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LibriVox recording of Short Ghost and Horror Collection 073 by Various. Read in English by LibriVox Volunteers
A collection of twenty stories featuring ghoulies, ghosties, four-legged beasts and things that go bump in the night. Expect shivers up your spine, the sound of a monstrous howl, and the occasional touch of wonder.
It lay silent and dead under the cold desert moonlight, but what strange race inhabited the abyss under those cyclopean ruins?
WHEN
I drew nigh the nameless city I knew it was accursed. I was traveling
in a parched and terrible valley under the moon, and afar I saw it
protruding uncannily above the sands as parts of a corpse might protrude
from an ill-made grave. Fear spoke from the age-worn stones of this
hoary survivor of the deluge, this great-grandmother of the eldest
pyramid; and a viewless aura repelled me and bade retreat from antique
and sinister secrets that no man should see, and no man else had ever
dared to see.
Remote in the desert of Araby lies the nameless city, crumbling
and inarticulate, its low walls nearly hidden by the sands of uncounted
ages. It must have been thus before the first stones of Memphis were
laid, and while the bricks of Babylon were yet unbaked. There is no
legend so old as to give it a name, or to recall that it was ever alive;
but it is told of in whispers around campfires and muttered about by
grandams in the tents of sheiks so that all the tribes shun it without
wholly knowing why. It was of this place that Abdul Alhazred the mad
poet dreamed on the night before he sang his unexplainable couplet:
That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange eons, even death may die.
I should have known that the Arabs had good reason for shunning the
nameless city, the city told of in strange tales but seen by no living
man; yet I defied them and went into the untrodden waste with my camel. I
alone have seen it, and that is why no other face bears such hideous
lines of fear as mine; why no other man shivers so horribly when the
night wind rattles the windows. When I came upon it in the ghastly
stillness of unending sleep it looked at me, chilly from the rays of a
cold moon amidst the desert's heat. And as I returned its look I forgot
my triumph at finding it, and stopped still with my camel to wait for
the dawn.
For hours I waited, till the east grew gray and the stars faded,
and the gray turned to roseate light edged with gold. I heard a moaning
and saw a storm of sand stirring among the antique stones, though the
sky was clear and the vast reaches of the desert still. Then suddenly
above the desert's far rim came the blazing edge of the sun, seen
through the tiny sandstorm which was passing away, and in my fevered
state I fancied that from some remote depth there came a crash of
musical metal to hail the fiery disk as Memnon hails it from the banks
of the Nile. My ears rang and my imagination seethed as I led my camel
slowly across the sand to that unvocal stone place; that place too old
for Egypt and Meroë to remember; that place which I alone of living men
had seen.
In and out amongst the shapeless foundations of houses and
palaces I wandered, finding never a carving or inscription to tell of
these men, if men they were, who built this city and dwelt therein so
long ago. The antiquity of the spot was unwholesome, and I longed to
encounter some sign or device to prove that the city was indeed
fashioned by mankind. There were certain proportions and dimensions
in the ruins which I did not like. I had with me many tools, and dug
much within the walls of the obliterated edifices; but progress was
slow, and nothing significant was revealed. When night and the moon
returned I felt a chill wind which brought new fear, so that I did not
dare to remain in the city. And as I went outside the antique walls to
sleep, a small sighing sandstorm gathered behind me, blowing over the
gray stones though the moon was bright and most of the desert still.
Iawaked
just at dawn from a pageant of horrible dreams, my ears ringing as from
some metallic peal. I saw the sun peering redly through the last gusts
of a little sandstorm that hovered over the nameless city, and marked
the quietness of the rest of the landscape. Once more I ventured within
those brooding ruins that swelled beneath the sand like an ogre under a
coverlet, and again dug vainly for relics of the forgotten race. At
noon I rested, and in the afternoon I spent much time tracing the walls
and the bygone streets, and the outlines of the nearly vanished
buildings. I saw that the city had been mighty indeed, and wondered at
the sources of its greatness. To myself I pictured all the splendors of
an age so distant that Chaldea could not recall it, and thought of
Sarnath the Doomed, that stood in the land Mnar when mankind was young,
and of Ib, that was carven of gray stone before mankind existed.
All at once I came upon a place where the bed-rock rose stark
through the sand and formed a low cliff; and here I saw with joy what
seemed to promise further traces of the antediluvian people. Hewn rudely
on the face of the cliff were the unmistakable facades of several
small, squat rock houses or temples, whose interiors might preserve many
secrets of ages too remote for calculation, though sandstorms had long
since effaced any carvings which may have been outside.
Very low and sand-choked were all of the dark apertures near me,
but I cleared one with my spade and crawled through it, carrying a torch
to reveal whatever mysteries it might hold. When I was inside I saw
that the cavern was indeed a temple, and beheld plain signs of the race
that had lived and worshipped before the desert was a desert. Primitive
altars, pillars, and niches, all curiously low, were not absent; and
though I saw no sculptures nor frescoes, there were many singular stones
clearly shaped into symbols by artificial means. The lowness of the
chiselled chamber was very strange, for I could hardly kneel upright;
but the area was so great that my torch showed only part of it at a
time. I shuddered oddly in some of the far corners; for certain altars
and stones suggested forgotten rites of terrible, revolting, and
inexplicable nature and made me wonder what manner of men could have
made and frequented such a temple. When I had seen all that the place
contained, I crawled out again, avid to find what the other temples
might yield.
Night
had now approached, yet the tangible things I had seen made curiosity
stronger than fear, so that I did not flee from the long moon-cast
shadows that had daunted me when first I saw the nameless city. In the
twilight I cleared another aperture and with a new torch crawled into
it, finding more vague stones and symbols, though nothing more definite
than the other temple had contained. The room was just as low, but much
less broad, ending in a very narrow passage crowded with obscure and
cryptical shrines. About these shrines I was prying when the noise of a
wind and of my camel outside broke through the stillness and drew me
forth to see what could have frightened the beast.
The moon was gleaming vividly over the primitive ruins, lighting a
dense cloud of sand that seemed blown by a strong but decreasing wind
from some point along the cliff ahead of me. I knew it was this chilly,
sandy wind which had disturbed the camel and was about to lead him to a
place of better shelter when I chanced to glance up and saw that there
was no wind atop the cliff. This astonished me and made me fearful
again, but I immediately recalled the sudden local winds that I had
seen and heard before at sunrise and sunset, and judged it was a normal
thing. I decided it came from some rock fissure leading to a cave, and
watched the troubled sand to trace it to its source; soon perceiving
that it came from the black orifice of a temple a long distance south of
me almost out of sight. Against the choking sand-cloud I plodded toward
this temple, which, as I neared it, loomed larger than the rest, and
showed a doorway far less clogged with caked sand. I would have entered
had not the terrific force of the icy wind almost quenched my torch. It
poured madly out of the dark door, sighing uncannily as it ruffled the
sand and spread among the weird ruins. Soon it grew fainter and the sand
grew more and more still, till finally all was at rest again; but a
presence seemed stalking among the spectral stones of the city, and when
I glanced at the moon it seemed to quiver as though mirrored in unquiet
waters. I was more afraid than I could explain, but not enough to dull
my thirst for wonder; so as soon as the wind was quite gone I crossed
into the dark chamber from which it had come.
This
temple, as I had fancied from the outside, was larger than either of
those I had visited before; and was presumably a natural cavern since it
bore winds from some region beyond. Here I could stand quite upright,
but saw that the stones and altars were as low as those in the other
temples. On the walls and roof I beheld for the first time some traces
of the pictorial art of the ancient race, curious curling streaks of
paint that had almost faded or crumbled away; and on two of the altars I
saw with rising excitement a maze of well-fashioned curvilinear
carvings. As I held my torch aloft it seemed to me that the shape of the
roof was too regular to be natural, and I wondered what the prehistoric
cutters of stone had first worked upon. Their engineering skill must
have been vast.
Then a bright flare of the fantastic flame showed me that for
which I had been seeking, the opening to those remoter abysses whence
the sudden wind had blown; and I grew faint when I saw that it was a
small and plainly artificial door chiselled in the solid rock. I
thrust my torch within, beholding a black tunnel with the roof arching
low over a rough flight of very small, numerous, and steeply descending
steps. I shall always see those steps in my dreams, for I came to learn
what they meant. At the time I hardly knew whether to call them steps or
mere footholds in a precipitous descent. My mind was whirling with mad
thoughts, and the words and warnings of Arab prophets seemed to float
across the desert from the lands that men know to the nameless city that
men dare not know. Yet I hesitated only a moment before advancing
through the portal and commencing to climb cautiously down the steep
passage, feet first, as though on a ladder.
It is only in the terrible phantasms of drugs or delirium that
any other man can have such a descent as mine. The narrow passage led
infinitely down like some hideous haunted well, and the torch I held
above my head could not light the unknown depths toward which I was
crawling. I lost track of the hours and forgot to consult my watch,
though I was frightened when I thought of the distance I must be
traversing. There were changes of direction and of steepness; and once I
came to a long, low level passage where
I had to wriggle feet first along the rocky floor, holding the torch at
arm's length beyond my head. The place not high enough for kneeling.
After that were more of the steep steps, and I was still scrambling down
interminably when my failing torch died out. I do not think I noticed
it at the time, for when I did notice it I was still holding it above me
as if it were ablaze. I was quite unbalanced with that instinct for the
strange and the unknown which had made me a wanderer upon earth and a
haunter of far, ancient, and forbidden places.
In the darkness there flashed before my mind fragments of my
cherished treasury of demoniac lore; sentences from Alhazred the mad
Arab, paragraphs from the apocryphal nightmares of Damascus, and
infamous lines from the delirious Image du Monde of Gauthier de
Metz. I repeated queer extracts, and muttered of Afrasiab and the demons
that floated with him down the Oxus; later chanting over and over again
a phrase from one of Lord Dunsany's tales—"the unreverberate blackness
of the abyss." Once when the descent grew amazingly steep I recited
something in singsong from Thomas Moore until I feared to recite more:
A reservoir of darkness, black
As witches' cauldrons are, when fill'd
With moon-drugs in th' eclipse distill'd.
Leaning to look if foot might pass
Down thro' that chasm, I saw, beneath,
As far as vision could explore,
The jetty sides as smooth as glass,
Looking as if just varnish'd o'er
With that dark pitch the Sea of Death
Throws out upon its slimy shore.
Time
had quite ceased to exist when my feet again felt a level floor, and I
found myself in a place slightly higher than the rooms in the two
smaller temples now so incalculably far above my head. I could not quite
stand, but could kneel upright, and in the dark I shuffled and crept
hither and thither at random. I soon knew that I was in a narrow passage
whose walls were lined with cases of wood having glass fronts. As in
that paleozotic and abysmal place I felt of such things as polished wood
and glass I shuddered at the possible implications. The cases were
apparently ranged along each side of the passage at regular intervals,
and were oblong and horizontal, hideously like coffins in shape and
size. When I tried to move two or three for further examination, I found
that they were firmly fastened.
I saw that the passage was a long one, so floundered ahead
rapidly in a creeping run that would have seemed horrible had any eye
watched me in the blackness; crossing from side to side occasionally to
feel of my surroundings and be sure the walls and rows of cases still
stretched on. Man is so used to thinking visually that I almost forgot
the darkness and pictured the endless corridor of wood and glass in its
low-studded monotony as though I saw it. And then in a moment of
indescribable emotion I did see it.
Just when my fancy merged into real sight I cannot tell; but
there came a gradual glow ahead, and all at once I knew that I saw the
dim outlines of the corridor and the cases, revealed by some unknown
subterranean phosphorescence. For a little while all was exactly as I
had imagined it, since the glow was very faint; but as I mechanically
kept stumbling ahead into the stronger light I realized that my fancy
had been but feeble. This hall was no relic of crudity like the temples
in the city above, but a monument of the most magnificent and exotic
art. Rich, vivid, and daringly fantastic designs and pictures formed a
continuous scheme of mural
painting whose lines and colors were beyond description. The cases were
of a strange golden wood, with fronts of exquisite glass, and
containing the mummified forms of creatures outreaching in grotesqueness
the most chaotic dreams of man.
To convey any idea of these monstrosities is impossible. They
were of the reptile kind, with body lines suggesting sometimes the
crocodile, sometimes the seal, but more often nothing of which either
the naturalist or the paleontologist ever heard. In size they
approximated a small man, and their forelegs bore delicate and evidently
flexible feet curiously like human hands and fingers. But strangest of
all were their heads, which presented a contour violating all known
biological principles. To nothing can such things be well compared—in
one flash I thought of comparisons as varied as the cat, the bulldog,
the mythic satyr, and the human being. Not Jove himself had had so
colossal and protuberant a forehead; yet the horns and the noselessness
and the alligator-like jaw placed the things outside all established
categories. I debated for a time on the reality of the mummies, half
suspecting they were artificial idols; but soon decided they were indeed
some paleogean species which had lived when the nameless city was
alive. To crown their grotesqueness, most of them were gorgeously
enrobed in the costliest of fabrics, and lavishly laden with ornaments
of gold, jewels, and unknown shining metals.
The importance of these crawling creatures must have been vast,
for they held first place among the wild designs on the frescoed walls
and ceiling. With matchless skill had the artist drawn them in a world
of their own, wherein they had cities and gardens fashioned to suit
their dimensions; and I could not help but think that their pictured
history was allegorical, perhaps showing the progress of the race that
worshipped them. These creatures, I said to myself, were to the men of
the nameless city what the she-wolf was to Rome, or some totem-beast is
to a tribe of Indians.
Holding this view, I thought I could trace roughly a wonderful
epic of the nameless city; the tale of a mighty seacoast metropolis that
ruled the world before Africa rose out of the waves, and of its
struggles as the sea shrank away, and the desert crept into the fertile
valley that held it. I saw its wars and triumphs, its troubles and
defeats, and afterward its terrible fight against the desert when
thousands of its people here represented in allegory by the grotesque
reptiles were driven to chisel their way down through the rocks in some
marvelous manner to another world whereof their prophets had told them.
It was all vividly weird and realistic, and its connection with the
awesome descent I had made was unmistakable. I even recognized the
passages.
As
I crept along the corridor toward the brighter light I saw later stages
of the painted epic—the leave-taking of the race that had dwelt in the
nameless city and the valley around for ten million years; the race
whose souls shrank from quitting scenes their bodies had known so long
where they had settled as nomads in the earth's youth, hewing in the
virgin rock those primal shrines at which they had never ceased to
worship. Now that the light was better I studied the pictures more
closely and, remembering that the strange reptiles must represent the
unknown men, pondered upon the customs
of the nameless city. Many things were peculiar and inexplicable. The
civilization, which included a written alphabet, had seemingly risen to a
higher order than those immeasurably later civilizations of Egypt and
Chaldea, yet there were curious omissions. I could, for example, find no
pictures to represent deaths or funeral customs, save such as were
related to wars, violence, and plagues; and I wondered at the reticence
shown concerning natural death. It was as though an ideal of immortality
had been fostered as a cheering illusion.
Still
nearer the end of the passage were painted scenes of the utmost
picturesqueness and extravagance; contrasted views of the nameless city
in its desertion and growing ruin, and of the strange new realm of
paradise to which the race had hewed its way through the stone. In these
views the city and the desert valley were shown always by moonlight, a
golden nimbus hovering over the fallen walls and half revealing the
splendid perfection of former times, shown spectrally and elusively by
the artist. The paradisal scenes were almost too extravagant to be
believed, portraying a hidden world of eternal day filled with glorious
cities and ethereal hills and valleys.
At the very last I thought I saw signs of an artistic anticlimax.
The paintings were less skilful, and much more bizarre than even the
wildest of the earlier scenes. They seemed to record a slow decadence of
the ancient stock, coupled with a growing ferocity toward the outside
world from which it was driven by the desert. The forms of the
people—always represented by the sacred reptiles—appeared to be
gradually wasting away, though their spirits as shown hovering above the
ruins by moonlight gained in proportion. Emaciated priests, displayed
as reptiles in ornate robes, cursed the upper air and all who breathed
it; and one terrible final scene showed a primitive-looking man, perhaps
a pioneer of ancient Irem, the City of Pillars, torn to pieces by
members of the older race. I remembered how the Arabs fear the nameless
city, and was glad that beyond this place the gray walls and ceiling
were bare.
As I viewed the pageant of mural history I had approached very
closely the end of the low-ceiled hall, and was aware of a gate through
which came all of the illuminating phosphorescence. Creeping up to it, I
cried aloud in transcendent amazement at what lay beyond; for instead
of other and brighter chambers there was only an illimitable void of
uniform radiance, such as one might fancy when gazing down from the peak
of Mount Everest upon a sea of sunlit mist. Behind me was a passage so
cramped that I could not stand upright in it; before me was an infinity
of subterranean effulgence.
Reaching down from the passage into the abyss was the head of a
steep flight of steps—small, numerous steps like those of the black
passages I had traversed—but after a few feet the glowing vapors
concealed everything. Swung back open against the left-hand wall of the
passage was a massive door of brass, incredibly thick and decorated with
fantastic bas-reliefs, which could if closed shut the whole inner world
of light away from the vaults and passages of rock. I looked at the
steps, and for the nonce dared not try them. I touched the open brass
door, and could not move it. Then I sank prone to the stone floor, my
mind aflame with prodigious reflections which not even a death-like
exhaustion could banish.
As
I lay still with closed eyes, free to ponder, many things I had lightly
noted in the frescoes came back to me with new and terrible
significance—scenes representing the nameless city in its heyday, the
vegetation of the valley around it, and the distant lands with which its
merchants traded. The allegory of the crawling creatures puzzled me by
its universal prominence, and I wondered that it should be so closely
followed in a pictured history of such importance. In the frescoes the
nameless city had been shown in proportions fitted to the reptiles. I
wondered what its real proportions and magnificence had been, and
reflected a moment on certain oddities I had noticed in the ruins. I
thought curiously of the lowness of the primal temples and of the
underground corridor, which were doubtless hewn thus out of deference to
the reptile deities there honored; though it perforce reduced the
worshippers to crawling. Perhaps the very rites here involved a crawling
in imitation of the creatures. No religious theory, however, could
easily explain why the level passage in the awesome descent should be as
low as the temples—or lower, since one could not even kneel in it. As I
thought of the crawling creatures, whose hideous mummified forms were
so close to me, I felt a new throb of fear. Mental associations are
curious, and I shrank from the idea that except for the poor primitive
man torn to pieces in the last painting, mine was the only human form
amidst the many relics and symbols of primordial life.
But as always in my strange and roving existence, wonder soon
drove out fear; for the luminous abyss and what it might contain
presented a problem worthy of the greatest explorer. That a weird world
of mystery lay far down that flight of peculiarly small steps I could
not doubt, and I hoped to find there those human memorials which the
painted corridor had failed to give. The frescoes had pictured
unbelievable cities and valleys in this lower realm, and my fancy dwelt
on the rich and colossal ruins that awaited me.
My fears,
indeed, concerned the past rather than the future. Not even the
physical horror of my position in that cramped corridor of dead reptiles
and antediluvian frescoes, miles below the world I knew and faced by
another world of eery light and mist, could match the lethal dread I
felt at the abysmal antiquity of the scene and its soul. An ancientness
so vast that measurement is feeble seemed to leer down from the primal
stones and rock-hewn temples of the nameless city, while the very latest
of the astounding maps in the frescoes showed oceans and continents
that man has forgotten, with only here and there some vaguely familiar
outline. Of what could have happened in the geological ages since the
paintings ceased and the death-hating race resentfully succumbed to
decay, no man might say. Life had once teemed in these caverns and in
the luminous realm beyond; now I was alone with vivid relics, and I
trembled to think of the countless ages through which these relics had
kept a silent, deserted vigil.
Suddenly there came another burst of that acute fear which had
intermittently seized me ever since I first saw the terrible valley and
the nameless city under a cold moon, and despite my exhaustion I found
myself starting frantically to a sitting posture and gazing back along
the black corridor toward the tunnels that rose to the outer world. My
sensations were like those which
had made me shun the nameless city at night, and were as inexplicable
as they were poignant. In another moment, however, I received a still
greater shock in the form of a definite sound—the first which had broken
the utter silence of these tomb-like depths. It was a deep, low
moaning, as of a distant throng of condemned spirits, and came from the
direction in which I was staring. Its volume rapidly grew, till soon it
reverberated frightfully through the low passage, and at the same time I
became conscious of an increasing draft of cold air, likewise flowing
from the tunnels and the city above.
The touch of this air seemed to restore my balance, for I
instantly recalled the sudden gusts which had risen around the mouth of
the abyss each sunset and sunrise, one of which had indeed revealed the
hidden tunnels to me. I looked at my watch and saw that sunrise was
near, so braced myself to resist the gale that was sweeping down to its
cavern home as it had swept forth at evening. My fear again waned low,
since a natural phenomenon tends to dispel broodings over the unknown.
More and more madly poured the shrieking, moaning night wind into
that gulf of the inner earth. I dropped prone again and clutched vainly
at the floor for fear of being swept bodily through the open gate into
the phosphorescent abyss. Such fury I had not expected, and as I grew
aware of an actual slipping of my form toward the abyss I was beset by a
thousand new terrors of apprehension and imagination.
The malignancy of the blast awakened incredible fancies; once
more I compared myself shudderingly to the only human image in that
frightful corridor, the man who was torn to pieces by the nameless race,
for in the fiendish clawing of the swirling currents there seemed to
abide a vindictive rage all the stronger because it was largely
impotent.
I think I screamed frantically near the last—I was almost mad—but
if I did so my cries were lost in the hell-born babel of the howling
wind-wraiths. I tried to crawl against the murderous invisible torrent,
but I could not even hold my own as I was pushed slowly and inexorably
toward the unknown world. Finally reason must have wholly snapped; for I
fell to babbling over and over that unexplainable couplet of the mad
Arab Alhazred, who dreamed of the nameless city:
That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange eons, even death may die.
Only the grim brooding desert gods know what really took place—what
indescribable struggles and scrambles in the dark I endured or what
Abaddon guided me back to life, where I must always remember and shiver
in the night wind till oblivion—or worse—claims me. Monstrous,
unnatural, colossal, was the thing—too far beyond all the ideas of man
to be believed except in the silent damnable small hours of the morning
when one cannot sleep.
Ihave
said that the fury of the rushing blast was infernal—cacodemoniacal—and
that its voices were hideous with the pent-up viciousness of desolate
eternities. Presently these voices, while still chaotic before me,
seemed to my beating brain to take articulate form behind me; and down
there in the grave of unnumbered eon-dead antiquities, leagues below the
dawn-lit world of men, I heard the ghastly cursing and snarling of
strange-tongued fiends. Turning, I saw outlined against the luminous
aether of the abyss
what could not be seen against the dusk of the corridor—a nightmare
horde of rushing devils; hate-distorted, grotesquely panoplied,
half-transparent devils of a race no man might mistake—the crawling
reptiles of the nameless city.
And as the wind died away I was plunged into the ghoul-peopled
darkness of earth's bowels; for behind the last of the creatures the
great brazen door clanged shut with a deafening peal of metallic music
whose reverberations swelled out to the distant world to hail the rising
sun as Memnon hails it from the banks of the Nile.
About the Author
Howard Phillips Lovecraft was an American writer of weird, science, fantasy, and horror fiction. He is best known for his creation of the Cthulhu Mythos.
Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Lovecraft spent most of his life in New England. Wikipedia
Born: August 20, 1890, Providence, RI Died: March 15, 1937, Providence, RI Full Name: Howard Phillips Lovecraft Spouse: Sonia Greene (m. 1924–1937)
"We shall meet again, perhaps in the shining mists of Orion's Sword."
Beyond the Wall of Sleep
By H. P. LOVECRAFT
What strange, splendid yet terrible experiences came to the poor
mountaineer in the hours of sleep?—a story of a supernal being from
Algol, the Demon-Star
Ihave
often wondered if the majority of mankind ever pause to reflect upon
the occasionally titanic significance of dreams, and of the obscure
world to which they belong. Whilst the greater number of our nocturnal
visions are perhaps no more than faint and fantastic reflections of our
waking experiences—Freud to the contrary with his puerile
symbolism—there are still a certain
remainder whose immundane and ethereal character permits of no ordinary
interpretation, and whose vaguely exciting and disquieting effect
suggests possible minute glimpses into a sphere of mental existence no
less important than physical life, yet separated from that life by an
all but impassable barrier. From my experience I cannot doubt but that
man, when lost to terrestrial consciousness, is indeed sojourning in
another and uncorporeal life of far different nature from the life we
know, and of which only the slightest and most indistinct memories
linger after waking. From those blurred and fragmentary memories we may
infer much, yet prove little. We may guess that in dreams life, matter,
and vitality, as the earth knows such things, are not necessarily
constant; and that time and space do not exist as our waking selves
comprehend them. Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our
truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is
itself the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon.
It was from a youthful revery filled with speculations of this
sort that I arose one afternoon in the winter of 1900-01, when to the
state psychopathic institution in which I served as an interne was
brought the man whose case has ever since haunted me so unceasingly. His
name, as given on the records, was Joe Slater, or Slaader, and his
appearance was that of the typical denizen of the Catskill Mountain
region; one of those strange, repellent scions of a primitive Colonial
peasant stock whose isolation for nearly three centuries in the hilly
fastnesses of a little-traveled countryside has caused them to sink to a
kind of barbaric degeneracy, rather than advance with their more
fortunately placed brethren of the thickly settled districts. Among
these odd folk, who correspond exactly to the decadent element of "white
trash" in the South, law and morals are non-existent; and their general
mental status is probably below that of any other section of the native
American people.
Joe Slater, who came to the institution in the vigilant custody
of four state policemen, and who was described as a highly dangerous
character, certainly presented no evidence of his perilous disposition
when I first beheld him. Though well above the middle stature, and of
somewhat brawny frame, he was given an absurd appearance of harmless
stupidity by the pale, sleepy blueness of his small watery eyes, the
scantiness of his neglected and never-shaven growth of yellow beard, and
the listless drooping of his heavy nether lip. His age was unknown,
since among his kind neither family records nor permanent family ties
exist; but from the baldness of his head in front, and from the decayed
condition of his teeth, the head surgeon wrote him down as a man of
about forty.
From the medical and court documents we learned all that could be
gathered of his case: This man, a vagabond, hunter and trapper, had
always been strange in the eyes of his primitive associates. He had
habitually slept at night beyond the ordinary time, and upon waking
would often talk of unknown things in a manner so bizarre as to inspire
fear even in the hearts of an unimaginative populace. Not that his form
of language was at all unusual, for he never spoke save in the debased
patois of his environment; but the tone and tenor of his utterances were
of such mysterious wildness, that none might listen without
apprehension. He himself was generally as terrified and baffled as his
auditors, and within an hour after awakening would forget all that he
had said, or at least all that had caused him to say what he did;
relapsing into a bovine, half-amiable normality like that of the other
hill-dwellers.
As
Slater grew older, it appeared, his matutinal aberrations had gradually
increased in frequency and violence; till about a month before his
arrival at the institution had occurred the shocking tragedy which
caused his arrest by the authorities. One day near noon, after a
profound sleep begun in a whisky debauch at about five of the previous
afternoon, the man had roused himself most suddenly, with ululations so
horrible and unearthly that they brought several neighbors to his
cabin—a filthy sty where he dwelt with a family as indescribable as
himself. Rushing out into the snow, he had flung his arms aloft and
commenced a series of leaps directly upward in the air; the while
shouting his determination to reach some "big, big cabin with brightness
in the roof and walls and floor and the loud queer music far away." As
two men of moderate size sought to restrain him, he had struggled with
maniacal force and fury, screaming of his desire and need to find and
kill a certain "thing that shines and shakes and laughs." At length,
after temporarily felling one of his detainers with a sudden blow, he
had flung himself upon the other in a demoniac ecstasy of
blood-thirstiness, shrieking fiendishly that he would "jump high in the
air and burn his way through anything that stopped him."
Family and neighbors had now fled in a panic, and when the more
courageous of them returned, Slater was gone, leaving behind an
unrecognizable pulp-like thing that had been a living man but an hour
before. None of the mountaineers had dared to pursue him, and it is
likely that they would have welcomed his death from the cold; but when
several mornings later they heard his screams from a distant ravine they
realized that he had somehow managed to survive, and that his removal
in one way or another would be necessary. Then had followed an armed
searching-party, whose purpose (whatever it may have been originally)
became that of a sheriff's posse after one of the seldom popular state
troopers had by accident observed, then questioned, and finally joined
the seekers.
On the
third day Slater was found unconscious in the hollow of a tree, and
taken to the nearest jail, where alienists from Albany examined him as
soon as his senses returned. To them he told a simple story. He had, he
said, gone to sleep one afternoon about sundown after drinking much
liquor. He had awaked to find himself standing bloody-handed in the snow
before his cabin, the mangled corpse of his neighbor Peter Slader at
his feet. Horrified, he had taken to the woods in a vague effort to
escape from the scene of what must have been his crime. Beyond these
things he seemed to know nothing, nor could the expert questioning of
his interrogators bring out a single additional fact.
That night Slater slept quietly, and the next morning he wakened
with no singular feature save a certain alteration of expression. Doctor
Barnard, who had been watching the patient, thought he noticed in the
pale blue eyes a certain gleam of peculiar quality, and in the flaccid
lips an all but imperceptible tightening, as if of intelligent
determination. But when questioned, Slater relapsed into the habitual
vacancy of the mountaineer, and only reiterated what he had said on the
preceding day.
On the third morning occurred the first of the man's mental
attacks. After some show of uneasiness in sleep, he burst forth into a
frenzy so powerful that the combined efforts of four men were needed to
bind him in a straitjacket. The alienists listened with keen attention
to his words, since their curiosity had been aroused to a high pitch by
the suggestive yet
mostly conflicting and incoherent stories of his family and neighbors.
Slater raved for upward of fifteen minutes, babbling in his backwoods
dialect of green edifices of light, oceans of space, strange music, and
shadowy mountains and valleys. But most of all did he dwell upon some
mysterious blazing entity that shook and laughed and mocked at him. This
vast, vague personality seemed to have done him a terrible wrong, and
to kill it in triumphant revenge was his paramount desire. In order to
reach it, he said, he would soar through abysses of emptiness, burning
every obstacle that stood in his way. Thus ran his discourse, until
with the greatest suddenness he ceased. The fire of madness died from
his eyes, and in dull wonder he looked at his questioners and asked why
he was bound. R. Barnard unbuckled the leather harness and did not
restore it till night, when he succeeded in persuading Slater to don it
of his own volition, for his own good. The man had now admitted that he
sometimes talked queerly, though he knew not why.
Within a week two more attacks appeared, but from them the doctors learned little. On the source
of Slater's visions they speculated at length, for since he could
neither read nor write, and had apparently never heard a legend or
fairy-tale, his gorgeous imagery was quite inexplicable. That it could
not come from any known myth or romance was made especially clear by the
fact that the unfortunate lunatic expressed himself only in his own
simple manner. He raved of things he did not understand and could not
interpret; things which he claimed to have experienced, but which he
could not have learned through any normal or connected narration. The
alienists soon agreed that abnormal dreams were the foundation of the
trouble; dreams whose vividness could for a time completely dominate the
waking mind of this basically inferior man. With due formality Slater
was tried for murder, acquitted on the ground of insanity, and committed
to the institution wherein I held so humble a post.
Ihave
said that I am a constant speculator concerning dream-life, and from
this you may judge of the eagerness with which I applied myself to the
study of the new patient as soon as I had fully ascertained the facts of
his case. He seemed to sense a certain friendliness in me, born no
doubt of the interest I could not conceal, and the gentle manner in
which I questioned him. Not that he ever recognized me during his
attacks, when I hung breathlessly upon his chaotic but cosmic
word-pictures; but he knew me in his quiet hours, when he would sit by
his barred window weaving baskets of straw and willow, and perhaps
pining for the mountain freedom he could never again enjoy. His family
never called to see him; probably it had found another temporary head,
after the manner of decadent mountain folk.
By degrees I commenced to feel an overwhelming wonder at the mad
and fantastic conceptions of Joe Slater. The man himself was pitiably
inferior in mentality and language alike; but his glowing, titanic
visions, though described in a barbarous disjointed jargon, were
assuredly things which only a superior or even exceptional brain could
conceive. How, I often asked myself, could the stolid imagination of a
Catskill degenerate conjure up sights whose very possession argued a
lurking spark of genius? How could any backwoods dullard have gained so
much as an idea of those glittering realms of supernal radiance and
space about which Slater ranted in his furious delirium? More and more I
inclined to the belief that in the pitiful personality who cringed
before me lay the disordered nucleus
of something beyond my comprehension; something infinitely beyond the
comprehension of my more experienced but less imaginative medical and
scientific colleagues.
And yet I could extract nothing definite from the man. The sum of
all my investigation was, that in a kind of semi-corporeal dream-life
Slater wandered or floated through resplendent and prodigious valleys,
meadows, gardens, cities, and palaces of light, in a region unbounded
and unknown to man; that there he was no peasant or degenerate, but a
creature of importance and vivid life, moving proudly and dominantly,
and checked only by a certain deadly enemy, who seemed to be a being of
visible yet ethereal structure, and who did not appear to be of human
shape, since Slater never referred to it as a man, or as aught save a thing. This thing had done Slater some hideous but unnamed wrong, which the maniac (if maniac he were) yearned to avenge.
From the manner in which Slater alluded to their dealings, I judged that he and the luminous thing
had met on equal terms; that in his dream existence the man was himself
a luminous thing of the same race as his enemy. This impression was
sustained by his frequent references to flying through space and burning
all that impeded his progress. Yet these conceptions were formulated in
rustic words wholly inadequate to convey them, a circumstance which
drove me to the conclusion that if a true dream world indeed existed,
oral language was not its medium for the transmission of thought. Could
it be that the dream soul inhabiting this inferior body was desperately
struggling to speak things which the simple and halting tongue of
dullness could not utter? Could it be that I was face to face with
intellectual emanations which would explain the mystery if I could but
learn to discover and read them? I did not tell the older physicians of
these things, for middle age is skeptical, cynical, and disinclined to
accept new ideas. Besides, the head of the institution had but lately
warned me in his paternal way that I was overworking; that my mind
needed a rest.
It had long been my belief that human thought consists basically
of atomic or molecular motion, convertible into ether waves of radiant
energy like heat, light and electricity. This belief had early led me to
contemplate the possibility of telepathy or mental communication by
means of suitable apparatus, and I had in my college days prepared a set
of transmitting and receiving instruments somewhat similar to the
cumbrous devices employed in wireless telegraphy at that crude,
pre-radio period. These I had tested with a fellow-student, but
achieving no result, had soon packed them away with other scientific
odds and ends for possible future use.
Now, in my intense desire to probe into the dream-life of Joe
Slater, I sought these instruments again, and spent several days in
repairing them for action. When they were complete once more I missed no
opportunity for their trial. At each outburst of Slater's violence, I
would fit the transmitter to his forehead and the receiver to my own,
constantly making delicate adjustments for various hypothetical
wave-lengths of intellectual energy. I had but little notion of how the
thought-impressions would, if successfully conveyed, arouse an
intelligent response in my brain, but I felt certain that I could detect
and interpret them. Accordingly I continued my experiments, though
informing no one of their nature.
It was
on the twenty-first of February, 1901, that the thing occurred. As I
look back across the years I realize how unreal it seems, and sometimes
half wonder
if old Doctor Fenton was not right when he charged it all to my excited
imagination. I recall that he listened with great kindness and patience
when I told him, but afterward gave me a nerve-powder and arranged for
the half-year's vacation on which I departed the next week.
That fateful night I was wildly agitated and perturbed, for
despite the excellent care he had received, Joe Slater was unmistakably
dying. Perhaps it was his mountain freedom that he missed, or perhaps
the turmoil in his brain had grown too acute for his rather sluggish
physique; but at all events the flame of vitality flickered low in the
decadent body. He was drowsy near the end, and as darkness fell he
dropped off into a troubled sleep.
I did not strap on the straitjacket as was customary when he
slept, since I saw that he was too feeble to be dangerous, even if he
woke in mental disorder once more before passing away. But I did place
upon his head and mine the two ends of my cosmic "radio," hoping against
hope for a first and last message from the dream world in the brief
time remaining. In the cell with us was one nurse, a mediocre fellow who
did not understand the purpose of the apparatus, or think to inquire
into my course. As the hours wore on I saw his head droop awkwardly in
sleep, but I did not disturb him. I myself, lulled by the rhythmical
breathing of the healthy and the dying man, must have nodded a little
later.
The sound of weird lyric melody was what aroused me. Chords,
vibrations, and harmonic ecstasies echoed passionately on every hand,
while on my ravished sight burst the stupendous spectacle of ultimate
beauty. Walls, columns, and architraves of living fire blazed
effulgently around the spot where I seemed to float in air, extending
upward to an infinitely high vaulted dome of indescribable splendor.
Blending with this display of palatial magnificence, or rather,
supplanting it at times in kaleidoscopic rotation, were glimpses of wide
plains and graceful valleys, high mountains and inviting grottoes,
covered with every lovely attribute of scenery which my delighted eyes
could conceive of, yet formed wholly of some glowing, ethereal plastic
entity, which in consistency partook as much of spirit as of matter. As I
gazed, I perceived that my own brain held the key to these enchanting
metamorphoses; for each vista which appeared to me was the one my
changing mind most wished to behold. Amidst this elysian realm I dwelt
not as a stranger, for each sight and sound was familiar to me; just as
it had been for uncounted eons of eternity before, and would be for like
eternities to come.
Then the resplendent aura of my brother of light drew near and
held colloquy with me, soul to soul, with silent and perfect interchange
of thought. The hour was one of approaching triumph, for was not my
fellow-being escaping at last from a degrading periodic bondage;
escaping for ever, and preparing to follow the accursed oppressor even
unto the uttermost fields of ether, that upon it might be wrought a
flaming cosmic vengeance which would shake the spheres? We floated thus
for a little time, when I perceived a slight blurring and fading of the
objects around us, as though some force were recalling me to earth—where
I least wished to go. The form near me seemed to feel a change also,
for it gradually brought its discourse toward a conclusion, and itself
prepared to quit the scene, fading from my sight at a rate somewhat less
rapid than that of the other objects. A few more thoughts were
exchanged, and I knew that the luminous one and I were being recalled to
bondage, though for my brother of light it would be
the last time. The sorry planet shell being well-nigh spent, in less
than an hour my fellow would be free to pursue the oppressor along the
Milky Way and past the hither stars to the very confines of infinity.
Awell-defined
shock separates my final impression of the fading scene of light from
my sudden and somewhat shamefaced awakening and straightening up in my
chair as I saw the dying figure on the couch move hesitantly. Joe Slater
was indeed awaking, though probably for the last time. As I looked more
closely, I saw that in the sallow cheeks shone spots of color which had
never before been present. The lips, too, seemed unusual, being tightly
compressed, as if by the force of a stronger character than had been
Slater's. The whole face finally began to grow tense, and the head
turned restlessly with closed eyes.
I did not rouse the sleeping nurse, but readjusted the slightly
disarranged headbands of my telepathic "radio," intent to catch any
parting message the dreamer might have to deliver. All at once the head
turned sharply in my direction and the eyes fell open, causing me to
stare in blank amazement at what I beheld. The man who had been Joe
Slater, the Catskill decadent, was now gazing at me with a pair of
luminous, expanding eyes whose blue seemed subtly to have deepened.
Neither mania nor degeneracy was visible in that gaze, and I felt beyond
a doubt that I was viewing a face behind which lay an active mind of
high order.
At this juncture my brain became aware of a steady external
influence operating upon it. I closed my eyes to concentrate my thoughts
more profoundly, and was rewarded by the positive knowledge that my long-sought mental message had come at last.
Each transmitted idea formed rapidly in my mind, and though no actual
language was employed, my habitual association of conception and
expression was so great that I seemed to be receiving the message in
ordinary English.
"Joe Slater is dead," came the soul-petrifying voice of an
agency from beyond the wall of sleep. My opened eyes sought the couch
of pain in curious horror, but the blue eyes were still calmly gazing,
and the countenance was still intelligently animated. "He is better
dead, for he was unfit to bear the active intellect of cosmic entity.
His gross body could not undergo the needed adjustments between ethereal
life and planet life. He was too much an animal, too little a man; yet
it is through his deficiency that you have come to discover me, for the
cosmic and planet souls rightly should never meet. He has been in my
torment and diurnal prison for forty-two of your terrestrial years.
"I am an entity like that which you yourself become in the
freedom of dreamless sleep. I am your brother of light, and have floated
with you in the effulgent valleys. It is not permitted me to tell your
waking earth-self of your real self, but we are all roamers of vast
spaces and travelers in many ages. Next year I may be dwelling in the
Egypt which you call ancient, or in the cruel empire of Tsan Chan which
is to come three thousand years hence. You and I have drifted to the
worlds that reel about the red Arcturus, and dwelt in the bodies of the
insect-philosophers that crawl proudly over the fourth moon of Jupiter.
How little does the earth self know life and its extent! How little,
indeed, ought it to know for its own tranquillity!
"Of the oppressor I cannot speak. You on earth have unwittingly
felt its distant presence—you who without knowing idly gave the blinking
beacon the name of Algol, the Demon-Star. It is to meet and conquer
the oppressor that I have vainly striven for eons, held back by bodily
encumbrances. Tonight I go as a Nemesis bearing just and blazingly
cataclysmic vengeance. Watch me in the sky close by the Demon-Star.
"I cannot speak longer, for the body of Joe Slater grows cold and
rigid, and the coarse brains are ceasing to vibrate as I wish. You have
been my only friend on this planet—the only soul to sense and seek for
me within the repellent form which lies on this couch. We shall meet
again—perhaps in the shining mists of Orion's Sword, perhaps on a bleak
plateau in prehistoric Asia, perhaps in unremembered dreams tonight,
perhaps in some other form an eon hence, when the solar system shall
have been swept away."
At this point the thought-waves abruptly ceased, and the pale
eyes of the dreamer—or can I say dead man?—commenced to glaze fishily.
In a half-stupor I crossed over to the couch and felt of his wrist, but
found it cold, stiff, and pulseless. The sallow cheeks paled again, and
the thick lips fell open, disclosing the repulsively rotten fangs of the
degenerate Joe Slater. I shivered, pulled a blanket over the hideous
face, and awakened the nurse. Then I left the cell and went silently to
my room. I had an instant and unaccountable craving for a sleep whose
dreams I should not remember.
The
climax? What plain tale of science can boast of such a rhetorical
effect? I have merely set down certain things appealing to me as facts,
allowing you to construe them as you will. As I have already admitted,
my superior, old Doctor Fenton, denies the reality of everything I have
related. He vows that I was broken down with nervous strain, and badly
in need of the long vacation on full pay which he so generously gave me.
He assures me on his professional honor that Joe Slater was but a
low-grade paranoiac, whose fantastic notions must have come from the
crude hereditary folk-tales which circulated in even the most decadent
of communities. All this he tells me—yet I cannot forget what I saw in
the sky on the night after Slater died. Lest you think me a biased
witness, another pen must add this final testimony, which may perhaps
supply the climax you expect. I will quote the following account of the
star Nova Persei verbatim from the pages of that eminent astronomical authority, Professor Garrett P. Serviss:
"On February 22, 1901, a marvelous new star was discovered by Doctor Anderson of Edinburgh, not very far from Algol.
No star had been visible at that point before. Within twenty-four hours
the stranger had become so bright that it outshone Capella. In a week
or two it had visibly faded, and in the course of a few months it was
hardly discernible with the naked eye."
About the Author
Howard Phillips Lovecraft was an American writer of weird, science, fantasy, and horror fiction. He is best known for his creation of the Cthulhu Mythos.
Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Lovecraft spent most of his life in New England. Wikipedia
Born: August 20, 1890, Providence, RI Died: March 15, 1937, Providence, RI Full Name: Howard Phillips Lovecraft Spouse: Sonia Greene (m. 1924–1937)