THE HOUSE ON
THE BORDERLAND
William Hope Hodgson
From the Manuscript discovered in 1877 by Messrs. Tonnison and Berreggnog
in the Ruins that
lie to the South of the Village of Kraighten, in the
West of Ireland. Set out here, with Notes.
| I | THE FINDING OF THE MANUSCRIPT |
| II | THE PLAIN OF SILENCE |
| III | THE HOUSE IN THE ARENA |
| IV | THE EARTH |
| V | THE THING IN THE PIT |
| VI | THE SWINE-THINGS |
| VII | THE ATTACK |
| VIII | AFTER THE ATTACK |
| IX | IN THE CELLARS |
| X | THE TIME OF WAITING |
| XI | THE SEARCHING OF THE GARDENS |
| XII | THE SUBTERRANEAN PIT |
| XIII | THE TRAP IN THE GREAT CELLAR |
| XIV | THE SEA OF SLEEP |
| XV | THE NOISE IN THE NIGHT |
| XVI | THE AWAKENING |
| XVII | THE SLOWING ROTATION |
| XVIII | THE GREEN STAR |
| XIX | THE END OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM |
| XX | THE CELESTIAL GLOBES |
| XXI | THE DARK SUN |
| XXII | THE DARK NEBULA |
| XXIII | PEPPER |
| XXIV | THE FOOTSTEPS IN THE GARDEN |
| XXV | THE THING FROM THE ARENA |
| XXVI | THE LUMINOUS SPECK |
| XXVII | CONCLUSION |
TO MY FATHER
| (Whose feet tread the lost aeons) |
| Open the door, |
| And listen! |
| Only the wind's muffled roar, |
| And the glisten |
| Of tears 'round the moon. |
| And, in fancy, the tread |
| Of vanishing shoon— |
| Out in the night with the Dead. |
| |
| "Hush! And hark |
| To the sorrowful cry |
| Of the wind in the dark. |
| Hush and hark, without murmur or sigh, |
| To shoon that tread the lost aeons: |
| To the sound that bids you to die. |
| Hush and hark! Hush and Hark!" |
| Shoon of the Dead |
AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION TO THE MANUSCRIPT
Many are the hours in which I have pondered upon the story that is set
forth in the following pages. I trust that my instincts are not awry
when they prompt me to leave the account, in simplicity, as it was
handed to me.
And the MS. itself—You must picture me, when first it was given into my
care, turning it over, curiously, and making a swift, jerky examination.
A small book it is; but thick, and all, save the last few pages, filled
with a quaint but legible handwriting, and writ very close. I have the
queer, faint, pit-water smell of it in my nostrils now as I write, and
my fingers have subconscious memories of the soft, "cloggy" feel of the
long-damp pages.
I read, and, in reading, lifted the Curtains of the Impossible that
blind the mind, and looked out into the unknown. Amid stiff, abrupt
sentences I wandered; and, presently, I had no fault to charge against
their abrupt tellings; for, better far than my own ambitious phrasing,
is this mutilated story capable of bringing home all that the old
Recluse, of the vanished house, had striven to tell.
Of the simple, stiffly given account of weird and extraordinary matters,
I will say little. It lies before you. The inner story must be
uncovered, personally, by each reader, according to ability and desire.
And even should any fail to see, as now I see, the shadowed picture and
conception of that to which one may well give the accepted titles of
Heaven and Hell; yet can I promise certain thrills, merely taking the
story as a story.
WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON December 17, 1907
I
THE FINDING OF THE MANUSCRIPT
Right away in the west of Ireland lies a tiny hamlet called Kraighten.
It is situated, alone, at the base of a low hill. Far around there
spreads a waste of bleak and totally inhospitable country; where, here
and there at great intervals, one may come upon the ruins of some long
desolate cottage—unthatched and stark. The whole land is bare and
unpeopled, the very earth scarcely covering the rock that lies beneath
it, and with which the country abounds, in places rising out of the soil
in wave-shaped ridges.
Yet, in spite of its desolation, my friend Tonnison and I had elected to
spend our vacation there. He had stumbled on the place by mere chance
the year previously, during the course of a long walking tour, and
discovered the possibilities for the angler in a small and unnamed river
that runs past the outskirts of the little village.
I have said that the river is without name; I may add that no map that I
have hitherto consulted has shown either village or stream. They seem
to have entirely escaped observation: indeed, they might never exist for
all that the average guide tells one. Possibly this can be partly
accounted for by the fact that the nearest railway station (Ardrahan) is
some forty miles distant.
It was early one warm evening when my friend and I arrived in Kraighten.
We had reached Ardrahan the previous night, sleeping there in rooms
hired at the village post office, and leaving in good time on the
following morning, clinging insecurely to one of the typical
jaunting cars.
It had taken us all day to accomplish our journey over some of the
roughest tracks imaginable, with the result that we were thoroughly
tired and somewhat bad tempered. However, the tent had to be erected and
our goods stowed away before we could think of food or rest. And so we
set to work, with the aid of our driver, and soon had the tent up upon a
small patch of ground just outside the little village, and quite near to
the river.
Then, having stored all our belongings, we dismissed the driver, as he
had to make his way back as speedily as possible, and told him to come
across to us at the end of a fortnight. We had brought sufficient
provisions to last us for that space of time, and water we could get
from the stream. Fuel we did not need, as we had included a small
oil-stove among our outfit, and the weather was fine and warm.
It was Tonnison's idea to camp out instead of getting lodgings in one of
the cottages. As he put it, there was no joke in sleeping in a room with
a numerous family of healthy Irish in one corner and the pigsty in the
other, while overhead a ragged colony of roosting fowls distributed
their blessings impartially, and the whole place so full of peat smoke
that it made a fellow sneeze his head off just to put it inside
the doorway.
Tonnison had got the stove lit now and was busy cutting slices of bacon
into the frying pan; so I took the kettle and walked down to the river
for water. On the way, I had to pass close to a little group of the
village people, who eyed me curiously, but not in any unfriendly manner,
though none of them ventured a word.
As I returned with my kettle filled, I went up to them and, after a
friendly nod, to which they replied in like manner, I asked them
casually about the fishing; but, instead of answering, they just shook
their heads silently, and stared at me. I repeated the question,
addressing more particularly a great, gaunt fellow at my elbow; yet
again I received no answer. Then the man turned to a comrade and said
something rapidly in a language that I did not understand; and, at once,
the whole crowd of them fell to jabbering in what, after a few moments,
I guessed to be pure Irish. At the same time they cast many glances in
my direction. For a minute, perhaps, they spoke among themselves thus;
then the man I had addressed faced 'round at me and said something. By
the expression of his face I guessed that he, in turn, was questioning
me; but now I had to shake my head, and indicate that I did not
comprehend what it was they wanted to know; and so we stood looking at
one another, until I heard Tonnison calling to me to hurry up with the
kettle. Then, with a smile and a nod, I left them, and all in the little
crowd smiled and nodded in return, though their faces still betrayed
their puzzlement.
It was evident, I reflected as I went toward the tent, that the
inhabitants of these few huts in the wilderness did not know a word of
English; and when I told Tonnison, he remarked that he was aware of the
fact, and, more, that it was not at all uncommon in that part of the
country, where the people often lived and died in their isolated hamlets
without ever coming in contact with the outside world.
"I wish we had got the driver to interpret for us before he left," I
remarked, as we sat down to our meal. "It seems so strange for the
people of this place not even to know what we've come for."
Tonnison grunted an assent, and thereafter was silent for a while.
Later, having satisfied our appetites somewhat, we began to talk, laying
our plans for the morrow; then, after a smoke, we closed the flap of the
tent, and prepared to turn in.
"I suppose there's no chance of those fellows outside taking anything?"
I asked, as we rolled ourselves in our blankets.
Tonnison said that he did not think so, at least while we were about;
and, as he went on to explain, we could lock up everything, except the
tent, in the big chest that we had brought to hold our provisions. I
agreed to this, and soon we were both asleep.
Next morning, early, we rose and went for a swim in the river; after
which we dressed and had breakfast. Then we roused out our fishing
tackle and overhauled it, by which time, our breakfasts having settled
somewhat, we made all secure within the tent and strode off in the
direction my friend had explored on his previous visit.
During the day we fished happily, working steadily upstream, and by
evening we had one of the prettiest creels of fish that I had seen for a
long while. Returning to the village, we made a good feed off our day's
spoil, after which, having selected a few of the finer fish for our
breakfast, we presented the remainder to the group of villagers who had
assembled at a respectful distance to watch our doings. They seemed
wonderfully grateful, and heaped mountains of what I presumed to be
Irish blessings upon our heads.
Thus we spent several days, having splendid sport, and first-rate
appetites to do justice upon our prey. We were pleased to find how
friendly the villagers were inclined to be, and that there was no
evidence of their having ventured to meddle with our belongings during
our absences.
It was on a Tuesday that we arrived in Kraighten, and it would be on the
Sunday following that we made a great discovery. Hitherto we had always
gone up-stream; on that day, however, we laid aside our rods, and,
taking some provisions, set off for a long ramble in the opposite
direction. The day was warm, and we trudged along leisurely enough,
stopping about mid-day to eat our lunch upon a great flat rock near the
riverbank. Afterward we sat and smoked awhile, resuming our walk only
when we were tired of inaction.
For perhaps another hour we wandered onward, chatting quietly and
comfortably on this and that matter, and on several occasions stopping
while my companion—who is something of an artist—made rough sketches
of striking bits of the wild scenery.
And then, without any warning whatsoever, the river we had followed so
confidently, came to an abrupt end—vanishing into the earth.
"Good Lord!" I said, "who ever would have thought of this?"
And I stared in amazement; then I turned to Tonnison. He was looking,
with a blank expression upon his face, at the place where the river
disappeared.
In a moment he spoke.
"Let us go on a bit; it may reappear again—anyhow, it is worth
investigating."
I agreed, and we went forward once more, though rather aimlessly; for we
were not at all certain in which direction to prosecute our search. For
perhaps a mile we moved onward; then Tonnison, who had been gazing about
curiously, stopped and shaded his eyes.
"See!" he said, after a moment, "isn't that mist or something, over
there to the right—away in a line with that great piece of rock?" And
he indicated with his hand.
I stared, and, after a minute, seemed to see something, but could not be
certain, and said so.
"Anyway," my friend replied, "we'll just go across and have a glance."
And he started off in the direction he had suggested, I following.
Presently, we came among bushes, and, after a time, out upon the top of
a high, boulder-strewn bank, from which we looked down into a wilderness
of bushes and trees.
"Seems as though we had come upon an oasis in this desert of stone,"
muttered Tonnison, as he gazed interestedly. Then he was silent, his
eyes fixed; and I looked also; for up from somewhere about the center of
the wooded lowland there rose high into the quiet air a great column of
hazelike spray, upon which the sun shone, causing innumerable rainbows.
"How beautiful!" I exclaimed.
"Yes," answered Tonnison, thoughtfully. "There must be a waterfall, or
something, over there. Perhaps it's our river come to light again. Let's
go and see."
Down the sloping bank we made our way, and entered among the trees and
shrubberies. The bushes were matted, and the trees overhung us, so that
the place was disagreeably gloomy; though not dark enough to hide from
me the fact that many of the trees were fruit trees, and that, here and
there, one could trace indistinctly, signs of a long departed
cultivation. Thus it came to me that we were making our way through the
riot of a great and ancient garden. I said as much to Tonnison, and he
agreed that there certainly seemed reasonable grounds for my belief.
What a wild place it was, so dismal and somber! Somehow, as we went
forward, a sense of the silent loneliness and desertion of the old
garden grew upon me, and I felt shivery. One could imagine things
lurking among the tangled bushes; while, in the very air of the place,
there seemed something uncanny. I think Tonnison was conscious of this
also, though he said nothing.
Suddenly, we came to a halt. Through the trees there had grown upon our
ears a distant sound. Tonnison bent forward, listening. I could hear it
more plainly now; it was continuous and harsh—a sort of droning roar,
seeming to come from far away. I experienced a queer, indescribable,
little feeling of nervousness. What sort of place was it into which we
had got? I looked at my companion, to see what he thought of the matter;
and noted that there was only puzzlement in his face; and then, as I
watched his features, an expression of comprehension crept over them,
and he nodded his head.
"That's a waterfall," he exclaimed, with conviction. "I know the sound
now." And he began to push vigorously through the bushes, in the
direction of the noise.
As we went forward, the sound became plainer continually, showing that
we were heading straight toward it. Steadily, the roaring grew louder
and nearer, until it appeared, as I remarked to Tonnison, almost to come
from under our feet—and still we were surrounded by the trees
and shrubs.
"Take care!" Tonnison called to me. "Look where you're going." And then,
suddenly, we came out from among the trees, on to a great open space,
where, not six paces in front of us, yawned the mouth of a tremendous
chasm, from the depths of which the noise appeared to rise, along with
the continuous, mistlike spray that we had witnessed from the top of the
distant bank.
For quite a minute we stood in silence, staring in bewilderment at the
sight; then my friend went forward cautiously to the edge of the abyss.
I followed, and, together, we looked down through a boil of spray at a
monster cataract of frothing water that burst, spouting, from the side
of the chasm, nearly a hundred feet below.
"Good Lord!" said Tonnison.
I was silent, and rather awed. The sight was so unexpectedly grand and
eerie; though this latter quality came more upon me later.
Presently, I looked up and across to the further side of the chasm.
There, I saw something towering up among the spray: it looked like a
fragment of a great ruin, and I touched Tonnison on the shoulder. He
glanced 'round, with a start, and I pointed toward the thing. His gaze
followed my finger, and his eyes lighted up with a sudden flash of
excitement, as the object came within his field of view.
"Come along," he shouted above the uproar. "We'll have a look at it.
There's something queer about this place; I feel it in my bones." And he
started off, 'round the edge of the craterlike abyss. As we neared this
new thing, I saw that I had not been mistaken in my first impression. It
was undoubtedly a portion of some ruined building; yet now I made out
that it was not built upon the edge of the chasm itself, as I had at
first supposed; but perched almost at the extreme end of a huge spur of
rock that jutted out some fifty or sixty feet over the abyss. In fact,
the jagged mass of ruin was literally suspended in midair.
Arriving opposite it, we walked out on to the projecting arm of rock,
and I must confess to having felt an intolerable sense of terror as I
looked down from that dizzy perch into the unknown depths below us—into
the deeps from which there rose ever the thunder of the falling water
and the shroud of rising spray.
Reaching the ruin, we clambered 'round it cautiously, and, on the
further side, came upon a mass of fallen stones and rubble. The ruin
itself seemed to me, as I proceeded now to examine it minutely, to be a
portion of the outer wall of some prodigious structure, it was so thick
and substantially built; yet what it was doing in such a position I
could by no means conjecture. Where was the rest of the house, or
castle, or whatever there had been?
I went back to the outer side of the wall, and thence to the edge of the
chasm, leaving Tonnison rooting systematically among the heap of stones
and rubbish on the outer side. Then I commenced to examine the surface
of the ground, near the edge of the abyss, to see whether there were not
left other remnants of the building to which the fragment of ruin
evidently belonged. But though I scrutinized the earth with the greatest
care, I could see no signs of anything to show that there had ever been
a building erected on the spot, and I grew more puzzled than ever.
Then, I heard a cry from Tonnison; he was shouting my name, excitedly,
and without delay I hurried along the rocky promontory to the ruin. I
wondered whether he had hurt himself, and then the thought came, that
perhaps he had found something.
I reached the crumbled wall and climbed 'round. There I found Tonnison
standing within a small excavation that he had made among the débris:
he was brushing the dirt from something that looked like a book, much
crumpled and dilapidated; and opening his mouth, every second or two, to
bellow my name. As soon as he saw that I had come, he handed his prize
to me, telling me to put it into my satchel so as to protect it from the
damp, while he continued his explorations. This I did, first, however,
running the pages through my fingers, and noting that they were closely
filled with neat, old-fashioned writing which was quite legible, save in
one portion, where many of the pages were almost destroyed, being
muddied and crumpled, as though the book had been doubled back at that
part. This, I found out from Tonnison, was actually as he had discovered
it, and the damage was due, probably, to the fall of masonry upon the
opened part. Curiously enough, the book was fairly dry, which I
attributed to its having been so securely buried among the ruins.
Having put the volume away safely, I turned-to and gave Tonnison a hand
with his self-imposed task of excavating; yet, though we put in over an
hour's hard work, turning over the whole of the upheaped stones and
rubbish, we came upon nothing more than some fragments of broken wood,
that might have been parts of a desk or table; and so we gave up
searching, and went back along the rock, once more to the safety of
the land.
The next thing we did was to make a complete tour of the tremendous
chasm, which we were able to observe was in the form of an almost
perfect circle, save for where the ruin-crowned spur of rock jutted out,
spoiling its symmetry.
The abyss was, as Tonnison put it, like nothing so much as a gigantic
well or pit going sheer down into the bowels of the earth.
For some time longer, we continued to stare about us, and then, noticing
that there was a clear space away to the north of the chasm, we bent our
steps in that direction.
Here, distant from the mouth of the mighty pit by some hundreds of
yards, we came upon a great lake of silent water—silent, that is, save
in one place where there was a continuous bubbling and gurgling.
Now, being away from the noise of the spouting cataract, we were able to
hear one another speak, without having to shout at the tops of our
voices, and I asked Tonnison what he thought of the place—I told him
that I didn't like it, and that the sooner we were out of it the better
I should be pleased.
He nodded in reply, and glanced at the woods behind furtively. I asked
him if he had seen or heard anything. He made no answer; but stood
silent, as though listening, and I kept quiet also.
Suddenly, he spoke.
"Hark!" he said, sharply. I looked at him, and then away among the trees
and bushes, holding my breath involuntarily. A minute came and went in
strained silence; yet I could hear nothing, and I turned to Tonnison to
say as much; and then, even as I opened my lips to speak, there came a
strange wailing noise out of the wood on our left.... It appeared to
float through the trees, and there was a rustle of stirring leaves, and
then silence.
All at once, Tonnison spoke, and put his hand on my shoulder. "Let us
get out of here," he said, and began to move slowly toward where the
surrounding trees and bushes seemed thinnest. As I followed him, it came
to me suddenly that the sun was low, and that there was a raw sense of
chilliness in the air.
Tonnison said nothing further, but kept on steadily. We were among the
trees now, and I glanced around, nervously; but saw nothing, save the
quiet branches and trunks and the tangled bushes. Onward we went, and no
sound broke the silence, except the occasional snapping of a twig under
our feet, as we moved forward. Yet, in spite of the quietness, I had a
horrible feeling that we were not alone; and I kept so close to Tonnison
that twice I kicked his heels clumsily, though he said nothing. A
minute, and then another, and we reached the confines of the wood coming
out at last upon the bare rockiness of the countryside. Only then was I
able to shake off the haunting dread that had followed me among
the trees.
Once, as we moved away, there seemed to come again a distant sound of
wailing, and I said to myself that it was the wind—yet the evening was
breathless.
Presently, Tonnison began to talk.
"Look you," he said with decision, "I would not spend the night in
that place for all the wealth that the world holds. There is something
unholy—diabolical—about it. It came to me all in a moment, just after
you spoke. It seemed to me that the woods were full of vile
things—you know!"
"Yes," I answered, and looked back toward the place; but it was hidden
from us by a rise in the ground.
"There's the book," I said, and I put my hand into the satchel.
"You've got it safely?" he questioned, with a sudden access of anxiety.
"Yes," I replied.
"Perhaps," he continued, "we shall learn something from it when we get
back to the tent. We had better hurry, too; we're a long way off still,
and I don't fancy, now, being caught out here in the dark."
It was two hours later when we reached the tent; and, without delay, we
set to work to prepare a meal; for we had eaten nothing since our lunch
at midday.
Supper over, we cleared the things out of the way, and lit our pipes.
Then Tonnison asked me to get the manuscript out of my satchel. This I
did, and then, as we could not both read from it at the same time, he
suggested that I should read the thing out loud. "And mind," he
cautioned, knowing my propensities, "don't go skipping half the book."
Yet, had he but known what it contained, he would have realized how
needless such advice was, for once at least. And there seated in the
opening of our little tent, I began the strange tale of The House on
the Borderland (for such was the title of the MS.); this is told in the
following pages.
II
THE PLAIN OF SILENCE
I am an old man. I live here in this ancient house, surrounded by huge,
unkempt gardens.
The peasantry, who inhabit the wilderness beyond, say that I am mad.
That is because I will have nothing to do with them. I live here alone
with my old sister, who is also my housekeeper. We keep no servants—I
hate them. I have one friend, a dog; yes, I would sooner have old Pepper
than the rest of Creation together. He, at least, understands me—and
has sense enough to leave me alone when I am in my dark moods.
I have decided to start a kind of diary; it may enable me to record
some of the thoughts and feelings that I cannot express to anyone; but,
beyond this, I am anxious to make some record of the strange things that
I have heard and seen, during many years of loneliness, in this weird
old building.
For a couple of centuries, this house has had a reputation, a bad one,
and, until I bought it, for more than eighty years no one had lived
here; consequently, I got the old place at a ridiculously low figure.
I am not superstitious; but I have ceased to deny that things happen
in this old house—things that I cannot explain; and, therefore, I must
needs ease my mind, by writing down an account of them, to the best of
my ability; though, should this, my diary, ever be read when I am gone,
the readers will but shake their heads, and be the more convinced that
I was mad.
This house, how ancient it is! though its age strikes one less,
perhaps, than the quaintness of its structure, which is curious and
fantastic to the last degree. Little curved towers and pinnacles, with
outlines suggestive of leaping flames, predominate; while the body of
the building is in the form of a circle.
I have heard that there is an old story, told amongst the country
people, to the effect that the devil built the place. However, that is
as may be. True or not, I neither know nor care, save as it may have
helped to cheapen it, ere I came.
I must have been here some ten years before I saw sufficient to warrant
any belief in the stories, current in the neighborhood, about this
house. It is true that I had, on at least a dozen occasions, seen,
vaguely, things that puzzled me, and, perhaps, had felt more than I had
seen. Then, as the years passed, bringing age upon me, I became often
aware of something unseen, yet unmistakably present, in the empty rooms
and corridors. Still, it was as I have said many years before I saw any
real manifestations of the so-called supernatural.
It was not Halloween. If I were telling a story for amusement's sake, I
should probably place it on that night of nights; but this is a true
record of my own experiences, and I would not put pen to paper to amuse
anyone. No. It was after midnight on the morning of the twenty-first day
of January. I was sitting reading, as is often my custom, in my study.
Pepper lay, sleeping, near my chair.
Without warning, the flames of the two candles went low, and then
shone with a ghastly green effulgence. I looked up, quickly, and as I
did so I saw the lights sink into a dull, ruddy tint; so that the room
glowed with a strange, heavy, crimson twilight that gave the shadows
behind the chairs and tables a double depth of blackness; and wherever
the light struck, it was as though luminous blood had been splashed
over the room.
Down on the floor, I heard a faint, frightened whimper, and something
pressed itself in between my two feet. It was Pepper, cowering under my
dressing gown. Pepper, usually as brave as a lion!
It was this movement of the dog's, I think, that gave me the first
twinge of real fear. I had been considerably startled when the lights
burnt first green and then red; but had been momentarily under the
impression that the change was due to some influx of noxious gas into
the room. Now, however, I saw that it was not so; for the candles burned
with a steady flame, and showed no signs of going out, as would have
been the case had the change been due to fumes in the atmosphere.
I did not move. I felt distinctly frightened; but could think of
nothing better to do than wait. For perhaps a minute, I kept my glance
about the room, nervously. Then I noticed that the lights had commenced
to sink, very slowly; until presently they showed minute specks of red
fire, like the gleamings of rubies in the darkness. Still, I sat
watching; while a sort of dreamy indifference seemed to steal over me;
banishing altogether the fear that had begun to grip me.
Away in the far end of the huge old-fashioned room, I became conscious
of a faint glow. Steadily it grew, filling the room with gleams of
quivering green light; then they sank quickly, and changed—even as the
candle flames had done—into a deep, somber crimson that strengthened,
and lit up the room with a flood of awful glory.
The light came from the end wall, and grew ever brighter until its
intolerable glare caused my eyes acute pain, and involuntarily I closed
them. It may have been a few seconds before I was able to open them. The
first thing I noticed was that the light had decreased, greatly; so that
it no longer tried my eyes. Then, as it grew still duller, I was aware,
all at once, that, instead of looking at the redness, I was staring
through it, and through the wall beyond.
Gradually, as I became more accustomed to the idea, I realized that I
was looking out on to a vast plain, lit with the same gloomy twilight
that pervaded the room. The immensity of this plain scarcely can be
conceived. In no part could I perceive its confines. It seemed to
broaden and spread out, so that the eye failed to perceive any
limitations. Slowly, the details of the nearer portions began to grow
clear; then, in a moment almost, the light died away, and the vision—if
vision it were—faded and was gone.
Suddenly, I became conscious that I was no longer in the chair.
Instead, I seemed to be hovering above it, and looking down at a dim
something, huddled and silent. In a little while, a cold blast struck
me, and I was outside in the night, floating, like a bubble, up through
the darkness. As I moved, an icy coldness seemed to enfold me, so that
I shivered.
After a time, I looked to right and left, and saw the intolerable
blackness of the night, pierced by remote gleams of fire. Onward,
outward, I drove. Once, I glanced behind, and saw the earth, a small
crescent of blue light, receding away to my left. Further off, the sun,
a splash of white flame, burned vividly against the dark.
An indefinite period passed. Then, for the last time, I saw the
earth—an enduring globule of radiant blue, swimming in an eternity of
ether. And there I, a fragile flake of soul dust, flickered silently
across the void, from the distant blue, into the expanse of the unknown.
A great while seemed to pass over me, and now I could nowhere see
anything. I had passed beyond the fixed stars and plunged into the huge
blackness that waits beyond. All this time I had experienced little,
save a sense of lightness and cold discomfort. Now however the atrocious
darkness seemed to creep into my soul, and I became filled with fear and
despair. What was going to become of me? Where was I going? Even as the
thoughts were formed, there grew against the impalpable blackness that
wrapped me a faint tinge of blood. It seemed extraordinarily remote, and
mistlike; yet, at once, the feeling of oppression was lightened, and I
no longer despaired.
Slowly, the distant redness became plainer and larger; until, as I drew
nearer, it spread out into a great, somber glare—dull and tremendous.
Still, I fled onward, and, presently, I had come so close, that it
seemed to stretch beneath me, like a great ocean of somber red. I could
see little, save that it appeared to spread out interminably in all
directions.
In a further space, I found that I was descending upon it; and, soon, I
sank into a great sea of sullen, red-hued clouds. Slowly, I emerged from
these, and there, below me, I saw the stupendous plain that I had seen
from my room in this house that stands upon the borders of the Silences.
Presently, I landed, and stood, surrounded by a great waste of
loneliness. The place was lit with a gloomy twilight that gave an
impression of indescribable desolation.
Afar to my right, within the sky, there burnt a gigantic ring of
dull-red fire, from the outer edge of which were projected huge,
writhing flames, darted and jagged. The interior of this ring was
black, black as the gloom of the outer night. I comprehended, at once,
that it was from this extraordinary sun that the place derived its
doleful light.
From that strange source of light, I glanced down again to my
surroundings. Everywhere I looked, I saw nothing but the same flat
weariness of interminable plain. Nowhere could I descry any signs of
life; not even the ruins of some ancient habitation.
Gradually, I found that I was being borne forward, floating across the
flat waste. For what seemed an eternity, I moved onward. I was unaware
of any great sense of impatience; though some curiosity and a vast
wonder were with me continually. Always, I saw around me the breadth of
that enormous plain; and, always, I searched for some new thing to break
its monotony; but there was no change—only loneliness, silence,
and desert.
Presently, in a half-conscious manner, I noticed that there was a faint
mistiness, ruddy in hue, lying over its surface. Still, when I looked
more intently, I was unable to say that it was really mist; for it
appeared to blend with the plain, giving it a peculiar unrealness, and
conveying to the senses the idea of unsubstantiality.
Gradually, I began to weary with the sameness of the thing. Yet, it was
a great time before I perceived any signs of the place, toward which I
was being conveyed.
"At first, I saw it, far ahead, like a long hillock on the surface of
the Plain. Then, as I drew nearer, I perceived that I had been mistaken;
for, instead of a low hill, I made out, now, a chain of great mountains,
whose distant peaks towered up into the red gloom, until they were
almost lost to sight."
III
THE HOUSE IN THE ARENA
And so, after a time, I came to the mountains. Then, the course of my
journey was altered, and I began to move along their bases, until, all
at once, I saw that I had come opposite to a vast rift, opening into the
mountains. Through this, I was borne, moving at no great speed. On
either side of me, huge, scarped walls of rocklike substance rose sheer.
Far overhead, I discerned a thin ribbon of red, where the mouth of the
chasm opened, among inaccessible peaks. Within, was gloom, deep and
somber, and chilly silence. For a while, I went onward steadily, and
then, at last, I saw, ahead, a deep, red glow, that told me I was near
upon the further opening of the gorge.
A minute came and went, and I was at the exit of the chasm, staring out
upon an enormous amphitheatre of mountains. Yet, of the mountains, and
the terrible grandeur of the place, I recked nothing; for I was
confounded with amazement to behold, at a distance of several miles and
occupying the center of the arena, a stupendous structure built
apparently of green jade. Yet, in itself, it was not the discovery of
the building that had so astonished me; but the fact, which became every
moment more apparent, that in no particular, save in color and its
enormous size, did the lonely structure vary from this house in which
I live.
For a while, I continued to stare, fixedly. Even then, I could scarcely
believe that I saw aright. In my mind, a question formed, reiterating
incessantly: 'What does it mean?' 'What does it mean?' and I was unable
to make answer, even out of the depths of my imagination. I seemed
capable only of wonder and fear. For a time longer, I gazed, noting
continually some fresh point of resemblance that attracted me. At last,
wearied and sorely puzzled, I turned from it, to view the rest of the
strange place on to which I had intruded.
Hitherto, I had been so engrossed in my scrutiny of the House, that I
had given only a cursory glance 'round. Now, as I looked, I began to
realize upon what sort of a place I had come. The arena, for so I have
termed it, appeared a perfect circle of about ten to twelve miles in
diameter, the House, as I have mentioned before, standing in the center.
The surface of the place, like to that of the Plain, had a peculiar,
misty appearance, that was yet not mist.
From a rapid survey, my glance passed quickly upward along the slopes
of the circling mountains. How silent they were. I think that this same
abominable stillness was more trying to me than anything that I had so
far seen or imagined. I was looking up, now, at the great crags,
towering so loftily. Up there, the impalpable redness gave a blurred
appearance to everything.
And then, as I peered, curiously, a new terror came to me; for away up
among the dim peaks to my right, I had descried a vast shape of
blackness, giantlike. It grew upon my sight. It had an enormous equine
head, with gigantic ears, and seemed to peer steadfastly down into the
arena. There was that about the pose that gave me the impression of an
eternal watchfulness—of having warded that dismal place, through
unknown eternities. Slowly, the monster became plainer to me; and then,
suddenly, my gaze sprang from it to something further off and higher
among the crags. For a long minute, I gazed, fearfully. I was strangely
conscious of something not altogether unfamiliar—as though something
stirred in the back of my mind. The thing was black, and had four
grotesque arms. The features showed indistinctly, 'round the neck, I
made out several light-colored objects. Slowly, the details came to me,
and I realized, coldly, that they were skulls. Further down the body was
another circling belt, showing less dark against the black trunk. Then,
even as I puzzled to know what the thing was, a memory slid into my
mind, and straightway, I knew that I was looking at a monstrous
representation of Kali, the Hindu goddess of death.
Other remembrances of my old student days drifted into my thoughts. My
glance fell back upon the huge beast-headed Thing. Simultaneously, I
recognized it for the ancient Egyptian god Set, or Seth, the Destroyer
of Souls. With the knowledge, there came a great sweep of
questioning—'Two of the—!' I stopped, and endeavored to think. Things
beyond my imagination peered into my frightened mind. I saw, obscurely.
'The old gods of mythology!' I tried to comprehend to what it was all
pointing. My gaze dwelt, flickeringly, between the two. 'If—'
An idea came swiftly, and I turned, and glanced rapidly upward,
searching the gloomy crags, away to my left. Something loomed out under
a great peak, a shape of greyness. I wondered I had not seen it earlier,
and then remembered I had not yet viewed that portion. I saw it more
plainly now. It was, as I have said, grey. It had a tremendous head; but
no eyes. That part of its face was blank.
Now, I saw that there were other things up among the mountains. Further
off, reclining on a lofty ledge, I made out a livid mass, irregular and
ghoulish. It seemed without form, save for an unclean, half-animal face,
that looked out, vilely, from somewhere about its middle. And then I saw
others—there were hundreds of them. They seemed to grow out of the
shadows. Several I recognized almost immediately as mythological
deities; others were strange to me, utterly strange, beyond the power of
a human mind to conceive.
On each side, I looked, and saw more, continually. The mountains were
full of strange things—Beast-gods, and Horrors so atrocious and bestial
that possibility and decency deny any further attempt to describe them.
And I—I was filled with a terrible sense of overwhelming horror and
fear and repugnance; yet, spite of these, I wondered exceedingly. Was
there then, after all, something in the old heathen worship, something
more than the mere deifying of men, animals, and elements? The thought
gripped me—was there?
Later, a question repeated itself. What were they, those Beast-gods,
and the others? At first, they had appeared to me just sculptured
Monsters placed indiscriminately among the inaccessible peaks and
precipices of the surrounding mountains. Now, as I scrutinized them with
greater intentness, my mind began to reach out to fresh conclusions.
There was something about them, an indescribable sort of silent vitality
that suggested, to my broadening consciousness, a state of
life-in-death—a something that was by no means life, as we understand
it; but rather an inhuman form of existence, that well might be likened
to a deathless trance—a condition in which it was possible to imagine
their continuing, eternally. 'Immortal!' the word rose in my thoughts
unbidden; and, straightway, I grew to wondering whether this might be
the immortality of the gods.
And then, in the midst of my wondering and musing, something happened.
Until then, I had been staying just within the shadow of the exit of the
great rift. Now, without volition on my part, I drifted out of the
semi-darkness and began to move slowly across the arena—toward the
House. At this, I gave up all thoughts of those prodigious Shapes above
me—and could only stare, frightenedly, at the tremendous structure
toward which I was being conveyed so remorselessly. Yet, though I
searched earnestly, I could discover nothing that I had not already
seen, and so became gradually calmer.
Presently, I had reached a point more than halfway between the House
and the gorge. All around was spread the stark loneliness of the place,
and the unbroken silence. Steadily, I neared the great building. Then,
all at once, something caught my vision, something that came 'round one
of the huge buttresses of the House, and so into full view. It was a
gigantic thing, and moved with a curious lope, going almost upright,
after the manner of a man. It was quite unclothed, and had a remarkable
luminous appearance. Yet it was the face that attracted and frightened
me the most. It was the face of a swine.
Silently, intently, I watched this horrible creature, and forgot my
fear, momentarily, in my interest in its movements. It was making its
way, cumbrously 'round the building, stopping as it came to each window
to peer in and shake at the bars, with which—as in this house—they
were protected; and whenever it came to a door, it would push at it,
fingering the fastening stealthily. Evidently, it was searching for an
ingress into the House.
I had come now to within less than a quarter of a mile of the great
structure, and still I was compelled forward. Abruptly, the Thing turned
and gazed hideously in my direction. It opened its mouth, and, for the
first time, the stillness of that abominable place was broken, by a
deep, booming note that sent an added thrill of apprehension through me.
Then, immediately, I became aware that it was coming toward me, swiftly
and silently. In an instant, it had covered half the distance that lay
between. And still, I was borne helplessly to meet it. Only a hundred
yards, and the brutish ferocity of the giant face numbed me with a
feeling of unmitigated horror. I could have screamed, in the supremeness
of my fear; and then, in the very moment of my extremity and despair, I
became conscious that I was looking down upon the arena, from a rapidly
increasing height. I was rising, rising. In an inconceivably short
while, I had reached an altitude of many hundred feet. Beneath me, the
spot that I had just left, was occupied by the foul Swine-creature. It
had gone down on all fours and was snuffing and rooting, like a
veritable hog, at the surface of the arena. A moment and it rose to its
feet, clutching upward, with an expression of desire upon its face such
as I have never seen in this world.
Continually, I mounted higher. A few minutes, it seemed, and I had
risen above the great mountains—floating, alone, afar in the redness.
At a tremendous distance below, the arena showed, dimly; with the mighty
House looking no larger than a tiny spot of green. The Swine-thing was
no longer visible.
Presently, I passed over the mountains, out above the huge breadth of
the plain. Far away, on its surface, in the direction of the ring-shaped
sun, there showed a confused blur. I looked toward it, indifferently. It
reminded me, somewhat, of the first glimpse I had caught of the
mountain-amphitheatre.
With a sense of weariness, I glanced upward at the immense ring of
fire. What a strange thing it was! Then, as I stared, out from the dark
center, there spurted a sudden flare of extraordinary vivid fire.
Compared with the size of the black center, it was as naught; yet, in
itself, stupendous. With awakened interest, I watched it carefully,
noting its strange boiling and glowing. Then, in a moment, the whole
thing grew dim and unreal, and so passed out of sight. Much amazed, I
glanced down to the Plain from which I was still rising. Thus, I
received a fresh surprise. The Plain—everything had vanished, and only
a sea of red mist was spread far below me. Gradually as I stared this
grew remote, and died away into a dim far mystery of red against an
unfathomable night. A while, and even this had gone, and I was wrapped
in an impalpable, lightless gloom.
IV
THE EARTH
Thus I was, and only the memory that I had lived through the dark, once
before, served to sustain my thoughts. A great time passed—ages. And
then a single star broke its way through the darkness. It was the first
of one of the outlying clusters of this universe. Presently, it was far
behind, and all about me shone the splendor of the countless stars.
Later, years it seemed, I saw the sun, a clot of flame. Around it, I
made out presently several remote specks of light—the planets of the
Solar system. And so I saw the earth again, blue and unbelievably
minute. It grew larger, and became defined.
A long space of time came and went, and then at last I entered into the
shadow of the world—plunging headlong into the dim and holy earth
night. Overhead were the old constellations, and there was a crescent
moon. Then, as I neared the earth's surface, a dimness swept over me,
and I appeared to sink into a black mist.
For a while, I knew nothing. I was unconscious. Gradually, I became
aware of a faint, distant whining. It became plainer. A desperate
feeling of agony possessed me. I struggled madly for breath, and tried
to shout. A moment, and I got my breath more easily. I was conscious
that something was licking my hand. Something damp swept across my face.
I heard a panting, and then again the whining. It seemed to come to my
ears, now, with a sense of familiarity, and I opened my eyes. All was
dark; but the feeling of oppression had left me. I was seated, and
something was whining piteously, and licking me. I felt strangely
confused, and, instinctively, tried to ward off the thing that licked.
My head was curiously vacant, and, for the moment, I seemed incapable of
action or thought. Then, things came back to me, and I called 'Pepper,'
faintly. I was answered by a joyful bark, and renewed and
frantic caresses.
In a little while, I felt stronger, and put out my hand for the
matches. I groped about, for a few moments, blindly; then my hands lit
upon them, and I struck a light, and looked confusedly around. All about
me, I saw the old, familiar things. And there I sat, full of dazed
wonders, until the flame of the match burnt my finger, and I dropped it;
while a hasty expression of pain and anger, escaped my lips, surprising
me with the sound of my own voice.
After a moment, I struck another match, and, stumbling across the room,
lit the candles. As I did so, I observed that they had not burned away,
but had been put out.
As the flames shot up, I turned, and stared about the study; yet there
was nothing unusual to see; and, suddenly, a gust of irritation took me.
What had happened? I held my head, with both hands, and tried to
remember. Ah! the great, silent Plain, and the ring-shaped sun of red
fire. Where were they? Where had I seen them? How long ago? I felt dazed
and muddled. Once or twice, I walked up and down the room, unsteadily.
My memory seemed dulled, and, already, the thing I had witnessed came
back to me with an effort.
I have a remembrance of cursing, peevishly, in my bewilderment.
Suddenly, I turned faint and giddy, and had to grasp at the table for
support. During a few moments, I held on, weakly; and then managed to
totter sideways into a chair. After a little time, I felt somewhat
better, and succeeded in reaching the cupboard where, usually, I keep
brandy and biscuits. I poured myself out a little of the stimulant, and
drank it off. Then, taking a handful of biscuits, I returned to my
chair, and began to devour them, ravenously. I was vaguely surprised at
my hunger. I felt as though I had eaten nothing for an uncountably
long while.
As I ate, my glance roved about the room, taking in its various
details, and still searching, though almost unconsciously, for something
tangible upon which to take hold, among the invisible mysteries that
encompassed me. 'Surely,' I thought, 'there must be something—' And, in
the same instant, my gaze dwelt upon the face of the clock in the
opposite corner. Therewith, I stopped eating, and just stared. For,
though its ticking indicated most certainly that it was still going, the
hands were pointing to a little before the hour of midnight; whereas
it was, as well I knew, considerably after that time when I had
witnessed the first of the strange happenings I have just described.
For perhaps a moment I was astounded and puzzled. Had the hour been the
same as when I had last seen the clock, I should have concluded that the
hands had stuck in one place, while the internal mechanism went on as
usual; but that would, in no way, account for the hands having traveled
backward. Then, even as I turned the matter over in my wearied brain,
the thought flashed upon me that it was now close upon the morning of
the twenty-second, and that I had been unconscious to the visible world
through the greater portion of the last twenty-four hours. The thought
occupied my attention for a full minute; then I commenced to eat again.
I was still very hungry.
During breakfast, next morning, I inquired casually of my sister
regarding the date, and found my surmise correct. I had, indeed, been
absent—at least in spirit—for nearly a day and a night.
My sister asked me no questions; for it is not by any means the first
time that I have kept to my study for a whole day, and sometimes a
couple of days at a time, when I have been particularly engrossed in my
books or work.
And so the days pass on, and I am still filled with a wonder to know
the meaning of all that I saw on that memorable night. Yet, well I know
that my curiosity is little likely to be satisfied.
V
THE THING IN THE PIT
This house is, as I have said before, surrounded by a huge estate, and
wild and uncultivated gardens.
Away at the back, distant some three hundred yards, is a dark, deep
ravine—spoken of as the 'Pit,' by the peasantry. At the bottom runs a
sluggish stream so overhung by trees as scarcely to be seen from above.
In passing, I must explain that this river has a subterranean origin,
emerging suddenly at the East end of the ravine, and disappearing, as
abruptly, beneath the cliffs that form its Western extremity.
It was some months after my vision (if vision it were) of the great
Plain that my attention was particularly attracted to the Pit.
I happened, one day, to be walking along its Southern edge, when,
suddenly, several pieces of rock and shale were dislodged from the face
of the cliff immediately beneath me, and fell with a sullen crash
through the trees. I heard them splash in the river at the bottom; and
then silence. I should not have given this incident more than a passing
thought, had not Pepper at once begun to bark savagely; nor would he be
silent when I bade him, which is most unusual behavior on his part.
Feeling that there must be someone or something in the Pit, I went back
to the house, quickly, for a stick. When I returned, Pepper had ceased
his barks and was growling and smelling, uneasily, along the top.
Whistling to him to follow me, I started to descend cautiously. The
depth to the bottom of the Pit must be about a hundred and fifty feet,
and some time as well as considerable care was expended before we
reached the bottom in safety.
Once down, Pepper and I started to explore along the banks of the
river. It was very dark there due to the overhanging trees, and I moved
warily, keeping my glance about me and my stick ready.
Pepper was quiet now and kept close to me all the time. Thus, we
searched right up one side of the river, without hearing or seeing
anything. Then, we crossed over—by the simple method of jumping—and
commenced to beat our way back through the underbrush.
We had accomplished perhaps half the distance, when I heard again the
sound of falling stones on the other side—the side from which we had
just come. One large rock came thundering down through the treetops,
struck the opposite bank, and bounded into the river, driving a great
jet of water right over us. At this, Pepper gave out a deep growl; then
stopped, and pricked up his ears. I listened, also.
A second later, a loud, half-human, half-piglike squeal sounded from
among the trees, apparently about halfway up the South cliff. It was
answered by a similar note from the bottom of the Pit. At this, Pepper
gave a short, sharp bark, and, springing across the little river,
disappeared into the bushes.
Immediately afterward, I heard his barks increase in depth and number,
and in between there sounded a noise of confused jabbering. This ceased,
and, in the succeeding silence, there rose a semi-human yell of agony.
Almost immediately, Pepper gave a long-drawn howl of pain, and then the
shrubs were violently agitated, and he came running out with his tail
down, and glancing as he ran over his shoulder. As he reached me, I saw
that he was bleeding from what appeared to be a great claw wound in the
side that had almost laid bare his ribs.
Seeing Pepper thus mutilated, a furious feeling of anger seized me,
and, whirling my staff, I sprang across, and into the bushes from which
Pepper had emerged. As I forced my way through, I thought I heard a
sound of breathing. Next instant, I had burst into a little clear space,
just in time to see something, livid white in color, disappear among the
bushes on the opposite side. With a shout, I ran toward it; but, though
I struck and probed among the bushes with my stick, I neither saw nor
heard anything further; and so returned to Pepper. There, after bathing
his wound in the river, I bound my wetted handkerchief 'round his body;
having done which, we retreated up the ravine and into the
daylight again.
On reaching the house, my sister inquired what had happened to Pepper,
and I told her he had been fighting with a wildcat, of which I had heard
there were several about.
I felt it would be better not to tell her how it had really happened;
though, to be sure, I scarcely knew myself; but this I did know, that
the thing I had seen run into the bushes was no wildcat. It was much too
big, and had, so far as I had observed, a skin like a hog's, only of a
dead, unhealthy white color. And then—it had run upright, or nearly so,
upon its hind feet, with a motion somewhat resembling that of a human
being. This much I had noticed in my brief glimpse, and, truth to tell,
I felt a good deal of uneasiness, besides curiosity as I turned the
matter over in my mind.
It was in the morning that the above incident had occurred.
Then, it would be after dinner, as I sat reading, that, happening to
look up suddenly, I saw something peering in over the window ledge the
eyes and ears alone showing.
'A pig, by Jove!' I said, and rose to my feet. Thus, I saw the thing
more completely; but it was no pig—God alone knows what it was. It
reminded me, vaguely, of the hideous Thing that had haunted the great
arena. It had a grotesquely human mouth and jaw; but with no chin of
which to speak. The nose was prolonged into a snout; thus it was that
with the little eyes and queer ears, gave it such an extraordinarily
swinelike appearance. Of forehead there was little, and the whole face
was of an unwholesome white color.
For perhaps a minute, I stood looking at the thing with an ever growing
feeling of disgust, and some fear. The mouth kept jabbering, inanely,
and once emitted a half-swinish grunt. I think it was the eyes that
attracted me the most; they seemed to glow, at times, with a horribly
human intelligence, and kept flickering away from my face, over the
details of the room, as though my stare disturbed it.
It appeared to be supporting itself by two clawlike hands upon the
windowsill. These claws, unlike the face, were of a clayey brown hue,
and bore an indistinct resemblance to human hands, in that they had four
fingers and a thumb; though these were webbed up to the first joint,
much as are a duck's. Nails it had also, but so long and powerful that
they were more like the talons of an eagle than aught else.
As I have said, before, I felt some fear; though almost of an
impersonal kind. I may explain my feeling better by saying that it was
more a sensation of abhorrence; such as one might expect to feel, if
brought in contact with something superhumanly foul; something
unholy—belonging to some hitherto undreamt of state of existence.
I cannot say that I grasped these various details of the brute at the
time. I think they seemed to come back to me, afterward, as though
imprinted upon my brain. I imagined more than I saw as I looked at the
thing, and the material details grew upon me later.
For perhaps a minute I stared at the creature; then as my nerves
steadied a little I shook off the vague alarm that held me, and took a
step toward the window. Even as I did so, the thing ducked and vanished.
I rushed to the door and looked 'round hurriedly; but only the tangled
bushes and shrubs met my gaze.
I ran back into the house, and, getting my gun, sallied out to search
through the gardens. As I went, I asked myself whether the thing I had
just seen was likely to be the same of which I had caught a glimpse in
the morning. I inclined to think it was.
I would have taken Pepper with me; but judged it better to give his
wound a chance to heal. Besides, if the creature I had just seen was, as
I imagined, his antagonist of the morning, it was not likely that he
would be of much use.
I began my search, systematically. I was determined, if it were
possible, to find and put an end to that swine-thing. This was, at
least, a material Horror!
At first, I searched, cautiously; with the thought of Pepper's wound in
my mind; but, as the hours passed, and not a sign of anything living,
showed in the great, lonely gardens, I became less apprehensive. I felt
almost as though I would welcome the sight of it. Anything seemed better
than this silence, with the ever-present feeling that the creature might
be lurking in every bush I passed. Later, I grew careless of danger, to
the extent of plunging right through the bushes, probing with my gun
barrel as I went.
At times, I shouted; but only the echoes answered back. I thought thus
perhaps to frighten or stir the creature to showing itself; but only
succeeded in bringing my sister Mary out, to know what was the matter. I
told her, that I had seen the wildcat that had wounded Pepper, and that
I was trying to hunt it out of the bushes. She seemed only half
satisfied, and went back into the house, with an expression of doubt
upon her face. I wondered whether she had seen or guessed anything. For
the rest of the afternoon, I prosecuted the search anxiously. I felt
that I should be unable to sleep, with that bestial thing haunting the
shrubberies, and yet, when evening fell, I had seen nothing. Then, as I
turned homeward, I heard a short, unintelligible noise, among the bushes
to my right. Instantly, I turned, and, aiming quickly, fired in the
direction of the sound. Immediately afterward, I heard something
scuttling away among the bushes. It moved rapidly, and in a minute had
gone out of hearing. After a few steps I ceased my pursuit, realizing
how futile it must be in the fast gathering gloom; and so, with a
curious feeling of depression, I entered the house.
That night, after my sister had gone to bed, I went 'round to all the
windows and doors on the ground floor; and saw to it that they were
securely fastened. This precaution was scarcely necessary as regards the
windows, as all of those on the lower storey are strongly barred; but
with the doors—of which there are five—it was wisely thought, as not
one was locked.
Having secured these, I went to my study, yet, somehow, for once, the
place jarred upon me; it seemed so huge and echoey. For some time I
tried to read; but at last finding it impossible I carried my book down
to the kitchen where a large fire was burning, and sat there.
I dare say, I had read for a couple of hours, when, suddenly, I heard a
sound that made me lower my book, and listen, intently. It was a noise
of something rubbing and fumbling against the back door. Once the door
creaked, loudly; as though force were being applied to it. During those
few, short moments, I experienced an indescribable feeling of terror,
such as I should have believed impossible. My hands shook; a cold sweat
broke out on me, and I shivered violently.
Gradually, I calmed. The stealthy movements outside had ceased.
Then for an hour I sat silent and watchful. All at once the feeling of
fear took me again. I felt as I imagine an animal must, under the eye of
a snake. Yet now I could hear nothing. Still, there was no doubting that
some unexplained influence was at work.
Gradually, imperceptibly almost, something stole on my ear—a sound
that resolved itself into a faint murmur. Quickly it developed and grew
into a muffled but hideous chorus of bestial shrieks. It appeared to
rise from the bowels of the earth.
I heard a thud, and realized in a dull, half comprehending way that I
had dropped my book. After that, I just sat; and thus the daylight found
me, when it crept wanly in through the barred, high windows of the
great kitchen.
With the dawning light, the feeling of stupor and fear left me; and I
came more into possession of my senses.
Thereupon I picked up my book, and crept to the door to listen. Not a
sound broke the chilly silence. For some minutes I stood there; then,
very gradually and cautiously, I drew back the bolt and opening the door
peeped out.
My caution was unneeded. Nothing was to be seen, save the grey vista of
dreary, tangled bushes and trees, extending to the distant plantation.
With a shiver, I closed the door, and made my way, quietly, up to bed.
VI
THE SWINE-THINGS
It was evening, a week later. My sister sat in the garden, knitting. I
was walking up and down, reading. My gun leant up against the wall of
the house; for, since the advent of that strange thing in the gardens, I
had deemed it wise to take precautions. Yet, through the whole week,
there had been nothing to alarm me, either by sight or sound; so that I
was able to look back, calmly, to the incident; though still with a
sense of unmitigated wonder and curiosity.
I was, as I have just said, walking up and down, and somewhat engrossed
in my book. Suddenly, I heard a crash, away in the direction of the Pit.
With a quick movement, I turned and saw a tremendous column of dust
rising high into the evening air.
My sister had risen to her feet, with a sharp exclamation of surprise
and fright.
Telling her to stay where she was, I snatched up my gun, and ran toward
the Pit. As I neared it, I heard a dull, rumbling sound, that grew
quickly into a roar, split with deeper crashes, and up from the Pit
drove a fresh volume of dust.
The noise ceased, though the dust still rose, tumultuously.
I reached the edge, and looked down; but could see nothing save a boil
of dust clouds swirling hither and thither. The air was so full of the
small particles, that they blinded and choked me; and, finally, I had to
run out from the smother, to breathe.
Gradually, the suspended matter sank, and hung in a panoply over the
mouth of the Pit.
I could only guess at what had happened.
That there had been a land-slip of some kind, I had little doubt; but
the cause was beyond my knowledge; and yet, even then, I had half
imaginings; for, already, the thought had come to me, of those falling
rocks, and that Thing in the bottom of the Pit; but, in the first
minutes of confusion, I failed to reach the natural conclusion, to which
the catastrophe pointed.
Slowly, the dust subsided, until, presently, I was able to approach the
edge, and look down.
For a while, I peered impotently, trying to see through the reek. At
first, it was impossible to make out anything. Then, as I stared, I saw
something below, to my left, that moved. I looked intently toward it,
and, presently, made out another, and then another—three dim shapes
that appeared to be climbing up the side of the Pit. I could see them
only indistinctly. Even as I stared and wondered, I heard a rattle of
stones, somewhere to my right. I glanced across; but could see nothing.
I leant forward, and peered over, and down into the Pit, just beneath
where I stood; and saw no further than a hideous, white swine-face, that
had risen to within a couple of yards of my feet. Below it, I could make
out several others. As the Thing saw me, it gave a sudden, uncouth
squeal, which was answered from all parts of the Pit. At that, a gust of
horror and fear took me, and, bending down, I discharged my gun right
into its face. Straightway, the creature disappeared, with a clatter of
loose earth and stones.
There was a momentary silence, to which, probably, I owe my life; for,
during it, I heard a quick patter of many feet, and, turning sharply,
saw a troop of the creatures coming toward me, at a run. Instantly, I
raised my gun and fired at the foremost, who plunged head-long, with a
hideous howling. Then, I turned to run. More than halfway from the house
to the Pit, I saw my sister—she was coming toward me. I could not see
her face, distinctly, as the dusk had fallen; but there was fear in her
voice as she called to know why I was shooting.
'Run!' I shouted in reply. 'Run for your life!'
Without more ado, she turned and fled—picking up her skirts with both
hands. As I followed, I gave a glance behind. The brutes were running on
their hind legs—at times dropping on all fours.
I think it must have been the terror in my voice, that spurred Mary to
run so; for I feel convinced that she had not, as yet, seen those hell
creatures that pursued.
On we went, my sister leading.
Each moment, the nearing sounds of the footsteps, told me that the
brutes were gaining on us, rapidly. Fortunately, I am accustomed to
live, in some ways, an active life. As it was, the strain of the race
was beginning to tell severely upon me.
Ahead, I could see the back door—luckily it was open. I was some
half-dozen yards behind Mary, now, and my breath was sobbing in my
throat. Then, something touched my shoulder. I wrenched my head 'round,
quickly, and saw one of those monstrous, pallid faces close to mine. One
of the creatures, having outrun its companions, had almost overtaken me.
Even as I turned, it made a fresh grab. With a sudden effort, I sprang
to one side, and, swinging my gun by the barrel, brought it crashing
down upon the foul creature's head. The Thing dropped, with an almost
human groan.
Even this short delay had been nearly sufficient to bring the rest of
the brutes down upon me; so that, without an instant's waste of time, I
turned and ran for the door.
Reaching it, I burst into the passage; then, turning quickly, slammed
and bolted the door, just as the first of the creatures rushed against
it, with a sudden shock.
My sister sat, gasping, in a chair. She seemed in a fainting condition;
but I had no time then to spend on her. I had to make sure that all the
doors were fastened. Fortunately, they were. The one leading from my
study into the gardens, was the last to which I went. I had just had
time to note that it was secured, when I thought I heard a noise
outside. I stood perfectly silent, and listened. Yes! Now I could
distinctly hear a sound of whispering, and something slithered over the
panels, with a rasping, scratchy noise. Evidently, some of the brutes
were feeling with their claw-hands, about the door, to discover whether
there were any means of ingress.
That the creatures should so soon have found the door was—to me—a
proof of their reasoning capabilities. It assured me that they must not
be regarded, by any means, as mere animals. I had felt something of this
before, when that first Thing peered in through my window. Then I had
applied the term superhuman to it, with an almost instinctive knowledge
that the creature was something different from the brute-beast.
Something beyond human; yet in no good sense; but rather as something
foul and hostile to the great and good in humanity. In a word, as
something intelligent, and yet inhuman. The very thought of the
creatures filled me with revulsion.
Now, I bethought me of my sister, and, going to the cupboard, I got
out a flask of brandy, and a wine-glass. Taking these, I went down to
the kitchen, carrying a lighted candle with me. She was not sitting in
the chair, but had fallen out, and was lying upon the floor,
face downward.
Very gently, I turned her over, and raised her head somewhat. Then, I
poured a little of the brandy between her lips. After a while, she
shivered slightly. A little later, she gave several gasps, and opened
her eyes. In a dreamy, unrealizing way, she looked at me. Then her eyes
closed, slowly, and I gave her a little more of the brandy. For, perhaps
a minute longer, she lay silent, breathing quickly. All at once, her
eyes opened again, and it seemed to me, as I looked, that the pupils
were dilated, as though fear had come with returning consciousness.
Then, with a movement so unexpected that I started backward, she sat up.
Noticing that she seemed giddy, I put out my hand to steady her. At
that, she gave a loud scream, and, scrambling to her feet, ran from
the room.
For a moment, I stayed there—kneeling and holding the brandy flask. I
was utterly puzzled and astonished.
Could she be afraid of me? But no! Why should she? I could only
conclude that her nerves were badly shaken, and that she was temporarily
unhinged. Upstairs, I heard a door bang, loudly, and I knew that she had
taken refuge in her room. I put the flask down on the table. My
attention was distracted by a noise in the direction of the back door. I
went toward it, and listened. It appeared to be shaken, as though some
of the creatures struggled with it, silently; but it was far too
strongly constructed and hung to be easily moved.
Out in the gardens rose a continuous sound. It might have been
mistaken, by a casual listener, for the grunting and squealing of a herd
of pigs. But, as I stood there, it came to me that there was sense and
meaning to all those swinish noises. Gradually, I seemed able to trace
a semblance in it to human speech—glutinous and sticky, as though each
articulation were made with difficulty: yet, nevertheless, I was
becoming convinced that it was no mere medley of sounds; but a rapid
interchange of ideas.
By this time, it had grown quite dark in the passages, and from these
came all the varied cries and groans of which an old house is so full
after nightfall. It is, no doubt, because things are then quieter, and
one has more leisure to hear. Also, there may be something in the theory
that the sudden change of temperature, at sundown, affects the structure
of the house, somewhat—causing it to contract and settle, as it were,
for the night. However, this is as may be; but, on that night in
particular, I would gladly have been quit of so many eerie noises. It
seemed to me, that each crack and creak was the coming of one of those
Things along the dark corridors; though I knew in my heart that this
could not be, for I had seen, myself, that all the doors were secure.
Gradually, however, these sounds grew on my nerves to such an extent
that, were it only to punish my cowardice, I felt I must make the 'round
of the basement again, and, if anything were there, face it. And then, I
would go up to my study, for I knew sleep was out of the question, with
the house surrounded by creatures, half beasts, half something else, and
entirely unholy.
Taking the kitchen lamp down from its hook, I made my way from cellar
to cellar, and room to room; through pantry and coal-hole—along
passages, and into the hundred-and-one little blind alleys and hidden
nooks that form the basement of the old house. Then, when I knew I had
been in every corner and cranny large enough to conceal aught of any
size, I made my way to the stairs.
With my foot on the first step, I paused. It seemed to me, I heard a
movement, apparently from the buttery, which is to the left of the
staircase. It had been one of the first places I searched, and yet, I
felt certain my ears had not deceived me. My nerves were strung now,
and, with hardly any hesitation, I stepped up to the door, holding the
lamp above my head. In a glance, I saw that the place was empty, save
for the heavy, stone slabs, supported by brick pillars; and I was about
to leave it, convinced that I had been mistaken; when, in turning, my
light was flashed back from two bright spots outside the window, and
high up. For a few moments, I stood there, staring. Then they
moved—revolving slowly, and throwing out alternate scintillations of
green and red; at least, so it appeared to me. I knew then that they
were eyes.
Slowly, I traced the shadowy outline of one of the Things. It appeared
to be holding on to the bars of the window, and its attitude suggested
climbing. I went nearer to the window, and held the light higher. There
was no need to be afraid of the creature; the bars were strong, and
there was little danger of its being able to move them. And then,
suddenly, in spite of the knowledge that the brute could not reach to
harm me, I had a return of the horrible sensation of fear, that had
assailed me on that night, a week previously. It was the same feeling of
helpless, shuddering fright. I realized, dimly, that the creature's eyes
were looking into mine with a steady, compelling stare. I tried to turn
away; but could not. I seemed, now, to see the window through a mist.
Then, I thought other eyes came and peered, and yet others; until a
whole galaxy of malignant, staring orbs seemed to hold me in thrall.
My head began to swim, and throb violently. Then, I was aware of a
feeling of acute physical pain in my left hand. It grew more severe, and
forced, literally forced, my attention. With a tremendous effort, I
glanced down; and, with that, the spell that had held me was broken. I
realized, then, that I had, in my agitation, unconsciously caught hold
of the hot lamp-glass, and burnt my hand, badly. I looked up to the
window, again. The misty appearance had gone, and, now, I saw that it
was crowded with dozens of bestial faces. With a sudden access of rage,
I raised the lamp, and hurled it, full at the window. It struck the
glass (smashing a pane), and passed between two of the bars, out into
the garden, scattering burning oil as it went. I heard several loud
cries of pain, and, as my sight became accustomed to the dark, I
discovered that the creatures had left the window.
Pulling myself together, I groped for the door, and, having found it,
made my way upstairs, stumbling at each step. I felt dazed, as though I
had received a blow on the head. At the same time, my hand smarted
badly, and I was full of a nervous, dull rage against those Things.
Reaching my study, I lit the candles. As they burnt up, their rays were
reflected from the rack of firearms on the sidewall. At the sight, I
remembered that I had there a power, which, as I had proved earlier,
seemed as fatal to those monsters as to more ordinary animals; and I
determined I would take the offensive.
First of all, I bound up my hand; for the pain was fast becoming
intolerable. After that, it seemed easier, and I crossed the room, to
the rifle stand. There, I selected a heavy rifle—an old and tried
weapon; and, having procured ammunition, I made my way up into one of
the small towers, with which the house is crowned.
From there, I found that I could see nothing. The gardens presented a
dim blur of shadows—a little blacker, perhaps, where the trees stood.
That was all, and I knew that it was useless to shoot down into all that
darkness. The only thing to be done, was to wait for the moon to rise;
then, I might be able to do a little execution.
In the meantime, I sat still, and kept my ears open. The gardens were
comparatively quiet now, and only an occasional grunt or squeal came up
to me. I did not like this silence; it made me wonder on what devilry
the creatures were bent. Twice, I left the tower, and took a walk
through the house; but everything was silent.
Once, I heard a noise, from the direction of the Pit, as though more
earth had fallen. Following this, and lasting for some fifteen minutes,
there was a commotion among the denizens of the gardens. This died away,
and, after that all was again quiet.
About an hour later, the moon's light showed above the distant horizon.
From where I sat, I could see it over the trees; but it was not until it
rose clear of them, that I could make out any of the details in the
gardens below. Even then, I could see none of the brutes; until,
happening to crane forward, I saw several of them lying prone, up
against the wall of the house. What they were doing, I could not make
out. It was, however, a chance too good to be ignored; and, taking aim,
I fired at the one directly beneath. There was a shrill scream, and, as
the smoke cleared away, I saw that it had turned on its back, and was
writhing, feebly. Then, it was quiet. The others had disappeared.
Immediately after this, I heard a loud squeal, in the direction of the
Pit. It was answered, a hundred times, from every part of the garden.
This gave me some notion of the number of the creatures, and I began to
feel that the whole affair was becoming even more serious than I
had imagined.
As I sat there, silent and watchful, the thought came to me—Why was
all this? What were these Things? What did it mean? Then my thoughts
flew back to that vision (though, even now, I doubt whether it was a
vision) of the Plain of Silence. What did that mean? I wondered—And
that Thing in the arena? Ugh! Lastly, I thought of the house I had seen
in that far-away place. That house, so like this in every detail of
external structure, that it might have been modeled from it; or this
from that. I had never thought of that—
At this moment, there came another long squeal, from the Pit, followed,
a second later, by a couple of shorter ones. At once, the garden was
filled with answering cries. I stood up, quickly, and looked over the
parapet. In the moonlight, it seemed as though the shrubberies were
alive. They tossed hither and thither, as though shaken by a strong,
irregular wind; while a continuous rustling, and a noise of scampering
feet, rose up to me. Several times, I saw the moonlight gleam on
running, white figures among the bushes, and, twice, I fired. The second
time, my shot was answered by a short squeal of pain.
A minute later, the gardens lay silent. From the Pit, came a deep,
hoarse Babel of swine-talk. At times, angry cries smote the air, and
they would be answered by multitudinous gruntings. It occurred to me,
that they were holding some kind of a council, perhaps to discuss the
problem of entering the house. Also, I thought that they seemed much
enraged, probably by my successful shots.
It occurred to me, that now would be a good time to make a final survey
of our defenses. This, I proceeded to do at once; visiting the whole of
the basement again, and examining each of the doors. Luckily, they are
all, like the back one, built of solid, iron-studded oak. Then, I went
upstairs to the study. I was more anxious about this door. It is,
palpably, of a more modern make than the others, and, though a stout
piece of work, it has little of their ponderous strength.
I must explain here, that there is a small, raised lawn on this side of
the house, upon which this door opens—the windows of the study being
barred on this account. All the other entrances—excepting the great
gateway which is never opened—are in the lower storey.
VII
THE ATTACK
I spent some time, puzzling how to strengthen the study door. Finally,
I went down to the kitchen, and with some trouble, brought up several
heavy pieces of timber. These, I wedged up, slantwise, against it, from
the floor, nailing them top and bottom. For half-an-hour, I worked hard,
and, at last, got it shored to my mind.
Then, feeling easier, I resumed my coat, which I had laid aside, and
proceeded to attend to one or two matters before returning to the tower.
It was whilst thus employed, that I heard a fumbling at the door, and
the latch was tried. Keeping silence, I waited. Soon, I heard several of
the creatures outside. They were grunting to one another, softly. Then,
for a minute, there was quietness. Suddenly, there sounded a quick, low
grunt, and the door creaked under a tremendous pressure. It would have
burst inward; but for the supports I had placed. The strain ceased, as
quickly as it had begun, and there was more talk.
Presently, one of the Things squealed, softly, and I heard the sound
of others approaching. There was a short confabulation; then again,
silence; and I realized that they had called several more to assist.
Feeling that now was the supreme moment, I stood ready, with my rifle
presented. If the door gave, I would, at least, slay as many
as possible.
Again came the low signal; and, once more, the door cracked, under a
huge force. For, a minute perhaps, the pressure was kept up; and I
waited, nervously; expecting each moment to see the door come down with
a crash. But no; the struts held, and the attempt proved abortive. Then
followed more of their horrible, grunting talk, and, whilst it lasted, I
thought I distinguished the noise of fresh arrivals.
After a long discussion, during which the door was several times
shaken, they became quiet once more, and I knew that they were going to
make a third attempt to break it down. I was almost in despair. The
props had been severely tried in the two previous attacks, and I was
sorely afraid that this would prove too much for them.
At that moment, like an inspiration, a thought flashed into my troubled
brain. Instantly, for it was no time to hesitate, I ran from the room,
and up stair after stair. This time, it was not to one of the towers,
that I went; but out on to the flat, leaded roof itself. Once there, I
raced across to the parapet, that walls it 'round, and looked down. As I
did so, I heard the short, grunted signal, and, even up there, caught
the crying of the door under the assault.
There was not a moment to lose, and, leaning over, I aimed, quickly,
and fired. The report rang sharply, and, almost blending with it, came
the loud splud of the bullet striking its mark. From below, rose a
shrill wail; and the door ceased its groaning. Then, as I took my weight
from off the parapet, a huge piece of the stone coping slid from under
me, and fell with a crash among the disorganized throng beneath.
Several horrible shrieks quavered through the night air, and then I
heard a sound of scampering feet. Cautiously, I looked over. In the
moonlight, I could see the great copingstone, lying right across the
threshold of the door. I thought I saw something under it—several
things, white; but I could not be sure.
And so a few minutes passed.
As I stared, I saw something come 'round, out of the shadow of the
house. It was one of the Things. It went up to the stone, silently, and
bent down. I was unable to see what it did. In a minute it stood up. It
had something in its talons, which it put to its mouth and tore at....
For the moment, I did not realize. Then, slowly, I comprehended. The
Thing was stooping again. It was horrible. I started to load my rifle.
When I looked again, the monster was tugging at the stone—moving it to
one side. I leant the rifle on the coping, and pulled the trigger. The
brute collapsed, on its face, and kicked, slightly.
Simultaneously, almost, with the report, I heard another sound—that of
breaking glass. Waiting, only to recharge my weapon, I ran from the
roof, and down the first two flights of stairs.
Here, I paused to listen. As I did so, there came another tinkle of
falling glass. It appeared to come from the floor below. Excitedly, I
sprang down the steps, and, guided by the rattle of the window-sash,
reached the door of one of the empty bedrooms, at the back of the house.
I thrust it open. The room was but dimly illuminated by the moonlight;
most of the light being blotted out by moving figures at the window.
Even as I stood, one crawled through, into the room. Leveling my weapon,
I fired point-blank at it—filling the room with a deafening bang. When
the smoke cleared, I saw that the room was empty, and the window free.
The room was much lighter. The night air blew in, coldly, through the
shattered panes. Down below, in the night, I could hear a soft moaning,
and a confused murmur of swine-voices.
Stepping to one side of the window, I reloaded, and then stood there,
waiting. Presently, I heard a scuffling noise. From where I stood in the
shadow, I could see, without being seen.
Nearer came the sounds, and then I saw something come up above the
sill, and clutch at the broken window-frame. It caught a piece of the
woodwork; and, now, I could make out that it was a hand and arm. A
moment later, the face of one of the Swine-creatures rose into view.
Then, before I could use my rifle, or do anything, there came a sharp
crack—cr-ac-k; and the window-frame gave way under the weight of the
Thing. Next instant, a squashing thud, and a loud outcry, told me that
it had fallen to the ground. With a savage hope that it had been killed,
I went to the window. The moon had gone behind a cloud, so that I could
see nothing; though a steady hum of jabbering, just beneath where I
stood, indicated that there were several more of the brutes close
at hand.
As I stood there, looking down, I marveled how it had been possible for
the creatures to climb so far; for the wall is comparatively smooth,
while the distance to the ground must be, at least, eighty feet.
All at once, as I bent, peering, I saw something, indistinctly, that
cut the grey shadow of the house-side, with a black line. It passed the
window, to the left, at a distance of about two feet. Then, I remembered
that it was a gutter-pipe, that had been put there some years ago, to
carry off the rainwater. I had forgotten about it. I could see, now, how
the creatures had managed to reach the window. Even as the solution came
to me, I heard a faint slithering, scratching noise, and knew that
another of the brutes was coming. I waited some odd moments; then leant
out of the window and felt the pipe. To my delight, I found that it was
quite loose, and I managed, using the rifle-barrel as a crowbar, to
lever it out from the wall. I worked quickly. Then, taking hold with
both bands, I wrenched the whole concern away, and hurled it down—with
the Thing still clinging to it—into the garden.
For a few minutes longer, I waited there, listening; but, after the
first general outcry, I heard nothing. I knew, now, that there was no
more reason to fear an attack from this quarter. I had removed the only
means of reaching the window, and, as none of the other windows had any
adjacent water pipes, to tempt the climbing powers of the monsters, I
began to feel more confident of escaping their clutches.
Leaving the room, I made my way down to the study. I was anxious to see
how the door had withstood the test of that last assault. Entering, I
lit two of the candles, and then turned to the door. One of the large
props had been displaced, and, on that side, the door had been forced
inward some six inches.
It was Providential that I had managed to drive the brutes away just
when I did! And that copingstone! I wondered, vaguely, how I had managed
to dislodge it. I had not noticed it loose, as I took my shot; and then,
as I stood up, it had slipped away from beneath me ... I felt that I
owed the dismissal of the attacking force, more to its timely fall than
to my rifle. Then the thought came, that I had better seize this chance
to shore up the door, again. It was evident that the creatures had not
returned since the fall of the copingstone; but who was to say how long
they would keep away?
There and then, I set-to, at repairing the door—working hard and
anxiously. First, I went down to the basement, and, rummaging 'round,
found several pieces of heavy oak planking. With these, I returned to
the study, and, having removed the props, placed the planks up against
the door. Then, I nailed the heads of the struts to these, and, driving
them well home at the bottoms, nailed them again there.
Thus, I made the door stronger than ever; for now it was solid with the
backing of boards, and would, I felt convinced, stand a heavier pressure
than hitherto, without giving way.
After that, I lit the lamp which I had brought from the kitchen, and
went down to have a look at the lower windows.
Now that I had seen an instance of the strength the creatures
possessed, I felt considerable anxiety about the windows on the ground
floor—in spite of the fact that they were so strongly barred.
I went first to the buttery, having a vivid remembrance of my late
adventure there. The place was chilly, and the wind, soughing in through
the broken glass, produced an eerie note. Apart from the general air of
dismalness, the place was as I had left it the night before. Going up to
the window, I examined the bars, closely; noting, as I did so, their
comfortable thickness. Still, as I looked more intently, it seemed to
me, that the middle bar was bent slightly from the straight; yet it was
but trifling, and it might have been so for years. I had never, before,
noticed them particularly.
I put my hand through the broken window, and shook the bar. It was as
firm as a rock. Perhaps the creatures had tried to 'start' it, and,
finding it beyond their power, ceased from the effort. After that, I
went 'round to each of the windows, in turn; examining them with careful
attention; but nowhere else could I trace anything to show that there
had been any tampering. Having finished my survey, I went back to the
study, and poured myself out a little brandy. Then to the tower
to watch.
VIII
AFTER THE ATTACK
It was now about three a.m., and, presently, the Eastern sky began to
pale with the coming of dawn. Gradually, the day came, and, by its
light, I scanned the gardens, earnestly; but nowhere could I see any
signs of the brutes. I leant over, and glanced down to the foot of the
wall, to see whether the body of the Thing I had shot the night before
was still there. It was gone. I supposed that others of the monsters had
removed it during the night.
Then, I went down on to the roof, and crossed over to the gap from
which the coping stone had fallen. Reaching it, I looked over. Yes,
there was the stone, as I had seen it last; but there was no appearance
of anything beneath it; nor could I see the creatures I had killed,
after its fall. Evidently, they also had been taken away. I turned, and
went down to my study. There, I sat down, wearily. I was thoroughly
tired. It was quite light now; though the sun's rays were not, as yet,
perceptibly hot. A clock chimed the hour of four.
I awoke, with a start, and looked 'round, hurriedly. The clock in the
corner, indicated that it was three o'clock. It was already afternoon. I
must have slept for nearly eleven hours.
With a jerky movement, I sat forward in the chair, and listened. The
house was perfectly silent. Slowly, I stood up, and yawned. I felt
desperately tired, still, and sat down again; wondering what it was that
had waked me.
It must have been the clock striking, I concluded, presently; and was
commencing to doze off, when a sudden noise brought me back, once more,
to life. It was the sound of a step, as of a person moving cautiously
down the corridor, toward my study. In an instant, I was on my feet, and
grasping my rifle. Noiselessly, I waited. Had the creatures broken in,
whilst I slept? Even as I questioned, the steps reached my door,
halted momentarily, and then continued down the passage. Silently, I
tiptoed to the doorway, and peeped out. Then, I experienced such a
feeling of relief, as must a reprieved criminal—it was my sister. She
was going toward the stairs.
I stepped into the hall, and was about to call to her, when it occurred
to me, that it was very queer she should have crept past my door, in
that stealthy manner. I was puzzled, and, for one brief moment, the
thought occupied my mind, that it was not she, but some fresh mystery of
the house. Then, as I caught a glimpse of her old petticoat, the thought
passed as quickly as it had come, and I half laughed. There could be no
mistaking that ancient garment. Yet, I wondered what she was doing; and,
remembering her condition of mind, on the previous day, I felt that it
might be best to follow, quietly—taking care not to alarm her—and see
what she was going to do. If she behaved rationally, well and good; if
not, I should have to take steps to restrain her. I could run no
unnecessary risks, under the danger that threatened us.
Quickly, I reached the head of the stairs, and paused a moment. Then,
I heard a sound that sent me leaping down, at a mad rate—it was the
rattle of bolts being unshot. That foolish sister of mine was actually
unbarring the back door.
Just as her hand was on the last bolt, I reached her. She had not seen
me, and, the first thing she knew, I had hold of her arm. She glanced up
quickly, like a frightened animal, and screamed aloud.
'Come, Mary!' I said, sternly, 'what's the meaning of this nonsense? Do
you mean to tell me you don't understand the danger, that you try to
throw our two lives away in this fashion!'
To this, she replied nothing; only trembled, violently, gasping and
sobbing, as though in the last extremity of fear.
Through some minutes, I reasoned with her; pointing out the need for
caution, and asking her to be brave. There was little to be afraid of
now, I explained—and, I tried to believe that I spoke the truth—but
she must be sensible, and not attempt to leave the house for a few days.
At last, I ceased, in despair. It was no use talking to her; she was,
obviously, not quite herself for the time being. Finally, I told her she
had better go to her room, if she could not behave rationally.
Still, she took not any notice. So, without more ado, I picked her up
in my arms, and carried her there. At first, she screamed, wildly; but
had relapsed into silent trembling, by the time I reached the stairs.
Arriving at her room, I laid her upon the bed. She lay there quietly
enough, neither speaking nor sobbing—just shaking in a very ague of
fear. I took a rug from a chair near by, and spread it over her. I could
do nothing more for her, and so, crossed to where Pepper lay in a big
basket. My sister had taken charge of him since his wound, to nurse him,
for it had proved more severe than I had thought, and I was pleased to
note that, in spite of her state of mind, she had looked after the old
dog, carefully. Stooping, I spoke to him, and, in reply, he licked my
hand, feebly. He was too ill to do more.
Then, going to the bed, I bent over my sister, and asked her how she
felt; but she only shook the more, and, much as it pained me, I had to
admit that my presence seemed to make her worse.
And so, I left her—locking the door, and pocketing the key. It seemed
to be the only course to take.
The rest of the day, I spent between the tower and my study. For food,
I brought up a loaf from the pantry, and on this, and some claret, I
lived for that day.
What a long, weary day it was. If only I could have gone out into the
gardens, as is my wont, I should have been content enough; but to be
cooped in this silent house, with no companion, save a mad woman and a
sick dog, was enough to prey upon the nerves of the hardiest. And out in
the tangled shrubberies that surrounded the house, lurked—for all I
could tell—those infernal Swine-creatures waiting their chance. Was
ever a man in such straits?
Once, in the afternoon, and again, later, I went to visit my sister.
The second time, I found her tending Pepper; but, at my approach, she
slid over, unobtrusively, to the far corner, with a gesture that
saddened me beyond belief. Poor girl! her fear cut me intolerably, and I
would not intrude on her, unnecessarily. She would be better, I trusted,
in a few days; meanwhile, I could do nothing; and I judged it still
needful—hard as it seemed—to keep her confined to her room. One thing
there was that I took for encouragement: she had eaten some of the food
I had taken to her, on my first visit.
And so the day passed.
As the evening drew on, the air grew chilly, and I began to make
preparations for passing a second night in the tower—taking up two
additional rifles, and a heavy ulster. The rifles I loaded, and laid
alongside my other; as I intended to make things warm for any of the
creatures who might show, during the night. I had plenty of ammunition,
and I thought to give the brutes such a lesson, as should show them the
uselessness of attempting to force an entrance.
After that, I made the 'round of the house again; paying particular
attention to the props that supported the study door. Then, feeling that
I had done all that lay in my power to insure our safety, I returned to
the tower; calling in on my sister and Pepper, for a final visit, on the
way. Pepper was asleep; but woke, as I entered, and wagged his tail, in
recognition. I thought he seemed slightly better. My sister was lying on
the bed; though whether asleep or not, I was unable to tell; and thus I
left them.
Reaching the tower, I made myself as comfortable as circumstances would
permit, and settled down to watch through the night. Gradually, darkness
fell, and soon the details of the gardens were merged into shadows.
During the first few hours, I sat, alert, listening for any sound that
might help to tell me if anything were stirring down below. It was far
too dark for my eyes to be of much use.
Slowly, the hours passed; without anything unusual happening. And the
moon rose, showing the gardens, apparently empty, and silent. And so,
through the night, without disturbance or sound.
Toward morning, I began to grow stiff and cold, with my long vigil;
also, I was getting very uneasy, concerning the continued quietness on
the part of the creatures. I mistrusted it, and would sooner, far, have
had them attack the house, openly. Then, at least, I should have known
my danger, and been able to meet it; but to wait like this, through a
whole night, picturing all kinds of unknown devilment, was to jeopardize
one's sanity. Once or twice, the thought came to me, that, perhaps, they
had gone; but, in my heart, I found it impossible to believe that it
was so.
IX
IN THE CELLARS
At last, what with being tired and cold, and the uneasiness that
possessed me, I resolved to take a walk through the house; first calling
in at the study, for a glass of brandy to warm me. This, I did, and,
while there, I examined the door, carefully; but found all as I had left
it the night before.
The day was just breaking, as I left the tower; though it was still too
dark in the house to be able to see without a light, and I took one of
the study candles with me on my 'round. By the time I had finished the
ground floor, the daylight was creeping in, wanly, through the barred
windows. My search had shown me nothing fresh. Everything appeared to be
in order, and I was on the point of extinguishing my candle, when the
thought suggested itself to me to have another glance 'round the
cellars. I had not, if I remember rightly, been into them since my hasty
search on the evening of the attack.
For, perhaps, the half of a minute, I hesitated. I would have been very
willing to forego the task—as, indeed, I am inclined to think any man
well might—for of all the great, awe-inspiring rooms in this house, the
cellars are the hugest and weirdest. Great, gloomy caverns of places,
unlit by any ray of daylight. Yet, I would not shirk the work. I felt
that to do so would smack of sheer cowardice. Besides, as I reassured
myself, the cellars were really the most unlikely places in which to
come across anything dangerous; considering that they can be entered,
only through a heavy oaken door, the key of which, I carry always on
my person.
It is in the smallest of these places that I keep my wine; a gloomy
hole close to the foot of the cellar stairs; and beyond which, I have
seldom proceeded. Indeed, save for the rummage 'round, already
mentioned, I doubt whether I had ever, before, been right through
the cellars.
As I unlocked the great door, at the top of the steps, I paused,
nervously, a moment, at the strange, desolate smell that assailed my
nostrils. Then, throwing the barrel of my weapon forward, I descended,
slowly, into the darkness of the underground regions.
Reaching the bottom of the stairs, I stood for a minute, and listened.
All was silent, save for a faint drip, drip of water, falling,
drop-by-drop, somewhere to my left. As I stood, I noticed how quietly
the candle burnt; never a flicker nor flare, so utterly windless was
the place.
Quietly, I moved from cellar to cellar. I had but a very dim memory of
their arrangement. The impressions left by my first search were blurred.
I had recollections of a succession of great cellars, and of one,
greater than the rest, the roof of which was upheld by pillars; beyond
that my mind was hazy, and predominated by a sense of cold and darkness
and shadows. Now, however, it was different; for, although nervous, I
was sufficiently collected to be able to look about me, and note the
structure and size of the different vaults I entered.
Of course, with the amount of light given by my candle, it was not
possible to examine each place, minutely, but I was enabled to notice,
as I went along, that the walls appeared to be built with wonderful
precision and finish; while here and there, an occasional, massive
pillar shot up to support the vaulted roof.
Thus, I came, at last, to the great cellar that I remembered. It is
reached, through a huge, arched entrance, on which I observed strange,
fantastic carvings, which threw queer shadows under the light of my
candle. As I stood, and examined these, thoughtfully, it occurred to me
how strange it was, that I should be so little acquainted with my own
house. Yet, this may be easily understood, when one realizes the size of
this ancient pile, and the fact that only my old sister and I live in
it, occupying a few of the rooms, such as our wants decide.
Holding the light high, I passed on into the cellar, and, keeping to
the right, paced slowly up, until I reached the further end. I walked
quietly, and looked cautiously about, as I went. But, so far as the
light showed, I saw nothing unusual.
At the top, I turned to the left, still keeping to the wall, and so
continued, until I had traversed the whole of the vast chamber. As I
moved along, I noticed that the floor was composed of solid rock, in
places covered with a damp mould, in others bare, or almost so, save for
a thin coating of light-grey dust.
I had halted at the doorway. Now, however, I turned, and made my way up
the center of the place; passing among the pillars, and glancing to
right and left, as I moved. About halfway up the cellar, I stubbed my
foot against something that gave out a metallic sound. Stooping quickly,
I held the candle, and saw that the object I had kicked, was a large,
metal ring. Bending lower, I cleared the dust from around it, and,
presently, discovered that it was attached to a ponderous trap door,
black with age.
Feeling excited, and wondering to where it could lead, I laid my gun on
the floor, and, sticking the candle in the trigger guard, took the ring
in both hands, and pulled. The trap creaked loudly—the sound echoing,
vaguely, through the huge place—and opened, heavily.
Propping the edge on my knee, I reached for the candle, and held it in
the opening, moving it to right and left; but could see nothing. I was
puzzled and surprised. There were no signs of steps, nor even the
appearance of there ever having been any. Nothing; save an empty
blackness. I might have been looking down into a bottomless, sideless
well. Then, even as I stared, full of perplexity, I seemed to hear, far
down, as though from untold depths, a faint whisper of sound. I bent my
head, quickly, more into the opening, and listened, intently. It may
have been fancy; but I could have sworn to hearing a soft titter, that
grew into a hideous, chuckling, faint and distant. Startled, I leapt
backward, letting the trap fall, with a hollow clang, that filled the
place with echoes. Even then, I seemed to hear that mocking, suggestive
laughter; but this, I knew, must be my imagination. The sound, I had
heard, was far too slight to penetrate through the cumbrous trap.
For a full minute, I stood there, quivering—glancing, nervously,
behind and before; but the great cellar was silent as a grave, and,
gradually, I shook off the frightened sensation. With a calmer mind, I
became again curious to know into what that trap opened; but could not,
then, summon sufficient courage to make a further investigation. One
thing I felt, however, was that the trap ought to be secured. This, I
accomplished by placing upon it several large pieces of 'dressed'
stone, which I had noticed in my tour along the East wall.
Then, after a final scrutiny of the rest of the place, I retraced my
way through the cellars, to the stairs, and so reached the daylight,
with an infinite feeling of relief, that the uncomfortable task was
accomplished.
X
THE TIME OF WAITING
The sun was now warm, and shining brightly, forming a wondrous contrast
to the dark and dismal cellars; and it was with comparatively light
feelings, that I made my way up to the tower, to survey the gardens.
There, I found everything quiet, and, after a few minutes, went down to
Mary's room.
Here, having knocked, and received a reply, I unlocked the door. My
sister was sitting, quietly, on the bed; as though waiting. She seemed
quite herself again, and made no attempt to move away, as I approached;
yet, I observed that she scanned my face, anxiously, as though in doubt,
and but half assured in her mind that there was nothing to fear from me.
To my questions, as to how she felt, she replied, sanely enough, that
she was hungry, and would like to go down to prepare breakfast, if I did
not mind. For a minute, I meditated whether it would be safe to let her
out. Finally, I told her she might go, on condition that she promised
not to attempt to leave the house, or meddle with any of the outer
doors. At my mention of the doors, a sudden look of fright crossed her
face; but she said nothing, save to give the required promise, and then
left the room, silently.
Crossing the floor, I approached Pepper. He had waked as I entered;
but, beyond a slight yelp of pleasure, and a soft rapping with his tail,
had kept quiet. Now, as I patted him, he made an attempt to stand up,
and succeeded, only to fall back on his side, with a little yowl
of pain.
I spoke to him, and bade him lie still. I was greatly delighted with
his improvement, and also with the natural kindness of my sister's
heart, in taking such good care of him, in spite of her condition of
mind. After a while, I left him, and went downstairs, to my study.
In a little time, Mary appeared, carrying a tray on which smoked a hot
breakfast. As she entered the room, I saw her gaze fasten on the props
that supported the study door; her lips tightened, and I thought she
paled, slightly; but that was all. Putting the tray down at my elbow,
she was leaving the room, quietly, when I called her back. She came, it
seemed, a little timidly, as though startled; and I noted that her hand
clutched at her apron, nervously.
'Come, Mary,' I said. 'Cheer up! Things look brighter. I've seen none
of the creatures since yesterday morning, early.'
She looked at me, in a curiously puzzled manner; as though not
comprehending. Then, intelligence swept into her eyes, and fear; but she
said nothing, beyond an unintelligible murmur of acquiescence. After
that, I kept silence; it was evident that any reference to the
Swine-things, was more than her shaken nerves could bear.
Breakfast over, I went up to the tower. Here, during the greater part
of the day, I maintained a strict watch over the gardens. Once or twice,
I went down to the basement, to see how my sister was getting along.
Each time, I found her quiet, and curiously submissive. Indeed, on the
last occasion, she even ventured to address me, on her own account, with
regard to some household matter that needed attention. Though this was
done with an almost extraordinary timidity, I hailed it with happiness,
as being the first word, voluntarily spoken, since the critical moment,
when I had caught her unbarring the back door, to go out among those
waiting brutes. I wondered whether she was aware of her attempt, and how
near a thing it had been; but refrained from questioning her, thinking
it best to let well alone.
That night, I slept in a bed; the first time for two nights. In the
morning, I rose early, and took a walk through the house. All was as it
should be, and I went up to the tower, to have a look at the gardens.
Here, again, I found perfect quietness.
At breakfast, when I met Mary, I was greatly pleased to see that she
had sufficiently regained command over herself, to be able to greet me
in a perfectly natural manner. She talked sensibly and quietly; only
keeping carefully from any mention of the past couple of days. In this,
I humored her, to the extent of not attempting to lead the conversation
in that direction.
Earlier in the morning, I had been to see Pepper. He was mending,
rapidly; and bade fair to be on his legs, in earnest, in another day or
two. Before leaving the breakfast table, I made some reference to his
improvement. In the short discussion that followed, I was surprised to
gather, from my sister's remarks, that she was still under the
impression that his wound had been given by the wildcat, of my
invention. It made me feel almost ashamed of myself for deceiving her.
Yet, the lie had been told to prevent her from being frightened. And
then, I had been sure that she must have known the truth, later, when
those brutes had attacked the house.
During the day, I kept on the alert; spending much of my time, as on
the previous day, in the tower; but not a sign could I see of the
Swine-creatures, nor hear any sound. Several times, the thought had come
to me, that the Things had, at last, left us; but, up to this time, I
had refused to entertain the idea, seriously; now, however, I began to
feel that there was reason for hope. It would soon be three days since I
had seen any of the Things; but still, I intended to use the utmost
caution. For all that I could tell, this protracted silence might be a
ruse to tempt me from the house—perhaps right into their arms. The
thought of such a contingency, was, alone, sufficient to make me
circumspect.
So it was, that the fourth, fifth and sixth days went by, quietly,
without my making any attempt to leave the house.
On the sixth day, I had the pleasure of seeing Pepper, once more, upon
his feet; and, though still very weak, he managed to keep me company
during the whole of that day.
XI
THE SEARCHING OF THE GARDENS
How slowly the time went; and never a thing to indicate that any of the
brutes still infested the gardens.
It was on the ninth day that, finally, I decided to run the risk, if
any there were, and sally out. With this purpose in view, I loaded one
of the shotguns, carefully—choosing it, as being more deadly than a
rifle, at close quarters; and then, after a final scrutiny of the
grounds, from the tower, I called Pepper to follow me, and made my way
down to the basement.
At the door, I must confess to hesitating a moment. The thought of what
might be awaiting me among the dark shrubberies, was by no means
calculated to encourage my resolution. It was but a second, though, and
then I had drawn the bolts, and was standing on the path outside
the door.
Pepper followed, stopping at the doorstep to sniff, suspiciously; and
carrying his nose up and down the jambs, as though following a scent.
Then, suddenly, he turned, sharply, and started to run here and there,
in semicircles and circles, all around the door; finally returning to
the threshold. Here, he began again to nose about.
Hitherto, I had stood, watching the dog; yet, all the time, with half
my gaze on the wild tangle of gardens, stretching 'round me. Now, I went
toward him, and, bending down, examined the surface of the door, where
he was smelling. I found that the wood was covered with a network of
scratches, crossing and recrossing one another, in inextricable
confusion. In addition to this, I noticed that the doorposts,
themselves, were gnawed in places. Beyond these, I could find nothing;
and so, standing up, I began to make the tour of the house wall.
Pepper, as soon as I walked away, left the door, and ran ahead, still
nosing and sniffing as he went along. At times, he stopped to
investigate. Here, it would be a bullet-hole in the pathway, or,
perhaps, a powder stained wad. Anon, it might be a piece of torn sod, or
a disturbed patch of weedy path; but, save for such trifles, he found
nothing. I observed him, critically, as he went along, and could
discover nothing of uneasiness, in his demeanor, to indicate that he
felt the nearness of any of the creatures. By this, I was assured that
the gardens were empty, at least for the present, of those hateful
Things. Pepper could not be easily deceived, and it was a relief to feel
that he would know, and give me timely warning, if there were
any danger.
Reaching the place where I had shot that first creature, I stopped, and
made a careful scrutiny; but could see nothing. From there, I went on to
where the great copingstone had fallen. It lay on its side, apparently
just as it had been left when I shot the brute that was moving it. A
couple of feet to the right of the nearer end, was a great dent in the
ground; showing where it had struck. The other end was still within the
indentation—half in, and half out. Going nearer, I looked at the stone,
more closely. What a huge piece of masonry it was! And that creature had
moved it, single-handed, in its attempt to reach what lay below.
I went 'round to the further end of the stone. Here, I found that it
was possible to see under it, for a distance of nearly a couple of feet.
Still, I could see nothing of the stricken creatures, and I felt much
surprised. I had, as I have before said, guessed that the remains had
been removed; yet, I could not conceive that it had been done so
thoroughly as not to leave some certain sign, beneath the stone,
indicative of their fate. I had seen several of the brutes struck down
beneath it, with such force that they must have been literally driven
into the earth; and now, not a vestige of them was to be seen—not even
a bloodstain.
I felt more puzzled, than ever, as I turned the matter over in my mind;
but could think of no plausible explanation; and so, finally, gave it
up, as one of the many things that were unexplainable.
From there, I transferred my attention to the study door. I could see,
now, even more plainly, the effects of the tremendous strain, to which
it had been subjected; and I marveled how, even with the support
afforded by the props, it had withstood the attacks, so well. There were
no marks of blows—indeed, none had been given—but the door had been
literally riven from its hinges, by the application of enormous, silent
force. One thing that I observed affected me profoundly—the head of one
of the props had been driven right through a panel. This was, of itself,
sufficient to show how huge an effort the creatures had made to break
down the door, and how nearly they had succeeded.
Leaving, I continued my tour 'round the house, finding little else of
interest; save at the back, where I came across the piece of piping I
had torn from the wall, lying among the long grass underneath the
broken window.
Then, I returned to the house, and, having re-bolted the back door,
went up to the tower. Here, I spent the afternoon, reading, and
occasionally glancing down into the gardens. I had determined, if the
night passed quietly, to go as far as the Pit, on the morrow. Perhaps, I
should be able to learn, then, something of what had happened. The day
slipped away, and the night came, and went much as the last few
nights had gone.
When I rose the morning had broken, fine and clear; and I determined to
put my project into action. During breakfast, I considered the matter,
carefully; after which, I went to the study for my shotgun. In addition,
I loaded, and slipped into my pocket, a small, but heavy, pistol. I
quite understood that, if there were any danger, it lay in the direction
of the Pit and I intended to be prepared.
Leaving the study, I went down to the back door, followed by Pepper.
Once outside, I took a quick survey of the surrounding gardens, and then
set off toward the Pit. On the way, I kept a sharp outlook, holding my
gun, handily. Pepper was running ahead, I noticed, without any apparent
hesitation. From this, I augured that there was no imminent danger to be
apprehended, and I stepped out more quickly in his wake. He had reached
the top of the Pit, now, and was nosing his way along the edge.
A minute later, I was beside him, looking down into the Pit. For a
moment, I could scarcely believe that it was the same place, so greatly
was it changed. The dark, wooded ravine of a fortnight ago, with a
foliage-hidden stream, running sluggishly, at the bottom, existed no
longer. Instead, my eyes showed me a ragged chasm, partly filled with a
gloomy lake of turbid water. All one side of the ravine was stripped of
underwood, showing the bare rock.
A little to my left, the side of the Pit appeared to have collapsed
altogether, forming a deep V-shaped cleft in the face of the rocky
cliff. This rift ran, from the upper edge of the ravine, nearly down to
the water, and penetrated into the Pit side, to a distance of some forty
feet. Its opening was, at least, six yards across; and, from this, it
seemed to taper into about two. But, what attracted my attention, more
than even the stupendous split itself, was a great hole, some distance
down the cleft, and right in the angle of the V. It was clearly defined,
and not unlike an arched doorway in shape; though, lying as it did in
the shadow, I could not see it very distinctly.
The opposite side of the Pit, still retained its verdure; but so torn
in places, and everywhere covered with dust and rubbish, that it was
hardly distinguishable as such.
My first impression, that there had been a land slip, was, I began to
see, not sufficient, of itself, to account for all the changes I
witnessed. And the water—? I turned, suddenly; for I had become aware
that, somewhere to my right, there was a noise of running water. I could
see nothing; but, now that my attention had been caught, I
distinguished, easily, that it came from somewhere at the East end
of the Pit.
Slowly, I made my way in that direction; the sound growing plainer as I
advanced, until in a little, I stood right above it. Even then, I could
not perceive the cause, until I knelt down, and thrust my head over the
cliff. Here, the noise came up to me, plainly; and I saw, below me, a
torrent of clear water, issuing from a small fissure in the Pit side,
and rushing down the rocks, into the lake beneath. A little further
along the cliff, I saw another, and, beyond that again, two smaller
ones. These, then, would help to account for the quantity of water in
the Pit; and, if the fall of rock and earth had blocked the outlet of
the stream at the bottom, there was little doubt but that it was
contributing a very large share.
Yet, I puzzled my head to account for the generally shaken appearance
of the place—these streamlets, and that huge cleft, further up the
ravine! It seemed to me, that more than the landslip was necessary to
account for these. I could imagine an earthquake, or a great
explosion, creating some such condition of affairs as existed; but, of
these, there had been neither. Then, I stood up, quickly, remembering
that crash, and the cloud of dust that had followed, directly, rushing
high into the air. But I shook my head, unbelievingly. No! It must have
been the noise of the falling rocks and earth, I had heard; of course,
the dust would fly, naturally. Still, in spite of my reasoning, I had an
uneasy feeling, that this theory did not satisfy my sense of the
probable; and yet, was any other, that I could suggest, likely to be
half so plausible? Pepper had been sitting on the grass, while I
conducted my examination. Now, as I turned up the North side of the
ravine, he rose and followed.
Slowly, and keeping a careful watch in all directions, I made the
circuit of the Pit; but found little else, that I had not already seen.
From the West end, I could see the four waterfalls, uninterruptedly.
They were some considerable distance up from the surface of the
lake—about fifty feet, I calculated.
For a little while longer, I loitered about; keeping my eyes and ears
open, but still, without seeing or hearing anything suspicious. The
whole place was wonderfully quiet; indeed, save for the continuous
murmur of the water, at the top end, no sound, of any description, broke
the silence.
All this while, Pepper had shown no signs of uneasiness. This seemed,
to me, to indicate that, for the time being, at least, there was none of
the Swine-creatures in the vicinity. So far as I could see, his
attention appeared to have been taken, chiefly, with scratching and
sniffing among the grass at the edge of the Pit. At times, he would
leave the edge, and run along toward the house, as though following
invisible tracks; but, in all cases, returning after a few minutes. I
had little doubt but that he was really tracing out the footsteps of the
Swine-things; and the very fact that each one seemed to lead him back to
the Pit, appeared to me, a proof that the brutes had all returned whence
they came.
At noon, I went home, for dinner. During the afternoon, I made a
partial search of the gardens, accompanied by Pepper; but, without
coming upon anything to indicate the presence of the creatures.
Once, as we made our way through the shrubberies, Pepper rushed in
among some bushes, with a fierce yelp. At that, I jumped back, in sudden
fright, and threw my gun forward, in readiness; only to laugh,
nervously, as Pepper reappeared, chasing an unfortunate cat. Toward
evening, I gave up the search, and returned to the house. All at once,
as we were passing a great clump of bushes, on our right, Pepper
disappeared, and I could hear him sniffing and growling among them, in a
suspicious manner. With my gun barrel, I parted the intervening
shrubbery, and looked inside. There was nothing to be seen, save that
many of the branches were bent down, and broken; as though some animal
had made a lair there, at no very previous date. It was probably, I
thought, one of the places occupied by some of the Swine-creatures, on
the night of the attack.
Next day, I resumed my search through the gardens; but without result.
By evening, I had been right through them, and now, I knew, beyond the
possibility of doubt, that there were no longer any of the Things
concealed about the place. Indeed, I have often thought since, that I
was correct in my earlier surmise, that they had left soon after
the attack.
XII
THE SUBTERRANEAN PIT
Another week came and went, during which I spent a great deal of my time
about the Pit mouth. I had come to the conclusion a few days earlier,
that the arched hole, in the angle of the great rift, was the place
through which the Swine-things had made their exit, from some unholy
place in the bowels of the world. How near the probable truth this went,
I was to learn later.
It may be easily understood, that I was tremendously curious, though in
a frightened way, to know to what infernal place that hole led; though,
so far, the idea had not struck me, seriously, of making an
investigation. I was far too much imbued with a sense of horror of the
Swine-creatures, to think of venturing, willingly, where there was any
chance of coming into contact with them.
Gradually, however, as time passed, this feeling grew insensibly less;
so that when, a few days later, the thought occurred to me that it might
be possible to clamber down and have a look into the hole, I was not so
exceedingly averse to it, as might have been imagined. Still, I do not
think, even then, that I really intended to try any such foolhardy
adventure. For all that I could tell, it might be certain death, to
enter that doleful looking opening. And yet, such is the pertinacity of
human curiosity, that, at last, my chief desire was but to discover what
lay beyond that gloomy entrance.
Slowly, as the days slid by, my fear of the Swine-things became an
emotion of the past—more an unpleasant, incredible memory, than
aught else.
Thus, a day came, when, throwing thoughts and fancies adrift, I
procured a rope from the house, and, having made it fast to a stout
tree, at the top of the rift, and some little distance back from the Pit
edge, let the other end down into the cleft, until it dangled right
across the mouth of the dark hole.
Then, cautiously, and with many misgivings as to whether it was not a
mad act that I was attempting, I climbed slowly down, using the rope as
a support, until I reached the hole. Here, still holding on to the rope,
I stood, and peered in. All was perfectly dark, and not a sound came to
me. Yet, a moment later, it seemed that I could hear something. I held
my breath, and listened; but all was silent as the grave, and I breathed
freely once more. At the same instant, I heard the sound again. It was
like a noise of labored breathing—deep and sharp-drawn. For a short
second, I stood, petrified; not able to move. But now the sounds had
ceased again, and I could hear nothing.
As I stood there, anxiously, my foot dislodged a pebble, which fell
inward, into the dark, with a hollow chink. At once, the noise was taken
up and repeated a score of times; each succeeding echo being fainter,
and seeming to travel away from me, as though into remote distance.
Then, as the silence fell again, I heard that stealthy breathing. For
each respiration I made, I could hear an answering breath. The sounds
appeared to be coming nearer; and then, I heard several others; but
fainter and more distant. Why I did not grip the rope, and spring up out
of danger, I cannot say. It was as though I had been paralyzed. I broke
out into a profuse sweat, and tried to moisten my lips with my tongue.
My throat had gone suddenly dry, and I coughed, huskily. It came back to
me, in a dozen, horrible, throaty tones, mockingly. I peered,
helplessly, into the gloom; but still nothing showed. I had a strange,
choky sensation, and again I coughed, dryly. Again the echo took it up,
rising and falling, grotesquely, and dying slowly into a
muffled silence.
Then, suddenly, a thought came to me, and I held my breath. The other
breathing stopped. I breathed again, and, once more, it re-commenced.
But now, I no longer feared. I knew that the strange sounds were not
made by any lurking Swine-creature; but were simply the echo of my own
respirations.
Yet, I had received such a fright, that I was glad to scramble up the
rift, and haul up the rope. I was far too shaken and nervous to think of
entering that dark hole then, and so returned to the house. I felt more
myself next morning; but even then, I could not summon up sufficient
courage to explore the place.
All this time, the water in the Pit had been creeping slowly up, and
now stood but a little below the opening. At the rate at which it was
rising, it would be level with the floor in less than another week; and
I realized that, unless I carried out my investigations soon, I should
probably never do so at all; as the water would rise and rise, until the
opening, itself, was submerged.
It may have been that this thought stirred me to act; but, whatever it
was, a couple of days later, saw me standing at the top of the cleft,
fully equipped for the task.
This time, I was resolved to conquer my shirking, and go right through
with the matter. With this intention, I had brought, in addition to the
rope, a bundle of candles, meaning to use them as a torch; also my
double-barreled shotgun. In my belt, I had a heavy horse-pistol, loaded
with buckshot.
As before, I fastened the rope to the tree. Then, having tied my gun
across my shoulders, with a piece of stout cord, I lowered myself over
the edge of the Pit. At this movement, Pepper, who had been eyeing my
actions, watchfully, rose to his feet, and ran to me, with a half bark,
half wail, it seemed to me, of warning. But I was resolved on my
enterprise, and bade him lie down. I would much have liked to take him
with me; but this was next to impossible, in the existing circumstances.
As my face dropped level with the Pit edge, he licked me, right across
the mouth; and then, seizing my sleeve between his teeth, began to pull
back, strongly. It was very evident that he did not want me to go. Yet,
having made up my mind, I had no intention of giving up the attempt;
and, with a sharp word to Pepper, to release me, I continued my descent,
leaving the poor old fellow at the top, barking and crying like a
forsaken pup.
Carefully, I lowered myself from projection to projection. I knew that
a slip might mean a wetting.
Reaching the entrance, I let go the rope, and untied the gun from my
shoulders. Then, with a last look at the sky—which I noticed was
clouding over, rapidly—I went forward a couple of paces, so as to be
shielded from the wind, and lit one of the candles. Holding it above my
head, and grasping my gun, firmly, I began to move on, slowly, throwing
my glances in all directions.
For the first minute, I could hear the melancholy sound of Pepper's
howling, coming down to me. Gradually, as I penetrated further into the
darkness, it grew fainter; until, in a little while, I could hear
nothing. The path tended downward somewhat, and to the left. Thence it
kept on, still running to the left, until I found that it was leading me
right in the direction of the house.
Very cautiously, I moved onward, stopping, every few steps, to listen.
I had gone, perhaps, a hundred yards, when, suddenly, it seemed to me
that I caught a faint sound, somewhere along the passage behind. With my
heart thudding heavily, I listened. The noise grew plainer, and appeared
to be approaching, rapidly. I could hear it distinctly, now. It was the
soft padding of running feet. In the first moments of fright, I stood,
irresolute; not knowing whether to go forward or backward. Then, with a
sudden realization of the best thing to do, I backed up to the rocky
wall on my right, and, holding the candle above my head, waited—gun in
hand—cursing my foolhardy curiosity, for bringing me into such
a strait.
I had not long to wait, but a few seconds, before two eyes reflected
back from the gloom, the rays of my candle. I raised my gun, using my
right hand only, and aimed quickly. Even as I did so, something leapt
out of the darkness, with a blustering bark of joy that woke the echoes,
like thunder. It was Pepper. How he had contrived to scramble down the
cleft, I could not conceive. As I brushed my hand, nervously, over his
coat, I noticed that he was dripping; and concluded that he must have
tried to follow me, and fallen into the water; from which he would not
find it very difficult to climb.
Having waited a minute, or so, to steady myself, I proceeded along the
way, Pepper following, quietly. I was curiously glad to have the old
fellow with me. He was company, and, somehow, with him at my heels, I
was less afraid. Also, I knew how quickly his keen ears would detect the
presence of any unwelcome creature, should there be such, amid the
darkness that wrapped us.
For some minutes we went slowly along; the path still leading straight
toward the house. Soon, I concluded, we should be standing right beneath
it, did the path but carry far enough. I led the way, cautiously, for
another fifty yards, or so. Then, I stopped, and held the light high;
and reason enough I had to be thankful that I did so; for there, not
three paces forward, the path vanished, and, in place, showed a hollow
blackness, that sent sudden fear through me.
Very cautiously, I crept forward, and peered down; but could see
nothing. Then, I crossed to the left of the passage, to see whether
there might be any continuation of the path. Here, right against the
wall, I found that a narrow track, some three feet wide, led onward.
Carefully, I stepped on to it; but had not gone far, before I regretted
venturing thereon. For, after a few paces, the already narrow way,
resolved itself into a mere ledge, with, on the one side the solid,
unyielding rock, towering up, in a great wall, to the unseen roof, and,
on the other, that yawning chasm. I could not help reflecting how
helpless I was, should I be attacked there, with no room to turn, and
where even the recoil of my weapon might be sufficient to drive me
headlong into the depths below.
To my great relief, a little further on, the track suddenly broadened
out again to its original breadth. Gradually, as I went onward, I
noticed that the path trended steadily to the right, and so, after some
minutes, I discovered that I was not going forward; but simply circling
the huge abyss. I had, evidently, come to the end of the great passage.
Five minutes later, I stood on the spot from which I had started;
having been completely 'round, what I guessed now to be a vast pit, the
mouth of which must be at least a hundred yards across.
For some little time, I stood there, lost in perplexing thought. 'What
does it all mean?' was the cry that had begun to reiterate through
my brain.
A sudden idea struck me, and I searched 'round for a piece of stone.
Presently, I found a bit of rock, about the size of a small loaf.
Sticking the candle upright in a crevice of the floor, I went back from
the edge, somewhat, and, taking a short run, launched the stone forward
into the chasm—my idea being to throw it far enough to keep it clear of
the sides. Then, I stooped forward, and listened; but, though I kept
perfectly quiet, for at least a full minute, no sound came back to me
from out of the dark.
I knew, then, that the depth of the hole must be immense; for the
stone, had it struck anything, was large enough to have set the echoes
of that weird place, whispering for an indefinite period. Even as it
was, the cavern had given back the sounds of my footfalls,
multitudinously. The place was awesome, and I would willingly have
retraced my steps, and left the mysteries of its solitudes unsolved;
only, to do so, meant admitting defeat.
Then, a thought came, to try to get a view of the abyss. It occurred to
me that, if I placed my candles 'round the edge of the hole, I should be
able to get, at least, some dim sight of the place.
I found, on counting, that I had brought fifteen candles, in the
bundle—my first intention having been, as I have already said, to make
a torch of the lot. These, I proceeded to place 'round the Pit mouth,
with an interval of about twenty yards between each.
Having completed the circle, I stood in the passage, and endeavored to
get an idea of how the place looked. But I discovered, immediately, that
they were totally insufficient for my purpose. They did little more than
make the gloom visible. One thing they did, however, and that was, they
confirmed my opinion of the size of the opening; and, although they
showed me nothing that I wanted to see; yet the contrast they afforded
to the heavy darkness, pleased me, curiously. It was as though fifteen
tiny stars shone through the subterranean night.
Then, even as I stood, Pepper gave a sudden howl, that was taken up by
the echoes, and repeated with ghastly variations, dying away, slowly.
With a quick movement, I held aloft the one candle that I had kept, and
glanced down at the dog; at the same moment, I seemed to hear a noise,
like a diabolical chuckle, rise up from the hitherto, silent depths of
the Pit. I started; then, I recollected that it was, probably, the echo
of Pepper's howl.
Pepper had moved away from me, up the passage, a few steps; he was
nosing along the rocky floor; and I thought I heard him lapping. I went
toward him, holding the candle low. As I moved, I heard my boot go sop,
sop; and the light was reflected from something that glistened, and
crept past my feet, swiftly toward the Pit. I bent lower, and looked;
then gave vent to an expression of surprise. From somewhere, higher up
the path, a stream of water was running quickly in the direction of the
great opening, and growing in size every second.
Again, Pepper gave vent to that deep-drawn howl, and, running at me,
seized my coat, and attempted to drag me up the path toward the
entrance. With a nervous gesture, I shook him off, and crossed quickly
over to the left-hand wall. If anything were coming, I was going to have
the wall at my back.
Then, as I stared anxiously up the pathway, my candle caught a gleam,
far up the passage. At the same moment, I became conscious of a
murmurous roar, that grew louder, and filled the whole cavern with
deafening sound. From the Pit, came a deep, hollow echo, like the sob of
a giant. Then, I had sprung to one side, on to the narrow ledge that ran
'round the abyss, and, turning, saw a great wall of foam sweep past me,
and leap tumultuously into the waiting chasm. A cloud of spray burst
over me, extinguishing my candle, and wetting me to the skin. I still
held my gun. The three nearest candles went out; but the further ones
gave only a short flicker. After the first rush, the flow of water eased
down to a steady stream, maybe a foot in depth; though I could not see
this, until I had procured one of the lighted candles, and, with it,
started to reconnoiter. Pepper had, fortunately, followed me as I leapt
for the ledge, and now, very much subdued, kept close behind.
A short examination showed me that the water reached right across the
passage, and was running at a tremendous rate. Already, even as I stood
there, it had deepened. I could make only a guess at what had happened.
Evidently, the water in the ravine had broken into the passage, by some
means. If that were the case, it would go on increasing in volume, until
I should find it impossible to leave the place. The thought was
frightening. It was evident that I must make my exit as hurriedly
as possible.
Taking my gun by the stock, I sounded the water. It was a little under
knee-deep. The noise it made, plunging down into the Pit, was deafening.
Then, with a call to Pepper, I stepped out into the flood, using the gun
as a staff. Instantly, the water boiled up over my knees, and nearly to
the tops of my thighs, with the speed at which it was racing. For one
short moment, I nearly lost my footing; but the thought of what lay
behind, stimulated me to a fierce endeavor, and, step-by-step, I
made headway.
Of Pepper, I knew nothing at first. I had all I could do to keep on my
legs; and was overjoyed, when he appeared beside me. He was wading
manfully along. He is a big dog, with longish thin legs, and I suppose
the water had less grasp on them, than upon mine. Anyway, he managed a
great deal better than I did; going ahead of me, like a guide, and
wittingly—or otherwise—helping, somewhat, to break the force of the
water. On we went, step by step, struggling and gasping, until somewhere
about a hundred yards had been safely traversed. Then, whether it was
because I was taking less care, or that there was a slippery place on
the rocky floor, I cannot say; but, suddenly, I slipped, and fell on my
face. Instantly, the water leapt over me in a cataract, hurling me down,
toward that bottomless hole, at a frightful speed. Frantically I
struggled; but it was impossible to get a footing. I was helpless,
gasping and drowning. All at once, something gripped my coat, and
brought me to a standstill. It was Pepper. Missing me, he must have
raced back, through the dark turmoil, to find me, and then caught, and
held me, until I was able to get to my feet.
I have a dim recollection of having seen, momentarily, the gleams of
several lights; but, of this, I have never been quite sure. If my
impressions are correct, I must have been washed down to the very brink
of that awful chasm, before Pepper managed to bring me to a standstill.
And the lights, of course, could only have been the distant flames of
the candles, I had left burning. But, as I have said, I am not by any
means sure. My eyes were full of water, and I had been badly shaken.
And there was I, without my helpful gun, without light, and sadly
confused, with the water deepening; depending solely upon my old friend
Pepper, to help me out of that hellish place.
I was facing the torrent. Naturally, it was the only way in which I
could have sustained my position a moment; for even old Pepper could not
have held me long against that terrific strain, without assistance,
however blind, from me.
Perhaps a minute passed, during which it was touch and go with me;
then, gradually I re-commenced my tortuous way up the passage. And so
began the grimmest fight with death, from which ever I hope to emerge
victorious. Slowly, furiously, almost hopelessly, I strove; and that
faithful Pepper led me, dragged me, upward and onward, until, at last,
ahead I saw a gleam of blessed light. It was the entrance. Only a few
yards further, and I reached the opening, with the water surging and
boiling hungrily around my loins.
And now I understood the cause of the catastrophe. It was raining
heavily, literally in torrents. The surface of the lake was level with
the bottom of the opening—nay! more than level, it was above it.
Evidently, the rain had swollen the lake, and caused this premature
rise; for, at the rate the ravine had been filling, it would not have
reached the entrance for a couple more days.
Luckily, the rope by which I had descended, was streaming into the
opening, upon the inrushing waters. Seizing the end, I knotted it
securely 'round Pepper's body, then, summoning up the last remnant of my
strength, I commenced to swarm up the side of the cliff. I reached the
Pit edge, in the last stage of exhaustion. Yet, I had to make one more
effort, and haul Pepper into safety.
Slowly and wearily, I hauled on the rope. Once or twice, it seemed that
I should have to give up; for Pepper is a weighty dog, and I was utterly
done. Yet, to let go, would have meant certain death to the old fellow,
and the thought spurred me to greater exertions. I have but a very hazy
remembrance of the end. I recall pulling, through moments that lagged
strangely. I have also some recollection of seeing Pepper's muzzle,
appearing over the Pit edge, after what seemed an indefinite period of
time. Then, all grew suddenly dark.
XIII
THE TRAP IN THE GREAT CELLAR
I suppose I must have swooned; for, the next thing I remember, I opened
my eyes, and all was dusk. I was lying on my back, with one leg doubled
under the other, and Pepper was licking my ears. I felt horribly stiff,
and my leg was numb, from the knee, downward. For a few minutes, I lay
thus, in a dazed condition; then, slowly, I struggled to a sitting
position, and looked about me.
It had stopped raining, but the trees still dripped, dismally. From the
Pit, came a continuous murmur of running water. I felt cold and shivery.
My clothes were sodden, and I ached all over. Very slowly, the life came
back into my numbed leg, and, after a little, I essayed to stand up.
This, I managed, at the second attempt; but I was very tottery, and
peculiarly weak. It seemed to me, that I was going to be ill, and I made
shift to stumble my way toward the house. My steps were erratic, and my
head confused. At each step that I took, sharp pains shot through
my limbs.
I had gone, perhaps, some thirty paces, when a cry from Pepper, drew
my attention, and I turned, stiffly, toward him. The old dog was trying
to follow me; but could come no further, owing to the rope, with which I
had hauled him up, being still tied 'round his body, the other end not
having been unfastened from the tree. For a moment, I fumbled with the
knots, weakly; but they were wet and hard, and I could do nothing. Then,
I remembered my knife, and, in a minute, the rope was cut.
How I reached the house, I scarcely know, and, of the days that
followed, I remember still less. Of one thing, I am certain, that, had
it not been for my sister's untiring love and nursing, I had not been
writing at this moment.
When I recovered my senses, it was to find that I had been in bed for
nearly two weeks. Yet another week passed, before I was strong enough to
totter out into the gardens. Even then, I was not able to walk so far as
the Pit. I would have liked to ask my sister, how high the water had
risen; but felt it was wiser not to mention the subject to her. Indeed,
since then, I have made a rule never to speak to her about the strange
things, that happen in this great, old house.
It was not until a couple of days later, that I managed to get across
to the Pit. There, I found that, in my few weeks' absence, there had
been wrought a wondrous change. Instead of the three-parts filled
ravine, I looked out upon a great lake, whose placid surface, reflected
the light, coldly. The water had risen to within half a dozen feet of
the Pit edge. Only in one part was the lake disturbed, and that was
above the place where, far down under the silent waters, yawned the
entrance to the vast, underground Pit. Here, there was a continuous
bubbling; and, occasionally, a curious sort of sobbing gurgle would find
its way up from the depth. Beyond these, there was nothing to tell of
the things that were hidden beneath. As I stood there, it came to me
how wonderfully things had worked out. The entrance to the place whence
the Swine-creatures had come, was sealed up, by a power that made me
feel there was nothing more to fear from them. And yet, with the
feeling, there was a sensation that, now, I should never learn anything
further, of the place from which those dreadful Things had come. It was
completely shut off and concealed from human curiosity forever.
Strange—in the knowledge of that underground hell-hole—how apposite
has been the naming of the Pit. One wonders how it originated, and when.
Naturally, one concludes that the shape and depth of the ravine would
suggest the name 'Pit.' Yet, is it not possible that it has, all along,
held a deeper significance, a hint—could one but have guessed—of the
greater, more stupendous Pit that lies far down in the earth, beneath
this old house? Under this house! Even now, the idea is strange and
terrible to me. For I have proved, beyond doubt, that the Pit yawns
right below the house, which is evidently supported, somewhere above the
center of it, upon a tremendous, arched roof, of solid rock.
It happened in this wise, that, having occasion to go down to the
cellars, the thought occurred to me to pay a visit to the great vault,
where the trap is situated; and see whether everything was as I had
left it.
Reaching the place, I walked slowly up the center, until I came to the
trap. There it was, with the stones piled upon it, just as I had seen it
last. I had a lantern with me, and the idea came to me, that now would
be a good time to investigate whatever lay under the great, oak slab.
Placing the lantern on the floor, I tumbled the stones off the trap,
and, grasping the ring, pulled the door open. As I did so, the cellar
became filled with the sound of a murmurous thunder, that rose from far
below. At the same time, a damp wind blew up into my face, bringing
with it a load of fine spray. Therewith, I dropped the trap, hurriedly,
with a half frightened feeling of wonder.
For a moment, I stood puzzled. I was not particularly afraid. The
haunting fear of the Swine-things had left me, long ago; but I was
certainly nervous and astonished. Then, a sudden thought possessed me,
and I raised the ponderous door, with a feeling of excitement. Leaving
it standing upon its end, I seized the lantern, and, kneeling down,
thrust it into the opening. As I did so, the moist wind and spray drove
in my eyes, making me unable to see, for a few moments. Even when my
eyes were clear, I could distinguish nothing below me, save darkness,
and whirling spray.
Seeing that it was useless to expect to make out anything, with the
light so high, I felt in my pockets for a piece of twine, with which to
lower it further into the opening. Even as I fumbled, the lantern
slipped from my fingers, and hurtled down into the darkness. For a brief
instant, I watched its fall, and saw the light shine on a tumult of
white foam, some eighty or a hundred feet below me. Then it was gone. My
sudden surmise was correct, and now, I knew the cause of the wet and
noise. The great cellar was connected with the Pit, by means of the
trap, which opened right above it; and the moisture, was the spray,
rising from the water, falling into the depths.
In an instant, I had an explanation of certain things, that had
hitherto puzzled me. Now, I could understand why the noises—on the
first night of the invasion—had seemed to rise directly from under my
feet. And the chuckle that had sounded when first I opened the trap!
Evidently, some of the Swine-things must have been right beneath me.
Another thought struck me. Were the creatures all drowned? Would they
drown? I remembered how unable I had been to find any traces to show
that my shooting had been really fatal. Had they life, as we understand
life, or were they ghouls? These thoughts flashed through my brain, as I
stood in the dark, searching my pockets for matches. I had the box in my
hand now, and, striking a light, I stepped to the trap door, and closed
it. Then, I piled the stones back upon it; after which, I made my way
out from the cellars.
And so, I suppose the water goes on, thundering down into that
bottomless hell-pit. Sometimes, I have an inexplicable desire to go down
to the great cellar, open the trap, and gaze into the impenetrable,
spray-damp darkness. At times, the desire becomes almost overpowering,
in its intensity. It is not mere curiosity, that prompts me; but more as
though some unexplained influence were at work. Still, I never go; and
intend to fight down the strange longing, and crush it; even as I would
the unholy thought of self-destruction.
This idea of some intangible force being exerted, may seem reasonless.
Yet, my instinct warns me, that it is not so. In these things, reason
seems to me less to be trusted than instinct.
One thought there is, in closing, that impresses itself upon me, with
ever growing insistence. It is, that I live in a very strange house; a
very awful house. And I have begun to wonder whether I am doing wisely
in staying here. Yet, if I left, where could I go, and still obtain the
solitude, and the sense of her presence,[1] that alone make my old
life bearable?
XIV
THE SEA OF SLEEP
For a considerable period after the last incident which I have narrated
in my diary, I had serious thoughts of leaving this house, and might
have done so; but for the great and wonderful thing, of which I am
about to write.
How well I was advised, in my heart, when I stayed on here—spite of
those visions and sights of unknown and unexplainable things; for, had I
not stayed, then I had not seen again the face of her I loved. Yes,
though few know it, none now save my sister Mary, I have loved and,
ah! me—lost.
I would write down the story of those sweet, old days; but it would be
like the tearing of old wounds; yet, after that which has happened, what
need have I to care? For she has come to me out of the unknown.
Strangely, she warned me; warned me passionately against this house;
begged me to leave it; but admitted, when I questioned her, that she
could not have come to me, had I been elsewhere. Yet, in spite of this,
still she warned me, earnestly; telling me that it was a place, long
ago given over to evil, and under the power of grim laws, of which none
here have knowledge. And I—I just asked her, again, whether she would
come to me elsewhere, and she could only stand, silent.
It was thus, that I came to the place of the Sea of Sleep—so she
termed it, in her dear speech with me. I had stayed up, in my study,
reading; and must have dozed over the book. Suddenly, I awoke and sat
upright, with a start. For a moment, I looked 'round, with a puzzled
sense of something unusual. There was a misty look about the room,
giving a curious softness to each table and chair and furnishing.
Gradually, the mistiness increased; growing, as it were, out of
nothing. Then, slowly, a soft, white light began to glow in the room.
The flames of the candles shone through it, palely. I looked from side
to side, and found that I could still see each piece of furniture; but
in a strangely unreal way, more as though the ghost of each table and
chair had taken the place of the solid article.
Gradually, as I looked, I saw them fade and fade; until, slowly, they
resolved into nothingness. Now, I looked again at the candles. They
shone wanly, and, even as I watched, grew more unreal, and so vanished.
The room was filled, now, with a soft, yet luminous, white twilight,
like a gentle mist of light. Beyond this, I could see nothing. Even the
walls had vanished.
Presently, I became conscious that a faint, continuous sound, pulsed
through the silence that wrapped me. I listened intently. It grew more
distinct, until it appeared to me that I harked to the breathings of
some great sea. I cannot tell how long a space passed thus; but, after a
while, it seemed that I could see through the mistiness; and, slowly, I
became aware that I was standing upon the shore of an immense and silent
sea. This shore was smooth and long, vanishing to right and left of me,
in extreme distances. In front, swam a still immensity of sleeping
ocean. At times, it seemed to me that I caught a faint glimmer of light,
under its surface; but of this, I could not be sure. Behind me, rose up,
to an extraordinary height, gaunt, black cliffs.
Overhead, the sky was of a uniform cold grey color—the whole place
being lit by a stupendous globe of pale fire, that swam a little above
the far horizon, and shed a foamlike light above the quiet waters.
Beyond the gentle murmur of the sea, an intense stillness prevailed.
For a long while, I stayed there, looking out across its strangeness.
Then, as I stared, it seemed that a bubble of white foam floated up out
of the depths, and then, even now I know not how it was, I was looking
upon, nay, looking into the face of Her—aye! into her face—into her
soul; and she looked back at me, with such a commingling of joy and
sadness, that I ran toward her, blindly; crying strangely to her, in a
very agony of remembrance, of terror, and of hope, to come to me. Yet,
spite of my crying, she stayed out there upon the sea, and only shook
her head, sorrowfully; but, in her eyes was the old earth-light of
tenderness, that I had come to know, before all things, ere we
were parted.
"At her perverseness, I grew desperate, and essayed to wade out to her;
yet, though I would, I could not. Something, some invisible barrier,
held me back, and I was fain to stay where I was, and cry out to her in
the fullness of my soul, 'O, my Darling, my Darling—' but could say no
more, for very intensity. And, at that, she came over, swiftly, and
touched me, and it was as though heaven had opened. Yet, when I reached
out my hands to her, she put me from her with tenderly stern hands, and
I was abashed—"
THE FRAGMENTS[2]
(The legible portions of the mutilated leaves.)
... through tears ... noise of eternity in my ears, we parted ... She
whom I love. O, my God ...!
I was a great time dazed, and then I was alone in the blackness of the
night. I knew that I journeyed back, once more, to the known universe.
Presently, I emerged from that enormous darkness. I had come among the
stars ... vast time ... the sun, far and remote.
I entered into the gulf that separates our system from the outer suns.
As I sped across the dividing dark, I watched, steadily, the
ever-growing brightness and size of our sun. Once, I glanced back to the
stars, and saw them shift, as it were, in my wake, against the mighty
background of night, so vast was the speed of my passing spirit.
I drew nigher to our system, and now I could see the shine of Jupiter.
Later, I distinguished the cold, blue gleam of the earthlight.... I had
a moment of bewilderment. All about the sun there seemed to be bright,
objects, moving in rapid orbits. Inward, nigh to the savage glory of the
sun, there circled two darting points of light, and, further off, there
flew a blue, shining speck, that I knew to be the earth. It circled the
sun in a space that seemed to be no more than an earth-minute.
... nearer with great speed. I saw the radiances of Jupiter and
Saturn, spinning, with incredible swiftness, in huge orbits. And ever I
drew more nigh, and looked out upon this strange sight—the visible
circling of the planets about the mother sun. It was as though time had
been annihilated for me; so that a year was no more to my unfleshed
spirit, than is a moment to an earth-bound soul.
The speed of the planets, appeared to increase; and, presently, I was
watching the sun, all ringed about with hairlike circles of different
colored fire—the paths of the planets, hurtling at mighty speed, about
the central flame....
"... the sun grew vast, as though it leapt to meet me.... And now I was
within the circling of the outer planets, and flitting swiftly, toward
the place where the earth, glimmering through the blue splendor of its
orbit, as though a fiery mist, circled the sun at a monstrous
speed...." [3]
XV
THE NOISE IN THE NIGHT
And now, I come to the strangest of all the strange happenings that
have befallen me in this house of mysteries. It occurred quite
lately—within the month; and I have little doubt but that what I saw
was in reality the end of all things. However, to my story.
I do not know how it is; but, up to the present, I have never been able
to write these things down, directly they happened. It is as though I
have to wait a time, recovering my just balance, and digesting—as it
were—the things I have heard or seen. No doubt, this is as it should
be; for, by waiting, I see the incidents more truly, and write of them
in a calmer and more judicial frame of mind. This by the way.
It is now the end of November. My story relates to what happened in the
first week of the month.
It was night, about eleven o'clock. Pepper and I kept one another
company in the study—that great, old room of mine, where I read and
work. I was reading, curiously enough, the Bible. I have begun, in these
later days, to take a growing interest in that great and ancient book.
Suddenly, a distinct tremor shook the house, and there came a faint and
distant, whirring buzz, that grew rapidly into a far, muffled screaming.
It reminded me, in a queer, gigantic way, of the noise that a clock
makes, when the catch is released, and it is allowed to run down. The
sound appeared to come from some remote height—somewhere up in the
night. There was no repetition of the shock. I looked across at Pepper.
He was sleeping peacefully.
Gradually, the whirring noise decreased, and there came a long silence.
All at once, a glow lit up the end window, which protrudes far out from
the side of the house, so that, from it, one may look both East and
West. I felt puzzled, and, after a moment's hesitation, walked across
the room, and pulled aside the blind. As I did so, I saw the Sun rise,
from behind the horizon. It rose with a steady, perceptible movement. I
could see it travel upward. In a minute, it seemed, it had reached the
tops of the trees, through which I had watched it. Up, up—It was broad
daylight now. Behind me, I was conscious of a sharp, mosquitolike
buzzing. I glanced 'round, and knew that it came from the clock. Even as
I looked, it marked off an hour. The minute hand was moving 'round the
dial, faster than an ordinary second-hand. The hour hand moved quickly
from space to space. I had a numb sense of astonishment. A moment later,
so it seemed, the two candles went out, almost together. I turned
swiftly back to the window; for I had seen the shadow of the
window-frames, traveling along the floor toward me, as though a great
lamp had been carried up past the window.
I saw now, that the sun had risen high into the heavens, and was still
visibly moving. It passed above the house, with an extraordinary sailing
kind of motion. As the window came into shadow, I saw another
extraordinary thing. The fine-weather clouds were not passing, easily,
across the sky—they were scampering, as though a hundred-mile-an-hour
wind blew. As they passed, they changed their shapes a thousand times a
minute, as though writhing with a strange life; and so were gone. And,
presently, others came, and whisked away likewise.
To the West, I saw the sun, drop with an incredible, smooth, swift
motion. Eastward, the shadows of every seen thing crept toward the
coming greyness. And the movement of the shadows was visible to me—a
stealthy, writhing creep of the shadows of the wind-stirred trees. It
was a strange sight.
Quickly, the room began to darken. The sun slid down to the horizon,
and seemed, as it were, to disappear from my sight, almost with a jerk.
Through the greyness of the swift evening, I saw the silver crescent of
the moon, falling out of the Southern sky, toward the West. The evening
seemed to merge into an almost instant night. Above me, the many
constellations passed in a strange, 'noiseless' circling, Westward. The
moon fell through that last thousand fathoms of the night-gulf, and
there was only the starlight....
About this time, the buzzing in the corner ceased; telling me that the
clock had run down. A few minutes passed, and I saw the Eastward sky
lighten. A grey, sullen morning spread through all the darkness, and hid
the march of the stars. Overhead, there moved, with a heavy, everlasting
rolling, a vast, seamless sky of grey clouds—a cloud-sky that would
have seemed motionless, through all the length of an ordinary earth-day.
The sun was hidden from me; but, from moment to moment, the world would
brighten and darken, brighten and darken, beneath waves of subtle light
and shadow....
The light shifted ever Westward, and the night fell upon the earth. A
vast rain seemed to come with it, and a wind of a most extraordinary
loudness—as though the howling of a nightlong gale, were packed into
the space of no more than a minute.
This noise passed, almost immediately, and the clouds broke; so that,
once more, I could see the sky. The stars were flying Westward, with
astounding speed. It came to me now, for the first time, that, though
the noise of the wind had passed, yet a constant 'blurred' sound was in
my ears. Now that I noticed it, I was aware that it had been with me all
the time. It was the world-noise.
And then, even as I grasped at so much comprehension, there came the
Eastward light. No more than a few heartbeats, and the sun rose,
swiftly. Through the trees, I saw it, and then it was above the trees.
Up—up, it soared and all the world was light. It passed, with a swift,
steady swing to its highest altitude, and fell thence, Westward. I saw
the day roll visibly over my head. A few light clouds flittered
Northward, and vanished. The sun went down with one swift, clear plunge,
and there was about me, for a few seconds, the darker growing grey of
the gloaming.
Southward and Westward, the moon was sinking rapidly. The night had
come, already. A minute it seemed, and the moon fell those remaining
fathoms of dark sky. Another minute, or so, and the Eastward sky glowed
with the coming dawn. The sun leapt upon me with a frightening
abruptness, and soared ever more swiftly toward the zenith. Then,
suddenly, a fresh thing came to my sight. A black thundercloud rushed up
out of the South, and seemed to leap all the arc of the sky, in a single
instant. As it came, I saw that its advancing edge flapped, like a
monstrous black cloth in the heaven, twirling and undulating rapidly,
with a horrid suggestiveness. In an instant, all the air was full of
rain, and a hundred lightning flashes seemed to flood downward, as it
were in one great shower. In the same second of time, the world-noise
was drowned in the roar of the wind, and then my ears ached, under the
stunning impact of the thunder.
And, in the midst of this storm, the night came; and then, within the
space of another minute, the storm had passed, and there was only the
constant 'blur' of the world-noise on my hearing. Overhead, the stars
were sliding quickly Westward; and something, mayhaps the particular
speed to which they had attained, brought home to me, for the first
time, a keen realization of the knowledge that it was the world that
revolved. I seemed to see, suddenly, the world—a vast, dark
mass—revolving visibly against the stars.
The dawn and the sun seemed to come together, so greatly had the speed
of the world-revolution increased. The sun drove up, in one long, steady
curve; passed its highest point, and swept down into the Western sky,
and disappeared. I was scarcely conscious of evening, so brief was it.
Then I was watching the flying constellations, and the Westward
hastening moon. In but a space of seconds, so it seemed, it was sliding
swiftly downward through the night-blue, and then was gone. And, almost
directly, came the morning.
And now there seemed to come a strange acceleration. The sun made one
clean, clear sweep through the sky, and disappeared behind the Westward
horizon, and the night came and went with a like haste.
As the succeeding day, opened and closed upon the world, I was aware of
a sweat of snow, suddenly upon the earth. The night came, and, almost
immediately, the day. In the brief leap of the sun, I saw that the snow
had vanished; and then, once more, it was night.
Thus matters were; and, even after the many incredible things that I
have seen, I experienced all the time a most profound awe. To see the
sun rise and set, within a space of time to be measured by seconds; to
watch (after a little) the moon leap—a pale, and ever growing orb—up
into the night sky, and glide, with a strange swiftness, through the
vast arc of blue; and, presently, to see the sun follow, springing out
of the Eastern sky, as though in chase; and then again the night, with
the swift and ghostly passing of starry constellations, was all too much
to view believingly. Yet, so it was—the day slipping from dawn to dusk,
and the night sliding swiftly into day, ever rapidly and more rapidly.
The last three passages of the sun had shown me a snow-covered earth,
which, at night, had seemed, for a few seconds, incredibly weird under
the fast-shifting light of the soaring and falling moon. Now, however,
for a little space, the sky was hidden, by a sea of swaying,
leaden-white clouds, which lightened and blackened, alternately, with
the passage of day and night.
The clouds rippled and vanished, and there was once more before me, the
vision of the swiftly leaping sun, and nights that came and went
like shadows.
Faster and faster, spun the world. And now each day and night was
completed within the space of but a few seconds; and still the speed
increased.
It was a little later, that I noticed that the sun had begun to have
the suspicion of a trail of fire behind it. This was due, evidently, to
the speed at which it, apparently, traversed the heavens. And, as the
days sped, each one quicker than the last, the sun began to assume the
appearance of a vast, flaming comet[4] flaring across the sky at short,
periodic intervals. At night, the moon presented, with much greater
truth, a cometlike aspect; a pale, and singularly clear, fast traveling
shape of fire, trailing streaks of cold flame. The stars showed now,
merely as fine hairs of fire against the dark.
Once, I turned from the window, and glanced at Pepper. In the flash of
a day, I saw that he slept, quietly, and I moved once more to
my watching.
The sun was now bursting up from the Eastern horizon, like a stupendous
rocket, seeming to occupy no more than a second or two in hurling from
East to West. I could no longer perceive the passage of clouds across
the sky, which seemed to have darkened somewhat. The brief nights,
appeared to have lost the proper darkness of night; so that the hairlike
fire of the flying stars, showed but dimly. As the speed increased, the
sun began to sway very slowly in the sky, from South to North, and then,
slowly again, from North to South.
So, amid a strange confusion of mind, the hours passed.
All this while had Pepper slept. Presently, feeling lonely and
distraught, I called to him, softly; but he took no notice. Again, I
called, raising my voice slightly; still he moved not. I walked over to
where he lay, and touched him with my foot, to rouse him. At the action,
gentle though it was, he fell to pieces. That is what happened; he
literally and actually crumbled into a mouldering heap of bones
and dust.
For the space of, perhaps a minute, I stared down at the shapeless
heap, that had once been Pepper. I stood, feeling stunned. What can have
happened? I asked myself; not at once grasping the grim significance of
that little hill of ash. Then, as I stirred the heap with my foot, it
occurred to me that this could only happen in a great space of time.
Years—and years.
Outside, the weaving, fluttering light held the world. Inside, I stood,
trying to understand what it meant—what that little pile of dust and
dry bones, on the carpet, meant. But I could not think, coherently.
I glanced away, 'round the room, and now, for the first time, noticed
how dusty and old the place looked. Dust and dirt everywhere; piled in
little heaps in the corners, and spread about upon the furniture. The
very carpet, itself, was invisible beneath a coating of the same, all
pervading, material. As I walked, little clouds of the stuff rose up
from under my footsteps, and assailed my nostrils, with a dry, bitter
odor that made me wheeze, huskily.
Suddenly, as my glance fell again upon Pepper's remains, I stood still,
and gave voice to my confusion—questioning, aloud, whether the years
were, indeed, passing; whether this, which I had taken to be a form of
vision, was, in truth, a reality. I paused. A new thought had struck me.
Quickly, but with steps which, for the first time, I noticed, tottered,
I went across the room to the great pier-glass, and looked in. It was
too covered with grime, to give back any reflection, and, with trembling
hands, I began to rub off the dirt. Presently, I could see myself. The
thought that had come to me, was confirmed. Instead of the great, hale
man, who scarcely looked fifty, I was looking at a bent, decrepit man,
whose shoulders stooped, and whose face was wrinkled with the years of a
century. The hair—which a few short hours ago had been nearly coal
black—was now silvery white. Only the eyes were bright. Gradually, I
traced, in that ancient man, a faint resemblance to my self of
other days.
I turned away, and tottered to the window. I knew, now, that I was old,
and the knowledge seemed to confirm my trembling walk. For a little
space, I stared moodily out into the blurred vista of changeful
landscape. Even in that short time, a year passed, and, with a petulant
gesture, I left the window. As I did so, I noticed that my hand shook
with the palsy of old age; and a short sob choked its way through
my lips.
For a little while, I paced, tremulously, between the window and the
table; my gaze wandering hither and thither, uneasily. How dilapidated
the room was. Everywhere lay the thick dust—thick, sleepy, and black.
The fender was a shape of rust. The chains that held the brass
clock-weights, had rusted through long ago, and now the weights lay on
the floor beneath; themselves two cones of verdigris.
As I glanced about, it seemed to me that I could see the very furniture
of the room rotting and decaying before my eyes. Nor was this fancy, on
my part; for, all at once, the bookshelf, along the sidewall, collapsed,
with a cracking and rending of rotten wood, precipitating its contents
upon the floor, and filling the room with a smother of dusty atoms.
How tired I felt. As I walked, it seemed that I could hear my dry
joints, creak and crack at every step. I wondered about my sister. Was
she dead, as well as Pepper? All had happened so quickly and suddenly.
This must be, indeed, the beginning of the end of all things! It
occurred to me, to go to look for her; but I felt too weary. And then,
she had been so queer about these happenings, of late. Of late! I
repeated the words, and laughed, feebly—mirthlessly, as the realization
was borne in upon me that I spoke of a time, half a century gone. Half a
century! It might have been twice as long!
I moved slowly to the window, and looked out once more across the
world. I can best describe the passage of day and night, at this period,
as a sort of gigantic, ponderous flicker. Moment by moment, the
acceleration of time continued; so that, at nights now, I saw the moon,
only as a swaying trail of palish fire, that varied from a mere line of
light to a nebulous path, and then dwindled again, disappearing
periodically.
The flicker of the days and nights quickened. The days had grown
perceptibly darker, and a queer quality of dusk lay, as it were, in the
atmosphere. The nights were so much lighter, that the stars were
scarcely to be seen, saving here and there an occasional hairlike line
of fire, that seemed to sway a little, with the moon.
Quicker, and ever quicker, ran the flicker of day and night; and,
suddenly it seemed, I was aware that the flicker had died out, and,
instead, there reigned a comparatively steady light, which was shed upon
all the world, from an eternal river of flame that swung up and down,
North and South, in stupendous, mighty swings.
The sky was now grown very much darker, and there was in the blue of it
a heavy gloom, as though a vast blackness peered through it upon the
earth. Yet, there was in it, also, a strange and awful clearness, and
emptiness. Periodically, I had glimpses of a ghostly track of fire that
swayed thin and darkly toward the sun-stream; vanished and reappeared.
It was the scarcely visible moon-stream.
Looking out at the landscape, I was conscious again, of a blurring sort
of 'flitter,' that came either from the light of the ponderous-swinging
sun-stream, or was the result of the incredibly rapid changes of the
earth's surface. And every few moments, so it seemed, the snow would lie
suddenly upon the world, and vanish as abruptly, as though an invisible
giant 'flitted' a white sheet off and on the earth.
Time fled, and the weariness that was mine, grew insupportable. I
turned from the window, and walked once across the room, the heavy dust
deadening the sound of my footsteps. Each step that I took, seemed a
greater effort than the one before. An intolerable ache, knew me in
every joint and limb, as I trod my way, with a weary uncertainty.
By the opposite wall, I came to a weak pause, and wondered, dimly, what
was my intent. I looked to my left, and saw my old chair. The thought of
sitting in it brought a faint sense of comfort to my bewildered
wretchedness. Yet, because I was so weary and old and tired, I would
scarcely brace my mind to do anything but stand, and wish myself past
those few yards. I rocked, as I stood. The floor, even, seemed a place
for rest; but the dust lay so thick and sleepy and black. I turned, with
a great effort of will, and made toward my chair. I reached it, with a
groan of thankfulness. I sat down.
Everything about me appeared to be growing dim. It was all so strange
and unthought of. Last night, I was a comparatively strong, though
elderly man; and now, only a few hours later—! I looked at the little
dust-heap that had once been Pepper. Hours! and I laughed, a feeble,
bitter laugh; a shrill, cackling laugh, that shocked my dimming senses.
For a while, I must have dozed. Then I opened my eyes, with a start.
Somewhere across the room, there had been a muffled noise of something
falling. I looked, and saw, vaguely, a cloud of dust hovering above a
pile of débris. Nearer the door, something else tumbled, with a crash.
It was one of the cupboards; but I was tired, and took little notice. I
closed my eyes, and sat there in a state of drowsy, semi-unconsciousness.
Once or twice—as though coming through thick mists—I heard noises,
faintly. Then I must have slept.
XVI
THE AWAKENING
I awoke, with a start. For a moment, I wondered where I was. Then
memory came to me....
The room was still lit with that strange light—half-sun, half-moon,
light. I felt refreshed, and the tired, weary ache had left me. I went
slowly across to the window, and looked out. Overhead, the river of
flame drove up and down, North and South, in a dancing semi-circle of
fire. As a mighty sleigh in the loom of time it seemed—in a sudden
fancy of mine—to be beating home the picks of the years. For, so vastly
had the passage of time been accelerated, that there was no longer any
sense of the sun passing from East to West. The only apparent movement
was the North and South beat of the sun-stream, that had become so swift
now, as to be better described as a quiver.
As I peered out, there came to me a sudden, inconsequent memory of that
last journey among the Outer worlds. I remembered the sudden vision that
had come to me, as I neared the Solar System, of the fast whirling
planets about the sun—as though the governing quality of time had been
held in abeyance, and the Machine of a Universe allowed to run down an
eternity, in a few moments or hours. The memory passed, along with a,
but partially comprehended, suggestion that I had been permitted a
glimpse into further time spaces. I stared out again, seemingly, at the
quake of the sun-stream. The speed seemed to increase, even as I looked.
Several lifetimes came and went, as I watched.
Suddenly, it struck me, with a sort of grotesque seriousness, that I
was still alive. I thought of Pepper, and wondered how it was that I had
not followed his fate. He had reached the time of his dying, and had
passed, probably through sheer length of years. And here was I, alive,
hundreds of thousands of centuries after my rightful period of years.
For, a time, I mused, absently. 'Yesterday—' I stopped, suddenly.
Yesterday! There was no yesterday. The yesterday of which I spoke had
been swallowed up in the abyss of years, ages gone. I grew dazed with
much thinking.
Presently, I turned from the window, and glanced 'round the room. It
seemed different—strangely, utterly different. Then, I knew what it was
that made it appear so strange. It was bare: there was not a piece of
furniture in the room; not even a solitary fitting of any sort.
Gradually, my amazement went, as I remembered, that this was but the
inevitable end of that process of decay, which I had witnessed
commencing, before my sleep. Thousands of years! Millions of years!
Over the floor was spread a deep layer of dust, that reached half way
up to the window-seat. It had grown immeasurably, whilst I slept; and
represented the dust of untold ages. Undoubtedly, atoms of the old,
decayed furniture helped to swell its bulk; and, somewhere among it all,
mouldered the long-ago-dead Pepper.
All at once, it occurred to me, that I had no recollection of wading
knee-deep through all that dust, after I awoke. True, an incredible age
of years had passed, since I approached the window; but that was
evidently as nothing, compared with the countless spaces of time that, I
conceived, had vanished whilst I was sleeping. I remembered now, that I
had fallen asleep, sitting in my old chair. Had it gone ...? I glanced
toward where it had stood. Of course, there was no chair to be seen. I
could not satisfy myself, whether it had disappeared, after my waking,
or before. If it had mouldered under me, surely, I should have been
waked by the collapse. Then I remembered that the thick dust, which
covered the floor, would have been sufficient to soften my fall; so that
it was quite possible, I had slept upon the dust for a million years
or more.
As these thoughts wandered through my brain, I glanced again, casually,
to where the chair had stood. Then, for the first time, I noticed that
there were no marks, in the dust, of my footprints, between it and the
window. But then, ages of years had passed, since I had awaked—tens of
thousands of years!
My look rested thoughtfully, again upon the place where once had stood
my chair. Suddenly, I passed from abstraction to intentness; for there,
in its standing place, I made out a long undulation, rounded off with
the heavy dust. Yet it was not so much hidden, but that I could tell
what had caused it. I knew—and shivered at the knowledge—that it was a
human body, ages-dead, lying there, beneath the place where I had slept.
It was lying on its right side, its back turned toward me. I could make
out and trace each curve and outline, softened, and moulded, as it were,
in the black dust. In a vague sort of way, I tried to account for its
presence there. Slowly, I began to grow bewildered, as the thought came
to me that it lay just about where I must have fallen when the chair
collapsed.
Gradually, an idea began to form itself within my brain; a thought that
shook my spirit. It seemed hideous and insupportable; yet it grew upon
me, steadily, until it became a conviction. The body under that coating,
that shroud of dust, was neither more nor less than my own dead shell. I
did not attempt to prove it. I knew it now, and wondered I had not known
it all along. I was a bodiless thing.
Awhile, I stood, trying to adjust my thoughts to this new problem. In
time—how many thousands of years, I know not—I attained to some degree
of quietude—sufficient to enable me to pay attention to what was
transpiring around me.
Now, I saw that the elongated mound had sunk, collapsed, level with the
rest of the spreading dust. And fresh atoms, impalpable, had settled
above that mixture of grave-powder, which the aeons had ground. A long
while, I stood, turned from the window. Gradually, I grew more
collected, while the world slipped across the centuries into the future.
Presently, I began a survey of the room. Now, I saw that time was
beginning its destructive work, even on this strange old building. That
it had stood through all the years was, it seemed to me, proof that it
was something different from any other house. I do not think, somehow,
that I had thought of its decaying. Though, why, I could not have said.
It was not until I had meditated upon the matter, for some considerable
time, that I fully realized that the extraordinary space of time through
which it had stood, was sufficient to have utterly pulverized the very
stones of which it was built, had they been taken from any earthly
quarry. Yes, it was undoubtedly mouldering now. All the plaster had gone
from the walls; even as the woodwork of the room had gone, many
ages before.
While I stood, in contemplation, a piece of glass, from one of the
small, diamond-shaped panes, dropped, with a dull tap, amid the dust
upon the sill behind me, and crumbled into a little heap of powder. As I
turned from contemplating it, I saw light between a couple of the stones
that formed the outer wall. Evidently, the mortar was falling away....
After awhile, I turned once more to the window, and peered out. I
discovered, now, that the speed of time had become enormous. The lateral
quiver of the sun-stream, had grown so swift as to cause the dancing
semi-circle of flame to merge into, and disappear in, a sheet of fire
that covered half the Southern sky from East to West.
From the sky, I glanced down to the gardens. They were just a blur of a
palish, dirty green. I had a feeling that they stood higher, than in the
old days; a feeling that they were nearer my window, as though they had
risen, bodily. Yet, they were still a long way below me; for the rock,
over the mouth of the pit, on which this house stands, arches up to a
great height.
It was later, that I noticed a change in the constant color of the
gardens. The pale, dirty green was growing ever paler and paler, toward
white. At last, after a great space, they became greyish-white, and
stayed thus for a very long time. Finally, however, the greyness began
to fade, even as had the green, into a dead white. And this remained,
constant and unchanged. And by this I knew that, at last, snow lay upon
all the Northern world.
And so, by millions of years, time winged onward through eternity, to
the end—the end, of which, in the old-earth days, I had thought
remotely, and in hazily speculative fashion. And now, it was approaching
in a manner of which none had ever dreamed.
I recollect that, about this time, I began to have a lively, though
morbid, curiosity, as to what would happen when the end came—but I
seemed strangely without imaginings.
All this while, the steady process of decay was continuing. The few
remaining pieces of glass, had long ago vanished; and, every now and
then, a soft thud, and a little cloud of rising dust, would tell of some
fragment of fallen mortar or stone.
I looked up again, to the fiery sheet that quaked in the heavens above
me and far down into the Southern sky. As I looked, the impression was
borne in upon me, that it had lost some of its first brilliancy—that it
was duller, deeper hued.
I glanced down, once more, to the blurred white of the worldscape.
Sometimes, my look returned to the burning sheet of dulling flame, that
was, and yet hid, the sun. At times, I glanced behind me, into the
growing dusk of the great, silent room, with its aeon-carpet of
sleeping dust....
So, I watched through the fleeting ages, lost in soul-wearing thoughts
and wonderings, and possessed with a new weariness.
XVII
THE SLOWING ROTATION
It might have been a million years later, that I perceived, beyond
possibility of doubt, that the fiery sheet that lit the world, was
indeed darkening.
Another vast space went by, and the whole enormous flame had sunk to a
deep, copper color. Gradually, it darkened, from copper to copper-red,
and from this, at times, to a deep, heavy, purplish tint, with, in it, a
strange loom of blood.
Although the light was decreasing, I could perceive no diminishment in
the apparent speed of the sun. It still spread itself in that dazzling
veil of speed.
The world, so much of it as I could see, had assumed a dreadful shade
of gloom, as though, in very deed, the last day of the worlds
approached.
The sun was dying; of that there could be little doubt; and still the
earth whirled onward, through space and all the aeons. At this time, I
remember, an extraordinary sense of bewilderment took me. I found
myself, later, wandering, mentally, amid an odd chaos of fragmentary
modern theories and the old Biblical story of the world's ending.
Then, for the first time, there flashed across me, the memory that the
sun, with its system of planets, was, and had been, traveling through
space at an incredible speed. Abruptly, the question rose—Where? For
a very great time, I pondered this matter; but, finally, with a certain
sense of the futility of my puzzlings, I let my thoughts wander to other
things. I grew to wondering, how much longer the house would stand.
Also, I queried, to myself, whether I should be doomed to stay,
bodiless, upon the earth, through the dark-time that I knew was coming.
From these thoughts, I fell again to speculations upon the possible
direction of the sun's journey through space.... And so another great
while passed.
Gradually, as time fled, I began to feel the chill of a great winter.
Then, I remembered that, with the sun dying, the cold must be,
necessarily, extraordinarily intense. Slowly, slowly, as the aeons
slipped into eternity, the earth sank into a heavier and redder gloom.
The dull flame in the firmament took on a deeper tint, very somber
and turbid.
Then, at last, it was borne upon me that there was a change. The fiery,
gloomy curtain of flame that hung quaking overhead, and down away into
the Southern sky, began to thin and contract; and, in it, as one sees
the fast vibrations of a jarred harp-string, I saw once more the
sun-stream quivering, giddily, North and South.
Slowly, the likeness to a sheet of fire, disappeared, and I saw,
plainly, the slowing beat of the sun-stream. Yet, even then, the speed
of its swing was inconceivably swift. And all the time, the brightness
of the fiery arc grew ever duller. Underneath, the world loomed
dimly—an indistinct, ghostly region.
Overhead, the river of flame swayed slower, and even slower; until, at
last, it swung to the North and South in great, ponderous beats, that
lasted through seconds. A long space went by, and now each sway of the
great belt lasted nigh a minute; so that, after a great while, I ceased
to distinguish it as a visible movement; and the streaming fire ran in a
steady river of dull flame, across the deadly-looking sky.
An indefinite period passed, and it seemed that the arc of fire became
less sharply defined. It appeared to me to grow more attenuated, and I
thought blackish streaks showed, occasionally. Presently, as I watched,
the smooth onward-flow ceased; and I was able to perceive that there
came a momentary, but regular, darkening of the world. This grew until,
once more, night descended, in short, but periodic, intervals upon the
wearying earth.
Longer and longer became the nights, and the days equaled them; so
that, at last, the day and the night grew to the duration of seconds in
length, and the sun showed, once more, like an almost invisible,
coppery-red colored ball, within the glowing mistiness of its flight.
Corresponding to the dark lines, showing at times in its trail, there
were now distinctly to be seen on the half-visible sun itself, great,
dark belts.
Year after year flashed into the past, and the days and nights spread
into minutes. The sun had ceased to have the appearance of a tail; and
now rose and set—a tremendous globe of a glowing copper-bronze hue; in
parts ringed with blood-red bands; in others, with the dusky ones, that
I have already mentioned. These circles—both red and black—were of
varying thicknesses. For a time, I was at a loss to account for their
presence. Then it occurred to me, that it was scarcely likely that the
sun would cool evenly all over; and that these markings were due,
probably, to differences in temperature of the various areas; the red
representing those parts where the heat was still fervent, and the black
those portions which were already comparatively cool.
It struck me, as a peculiar thing, that the sun should cool in evenly
defined rings; until I remembered that, possibly, they were but isolated
patches, to which the enormous rotatory speed of the sun had imparted a
beltlike appearance. The sun, itself, was very much greater than the sun
I had known in the old-world days; and, from this, I argued that it was
considerably nearer.
At nights, the moon[6] still showed; but small and remote; and the
light she reflected was so dull and weak that she seemed little more
than the small, dim ghost of the olden moon, that I had known.
Gradually, the days and nights lengthened out, until they equaled a
space somewhat less than one of the old-earth hours; the sun rising and
setting like a great, ruddy bronze disk, crossed with ink-black bars.
About this time, I found myself, able once more, to see the gardens,
with clearness. For the world had now grown very still, and changeless.
Yet, I am not correct in saying, 'gardens'; for there were no
gardens—nothing that I knew or recognized. In place thereof, I looked
out upon a vast plain, stretching away into distance. A little to my
left, there was a low range of hills. Everywhere, there was a uniform,
white covering of snow, in places rising into hummocks and ridges.
It was only now, that I recognized how really great had been the
snowfall. In places it was vastly deep, as was witnessed by a great,
upleaping, wave-shaped hill, away to my right; though it is not
impossible, that this was due, in part, to some rise in the surface of
the ground. Strangely enough, the range of low hills to my
left—already mentioned—was not entirely covered with the universal
snow; instead, I could see their bare, dark sides showing in several
places. And everywhere and always there reigned an incredible
death-silence and desolation. The immutable, awful quiet of a
dying world.
All this time, the days and nights were lengthening, perceptibly.
Already, each day occupied, maybe, some two hours from dawn to dusk. At
night, I had been surprised to find that there were very few stars
overhead, and these small, though of an extraordinary brightness; which
I attributed to the peculiar, but clear, blackness of the nighttime.
Away to the North, I could discern a nebulous sort of mistiness; not
unlike, in appearance, a small portion of the Milky Way. It might have
been an extremely remote star-cluster; or—the thought came to me
suddenly—perhaps it was the sidereal universe that I had known, and now
left far behind, forever—a small, dimly glowing mist of stars, far in
the depths of space.
Still, the days and nights lengthened, slowly. Each time, the sun rose
duller than it had set. And the dark belts increased in breadth.
About this time, there happened a fresh thing. The sun, earth, and sky
were suddenly darkened, and, apparently, blotted out for a brief space.
I had a sense, a certain awareness (I could learn little by sight), that
the earth was enduring a very great fall of snow. Then, in an instant,
the veil that had obscured everything, vanished, and I looked out, once
more. A marvelous sight met my gaze. The hollow in which this house,
with its gardens, stands, was brimmed with snow.[7] It lipped over the
sill of my window. Everywhere, it lay, a great level stretch of white,
which caught and reflected, gloomily, the somber coppery glows of the
dying sun. The world had become a shadowless plain, from horizon
to horizon.
I glanced up at the sun. It shone with an extraordinary, dull
clearness. I saw it, now, as one who, until then, had seen it, only
through a partially obscuring medium. All about it, the sky had become
black, with a clear, deep blackness, frightful in its nearness, and its
unmeasured deep, and its utter unfriendliness. For a great time, I
looked into it, newly, and shaken and fearful. It was so near. Had I
been a child, I might have expressed some of my sensation and distress,
by saying that the sky had lost its roof.
Later, I turned, and peered about me, into the room. Everywhere, it was
covered with a thin shroud of the all-pervading white. I could see it
but dimly, by reason of the somber light that now lit the world. It
appeared to cling to the ruined walls; and the thick, soft dust of the
years, that covered the floor knee-deep, was nowhere visible. The snow
must have blown in through the open framework of the windows. Yet, in no
place had it drifted; but lay everywhere about the great, old room,
smooth and level. Moreover, there had been no wind these many thousand
years. But there was the snow,[8] as I have told.
And all the earth was silent. And there was a cold, such as no living
man can ever have known.
The earth was now illuminated, by day, with a most doleful light,
beyond my power to describe. It seemed as though I looked at the great
plain, through the medium of a bronze-tinted sea.
It was evident that the earth's rotatory movement was departing,
steadily.
The end came, all at once. The night had been the longest yet; and
when the dying sun showed, at last, above the world's edge, I had grown
so wearied of the dark, that I greeted it as a friend. It rose steadily,
until about twenty degrees above the horizon. Then, it stopped suddenly,
and, after a strange retrograde movement, hung motionless—a great
shield in the sky[9]. Only the circular rim of the sun showed
bright—only this, and one thin streak of light near the equator.
Gradually, even this thread of light died out; and now, all that was
left of our great and glorious sun, was a vast dead disk, rimmed with a
thin circle of bronze-red light.
XVIII
THE GREEN STAR
The world was held in a savage gloom—cold and intolerable. Outside,
all was quiet—quiet! From the dark room behind me, came the occasional,
soft thud[10] of falling matter—fragments of rotting stone. So time
passed, and night grasped the world, wrapping it in wrappings of
impenetrable blackness.
There was no night-sky, as we know it. Even the few straggling stars
had vanished, conclusively. I might have been in a shuttered room,
without a light; for all that I could see. Only, in the impalpableness
of gloom, opposite, burnt that vast, encircling hair of dull fire.
Beyond this, there was no ray in all the vastitude of night that
surrounded me; save that, far in the North, that soft, mistlike glow
still shone.
Silently, years moved on. What period of time passed, I shall never
know. It seemed to me, waiting there, that eternities came and went,
stealthily; and still I watched. I could see only the glow of the sun's
edge, at times; for now, it had commenced to come and go—lighting up a
while, and again becoming extinguished.
All at once, during one of these periods of life, a sudden flame cut
across the night—a quick glare that lit up the dead earth, shortly;
giving me a glimpse of its flat lonesomeness. The light appeared to come
from the sun—shooting out from somewhere near its center, diagonally. A
moment, I gazed, startled. Then the leaping flame sank, and the gloom
fell again. But now it was not so dark; and the sun was belted by a thin
line of vivid, white light. I stared, intently. Had a volcano broken out
on the sun? Yet, I negatived the thought, as soon as formed. I felt that
the light had been far too intensely white, and large, for such a cause.
Another idea there was, that suggested itself to me. It was, that one
of the inner planets had fallen into the sun—becoming incandescent,
under that impact. This theory appealed to me, as being more plausible,
and accounting more satisfactorily for the extraordinary size and
brilliance of the blaze, that had lit up the dead world, so
unexpectedly.
Full of interest and emotion, I stared, across the darkness, at that
line of white fire, cutting the night. One thing it told to me,
unmistakably: the sun was yet rotating at an enormous speed.[11] Thus, I
knew that the years were still fleeting at an incalculable rate; though
so far as the earth was concerned, life, and light, and time, were
things belonging to a period lost in the long gone ages.
After that one burst of flame, the light had shown, only as an
encircling band of bright fire. Now, however, as I watched, it began
slowly to sink into a ruddy tint, and, later, to a dark, copper-red
color; much as the sun had done. Presently, it sank to a deeper hue;
and, in a still further space of time, it began to fluctuate; having
periods of glowing, and anon, dying. Thus, after a great while, it
disappeared.
Long before this, the smoldering edge of the sun had deadened into
blackness. And so, in that supremely future time, the world, dark and
intensely silent, rode on its gloomy orbit around the ponderous mass of
the dead sun.
My thoughts, at this period, can be scarcely described. At first, they
were chaotic and wanting in coherence. But, later, as the ages came and
went, my soul seemed to imbibe the very essence of the oppressive
solitude and dreariness, that held the earth.
With this feeling, there came a wonderful clearness of thought, and I
realized, despairingly, that the world might wander for ever, through
that enormous night. For a while, the unwholesome idea filled me, with a
sensation of overbearing desolation; so that I could have cried like a
child. In time, however, this feeling grew, almost insensibly, less, and
an unreasoning hope possessed me. Patiently, I waited.
From time to time, the noise of dropping particles, behind in the room,
came dully to my ears. Once, I heard a loud crash, and turned,
instinctively, to look; forgetting, for the moment, the impenetrable
night in which every detail was submerged. In a while, my gaze sought
the heavens; turning, unconsciously, toward the North. Yes, the nebulous
glow still showed. Indeed, I could have almost imagined that it looked
somewhat plainer. For a long time, I kept my gaze fixed upon it;
feeling, in my lonely soul, that its soft haze was, in some way, a tie
with the past. Strange, the trifles from which one can suck comfort! And
yet, had I but known—But I shall come to that in its proper time.
For a very long space, I watched, without experiencing any of the
desire for sleep, that would so soon have visited me in the old-earth
days. How I should have welcomed it; if only to have passed the time,
away from my perplexities and thoughts.
Several times, the comfortless sound of some great piece of masonry
falling, disturbed my meditations; and, once, it seemed I could hear
whispering in the room, behind me. Yet it was utterly useless to try to
see anything. Such blackness, as existed, scarcely can be conceived. It
was palpable, and hideously brutal to the sense; as though something
dead, pressed up against me—something soft, and icily cold.
Under all this, there grew up within my mind, a great and overwhelming
distress of uneasiness, that left me, but to drop me into an
uncomfortable brooding. I felt that I must fight against it; and,
presently, hoping to distract my thoughts, I turned to the window, and
looked up toward the North, in search of the nebulous whiteness, which,
still, I believed to be the far and misty glowing of the universe we had
left. Even as I raised my eyes, I was thrilled with a feeling of wonder;
for, now, the hazy light had resolved into a single, great star, of
vivid green.
As I stared, astonished, the thought flashed into my mind; that the
earth must be traveling toward the star; not away, as I had imagined.
Next, that it could not be the universe the earth had left; but,
possibly, an outlying star, belonging to some vast star-cluster, hidden
in the enormous depths of space. With a sense of commingled awe and
curiosity, I watched it, wondering what new thing was to be revealed
to me.
For a while, vague thoughts and speculations occupied me, during which
my gaze dwelt insatiably upon that one spot of light, in the otherwise
pitlike darkness. Hope grew up within me, banishing the oppression of
despair, that had seemed to stifle me. Wherever the earth was traveling,
it was, at least, going once more toward the realms of light. Light! One
must spend an eternity wrapped in soundless night, to understand the
full horror of being without it.
Slowly, but surely, the star grew upon my vision, until, in time, it
shone as brightly as had the planet Jupiter, in the old-earth days. With
increased size, its color became more impressive; reminding me of a huge
emerald, scintillating rays of fire across the world.
Years fled away in silence, and the green star grew into a great splash
of flame in the sky. A little later, I saw a thing that filled me with
amazement. It was the ghostly outline of a vast crescent, in the night;
a gigantic new moon, seeming to be growing out of the surrounding gloom.
Utterly bemused, I stared at it. It appeared to be quite
close—comparatively; and I puzzled to understand how the earth had come
so near to it, without my having seen it before.
The light, thrown by the star, grew stronger; and, presently, I was
aware that it was possible to see the earthscape again; though
indistinctly. Awhile, I stared, trying to make out whether I could
distinguish any detail of the world's surface, but I found the light
insufficient. In a little, I gave up the attempt, and glanced once more
toward the star. Even in the short space, that my attention had been
diverted, it had increased considerably, and seemed now, to my
bewildered sight, about a quarter of the size of the full moon. The
light it threw, was extraordinarily powerful; yet its color was so
abominably unfamiliar, that such of the world as I could see, showed
unreal; more as though I looked out upon a landscape of shadow, than
aught else.
All this time, the great crescent was increasing in brightness, and
began, now, to shine with a perceptible shade of green. Steadily, the
star increased in size and brilliancy, until it showed, fully as large
as half a full moon; and, as it grew greater and brighter, so did the
vast crescent throw out more and more light, though of an ever deepening
hue of green. Under the combined blaze of their radiances, the
wilderness that stretched before me, became steadily more visible. Soon,
I seemed able to stare across the whole world, which now appeared,
beneath the strange light, terrible in its cold and awful, flat
dreariness.
It was a little later, that my attention was drawn to the fact, that
the great star of green flame, was slowly sinking out of the North,
toward the East. At first, I could scarcely believe that I saw aright;
but soon there could be no doubt that it was so. Gradually, it sank,
and, as it fell, the vast crescent of glowing green, began to dwindle
and dwindle, until it became a mere arc of light, against the livid
colored sky. Later it vanished, disappearing in the self-same spot from
which I had seen it slowly emerge.
By this time, the star had come to within some thirty degrees of the
hidden horizon. In size it could now have rivaled the moon at its full;
though, even yet, I could not distinguish its disk. This fact led me to
conceive that it was, still, an extraordinary distance away; and, this
being so, I knew that its size must be huge, beyond the conception of
man to understand or imagine.
Suddenly, as I watched, the lower edge of the star vanished—cut by a
straight, dark line. A minute—or a century—passed, and it dipped
lower, until the half of it had disappeared from sight. Far away out on
the great plain, I saw a monstrous shadow blotting it out, and advancing
swiftly. Only a third of the star was visible now. Then, like a flash,
the solution of this extraordinary phenomenon revealed itself to me. The
star was sinking behind the enormous mass of the dead sun. Or rather,
the sun—obedient to its attraction—was rising toward it,[12] with the
earth following in its trail. As these thoughts expanded in my mind, the
star vanished; being completely hidden by the tremendous bulk of the
sun. Over the earth there fell, once more, the brooding night.
With the darkness, came an intolerable feeling of loneliness and dread.
For the first time, I thought of the Pit, and its inmates. After that,
there rose in my memory the still more terrible Thing, that had haunted
the shores of the Sea of Sleep, and lurked in the shadows of this old
building. Where were they? I wondered—and shivered with miserable
thoughts. For a time, fear held me, and I prayed, wildly and
incoherently, for some ray of light with which to dispel the cold
blackness that enveloped the world.
How long I waited, it is impossible to say—certainly for a very great
period. Then, all at once, I saw a loom of light shine out ahead.
Gradually, it became more distinct. Suddenly, a ray of vivid green,
flashed across the darkness. At the same moment, I saw a thin line of
livid flame, far in the night. An instant, it seemed, and it had grown
into a great clot of fire; beneath which, the world lay bathed in a
blaze of emerald green light. Steadily it grew, until, presently, the
whole of the green star had come into sight again. But now, it could be
scarcely called a star; for it had increased to vast proportions, being
incomparably greater than the sun had been in the olden time.
"Then, as I stared, I became aware that I could see the edge of the
lifeless sun, glowing like a great crescent-moon. Slowly, its lighted
surface, broadened out to me, until half of its diameter was visible;
and the star began to drop away on my right. Time passed, and the earth
moved on, slowly traversing the tremendous face of the dead sun." [13]
Gradually, as the earth traveled forward, the star fell still more to
the right; until, at last, it shone on the back of the house, sending a
flood of broken rays, in through the skeletonlike walls. Glancing
upward, I saw that much of the ceiling had vanished, enabling me to see
that the upper storeys were even more decayed. The roof had, evidently,
gone entirely; and I could see the green effulgence of the Starlight
shining in, slantingly.
XIX
THE END OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM
From the abutment, where once had been the windows, through which I had
watched that first, fatal dawn, I could see that the sun was hugely
greater, than it had been, when first the Star lit the world. So great
was it, that its lower edge seemed almost to touch the far horizon. Even
as I watched, I imagined that it drew closer. The radiance of green that
lit the frozen earth, grew steadily brighter.
Thus, for a long space, things were. Then, on a sudden, I saw that the
sun was changing shape, and growing smaller, just as the moon would have
done in past time. In a while, only a third of the illuminated part was
turned toward the earth. The Star bore away on the left.
Gradually, as the world moved on, the Star shone upon the front of the
house, once more; while the sun showed, only as a great bow of green
fire. An instant, it seemed, and the sun had vanished. The Star was
still fully visible. Then the earth moved into the black shadow of the
sun, and all was night—Night, black, starless, and intolerable.
Filled with tumultuous thoughts, I watched across the night—waiting.
Years, it may have been, and then, in the dark house behind me, the
clotted stillness of the world was broken. I seemed to hear a soft
padding of many feet, and a faint, inarticulate whisper of sound, grew
on my sense. I looked 'round into the blackness, and saw a multitude of
eyes. As I stared, they increased, and appeared to come toward me. For
an instant, I stood, unable to move. Then a hideous swine-noise[14] rose
up into the night; and, at that, I leapt from the window, out on to the
frozen world. I have a confused notion of having run awhile; and, after
that, I just waited—waited. Several times, I heard shrieks; but always
as though from a distance. Except for these sounds, I had no idea of the
whereabouts of the house. Time moved onward. I was conscious of little,
save a sensation of cold and hopelessness and fear.
An age, it seemed, and there came a glow, that told of the coming
light. It grew, tardily. Then—with a loom of unearthly glory—the first
ray from the Green Star, struck over the edge of the dark sun, and lit
the world. It fell upon a great, ruined structure, some two hundred
yards away. It was the house. Staring, I saw a fearsome sight—over its
walls crawled a legion of unholy things, almost covering the old
building, from tottering towers to base. I could see them, plainly; they
were the Swine-creatures.
The world moved out into the light of the Star, and I saw that, now, it
seemed to stretch across a quarter of the heavens. The glory of its
livid light was so tremendous, that it appeared to fill the sky with
quivering flames. Then, I saw the sun. It was so close that half of its
diameter lay below the horizon; and, as the world circled across its
face, it seemed to tower right up into the sky, a stupendous dome of
emerald colored fire. From time to time, I glanced toward the house; but
the Swine-things seemed unaware of my proximity.
Years appeared to pass, slowly. The earth had almost reached the center
of the sun's disk. The light from the Green Sun—as now it must be
called—shone through the interstices, that gapped the mouldered walls
of the old house, giving them the appearance of being wrapped in green
flames. The Swine-creatures still crawled about the walls.
Suddenly, there rose a loud roar of swine-voices, and, up from the
center of the roofless house, shot a vast column of blood-red flame. I
saw the little, twisted towers and turrets flash into fire; yet still
preserving their twisted crookedness. The beams of the Green Sun, beat
upon the house, and intermingled with its lurid glows; so that it
appeared a blazing furnace of red and green fire.
Fascinated, I watched, until an overwhelming sense of coming danger,
drew my attention. I glanced up, and, at once, it was borne upon me,
that the sun was closer; so close, in fact, that it seemed to overhang
the world. Then—I know not how—I was caught up into strange
heights—floating like a bubble in the awful effulgence.
Far below me, I saw the earth, with the burning house leaping into an
ever growing mountain of flame, 'round about it, the ground appeared to
be glowing; and, in places, heavy wreaths of yellow smoke ascended from
the earth. It seemed as though the world were becoming ignited from that
one plague-spot of fire. Faintly, I could see the Swine-things. They
appeared quite unharmed. Then the ground seemed to cave in, suddenly,
and the house, with its load of foul creatures, disappeared into the
depths of the earth, sending a strange, blood colored cloud into the
heights. I remembered the hell Pit under the house.
In a while, I looked 'round. The huge bulk of the sun, rose high above
me. The distance between it and the earth, grew rapidly less. Suddenly,
the earth appeared to shoot forward. In a moment, it had traversed the
space between it and the sun. I heard no sound; but, out from the sun's
face, gushed an ever-growing tongue of dazzling flame. It seemed to
leap, almost to the distant Green Sun—shearing through the emerald
light, a very cataract of blinding fire. It reached its limit, and sank;
and, on the sun, glowed a vast splash of burning white—the grave of
the earth.
The sun was very close to me, now. Presently, I found that I was rising
higher; until, at last, I rode above it, in the emptiness. The Green Sun
was now so huge that its breadth seemed to fill up all the sky, ahead. I
looked down, and noted that the sun was passing directly beneath me.
A year may have gone by—or a century—and I was left, suspended,
alone. The sun showed far in front—a black, circular mass, against the
molten splendor of the great, Green Orb. Near one edge, I observed that
a lurid glow had appeared, marking the place where the earth had fallen.
By this, I knew that the long-dead sun was still revolving, though with
great slowness.
Afar to my right, I seemed to catch, at times, a faint glow of whitish
light. For a great time, I was uncertain whether to put this down to
fancy or not. Thus, for a while, I stared, with fresh wonderings; until,
at last, I knew that it was no imaginary thing; but a reality. It grew
brighter; and, presently, there slid out of the green, a pale globe of
softest white. It came nearer, and I saw that it was apparently
surrounded by a robe of gently glowing clouds. Time passed....
I glanced toward the diminishing sun. It showed, only as a dark blot on
the face of the Green Sun. As I watched, I saw it grow smaller,
steadily, as though rushing toward the superior orb, at an immense
speed. Intently, I stared. What would happen? I was conscious of
extraordinary emotions, as I realized that it would strike the Green
Sun. It grew no bigger than a pea, and I looked, with my whole soul, to
witness the final end of our System—that system which had borne the
world through so many aeons, with its multitudinous sorrows and
joys; and now—
Suddenly, something crossed my vision, cutting from sight all vestige
of the spectacle I watched with such soul-interest. What happened to the
dead sun, I did not see; but I have no reason—in the light of that
which I saw afterward—to disbelieve that it fell into the strange fire
of the Green Sun, and so perished.
And then, suddenly, an extraordinary question rose in my mind, whether
this stupendous globe of green fire might not be the vast Central
Sun—the great sun, 'round which our universe and countless others
revolve. I felt confused. I thought of the probable end of the dead sun,
and another suggestion came, dumbly—Do the dead stars make the Green
Sun their grave? The idea appealed to me with no sense of grotesqueness;
but rather as something both possible and probable.
XX
THE CELESTIAL GLOBES
For a while, many thoughts crowded my mind, so that I was unable to do
aught, save stare, blindly, before me. I seemed whelmed in a sea of
doubt and wonder and sorrowful remembrance.
It was later, that I came out of my bewilderment. I looked about,
dazedly. Thus, I saw so extraordinary a sight that, for a while, I could
scarcely believe I was not still wrapped in the visionary tumult of my
own thoughts. Out of the reigning green, had grown a boundless river of
softly shimmering globes—each one enfolded in a wondrous fleece of pure
cloud. They reached, both above and below me, to an unknown distance;
and, not only hid the shining of the Green Sun; but supplied, in place
thereof, a tender glow of light, that suffused itself around me, like
unto nothing I have ever seen, before or since.
In a little, I noticed that there was about these spheres, a sort of
transparency, almost as though they were formed of clouded crystal,
within which burned a radiance—gentle and subdued. They moved on, past
me, continually, floating onward at no great speed; but rather as
though they had eternity before them. A great while, I watched, and
could perceive no end to them. At times, I seemed to distinguish faces,
amid the cloudiness; but strangely indistinct, as though partly real,
and partly formed of the mistiness through which they showed.
For a long time, I waited, passively, with a sense of growing content.
I had no longer that feeling of unutterable loneliness; but felt,
rather, that I was less alone, than I had been for kalpas of years. This
feeling of contentment, increased, so that I would have been satisfied
to float in company with those celestial globules, forever.
Ages slipped by, and I saw the shadowy faces, with increased frequency,
also with greater plainness. Whether this was due to my soul having
become more attuned to its surroundings, I cannot tell—probably it was
so. But, however this may be, I am assured now, only of the fact that I
became steadily more conscious of a new mystery about me, telling me
that I had, indeed, penetrated within the borderland of some
unthought-of region—some subtle, intangible place, or form, of
existence.
The enormous stream of luminous spheres continued to pass me, at an
unvarying rate—countless millions; and still they came, showing no
signs of ending, nor even diminishing.
Then, as I was borne, silently, upon the unbuoying ether, I felt a
sudden, irresistible, forward movement, toward one of the passing
globes. An instant, and I was beside it. Then, I slid through, into the
interior, without experiencing the least resistance, of any description.
For a short while, I could see nothing; and waited, curiously.
All at once, I became aware that a sound broke the inconceivable
stillness. It was like the murmur of a great sea at calm—a sea
breathing in its sleep. Gradually, the mist that obscured my sight,
began to thin away; and so, in time, my vision dwelt once again upon the
silent surface of the Sea of Sleep.
For a little, I gazed, and could scarcely believe I saw aright. I
glanced 'round. There was the great globe of pale fire, swimming, as I
had seen it before, a short distance above the dim horizon. To my left,
far across the sea, I discovered, presently, a faint line, as of thin
haze, which I guessed to be the shore, where my Love and I had met,
during those wonderful periods of soul-wandering, that had been granted
to me in the old earth days.
Another, a troubled, memory came to me—of the Formless Thing that had
haunted the shores of the Sea of Sleep. The guardian of that silent,
echoless place. These, and other, details, I remembered, and knew,
without doubt that I was looking out upon that same sea. With the
assurance, I was filled with an overwhelming feeling of surprise, and
joy, and shaken expectancy, conceiving it possible that I was about to
see my Love, again. Intently, I gazed around; but could catch no sight
of her. At that, for a little, I felt hopeless. Fervently, I prayed, and
ever peered, anxiously.... How still was the sea!
Down, far beneath me, I could see the many trails of changeful fire,
that had drawn my attention, formerly. Vaguely, I wondered what caused
them; also, I remembered that I had intended to ask my dear One about
them, as well as many other matters—and I had been forced to leave her,
before the half that I had wished to say, was said.
My thoughts came back with a leap. I was conscious that something had
touched me. I turned quickly. God, Thou wert indeed gracious—it was
She! She looked up into my eyes, with an eager longing, and I looked
down to her, with all my soul. I should like to have held her; but the
glorious purity of her face, kept me afar. Then, out of the winding
mist, she put her dear arms. Her whisper came to me, soft as the rustle
of a passing cloud. 'Dearest!' she said. That was all; but I had heard,
and, in a moment I held her to me—as I prayed—forever.
In a little, she spoke of many things, and I listened. Willingly, would
I have done so through all the ages that are to come. At times, I
whispered back, and my whispers brought to her spirit face, once more,
an indescribably delicate tint—the bloom of love. Later, I spoke more
freely, and to each word she listened, and made answer, delightfully; so
that, already, I was in Paradise.
She and I; and nothing, save the silent, spacious void to see us; and
only the quiet waters of the Sea of Sleep to hear us.
Long before, the floating multitude of cloud-enfolded spheres had
vanished into nothingness. Thus, we looked upon the face of the
slumberous deeps, and were alone. Alone, God, I would be thus alone in
the hereafter, and yet be never lonely! I had her, and, greater than
this, she had me. Aye, aeon-aged me; and on this thought, and some
others, I hope to exist through the few remaining years that may yet lie
between us.
XXI
THE DARK SUN
How long our souls lay in the arms of joy, I cannot say; but, all at
once, I was waked from my happiness, by a diminution of the pale and
gentle light that lit the Sea of Sleep. I turned toward the huge, white
orb, with a premonition of coming trouble. One side of it was curving
inward, as though a convex, black shadow were sweeping across it. My
memory went back. It was thus, that the darkness had come, before our
last parting. I turned toward my Love, inquiringly. With a sudden
knowledge of woe, I noticed how wan and unreal she had grown, even in
that brief space. Her voice seemed to come to me from a distance. The
touch of her hands was no more than the gentle pressure of a summer
wind, and grew less perceptible.
Already, quite half of the immense globe was shrouded. A feeling of
desperation seized me. Was she about to leave me? Would she have to go,
as she had gone before? I questioned her, anxiously, frightenedly; and
she, nestling closer, explained, in that strange, faraway voice, that it
was imperative she should leave me, before the Sun of Darkness—as she
termed it—blotted out the light. At this confirmation of my fears, I
was overcome with despair; and could only look, voicelessly, across the
quiet plains of the silent sea.
How swiftly the darkness spread across the face of the White Orb. Yet,
in reality, the time must have been long, beyond human comprehension.
At last, only a crescent of pale fire, lit the, now dim, Sea of Sleep.
All this while, she had held me; but, with so soft a caress, that I had
been scarcely conscious of it. We waited there, together, she and I;
speechless, for very sorrow. In the dimming light, her face showed,
shadowy—blending into the dusky mistiness that encircled us.
Then, when a thin, curved line of soft light was all that lit the sea,
she released me—pushing me from her, tenderly. Her voice sounded in my
ears, 'I may not stay longer, Dear One.' It ended in a sob.
She seemed to float away from me, and became invisible. Her voice came
to me, out of the shadows, faintly; apparently from a great distance:—
'A little while—' It died away, remotely. In a breath, the Sea of
Sleep darkened into night. Far to my left, I seemed to see, for a brief
instant, a soft glow. It vanished, and, in the same moment, I became
aware that I was no longer above the still sea; but once more suspended
in infinite space, with the Green Sun—now eclipsed by a vast, dark
sphere—before me.
Utterly bewildered, I stared, almost unseeingly, at the ring of green
flames, leaping above the dark edge. Even in the chaos of my thoughts, I
wondered, dully, at their extraordinary shapes. A multitude of questions
assailed me. I thought more of her, I had so lately seen, than of the
sight before me. My grief, and thoughts of the future, filled me. Was I
doomed to be separated from her, always? Even in the old earth-days, she
had been mine, only for a little while; then she had left me, as I
thought, forever. Since then, I had seen her but these times, upon the
Sea of Sleep.
A feeling of fierce resentment filled me, and miserable questionings.
Why could I not have gone with my Love? What reason to keep us apart?
Why had I to wait alone, while she slumbered through the years, on the
still bosom of the Sea of Sleep? The Sea of Sleep! My thoughts turned,
inconsequently, out of their channel of bitterness, to fresh, desperate
questionings. Where was it? Where was it? I seemed to have but just
parted from my Love, upon its quiet surface, and it had gone, utterly.
It could not be far away! And the White Orb which I had seen hidden in
the shadow of the Sun of Darkness! My sight dwelt upon the Green
Sun—eclipsed. What had eclipsed it? Was there a vast, dead star
circling it? Was the Central Sun—as I had come to regard it—a double
star? The thought had come, almost unbidden; yet why should it not
be so?
My thoughts went back to the White Orb. Strange, that it should have
been—I stopped. An idea had come, suddenly. The White Orb and the Green
Sun! Were they one and the same? My imagination wandered backward, and I
remembered the luminous globe to which I had been so unaccountably
attracted. It was curious that I should have forgotten it, even
momentarily. Where were the others? I reverted again to the globe I had
entered. I thought, for a time, and matters became clearer. I conceived
that, by entering that impalpable globule, I had passed, at once, into
some further, and, until then, invisible dimension; There, the Green Sun
was still visible; but as a stupendous sphere of pale, white
light—almost as though its ghost showed, and not its material part.
A long time, I mused on the subject. I remembered how, on entering the
sphere, I had, immediately, lost all sight of the others. For a still
further period, I continued to revolve the different details in my mind.
In a while, my thoughts turned to other things. I came more into the
present, and began to look about me, seeingly. For the first time, I
perceived that innumerable rays, of a subtle, violet hue, pierced the
strange semi-darkness, in all directions. They radiated from the fiery
rim of the Green Sun. They seemed to grow upon my vision, so that, in a
little, I saw that they were countless. The night was filled with
them—spreading outward from the Green Sun, fan-wise. I concluded that I
was enabled to see them, by reason of the Sun's glory being cut off by
the eclipse. They reached right out into space, and vanished.
Gradually, as I looked, I became aware that fine points of intensely
brilliant light, traversed the rays. Many of them seemed to travel from
the Green Sun, into distance. Others came out of the void, toward the
Sun; but one and all, each kept strictly to the ray in which it
traveled. Their speed was inconceivably great; and it was only when they
neared the Green Sun, or as they left it, that I could see them as
separate specks of light. Further from the sun, they became thin lines
of vivid fire within the violet.
The discovery of these rays, and the moving sparks, interested me,
extraordinarily. To where did they lead, in such countless profusion? I
thought of the worlds in space.... And those sparks! Messengers!
Possibly, the idea was fantastic; but I was not conscious of its being
so. Messengers! Messengers from the Central Sun!
An idea evolved itself, slowly. Was the Green Sun the abode of some
vast Intelligence? The thought was bewildering. Visions of the Unnamable
rose, vaguely. Had I, indeed, come upon the dwelling-place of the
Eternal? For a time, I repelled the thought, dumbly. It was too
stupendous. Yet....
Huge, vague thoughts had birth within me. I felt, suddenly, terribly
naked. And an awful Nearness, shook me.
And Heaven ...! Was that an illusion?
My thoughts came and went, erratically. The Sea of Sleep—and she!
Heaven.... I came back, with a bound, to the present. Somewhere, out of
the void behind me, there rushed an immense, dark body—huge and silent.
It was a dead star, hurling onward to the burying place of the stars. It
drove between me and the Central Suns—blotting them out from my vision,
and plunging me into an impenetrable night.
An age, and I saw again the violet rays. A great while later—aeons it
must have been—a circular glow grew in the sky, ahead, and I saw the
edge of the receding star, show darkly against it. Thus, I knew that it
was nearing the Central Suns. Presently, I saw the bright ring of the
Green Sun, show plainly against the night The star had passed into the
shadow of the Dead Sun. After that, I just waited. The strange years
went slowly, and ever, I watched, intently.
'The thing I had expected, came at last—suddenly, awfully. A vast
flare of dazzling light. A streaming burst of white flame across the
dark void. For an indefinite while, it soared outward—a gigantic
mushroom of fire. It ceased to grow. Then, as time went by, it began to
sink backward, slowly. I saw, now, that it came from a huge, glowing
spot near the center of the Dark Sun. Mighty flames, still soared
outward from this. Yet, spite of its size, the grave of the star was no
more than the shining of Jupiter upon the face of an ocean, when
compared with the inconceivable mass of the Dead Sun.
I may remark here, once more, that no words will ever convey to the
imagination, the enormous bulk of the two Central Suns.
XXII
THE DARK NEBULA
Years melted into the past, centuries, aeons. The light of the
incandescent star, sank to a furious red.
It was later, that I saw the dark nebula—at first, an impalpable
cloud, away to my right. It grew, steadily, to a clot of blackness in
the night. How long I watched, it is impossible to say; for time, as we
count it, was a thing of the past. It came closer, a shapeless
monstrosity of darkness—tremendous. It seemed to slip across the night,
sleepily—a very hell-fog. Slowly, it slid nearer, and passed into the
void, between me and the Central Suns. It was as though a curtain had
been drawn before my vision. A strange tremor of fear took me, and a
fresh sense of wonder.
The green twilight that had reigned for so many millions of years, had
now given place to impenetrable gloom. Motionless, I peered about me. A
century fled, and it seemed to me that I detected occasional dull glows
of red, passing me at intervals.
Earnestly, I gazed, and, presently, seemed to see circular masses, that
showed muddily red, within the clouded blackness. They appeared to be
growing out of the nebulous murk. Awhile, and they became plainer to my
accustomed vision. I could see them, now, with a fair amount of
distinctness—ruddy-tinged spheres, similar, in size, to the luminous
globes that I had seen, so long previously.
They floated past me, continually. Gradually, a peculiar uneasiness
seized me. I became aware of a growing feeling of repugnance and dread.
It was directed against those passing orbs, and seemed born of intuitive
knowledge, rather than of any real cause or reason.
Some of the passing globes were brighter than others; and, it was from
one of these, that a face looked, suddenly. A face, human in its
outline; but so tortured with woe, that I stared, aghast. I had not
thought there was such sorrow, as I saw there. I was conscious of an
added sense of pain, on perceiving that the eyes, which glared so
wildly, were sightless. A while longer, I saw it; then it had passed on,
into the surrounding gloom. After this, I saw others—all wearing that
look of hopeless sorrow; and blind.
A long time went by, and I became aware that I was nearer to the orbs,
than I had been. At this, I grew uneasy; though I was less in fear of
those strange globules, than I had been, before seeing their sorrowful
inhabitants; for sympathy had tempered my fear.
Later, there was no doubt but that I was being carried closer to the
red spheres, and, presently, I floated among them. In awhile, I
perceived one bearing down upon me. I was helpless to move from its
path. In a minute, it seemed, it was upon me, and I was submerged in a
deep red mist. This cleared, and I stared, confusedly, across the
immense breadth of the Plain of Silence. It appeared just as I had first
seen it. I was moving forward, steadily, across its surface. Away ahead,
shone the vast, blood-red ring [15] that lit the place. All around, was
spread the extraordinary desolation of stillness, that had so impressed
me during my previous wanderings across its starkness.
Presently, I saw, rising up into the ruddy gloom, the distant peaks of
the mighty amphitheatre of mountains, where, untold ages before, I had
been shown my first glimpse of the terrors that underlie many things;
and where, vast and silent, watched by a thousand mute gods, stands the
replica of this house of mysteries—this house that I had seen swallowed
up in that hell-fire, ere the earth had kissed the sun, and vanished
for ever.
Though I could see the crests of the mountain-amphitheatre, yet it was
a great while before their lower portions became visible. Possibly, this
was due to the strange, ruddy haze, that seemed to cling to the surface
of the Plain. However, be this as it may, I saw them at last.
In a still further space of time, I had come so close to the mountains,
that they appeared to overhang me. Presently, I saw the great rift, open
before me, and I drifted into it; without volition on my part.
Later, I came out upon the breadth of the enormous arena. There, at an
apparent distance of some five miles, stood the House, huge, monstrous
and silent—lying in the very center of that stupendous amphitheatre. So
far as I could see, it had not altered in any way; but looked as though
it were only yesterday that I had seen it. Around, the grim, dark
mountains frowned down upon me from their lofty silences.
Far to my right, away up among inaccessible peaks, loomed the enormous
bulk of the great Beast-god. Higher, I saw the hideous form of the dread
goddess, rising up through the red gloom, thousands of fathoms above
me. To the left, I made out the monstrous Eyeless-Thing, grey and
inscrutable. Further off, reclining on its lofty ledge, the livid
Ghoul-Shape showed—a splash of sinister color, among the dark
mountains.
Slowly, I moved out across the great arena—floating. As I went, I made
out the dim forms of many of the other lurking Horrors that peopled
those supreme heights.
Gradually, I neared the House, and my thoughts flashed back across the
abyss of years. I remembered the dread Specter of the Place. A short
while passed, and I saw that I was being wafted directly toward the
enormous mass of that silent building.
About this time, I became aware, in an indifferent sort of way, of a
growing sense of numbness, that robbed me of the fear, which I should
otherwise have felt, on approaching that awesome Pile. As it was, I
viewed it, calmly—much as a man views calamity through the haze of his
tobacco smoke.
In a little while, I had come so close to the House, as to be able to
distinguish many of the details about it. The longer I looked, the more
was I confirmed in my long-ago impressions of its entire similitude to
this strange house. Save in its enormous size, I could find
nothing unlike.
Suddenly, as I stared, a great feeling of amazement filled me. I had
come opposite to that part, where the outer door, leading into the
study, is situated. There, lying right across the threshold, lay a great
length of coping stone, identical—save in size and color—with the
piece I had dislodged in my fight with the Pit-creatures.
I floated nearer, and my astonishment increased, as I noted that the
door was broken partly from its hinges, precisely in the manner that my
study door had been forced inward, by the assaults of the Swine-things.
The sight started a train of thoughts, and I began to trace, dimly,
that the attack on this house, might have a far deeper significance than
I had, hitherto, imagined. I remembered how, long ago, in the old
earth-days, I had half suspected that, in some unexplainable manner,
this house, in which I live, was en rapport—to use a recognized
term—with that other tremendous structure, away in the midst of that
incomparable Plain.
Now, however, it began to be borne upon me, that I had but vaguely
conceived what the realization of my suspicion meant. I began to
understand, with a more than human clearness, that the attack I had
repelled, was, in some extraordinary manner, connected with an attack
upon that strange edifice.
With a curious inconsequence, my thoughts abruptly left the matter; to
dwell, wonderingly, upon the peculiar material, out of which the House
was constructed. It was—as I have mentioned, earlier—of a deep, green
color. Yet, now that I had come so close to it, I perceived that it
fluctuated at times, though slightly—glowing and fading, much as do the
fumes of phosphorus, when rubbed upon the hand, in the dark.
Presently, my attention was distracted from this, by coming to the
great entrance. Here, for the first time, I was afraid; for, all in a
moment, the huge doors swung back, and I drifted in between them,
helplessly. Inside, all was blackness, impalpable. In an instant, I had
crossed the threshold, and the great doors closed, silently, shutting me
in that lightless place.
For a while, I seemed to hang, motionless; suspended amid the darkness.
Then, I became conscious that I was moving again; where, I could not
tell. Suddenly, far down beneath me, I seemed to hear a murmurous noise
of Swine-laughter. It sank away, and the succeeding silence appeared
clogged with horror.
Then a door opened somewhere ahead; a white haze of light filtered
through, and I floated slowly into a room, that seemed strangely
familiar. All at once, there came a bewildering, screaming noise, that
deafened me. I saw a blurred vista of visions, flaming before my sight.
My senses were dazed, through the space of an eternal moment. Then, my
power of seeing, came back to me. The dizzy, hazy feeling passed, and I
saw, clearly.
XXIII
PEPPER
I was seated in my chair, back again in this old study. My glance
wandered 'round the room. For a minute, it had a strange, quivery
appearance—unreal and unsubstantial. This disappeared, and I saw that
nothing was altered in any way. I looked toward the end window—the
blind was up.
I rose to my feet, shakily. As I did so, a slight noise, in the
direction of the door, attracted my attention. I glanced toward it. For
a short instant, it appeared to me that it was being closed, gently. I
stared, and saw that I must have been mistaken—it seemed closely shut.
With a succession of efforts, I trod my way to the window, and looked
out. The sun was just rising, lighting up the tangled wilderness of
gardens. For, perhaps, a minute, I stood, and stared. I passed my hand,
confusedly, across my forehead.
Presently, amid the chaos of my senses, a sudden thought came to me; I
turned, quickly, and called to Pepper. There was no answer, and I
stumbled across the room, in a quick access of fear. As I went, I tried
to frame his name; but my lips were numb. I reached the table, and
stooped down to him, with a catching at my heart. He was lying in the
shadow of the table, and I had not been able to see him, distinctly,
from the window. Now, as I stooped, I took my breath, shortly. There was
no Pepper; instead, I was reaching toward an elongated, little heap of
grey, ashlike dust....
I must have remained, in that half-stooped position, for some minutes.
I was dazed—stunned. Pepper had really passed into the land of shadows.
XXIV
THE FOOTSTEPS IN THE GARDEN
Pepper is dead! Even now, at times, I seem scarcely able to realize
that this is so. It is many weeks, since I came back from that strange
and terrible journey through space and time. Sometimes, in my sleep, I
dream about it, and go through, in imagination, the whole of that
fearsome happening. When I wake, my thoughts dwell upon it. That
Sun—those Suns, were they indeed the great Central Suns, 'round which
the whole universe, of the unknown heavens, revolves? Who shall say? And
the bright globules, floating forever in the light of the Green Sun! And
the Sea of Sleep on which they float! How unbelievable it all is. If it
were not for Pepper, I should, even after the many extraordinary things
that I have witnessed, be inclined to imagine that it was but a gigantic
dream. Then, there is that dreadful, dark nebula (with its multitudes of
red spheres) moving always within the shadow of the Dark Sun, sweeping
along on its stupendous orbit, wrapped eternally in gloom. And the faces
that peered out at me! God, do they, and does such a thing really
exist? ... There is still that little heap of grey ash, on my study
floor. I will not have it touched.
At times, when I am calmer, I have wondered what became of the outer
planets of the Solar System. It has occurred to me, that they may have
broken loose from the sun's attraction, and whirled away into space.
This is, of course, only a surmise. There are so many things, about
which I wonder.
Now that I am writing, let me record that I am certain, there is
something horrible about to happen. Last night, a thing occurred, which
has filled me with an even greater terror, than did the Pit fear. I will
write it down now, and, if anything more happens, endeavor to make a
note of it, at once. I have a feeling, that there is more in this last
affair, than in all those others. I am shaky and nervous, even now, as I
write. Somehow, I think death is not very far away. Not that I fear
death—as death is understood. Yet, there is that in the air, which bids
me fear—an intangible, cold horror. I felt it last night. It
was thus:—
Last night, I was sitting here in my study, writing. The door, leading
into the garden, was half open. At times, the metallic rattle of a dog's
chain, sounded faintly. It belongs to the dog I have bought, since
Pepper's death. I will not have him in the house—not after Pepper.
Still, I have felt it better to have a dog about the place. They are
wonderful creatures.
I was much engrossed in my work, and the time passed, quickly.
Suddenly, I heard a soft noise on the path, outside in the garden—pad,
pad, pad, it went, with a stealthy, curious sound. I sat upright, with a
quick movement, and looked out through the opened door. Again the noise
came—pad, pad, pad. It appeared to be approaching. With a slight
feeling of nervousness, I stared into the gardens; but the night hid
everything.
Then the dog gave a long howl, and I started. For a minute, perhaps, I
peered, intently; but could hear nothing. After a little, I picked up
the pen, which I had laid down, and recommenced my work. The nervous
feeling had gone; for I imagined that the sound I had heard, was nothing
more than the dog walking 'round his kennel, at the length of his chain.
A quarter of an hour may have passed; then, all at once, the dog howled
again, and with such a plaintively sorrowful note, that I jumped to my
feet, dropping my pen, and inking the page on which I was at work.
'Curse that dog!' I muttered, noting what I had done. Then, even as I
said the words, there sounded again that queer—pad, pad, pad. It was
horribly close—almost by the door, I thought. I knew, now, that it
could not be the dog; his chain would not allow him to come so near.
The dog's growl came again, and I noted, subconsciously, the taint of
fear in it.
Outside, on the windowsill, I could see Tip, my sister's pet cat. As I
looked, it sprang to its feet, its tail swelling, visibly. For an
instant it stood thus; seeming to stare, fixedly, at something, in the
direction of the door. Then, quickly, it began to back along the sill;
until, reaching the wall at the end, it could go no further. There it
stood, rigid, as though frozen in an attitude of extraordinary terror.
Frightened, and puzzled, I seized a stick from the corner, and went
toward the door, silently; taking one of the candles with me. I had come
to within a few paces of it, when, suddenly, a peculiar sense of fear
thrilled through me—a fear, palpitant and real; whence, I knew not, nor
why. So great was the feeling of terror, that I wasted no time; but
retreated straight-way—walking backward, and keeping my gaze,
fearfully, on the door. I would have given much, to rush at it, fling it
to, and shoot the bolts; for I have had it repaired and strengthened,
so that, now, it is far stronger than ever it has been. Like Tip, I
continued my, almost unconscious, progress backward, until the wall
brought me up. At that, I started, nervously, and glanced 'round,
apprehensively. As I did so, my eyes dwelt, momentarily, on the rack of
firearms, and I took a step toward them; but stopped, with a curious
feeling that they would be needless. Outside, in the gardens, the dog
moaned, strangely.
Suddenly, from the cat, there came a fierce, long screech. I glanced,
jerkily, in its direction—Something, luminous and ghostly, encircled
it, and grew upon my vision. It resolved into a glowing hand,
transparent, with a lambent, greenish flame flickering over it. The cat
gave a last, awful caterwaul, and I saw it smoke and blaze. My breath
came with a gasp, and I leant against the wall. Over that part of the
window there spread a smudge, green and fantastic. It hid the thing from
me, though the glare of fire shone through, dully. A stench of burning,
stole into the room.
Pad, pad, pad—Something passed down the garden path, and a faint,
mouldy odor seemed to come in through the open door, and mingle with the
burnt smell.
The dog had been silent for a few moments. Now, I heard him yowl,
sharply, as though in pain. Then, he was quiet, save for an occasional,
subdued whimper of fear.
A minute went by; then the gate on the West side of the gardens,
slammed, distantly. After that, nothing; not even the dog's whine.
I must have stood there some minutes. Then a fragment of courage stole
into my heart, and I made a frightened rush at the door, dashed it to,
and bolted it. After that, for a full half-hour, I sat,
helpless—staring before me, rigidly.
Slowly, my life came back into me, and I made my way, shakily,
up-stairs to bed.
That is all.
XXV
THE THING FROM THE ARENA
This morning, early, I went through the gardens; but found everything
as usual. Near the door, I examined the path, for footprints; yet, here
again, there was nothing to tell me whether, or not, I dreamed
last night.
It was only when I came to speak to the dog, that I discovered tangible
proof, that something did happen. When I went to his kennel, he kept
inside, crouching up in one corner, and I had to coax him, to get him
out. When, finally, he consented to come, it was in a strangely cowed
and subdued manner. As I patted him, my attention was attracted to a
greenish patch, on his left flank. On examining it, I found, that the
fur and skin had been apparently, burnt off; for the flesh showed, raw
and scorched. The shape of the mark was curious, reminding me of the
imprint of a large talon or hand.
I stood up, thoughtful. My gaze wandered toward the study window. The
rays of the rising sun, shimmered on the smoky patch in the lower
corner, causing it to fluctuate from green to red, oddly. Ah! that was
undoubtedly another proof; and, suddenly, the horrible Thing I saw last
night, rose in my mind. I looked at the dog, again. I knew the cause,
now, of that hateful looking wound on his side—I knew, also, that, what
I had seen last night, had been a real happening. And a great discomfort
filled me. Pepper! Tip! And now this poor animal ...! I glanced at the
dog again, and noticed that he was licking at his wound.
'Poor brute!' I muttered, and bent to pat his head. At that, he got
upon his feet, nosing and licking my hand, wistfully.
Presently, I left him, having other matters to which to attend.
After dinner, I went to see him, again. He seemed quiet, and
disinclined to leave his kennel. From my sister, I have learnt that he
has refused all food today. She appeared a little puzzled, when she told
me; though quite unsuspicious of anything of which to be afraid.
The day has passed, uneventfully enough. After tea, I went, again, to
have a look at the dog. He seemed moody, and somewhat restless; yet
persisted in remaining in his kennel. Before locking up, for the night,
I moved his kennel out, away from the wall, so that I shall be able to
watch it from the small window, tonight. The thought came to me, to
bring him into the house for the night; but consideration has decided
me, to let him remain out. I cannot say that the house is, in any
degree, less to be feared than the gardens. Pepper was in the house,
and yet....
It is now two o'clock. Since eight, I have watched the kennel, from the
small, side window in my study. Yet, nothing has occurred, and I am too
tired to watch longer. I will go to bed....
During the night, I was restless. This is unusual for me; but, toward
morning, I obtained a few hours' sleep.
I rose early, and, after breakfast, visited the dog. He was quiet; but
morose, and refused to leave his kennel. I wish there was some horse
doctor near here; I would have the poor brute looked to. All day, he has
taken no food; but has shown an evident desire for water—lapping it up,
greedily. I was relieved to observe this.
The evening has come, and I am in my study. I intend to follow my plan
of last night, and watch the kennel. The door, leading into the garden,
is bolted, securely. I am consciously glad there are bars to the
windows....
Night:—Midnight has gone. The dog has been silent, up to the present.
Through the side window, on my left, I can make out, dimly, the outlines
of the kennel. For the first time, the dog moves, and I hear the rattle
of his chain. I look out, quickly. As I stare, the dog moves again,
restlessly, and I see a small patch of luminous light, shine from the
interior of the kennel. It vanishes; then the dog stirs again, and, once
more, the gleam comes. I am puzzled. The dog is quiet, and I can see the
luminous thing, plainly. It shows distinctly. There is something
familiar about the shape of it. For a moment, I wonder; then it comes to
me, that it is not unlike the four fingers and thumb of a hand. Like a
hand! And I remember the contour of that fearsome wound on the dog's
side. It must be the wound I see. It is luminous at night—Why? The
minutes pass. My mind is filled with this fresh thing....
Suddenly, I hear a sound, out in the gardens. How it thrills through
me. It is approaching. Pad, pad, pad. A prickly sensation traverses my
spine, and seems to creep across my scalp. The dog moves in his kennel,
and whimpers, frightenedly. He must have turned 'round; for, now, I can
no longer see the outline of his shining wound.
Outside, the gardens are silent, once more, and I listen, fearfully. A
minute passes, and another; then I hear the padding sound, again. It is
quite close, and appears to be coming down the graveled path. The noise
is curiously measured and deliberate. It ceases outside the door; and I
rise to my feet, and stand motionless. From the door, comes a slight
sound—the latch is being slowly raised. A singing noise is in my ears,
and I have a sense of pressure about the head—
The latch drops, with a sharp click, into the catch. The noise startles
me afresh; jarring, horribly, on my tense nerves. After that, I stand,
for a long while, amid an ever-growing quietness. All at once, my knees
begin to tremble, and I have to sit, quickly.
An uncertain period of time passes, and, gradually, I begin to shake
off the feeling of terror, that has possessed me. Yet, still I sit. I
seem to have lost the power of movement. I am strangely tired, and
inclined to doze. My eyes open and close, and, presently, I find myself
falling asleep, and waking, in fits and starts.
It is some time later, that I am sleepily aware that one of the candles
is guttering. When I wake again, it has gone out, and the room is very
dim, under the light of the one remaining flame. The semi-darkness
troubles me little. I have lost that awful sense of dread, and my only
desire seems to be to sleep—sleep.
Suddenly, although there is no noise, I am awake—wide awake. I am
acutely conscious of the nearness of some mystery, of some overwhelming
Presence. The very air seems pregnant with terror. I sit huddled, and
just listen, intently. Still, there is no sound. Nature, herself, seems
dead. Then, the oppressive stillness is broken by a little eldritch
scream of wind, that sweeps 'round the house, and dies away, remotely.
I let my gaze wander across the half-lighted room. By the great clock
in the far corner, is a dark, tall shadow. For a short instant, I stare,
frightenedly. Then, I see that it is nothing, and am,
momentarily, relieved.
In the time that follows, the thought flashes through my brain, why
not leave this house—this house of mystery and terror? Then, as though
in answer, there sweeps up, across my sight, a vision of the wondrous
Sea of Sleep,—the Sea of Sleep where she and I have been allowed to
meet, after the years of separation and sorrow; and I know that I shall
stay on here, whatever happens.
Through the side window, I note the somber blackness of the night. My
glance wanders away, and 'round the room; resting on one shadowy object
and another. Suddenly, I turn, and look at the window on my right; as I
do so, I breathe quickly, and bend forward, with a frightened gaze at
something outside the window, but close to the bars. I am looking at a
vast, misty swine-face, over which fluctuates a flamboyant flame, of a
greenish hue. It is the Thing from the arena. The quivering mouth seems
to drip with a continual, phosphorescent slaver. The eyes are staring
straight into the room, with an inscrutable expression. Thus, I sit
rigidly—frozen.
The Thing has begun to move. It is turning, slowly, in my direction.
Its face is coming 'round toward me. It sees me. Two huge, inhumanly
human, eyes are looking through the dimness at me. I am cold with fear;
yet, even now, I am keenly conscious, and note, in an irrelevant way,
that the distant stars are blotted out by the mass of the giant face.
A fresh horror has come to me. I am rising from my chair, without the
least intention. I am on my feet, and something is impelling me toward
the door that leads out into the gardens. I wish to stop; but cannot.
Some immutable power is opposed to my will, and I go slowly forward,
unwilling and resistant. My glance flies 'round the room, helplessly,
and stops at the window. The great swine-face has disappeared, and I
hear, again, that stealthy pad, pad, pad. It stops outside the
door—the door toward which I am being compelled....
There succeeds a short, intense silence; then there comes a sound. It
is the rattle of the latch, being slowly lifted. At that, I am filled
with desperation. I will not go forward another step. I make a vast
effort to return; but it is, as though I press back, upon an invisible
wall. I groan out loud, in the agony of my fear, and the sound of my
voice is frightening. Again comes that rattle, and I shiver, clammily. I
try—aye, fight and struggle, to hold back, back; but it is no use....
I am at the door, and, in a mechanical way, I watch my hand go forward,
to undo the topmost bolt. It does so, entirely without my volition. Even
as I reach up toward the bolt, the door is violently shaken, and I get a
sickly whiff of mouldy air, which seems to drive in through the
interstices of the doorway. I draw the bolt back, slowly, fighting,
dumbly, the while. It comes out of its socket, with a click, and I begin
to shake, aguishly. There are two more; one at the bottom of the door;
the other, a massive affair, is placed about the middle.
For, perhaps a minute, I stand, with my arms hanging slackly, by my
sides. The influence to meddle with the fastenings of the door, seems to
have gone. All at once, there comes the sudden rattle of iron, at my
feet. I glance down, quickly, and realize, with an unspeakable terror,
that my foot is pushing back the lower bolt. An awful sense of
helplessness assails me.... The bolt comes out of its hold, with a
slight, ringing sound and I stagger on my feet, grasping at the great,
central bolt, for support. A minute passes, an eternity; then
another----My God, help me! I am being forced to work upon the last
fastening. I will not! Better to die, than open to the Terror, that is
on the other side of the door. Is there no escape ...? God help me, I
have jerked the bolt half out of its socket! My lips emit a hoarse
scream of terror, the bolt is three parts drawn, now, and still my
unconscious hands work toward my doom. Only a fraction of steel, between
my soul and That. Twice, I scream out in the supreme agony of my fear;
then, with a mad effort, I tear my hands away. My eyes seem blinded. A
great blackness is falling upon me. Nature has come to my rescue. I feel
my knees giving. There is a loud, quick thudding upon the door, and I am
falling, falling....
I must have lain there, at least a couple of hours. As I recover, I am
aware that the other candle has burnt out, and the room is in an almost
total darkness. I cannot rise to my feet, for I am cold, and filled with
a terrible cramp. Yet my brain is clear, and there is no longer the
strain of that unholy influence.
Cautiously, I get upon my knees, and feel for the central bolt. I find
it, and push it securely back into its socket; then the one at the
bottom of the door. By this time, I am able to rise to my feet, and so
manage to secure the fastening at the top. After that, I go down upon my
knees, again, and creep away among the furniture, in the direction of
the stairs. By doing this, I am safe from observation from the window.
I reach the opposite door, and, as I leave the study, cast one nervous
glance over my shoulder, toward the window. Out in the night, I seem to
catch a glimpse of something impalpable; but it may be only a fancy.
Then, I am in the passage, and on the stairs.
Reaching my bedroom, I clamber into bed, all clothed as I am, and pull
the bedclothes over me. There, after awhile, I begin to regain a little
confidence. It is impossible to sleep; but I am grateful for the added
warmth of the bedclothes. Presently, I try to think over the happenings
of the past night; but, though I cannot sleep, I find that it is
useless, to attempt consecutive thought. My brain seems curiously blank.
Toward morning, I begin to toss, uneasily. I cannot rest, and, after
awhile, I get out of bed, and pace the floor. The wintry dawn is
beginning to creep through the windows, and shows the bare discomfort of
the old room. Strange, that, through all these years, it has never
occurred to me how dismal the place really is. And so a time passes.
From somewhere down stairs, a sound comes up to me. I go to the bedroom
door, and listen. It is Mary, bustling about the great, old kitchen,
getting the breakfast ready. I feel little interest. I am not hungry. My
thoughts, however; continue to dwell upon her. How little the weird
happenings in this house seem to trouble her. Except in the incident of
the Pit creatures, she has seemed unconscious of anything unusual
occurring. She is old, like myself; yet how little we have to do with
one another. Is it because we have nothing in common; or only that,
being old, we care less for society, than quietness? These and other
matters pass through my mind, as I meditate; and help to distract my
attention, for a while, from the oppressive thoughts of the night.
After a time, I go to the window, and, opening it, look out. The sun is
now above the horizon, and the air, though cold, is sweet and crisp.
Gradually, my brain clears, and a sense of security, for the time being,
comes to me. Somewhat happier, I go down stairs, and out into the
garden, to have a look at the dog.
As I approach the kennel, I am greeted by the same mouldy stench that
assailed me at the door last night. Shaking off a momentary sense of
fear, I call to the dog; but he takes no heed, and, after calling once
more, I throw a small stone into the kennel. At this, he moves,
uneasily, and I shout his name, again; but do not go closer. Presently,
my sister comes out, and joins me, in trying to coax him from
the kennel.
In a little the poor beast rises, and shambles out lurching queerly. In
the daylight he stands swaying from side to side, and blinking stupidly.
I look and note that the horrid wound is larger, much larger, and seems
to have a whitish, fungoid appearance. My sister moves to fondle him;
but I detain her, and explain that I think it will be better not to go
too near him for a few days; as it is impossible to tell what may be the
matter with him; and it is well to be cautious.
A minute later, she leaves me; coming back with a basin of odd scraps
of food. This she places on the ground, near the dog, and I push it into
his reach, with the aid of a branch, broken from one of the shrubs. Yet,
though the meat should be tempting, he takes no notice of it; but
retires to his kennel. There is still water in his drinking vessel, so,
after a few moments' talk, we go back to the house. I can see that my
sister is much puzzled as to what is the matter with the animal; yet it
would be madness, even to hint the truth to her.
The day slips away, uneventfully; and night comes on. I have determined
to repeat my experiment of last night. I cannot say that it is wisdom;
yet my mind is made up. Still, however, I have taken precautions; for I
have driven stout nails in at the back of each of the three bolts, that
secure the door, opening from the study into the gardens. This will, at
least, prevent a recurrence of the danger I ran last night.
From ten to about two-thirty, I watch; but nothing occurs; and,
finally, I stumble off to bed, where I am soon asleep.
XXVI
THE LUMINOUS SPECK
I awake suddenly. It is still dark. I turn over, once or twice, in my
endeavors to sleep again; but I cannot sleep. My head is aching,
slightly; and, by turns I am hot and cold. In a little, I give up the
attempt, and stretch out my hand, for the matches. I will light my
candle, and read, awhile; perhaps, I shall be able to sleep, after a
time. For a few moments, I grope; then my hand touches the box; but, as
I open it, I am startled, to see a phosphorescent speck of fire, shining
amid the darkness. I put out my other hand, and touch it. It is on my
wrist. With a feeling of vague alarm, I strike a light, hurriedly, and
look; but can see nothing, save a tiny scratch.
'Fancy!' I mutter, with a half sigh of relief. Then the match burns my
finger, and I drop it, quickly. As I fumble for another, the thing
shines out again. I know, now, that it is no fancy. This time, I light
the candle, and examine the place, more closely. There is a slight,
greenish discoloration 'round the scratch. I am puzzled and worried.
Then a thought comes to me. I remember the morning after the Thing
appeared. I remember that the dog licked my hand. It was this one, with
the scratch on it; though I have not been even conscious of the
abasement, until now. A horrible fear has come to me. It creeps into my
brain—the dog's wound, shines at night. With a dazed feeling, I sit
down on the side of the bed, and try to think; but cannot. My brain
seems numbed with the sheer horror of this new fear.
Time moves on, unheeded. Once, I rouse up, and try to persuade myself
that I am mistaken; but it is no use. In my heart, I have no doubt.
Hour after hour, I sit in the darkness and silence, and shiver,
hopelessly....
The day has come and gone, and it is night again.
This morning, early, I shot the dog, and buried it, away among the
bushes. My sister is startled and frightened; but I am desperate.
Besides, it is better so. The foul growth had almost hidden its left
side. And I—the place on my wrist has enlarged, perceptibly. Several
times, I have caught myself muttering prayers—little things learnt as a
child. God, Almighty God, help me! I shall go mad.
Six days, and I have eaten nothing. It is night. I am sitting in my
chair. Ah, God! I wonder have any ever felt the horror of life that I
have come to know? I am swathed in terror. I feel ever the burning of
this dread growth. It has covered all my right arm and side, and is
beginning to creep up my neck. Tomorrow, it will eat into my face. I
shall become a terrible mass of living corruption. There is no escape.
Yet, a thought has come to me, born of a sight of the gun-rack, on the
other side of the room. I have looked again—with the strangest of
feelings. The thought grows upon me. God, Thou knowest, Thou must know,
that death is better, aye, better a thousand times than This. This!
Jesus, forgive me, but I cannot live, cannot, cannot! I dare not! I am
beyond all help—there is nothing else left. It will, at least, spare
me that final horror....
I think I must have been dozing. I am very weak, and oh! so miserable,
so miserable and tired—tired. The rustle of the paper, tries my brain.
My hearing seems preternaturally sharp. I will sit awhile and think....
"Hush! I hear something, down—down in the cellars. It is a creaking
sound. My God, it is the opening of the great, oak trap. What can be
doing that? The scratching of my pen deafens me ... I must listen....
There are steps on the stairs; strange padding steps, that come up and
nearer.... Jesus, be merciful to me, an old man. There is something
fumbling at the door-handle. O God, help me now! Jesus—The door is
opening—slowly. Somethi—"
That is all[16]
XXVII
CONCLUSION
I put down the Manuscript, and glanced across at Tonnison: he was
sitting, staring out into the dark. I waited a minute; then I spoke.
"Well?" I said.
He turned, slowly, and looked at me. His thoughts seemed to have gone
out of him into a great distance.
"Was he mad?" I asked, and indicated the MS., with a half nod.
Tonnison stared at me, unseeingly, a moment; then, his wits came back to
him, and, suddenly, he comprehended my question.
"No!" he said.
I opened my lips, to offer a contradictory opinion; for my sense of the
saneness of things, would not allow me to take the story literally; then
I shut them again, without saying anything. Somehow, the certainty in
Tonnison's voice affected my doubts. I felt, all at once, less assured;
though I was by no means convinced as yet.
After a few moments' silence, Tonnison rose, stiffly, and began to
undress. He seemed disinclined to talk; so I said nothing; but followed
his example. I was weary; though still full of the story I had
just read.
Somehow, as I rolled into my blankets, there crept into my mind a memory
of the old gardens, as we had seen them. I remembered the odd fear that
the place had conjured up in our hearts; and it grew upon me, with
conviction, that Tonnison was right.
It was very late when we rose—nearly midday; for the greater part of
the night had been spent in reading the MS.
Tonnison was grumpy, and I felt out of sorts. It was a somewhat dismal
day, and there was a touch of chilliness in the air. There was no
mention of going out fishing on either of our parts. We got dinner, and,
after that, just sat and smoked in silence.
Presently, Tonnison asked for the Manuscript: I handed it to him, and he
spent most of the afternoon in reading it through by himself.
It was while he was thus employed, that a thought came to me:—
"What do you say to having another look at—?" I nodded my head down
stream.
Tonnison looked up. "Nothing!" he said, abruptly; and, somehow, I was
less annoyed, than relieved, at his answer.
After that, I left him alone.
A little before teatime, he looked up at me, curiously.
"Sorry, old chap, if I was a bit short with you just now;" (just now,
indeed! he had not spoken for the last three hours) "but I would not go
there again," and he indicated with his head, "for anything that you
could offer me. Ugh!" and he put down that history of a man's terror and
hope and despair.
The next morning, we rose early, and went for our accustomed swim: we
had partly shaken off the depression of the previous day; and so, took
our rods when we had finished breakfast, and spent the day at our
favorite sport.
After that day, we enjoyed our holiday to the utmost; though both of us
looked forward to the time when our driver should come; for we were
tremendously anxious to inquire of him, and through him among the people
of the tiny hamlet, whether any of them could give us information about
that strange garden, lying away by itself in the heart of an almost
unknown tract of country.
At last, the day came, on which we expected the driver to come across
for us. He arrived early, while we were still abed; and, the first thing
we knew, he was at the opening of the tent, inquiring whether we had had
good sport. We replied in the affirmative; and then, both together,
almost in the same breath, we asked the question that was uppermost in
our minds:—Did he know anything about an old garden, and a great pit,
and a lake, situated some miles away, down the river; also, had he ever
heard of a great house thereabouts?
No, he did not, and had not; yet, stay, he had heard a rumor, once upon
a time, of a great, old house standing alone out in the wilderness; but,
if he remembered rightly it was a place given over to the fairies; or,
if that had not been so, he was certain that there had been something
"quare" about it; and, anyway, he had heard nothing of it for a very
long while—not since he was quite a gossoon. No, he could not remember
anything particular about it; indeed, he did not know he remembered
anything "at all, at all" until we questioned him.
"Look here," said Tonnison, finding that this was about all that he
could tell us, "just take a walk 'round the village, while we dress, and
find out something, if you can."
With a nondescript salute, the man departed on his errand; while we made
haste to get into our clothes; after which, we began to prepare
breakfast.
We were just sitting down to it, when he returned.
"It's all in bed the lazy divvils is, sor," he said, with a repetition
of the salute, and an appreciative eye to the good things spread out on
our provision chest, which we utilized as a table.
"Oh, well, sit down," replied my friend, "and have something to eat with
us." Which the man did without delay.
After breakfast, Tonnison sent him off again on the same errand, while
we sat and smoked. He was away some three-quarters of an hour, and, when
he returned, it was evident that he had found out something. It appeared
that he had got into conversation with an ancient man of the village,
who, probably, knew more—though it was little enough—of the strange
house, than any other person living.
The substance of this knowledge was, that, in the "ancient man's"
youth—and goodness knows how long back that was—there had stood a
great house in the center of the gardens, where now was left only that
fragment of ruin. This house had been empty for a great while; years
before his—the ancient man's—birth. It was a place shunned by the
people of the village, as it had been shunned by their fathers before
them. There were many things said about it, and all were of evil. No one
ever went near it, either by day or night. In the village it was a
synonym of all that is unholy and dreadful.
And then, one day, a man, a stranger, had ridden through the village,
and turned off down the river, in the direction of the House, as it was
always termed by the villagers. Some hours afterward, he had ridden
back, taking the track by which he had come, toward Ardrahan. Then, for
three months or so, nothing was heard. At the end of that time, he
reappeared; but now, he was accompanied by an elderly woman, and a large
number of donkeys, laden with various articles. They had passed through
the village without stopping, and gone straight down the bank of the
river, in the direction of the House.
Since that time, no one, save the man whom they had chartered to bring
over monthly supplies of necessaries from Ardrahan, had ever seen either
of them: and him, none had ever induced to talk; evidently, he had been
well paid for his trouble.
The years had moved onward, uneventfully enough, in that little hamlet;
the man making his monthly journeys, regularly.
One day, he had appeared as usual on his customary errand. He had passed
through the village without exchanging more than a surly nod with the
inhabitants and gone on toward the House. Usually, it was evening before
he made the return journey. On this occasion, however, he had reappeared
in the village, a few hours later, in an extraordinary state of
excitement, and with the astounding information, that the House had
disappeared bodily, and that a stupendous pit now yawned in the place
where it had stood.
This news, it appears, so excited the curiosity of the villagers, that
they overcame their fears, and marched en masse to the place. There,
they found everything, just as described by the carrier.
This was all that we could learn. Of the author of the MS., who he was,
and whence he came, we shall never know.
His identity is, as he seems to have desired, buried forever.
That same day, we left the lonely village of Kraighten. We have never
been there since.
Sometimes, in my dreams, I see that enormous pit, surrounded, as it is,
on all sides by wild trees and bushes. And the noise of the water rises
upward, and blends—in my sleep—with other and lower noises; while,
over all, hangs the eternal shroud of spray.
Fierce hunger reigns within my breast,
I had not dreamt that this whole world,
Crushed in the hand of God, could yield
Such bitter essence of unrest,
Such pain as Sorrow now hath hurled
Out of its dreadful heart, unsealed!
Each sobbing breath is but a cry,
My heart-strokes knells of agony,
And my whole brain has but one thought
That nevermore through life shall I
(Save in the ache of memory)
Touch hands with thee, who now art naught!
Through the whole void of night I search,
So dumbly crying out to thee;
But thou are not; and night's vast throne
Becomes an all stupendous church
With star-bells knelling unto me
Who in all space am most alone!
An hungered, to the shore I creep,
Perchance some comfort waits on me
From the old Sea's eternal heart;
But lo! from all the solemn deep,
Far voices out of mystery
Seem questioning why we are apart!
"Where'er I go I am alone
Who once, through thee, had all the world.
My breast is one whole raging pain
For that which was, and now is flown
Into the Blank where life is hurled
Where all is not, nor is again!"
FOOTNOTES:
[1] An apparently unmeaning interpolation. I can find no previous
reference in the MS. to this matter. It becomes clearer, however, in the
light of succeeding incidents.—Ed.
[2] Here, the writing becomes undecipherable, owing to the damaged
condition of this part of the MS. Below I print such fragments as are
legible.—Ed.
[3] NOTE.—The severest scrutiny has not enabled me to decipher more of
the damaged portion of the MS. It commences to be legible again with the
chapter entitled "The Noise in the Night."—Ed.
[4] The Recluse uses this as an illustration, evidently in the sense of
the popular conception of a comet.—Ed.
[5] Evidently referring to something set forth in the missing and
mutilated pages. See Fragments, Chapter 14—Ed.
[6] No further mention is made of the moon. From what is said here, it
is evident that our satellite had greatly increased its distance from
the earth. Possibly, at a later age it may even have broken loose from
our attraction. I cannot but regret that no light is shed on this
point.—Ed.
[7] Conceivably, frozen air.—Ed.
[8] See previous footnote. This would explain the snow (?) within the
room.—Ed.
[9] I am confounded that neither here, nor later on, does the Recluse
make any further mention of the continued north and south movement
(apparent, of course,) of the sun from solstice to solstice.—Ed.
[10] At this time the sound-carrying atmosphere must have been either
incredibly attenuated, or—more probably—nonexistent. In the light of
this, it cannot be supposed that these, or any other, noises would have
been apparent to living ears—to hearing, as we, in the material body,
understand that sense.—Ed.
[11] I can only suppose that the time of the earth's yearly journey had
ceased to bear its present relative proportion to the period of the
sun's rotation.—Ed.
[12] A careful reading of the MS. suggests that, either the sun is
traveling on an orbit of great eccentricity, or else that it was
approaching the green star on a lessening orbit. And at this moment, I
conceive it to be finally torn directly from its oblique course, by the
gravitational pull of the immense star.—Ed.
[13] It will be noticed here that the earth was "slowly traversing the
tremendous face of the dead sun." No explanation is given of this, and
we must conclude, either that the speed of time had slowed, or else that
the earth was actually progressing on its orbit at a rate, slow, when
measured by existing standards. A careful study of the MS. however,
leads me to conclude that the speed of time had been steadily decreasing
for a very considerable period.—Ed.
[14] See first footnote, Chapter 18.
[15] Without doubt, the flame-edged mass of the Dead Central Sun, seen
from another dimension.—Ed.
[16] NOTE.—From the unfinished word, it is possible, on the MS., to
trace a faint line of ink, which suggests that the pen has trailed away
over the paper; possibly, through fright and weakness.—Ed.
[17] These stanzas I found, in pencil, upon a piece of foolscap gummed in behind the fly-leaf of the MS. They have all the appearance of having been written at an earlier date than the Manuscript.--Ed.
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