleed from every part of his body. in thirty minutes he was dead. After that no one, not even his family, went near the blood-covered body.

It was a huge and extraordinary castle, built to Prince Prospero's own plan. It had strong high walls and great gates of heavy metal. Now when the Prince and his friends arrived at the castle gates they went inside, locked the gates carefully and threw away the keys. In that way no one would be able to enter or escape. They were all there together, far away from the Red Death. Now they could forget the world outside and think only of themselves. They had everything they needed to amuse themselves, because the Prince had forgotten nothing. He had brought in food and wine, actors, musicians, and dancers. All of this, and life itself, was inside the castle. Outside lay the Red Death.

Everybody was afraid of the Red Death -- everybody except the fearless Prince Prospero. He refused to be troubled by it. Although half the people of his country had already died from this terrible disease, he continued to enjoy life to the full. One day he decided to invite a thousand of his strong and brave friends to stay with him in one of his castles, far out in the countryside. There the Red Death would not be able to touch them.

In the middle of each wall, on the right and left, there was a tall, narrow window opening onto the closed passage which ran along beside all seven rooms. Each window was made of different coloured glass, and the colour of the glass was the same as the colour of the room that it opened onto. The first room, for example, was blue, and so its windows were also a deep blue. The second room was purple, and so the windows, too, were purple. The third was green, with green windows, the fourth orange, the fifth white, and the sixth violet. The seventh room was black. Its walls were black, its thick, heavy carpet was also black. But its windows were red -- a deep blood－red.

Towards the end of the fifth or sixth month, while the Red Death was at its most deadly outside, the Prince gave a wonderful masked ball for his friends. It was a wild and wonderful ball, but first let me tell you about the rooms in which he gave the ball. There were seven rooms in all. In most castles, of course, the rooms for great parties or dances join each other end to end. In this way, when the doors at the end of each room are opened, the seven rooms become one huge room, and you can see from the first room right through to the last one. In Prospero's castle, it was different. Each room turned suddenly round a corner into the next, so if you were standing in one room it was impossible to see into the other rooms.

There were no candles in any of the rooms. The only light came from fires, in hanging metal baskets, which were in the passages outside the rooms. Each fire was opposite a window, and so the light from the fire shone through the coloured glass and filled each room with strange and fantastic shadows. But in the black room the firelight that shone through the blood -- red window changed the room into something too horrible to describe. In that strange light, faces became wild and frightening, and few people were brave enough to enter the room at all.

In this room, against the farthest wall, stood a huge black clock Every hour it chimed loud and deep and clear, filling the castle with its long, gloomy sound. And while the clock chimed, the musicians stopped playing and even the wildest dancers stood still, in silence and fear, listening to the passing of another hour hour…But when the chiming stopped, people looked at each other and laughed, trying hard to pretend that they had not been frightened. Happiness came into the castle again, until the clock chimed the passing of the next hour, and the same fear returned.

Each man and woman was dressed like a terrible dream. And in and out of the rooms these dreams walked and danced, their clothes changing colour each time they entered a different room. But no one was brave enough now to enter the black room. As the night passed and the fires burned brighter, the colours and shapes in this room became more horrible than ever. The black carpet and walls seemed full of gloom, and the deep chimes of the black clock sounded even more frightening.

Prince Prospero's ball, although given in these strange rooms, was wild and happy. The Prince had planned everything -- the colours, the paintings on the walls, even the cloaks and masks worn by each one of his friends. He had chosen all the clothes with the greatest of care, putting together the beautiful and the ugly, the strange and the fantastic, the surprising and the frightening.

But the other six rooms were full of life and pleasure. People were dancing and singing, talking and laughing, and the wild noise of a thousand happy men and women rang through the castle. Then came the hour of midnight, and once again dancers and musicians became still and silent, as the clock slowly rang the twelve long chimes of midnight. And because the twelve chimes took a long time to ring, each person had more time to think, and feel uncomfortable. They also had time, before the last chime had sounded, to notice a masked figure who had not been there before. The first person who saw the stranger told the next person, who told another, and in a few minutes a cry of fear and horror rose up from the crowd.

When Prince Prospero saw the masked stranger, his face became white with fear. Then his fear turned to anger and he shouted out, "Who is that? Who is mad enough to play games with us, and with death, in this way? Take hold of him, and pull off his mask. I want to see the face of the man who, tomorrow, will hang from the castle roof."

The Prince was in the blue room as he said these words. They rang loudly and clearly through the seven rooms. Many of the Prince's friends started to run towards the masked figure, but they were all too frightened to touch him. With slow and silent steps, the stranger walked slowly towards the Prince, passing very near to him. Then he continued walking, and went from the blue room into the purple one, from the purple into the green, and then into the orange room, the white room and then the violet room. No one tried to stop him.

Now you will remember that everyone at the ball was wearing strange cloaks and masks, which belonged more to the world of dreams and wild imagination than to everyday life. So why, you may ask, this horror, and this fear? But even in the cruellest heart there are some fears too terrible to laugh at The tall thin figure of the stranger was dressed from head to foot in the white clothes of the dead. And the mask over the face was frighteningly real -- it was the face of a dead man. Worse still, the face and the body were covered with red, horrible blood! Here, in the middle of all that dancing and happiness was a living picture of the Red Death!

At once a crowd of people ran into the black room and took hold of the masked stranger. He was standing very still, in the shadow of the black clock. Angrily, they pulled away the clothes and the mask, but then they backed away in horror, because inside the clothes and mask they found -- nothing.

Then Prince Prospero, mad with anger, hurried through the six rooms, with a sword in his hand. As the masked figure entered the black room, the Prince was close behind him, holding his sword up high. At that moment the stranger turned suddenly to look at the Prince. There was a loud cry -- and the sword fell upon the black carpet, followed by the dead body of the fearless Prince Prospero.

And now each person in the castle understood that the Red Death was there, among them. It had come like a thief in the night. And one by one they fell down dead. And the black clock stopped ringing with the death of the last person. And the fires also died away. And the only things left in the castle were Darkness and the Red Death.