The Crimson Weaver by R Murray Gilchrist

The Crimson Weaver first appeared in Aubrey Beardsley's The Yellow Book Quarterly (Volume VI, July 1895). A servant and his master have wandered from their path and find themselves in the Domain of the Crimson Weaver.

Warned by an old woman that they are entering a land ruled by a fiend, the master insists that he is strong enough to pass through. That night, the servant has strange dreams, and when he wakes finds his master is missing.

 “The mists gathered together and passed sunward in one long many-coloured veil. When the last shred had been drawn into the great light, I gazed along the avenue, and saw the topmost bartizan of the Crimson Weaver’s palace.” 

He sets out for the palace, and when he gets there: “On the terrace strange beasts – dogs and pigs with human limbs – tore ravenously at something that lay beside the balustrade. At sight of me they paused and lifted their snouts and bayed.”

The Crimson Weaver comes to meet the servant and tells him that his master no longer has any memory of him; she has drugged him and now he lies asleep. Too late he realises that the Weaver wears men’s lives, drawing them from their bodies and weaving them on her loom, and now there will be no escape for either of them.

The story may be found here The Crimson Weaver at Project Gutenberg