IV. A Mutation and a Madness
1
In the week following that memorable Good Friday Charles
Ward was seen more often than usual, and was continually carrying books
between his library and the attic laboratory. His actions were quiet and
rational, but he had a furtive, hunted look which his mother did not like,
and developed an incredibly ravenous appetite as gauged by his demands
upon the cook. Dr. Willett had been told of those Friday noises and happenings,
and on the following Tuesday had a long conversation with the youth in
the library where the picture stared no more. The interview was, as always,
inconclusive; but Willett is still ready to swear that the youth was sane
and himself at the time. He held out promises of an early revelation, and
spoke of the need of securing a laboratory elsewhere. At the loss of the
portrait he grieved singularly little considering his first enthusiasm
over it, but seemed to find something of positive humour in its sudden
crumbling.
About the second week Charles began to be absent from
the house for long periods, and one day when good old black Hannah came
to help with the spring cleaning she mentioned his frequent visits to the
old house in Olney Court, where he would come with a large valise and perform
curious delvings in the cellar. He was always very liberal to her and to
old Asa, but seemed more worried than he used to be; which grieved her
very much, since she had watched him grow up from birth. Another report
of his doings came from Pawtuxet, where some friends of the family saw
him at a distance a surprising number of times. He seemed to haunt the
resort and canoe-house of Rhodes-on-the-Pawtuxet, and subsequent inquiries
by Dr. Willett at that place brought out the fact that his purpose was
always to secure access to the rather hedged-in river-bank, along which
he would walk toward the north, usually not reappearing for a very long
while.
Late in May came a momentary revival of ritualistic sounds
in the attic laboratory which brought a stern reproof from Mr. Ward and
a somewhat distracted promise of amendment from Charles. It occurred one
morning, and seemed to form a resumption of the imaginary conversation
noted on that turbulent Good Friday. The youth was arguing or remonstrating
hotly with himself, for there suddenly burst forth a perfectly distinguishable
series of clashing shouts in differentiated tones like alternate demands
and denials which caused Mrs. Ward to run upstairs and listen at the door.
She could hear no more than a fragment whose only plain words were 'must
have it red for three months', and upon her knocking all sounds ceased
at once. When Charles was later questioned by his father he said that there
were certain conflicts of spheres of consciousness which only great skill
could avoid, but which he would try to transfer to other realms.
About the middle of June a queer nocturnal incident occurred.
In the early evening there had been some noise and thumping in the laboratory
upstairs, and Mr. Ward was on the point of investigating when it suddenly
quieted down. That midnight, after the family had retired, the butler was
nightlocking the front door when according to his statement Charles appeared
somewhat
blunderingly and uncertainly at the foot of the stairs
with a large suitcase and made signs that he wished egress. The youth spoke
no word, but the worthy Yorkshireman caught one sight of his fevered eyes
and trembled causelessly. He opened the door and young Ward went out, but
in the morning he presented his resignation to Mrs. Ward. There was, he
said, something unholy in the glance Charles had fixed on him. It was no
way for a young gentleman to look at an honest person, and he could not
possibly stay another night. Mrs. Ward allowed the man to depart, but she
did not value his statement highly. To fancy Charles in a savage state
that night was quite ridiculous, for as long as she had remained awake
she had heard faint sounds from the laboratory
above; sounds as if of sobbing and pacing, and of a sighing
which told only of despair's profoundest depths. Mrs. Ward had grown used
to listening for sounds in the night, for the mystery of her son was fast
driving all else from her mind.
The next evening, much as on another evening nearly three
months before, Charles Ward seized the newspaper very early and accidentally
lost the main section. This matter was not recalled till later, when Dr.
Willett began checking up loose ends and searching out missing links here
and there. In the Journal office he found the section which Charles had
lost, and marked two items as of possible significance. They were as follows:
More Cemetery Delving
It was this morning discovered by Robert Hart, night watchman
at the North Burial Ground, that ghouls were again at work in the ancient
portion of the cemetery. The grave of Ezra Weeden, who was born in 1740
and died in 1824 according to his uprooted and savagely splintered slate
headstone, was found excavated and rifled, the work being evidently done
with a spade stolen
from an adjacent tool-shed.
Whatever the contents may have been after more than a
century of burial, all was gone except a few slivers of decayed wood. There
were no wheel tracks, but the police have measured a single set of footprints
which they found in the vicinity, and which indicate the boots of a man
of refinement.
Hart is inclined to link this incident with the digging
discovered last March, when a party in a motor truck were frightened away
after making a deep excavation; but Sergt. Riley of the Second Station
discounts this theory and points to vital differences in the two cases.
In March the digging had been in a spot where no grave was known; but this
time a well-marked and cared-for
grave had been rifled with every evidence of deliberate
purpose, and with a conscious malignity expressed in the splintering of
the slab which had been intact up to the day before.
Members of the Weeden family, notified of the happening,
expressed their astonishment and regret; and were wholly unable to think
of any enemy who would care to violate the grave of their ancestor. Hazard
Weeden of 598 Angell Street recalls a family legend according to which
Ezra Weeden was involved in some very peculiar circumstances, not dishonourable
to himself,
shortly before the Revolution; but of any modern feud
or mystery he is frankly ignorant. Inspector Cunningham has been assigned
to the case, and hopes to uncover some valuable clues in the near future.
Dogs Noisy in Pawtuxet Residents of
Pawtuxet were aroused about 3 a.m. today by a phenomenal baying of dogs
which seemed to centre near the river just north of Rhodes-on-the-Pawtuxet.
The volume and quality of the howling were unusually odd, according to
most who heart it; and Fred Lemdin, night watchman at Rhodes, declares
it was mixed with something very like the shrieks of a man in mortal terror
and agony. A sharp and very brief thunderstorm, which seemed to strike
somewhere near the bank of the river, put an end to the disturbance. Strange
and unpleasant odours, probably from the oil tanks along the bay, are popularly
linked with this incident; and may have had their share in exciting the
dogs.
The aspect of Charles now became very haggard and hunted,
and all agreed in retrospect that he may have wished at this period to
make some statement or confession from which sheer terror withheld him.
The morbid listening of his mother in the night brought out the fact that
he made frequent sallies abroad under cover of darkness, and most of the
more academic alienists unite
at present in charging him with the revolting cases of
vampirism which the press so sensationally reported about this time, but
which have not yet been definitely traced to any known perpetrator. These
cases, too recent and celebrated to need detailed mention, involved victims
of every age and type and seemed to cluster around two distinct localities;
the residential hill and the
North End, near the Ward home, and the suburban districts
across the Cranston line near Pawtuxet. Both late wayfarers and sleepers
with open windows were attacked, and those who lived to tell the tale spoke
unanimously of a lean, lithe, leaping monster with burning eyes which fastened
its teeth in the throat or upper arm and feasted ravenously.
Dr. Willett, who refuses to date the madness of Charles
Ward as far back as even this, is cautious in attempting to explain these
horrors. He has, he declares, certain theories of his own; and limits his
positive statements to a peculiar kind of negation: 'I will not,' he says,
'state who or what I believe perpetrated these attacks and murders, but
I will declare that Charles Ward was innocent of them. I have reason to
be sure he was ignorant of the taste of blood, as indeed his continued
anaemic decline and increasing pallor prove better than any verbal argument.
Ward meddled with terrible things, but he has paid for it, and he was never
a monster or a villain. As for now - I don't like to think. A change came,
and I'm content to believe that the old Charles Ward died with it. His
soul did, anyhow, for that mad flesh that vanished from Waite's hospital
had another.'
Willett speaks with authority, for he was often at the
Ward home attending Mrs. Ward, whose nerves had begun to snap under the
strain. Her nocturnal listening had bred some morbid hallucinations which
she confided to the doctor with hesitancy, and which he ridiculed in talking
to her, although they made him ponder deeply when alone. These delusions
always concerning the
faint sounds which she fancied she heard in the attic
laboratory and bedroom, and emphasised the occurrence of muffled sighs
and sobbings at the most impossible times. Early in July Willett ordered
Mrs. Ward to Atlantic City for an indefinite recuperative sojourn, and
cautioned both Mr. Ward and the haggard and elusive Charles to write her
only cheering letters. It is probably to
this enforced and reluctant escape that she owes her
life and continued sanity.
2
Not long after his mother's departure, Charles Ward began
negotiating for the Pawtuxet bungalow. It was a squalid little wooden edifice
with a concrete garage, perched high on the sparsely settled bank of the
river slightly above Rhodes, but for some odd reason the youth would have
nothing else. He gave the real-estate agencies no peace till one of them
secured it for him at an
exorbitant price from a somewhat reluctant owner, and
as soon as it was vacant he took possession under cover of darkness,, transporting
in a great closed van the entire contents of his attic laboratory, including
the books both weird and modern which he had borrowed from his study. He
had this van loaded in the black small hours, and his father recalls only
a drowsy realisation
of stifled oaths and stamping feet on the night the goods
were taken away. After that Charles moved back to his own old quarters
on the third floor, and never haunted the attic again.
To the Pawtuxet bungalow Charles transferred all the secrecy
with which he had surrounded his attic realm, save that he now appeared
to have two sharers of his mysteries; a villainous-looking Portuguese half-caste
from the South Main St. waterfront who acted as a servant, and a thin,
scholarly stranger with dark glasses and a stubbly full beard of dyed aspect
whose status was
evidently that of a colleague. Neighbours vainly tried
to engage these odd persons in conversation. The mulatto Gomes spoke very
little English, and the bearded man, who gave his name as Dr. Allen, voluntarily
followed his example. Ward himself tried to be more affable, but succeeded
only in provoking curiousity with his rambling accounts of chemical research.
Before long queer tales began to circulate regarding the all-night burning
of lights; and somewhat later, after this burning had suddenly ceased,
there rose still queerer tales of disproportionate orders of meat from
the butcher's and of the muffled shouting, declamation, rhythmic chanting,
and screaming supposed to come from some very cellar below the place. Most
distinctly the new and strange
household was bitterly disliked by the honest bourgeoisie
of the vicinity, and it is not remarkable that dark hints were advanced
connecting the hated establishment with the current epidemic of vampiristic
attacks and murders; especially since the radius of that plague seemed
now confined wholly to Pawtuxet and the adjacent streets of Edgewood.
Ward spent most of his time at the bungalow, but slept
occasionally at home and was still reckoned a dweller beneath his father's
roof. Twice he was absent from the city on week-long trips, whose destinations
have not yet been discovered. He grew steadily paler and more emaciated
even than before, and lacked some of his former assurance when repeating
to Dr. Willett his old,
old story of vital research and future revelations. Willett
often waylaid him at his father's house, for the elder Ward was deeply
worried and perplexed, and wished his son to get as much sound oversight
as could be managed in the case of so secretive and independent an adult.
The doctor still insists that the youth was sane even as late as this,
and adduces many a conversation to
prove his point.
About September the vampirism declined, but in the following
January almost became involved in serious trouble. For some time the nocturnal
arrival and departure of motor trucks at the Pawtuxet bungalow had been
commented upon, and at this juncture an unforeseen hitch exposed the nature
of at least one item of their contents. In a lonely spot near Hope Valley
had occurred
one of the frequent sordid waylaying of trucks by "hi-jackers"
in quest of liquor shipments, but this time the robbers had been destined
to receive the greater shock. For the long cases they seized proved upon
opening to contain some exceedingly gruesome things; so gruesome, in fact,
that the matter could not be kept quiet amongst the denizens of the underworld.
The thieves had
hastily buried what they discovered, but when the State
Police got wind of the matter a careful search was made. A recently arrived
vagrant, under promise of immunity from prosecution on any additional charge,
at last consented to guide a party of troopers to the spot; and there was
found in that hasty cache a very hideous and shameful thing. It would not
be well for the national -
or even the international - sense of decorum if the public
were ever to know what was uncovered by that awestruck party. There was
no mistaking it, even by those far from studious officers; and telegrams
to Washington ensued with feverish rapidity.
The cases were addressed to Charles Ward at his Pawtuxet
bungalow, and State and Federal officials at once paid him a very forceful
and serious call. They found him pallid and worried with his two odd companions,
and received from him what seemed to be a valid explanation and evidence
of innocence. He had needed certain anatomical specimens as part of a programme
of research whose depth and genuineness anyone who had known him in the
last decade could prove, and had ordered the required kind and number from
agencies which he had thought as reasonably legitimate as such things can
be. Of the identity of the specimens he had known absolutely nothing, and
was properly shocked when the inspectors hinted at the monstrous effect
on public sentiment and national dignity which a knowledge of the matter
would produce. In this statement he was firmly sustained by his bearded
colleague Dr. Allen, whose oddly hollow voice carried even more conviction
than his own nervous tones; so that in the end the officials took no action,
but carefully set down the New York name and address which Ward gave them
a basis for a search which came to nothing. It is only fair to add that
the specimens were quickly and quietly restored to their proper places,
and that the general public will never know of their blasphemous disturbance.
On February 9, 1928, Dr. Willett received a letter from
Charles Ward which he considers of extraordinary importance, and about
which he has frequently quarrelled with Dr. Lyman. Lyman believes that
this note contains positive proof of a well-developed case of dementia
praecox, but Willett on the other hand regards it as the last perfectly
sane utterance of the hapless youth. He
calls especial attention to the normal character of the
penmanship; which though shewing traces of shattered nerves, is nevertheless
distinctly Ward's own. The text in full is as follows:
100 Prospect St.
Providence, R.I.,
February 8, 1928.
Dear Dr. Willett:-
I feel that at last the time has come for me to make the
disclosures which I have so long promised you, and for which you have pressed
me so often. The patience you have shewn in waiting, and the confidence
you have shewn in my mind and integrity, are things I shall never cease
to appreciate.
And now that I am ready to speak, I must own with humiliation
that no triumph such as I dreamed of can ever by mine. Instead of triumph
I have found terror, and my talk with you will not be a boast of victory
but a plea for help and advice in saving both myself and the world from
a horror beyond all human conception or calculation. You recall what those
Fenner letters said of
the old raiding party at Pawtuxet. That must all be done
again, and quickly. Upon us depends more than can be put into words - all
civilisation, all natural law, perhaps even the fate of the solar system
and the universe. I have brought to light a monstrous abnormality, but
I did it for the sake of knowledge. Now for the sake of all life and Nature
you must help me thrust it back into the dark again.
I have left that Pawtuxet place forever, and we must extirpate
everything existing there, alive or dead. I shall not go there again, and
you must not believe it if you ever hear that I am there. I will tell you
why I say this when I see you. I have come home for good, and wish you
would call on me at the very first moment that you can spare five or six
hours continuously to hear what I have to say. It will take that long -
and believe me when I tell you that you never had a more genuine professional
duty than this. My life and reason are the very least things which hang
in the balance.
I dare not tell my father, for he could not grasp the
whole thing. But I have told him of my danger, and he has four men from
a detective agency watching the house. I don't know how much good they
can do, for they have against them forces which even you could scarcely
envisage or acknowledge. So come quickly if you wish to see me alive and
hear how you may help to save
the cosmos from stark hell.
Any time will do - I shall not be out of the house. Don't
telephone ahead, for there is no telling who or what may try to intercept
you. And let us pray to whatever gods there be that nothing may prevent
this meeting.
In utmost gravity and desperation,
Charles Dexter Ward.
P.S. Shoot Dr. Allen on sight and dissolve his body in
acid. Don't burn it.
Dr. Willett received this note about 10:30 a.m., and immediately
arranged to spare the whole late afternoon and evening for the momentous
talk, letting it extend on into the night as long as might be necessary.
He planned to arrive about four o'clock, and through all the intervening
hours was so engulfed in every sort of wild speculation that most of his
tasks were very mechanically
performed. Maniacal as the letter would have sounded
to a stranger, Willett had seen too much of Charles Ward's oddities to
dismiss it as sheer raving. That something very subtle, ancient, and horrible
was hovering about he felt quite sure, and the reference to Dr. Allen could
almost be comprehended in view of what Pawtuxet gossip said of Ward's enigmatical
colleague. Willett
had never seen the man, but had heard much of his aspect
and bearing, and could not but wonder what sort of eyes those much-discussed
dark glasses might conceal.
Promptly at four Dr. Willett presented himself at the
Ward residence, but found to his annoyance that Charles had not adhered
to his determination to remain indoors. The guards were there, but said
that the young man seemed to have lost part of his timidity. He had that
morning done much apparently frightened arguing and protesting over the
telephone, one of the detectives said, replying to some unknown voice with
phrases such as 'I am very tired and must rest a while', 'I can't receive
anyone for some time', 'you'll have to excuse me', 'Please postpone decisive
action till we can arrange some sort of compromise', or 'I am very sorry,
but I must take a complete vacation from everything; I'll talk with you
later.' Then, apparently gaining boldness through
meditation, he had slipped out so quietly that no one
had seen him depart or knew that he had gone until he returned about one
o'clock and entered the house without a word. He had gone upstairs, where
a bit of his fear must have surged back; for he was heard to cry out in
a highly terrified fashion upon entering his library, afterward trailing
off into a kind of choking gasp. When,
however, the butler had gone to inquire what the trouble
was, he had appeared at the door with a great show of boldness, and had
silently gestured the man away in a manner that terrified him unaccountably.
Then he had evidently done some rearranging of his shelves, for a great
clattering and thumping and creaking ensued; after which he had reappeared
and left at once. Willett inquired whether or not any message had been
left, but was told that there was no none. The butler seemed queerly disturbed
about something in Charles's appearance and manner, and asked solicitously
if there was much hope for a cure of his disordered nerves.
For almost two hours Dr. Willett waited vainly in Charles
Ward's library, watching the dusty shelves with their wide gaps where books
had been removed, and smiling grimly at the panelled overmantel on the
north wall, whence a year before the suave features of old Joseph Curwen
had looked mildly down. After a time the shadows began to gather, and the
sunset cheer gave place to a vague growing terror which flew shadow-like
before the night. Mr. Ward finally arrived, and shewed much surprise and
anger at his son's absence after all the pains which had been taken to
guard him. He had not known of Charles's appointment, and promised to notify
Willett when the youth returned. In bidding the doctor goodnight he expressed
his utter perplexity at his son's condition, and urged his caller to do
all he could to restore the boy to normal poise. Willett was glad to escape
from that library, for something frightful and unholy seemed to haunt it;
as if the vanished picture had left behind a legacy of evil. He had never
liked that picture; and even now, strong-nerved though he was, there lurked
a quality in its vacant panel which made him feel an urgent need to get
out into the pure air as soon as possible.
3
The next morning Willett received a message from the senior
Ward, saying that Charles was still absent. Mr. Ward mentioned that Dr.
Allen had telephoned him to say that Charles would remain at Pawtuxet for
some time, and that he must not be disturbed. This was necessary because
Allen himself was suddenly called away for an indefinite period, leaving
the researches in need of Charles's constant oversight. Charles sent his
best wishes, and regretted any bother his abrupt change of plans might
have caused. It listening to this message Mr. Ward heard Dr. Allen's voice
for the first time, and it seemed to excite some vague and elusive memory
which could not be actually placed, but which was disturbing to the point
of fearfulness.
Faced by these baffling and contradictory reports, Dr.
Willett was frankly at a loss what to do. The frantic earnestness of Charles's
note was not to be denied, yet what could one think of its writer's immediate
violation of his own expressed policy? Young Ward had written that his
delvings had become blasphemous and menacing, that they and his bearded
colleague must be
extirpated at any cost, and that he himself would never
return to their final scene; yet according to latest advices he had forgotten
all this and was back in the thick of the mystery. Common sense bade one
leave the youth alone with his freakishness, yet some deeper instinct would
not permit the impression of that frenzied letter to subside. Willett read
it over again, and could not
make its essence sound as empty and insane as both its
bombastic verbiage and its lack of fulfilment would seem to imply. Its
terror was too profound and real, and in conjunction with what the doctor
already knew evoked too vivid hints of monstrosities from beyond time and
space to permit of any cynical explanation. There were nameless horrors
abroad; and no matter how little one might be able to get at them, one
ought to stand prepared for any sort of action at any time.
For over a week Dr. Willett pondered on the dilemma which
seemed thrust upon him, and became more and more inclined to pay Charles
a call at the Pawtuxet bungalow. No friend of the youth had ever ventured
to storm this forbidden retreat, and even his father knew of its interior
only from such descriptions as he chose to give; but Willett felt that
some direct conversation with his patient was necessary. Mr. Ward had been
receiving brief and non-committal typed notes from his son, and said that
Mrs. Ward in her Atlantic City retirement had had no better word. So at
length the doctor resolved to act; and despite a curious sensation inspired
by old legends of Joseph Curwen, and by more recent revelations and warnings
from Charles Ward, set boldly out for the bungalow on the bluff above the
river.
Willett had visited the spot before through sheer curiousity,
though of course never entering the house or proclaiming his presence;
hence knew exactly the route to take. Driving out Broad Street one early
afternoon toward the end of February in his small motor, he thought oddly
of the grim party which had taken that selfsame road a hundred and fifty-seven
years before on a
terrible errand which none might ever comprehend.
The ride through the city's decaying fringe was short,
and trim Edgewood and sleepy Pawtuxet presently spread out ahead. Willett
turned to the right down Lockwood Street and drove his car as far along
that rural road as he could, then alighted and walked north to where the
bluff towered above the lovely bends of the river and the sweep of misty
downlands beyond. Houses were
still few here, and there was no mistaking the isolated
bungalow with its concrete garage on a high point of land at his left.
Stepping briskly up the neglected gravel walk he rapped at the door with
a firm hand, and spoke without a tremor to the evil Portuguese mulatto
who opened it to the width of a crack.
He must, he said, see Charles Ward at once on vitally
important business. No excuse would be accepted, and a repulse would mean
only a full report of the matter to the elder Ward. The mulatto still hesitated,
and pushed against the door when Willett attempted to open it; but the
doctor merely raised his voice and renewed his demands. Then there came
from the dark interior a
husky whisper which somehow chilled the hearer through
and through though he did not know why he feared it. 'Let him in, Tony,'
it said, 'we may as well talk now as ever.' But disturbing as was the whisper,
the greater fear was that which immediately followed. The floor creaked
and the speaker hove in sight - and the owner of those strange and resonant
tones was seen to be no
other than Charles Dexter Ward.
The minuteness with which Dr. Willett recalled and recorded
his conversation of that afternoon is due to the importance he assigns
to this particular period. For at last he concedes a vital change in Charles
Dexter Ward's mentality, and believes that the youth now spoke from a brain
hopelessly alien to the brain whose growth he had watched for six and twenty
years. Controversy
with Dr. Lyman has compelled him to be very specific,
and he definitely dates the madness of Charles Ward from the time the typewritten
notes began to reach his parents. Those notes are not in Ward's normal
style; not even in the style of that last frantic letter to Willett. Instead,
they are strange and archaic, as if the snapping of the writer's mind had
released a flood of tendencies
and impressions picked up unconsciously through boyhood
antiquarianism. There is an obvious effort to be modern, but the spirit
and occasionally the language are those of the past.
The past, too, was evident in Ward's every tone and gesture
as he received the doctor in that shadowy bungalow. He bowed, motioned
Willett to a seat, and began to speak abruptly in that strange whisper
which he sought to explain at the very outset.
'I am grown phthisical,' he began, 'from this cursed river
air. You must excuse my speech. I suppose you are come from my father to
see what ails me, and I hope you will say nothing to alarm him.'
Willett was studying these scraping tones with extreme
care, but studying even more closely the face of the speaker. Something,
he felt, was wrong; and he thought of what the family had told him about
the fright of that Yorkshire butler one night. He wished it were not so
dark, but did not request that the blind be opened. Instead, he merely
asked Ward why he had so belied the
frantic note of little more than a week before.
'I was coming to that,' the host replied. 'You must know,
I am in a very bad state of nerves, and do and say queer things I cannot
account for. As I have told you often, I am on the edge of great matters;
and the bigness of them has a way of making me light-headed. Any man might
well be frighted of what I have found, but I am not to be put off for long.
I was a dunce to have that
guard and stick at home; for having gone this far, my
place is here. I am not well spoke of my prying neighbours, and perhaps
I was led by weakness to believe myself what they say of me. There is no
evil to any in what I do, so long as I do it rightly. Have the goodness
to wait six months, and I'll shew you what will pay your patience well.'
'You may as well know I have a way of learning old matters
from things surer than books, and I'll leave you to judge the importance
of what I can give to history, philosophy, and the arts by reason of the
doors I have access to. My ancestor had all this when those witless peeping
Toms came and murdered him. I now have it again, or am coming very imperfectly
to have a part of it.
This time nothing must happen, and least of all though
any idiot fears of my own. Pray forget all I writ you, Sir, and have no
fear of this place or any in it. Dr. Allen is a man of fine parts, and
I own him an apology for anything ill I have said of him. I wish I had
no need to spare him, but there were things he had to do elsewhere. His
zeal is equal to mine in all those matters, and I
suppose that when I feared the work I feared him too
as my greatest helper in it.'
Ward paused, and the doctor hardly knew what to say or
think. He felt almost foolish in the face of this calm repudiation of the
letter; and yet there clung to him the fact that while the present discourse
was strange and alien and indubitably mad, the note itself had been tragic
in its naturalness and likeness to the Charles Ward he knew. Willett now
tried to turn the talk on early
matters, and recall to the youth some past events which
would restore a familiar mood; but in this process he obtained only the
most grotesque results. It was the same with all the alienists later on.
Important sections of Charles Ward's store of mental images, mainly those
touching modern times and his own personal life, had been unaccountably
expunged; whilst all the massed
antiquarianism of his youth had welled up from some profound
subconsciousness to engulf the contemporary and the individual. The youth's
intimate knowledge of elder things was abnormal and unholy, and he tried
his best to hide it. When Willett would mention some favourite object of
his boyhood archaistic studies he often shed by pure accident such a light
as no normal mortal could conceivably be expected to possess, and the doctor
shuddered as the glib allusion glided by.
It was not wholesome to know so much about the way the
fat sheriff's wig fell off as he leaned over at the play in Mr. Douglass's
Histrionick Academy in King Street on the eleventh of February, 1762, which
fell on a Thursday; or about how the actors cut the text of Steele's Conscious
Lover so badly that one was almost glad the Baptist-ridden legislature
closed the theatre a fortnight later. That Thomas Sabin's Boston coach
was "damn'd uncomfortable" old letters may well have told; but what healthy
antiquarian could recall how the creaking of Epenetus Olney's new signboard
(the gaudy crown he set up after he took to calling his tavern the Crown
Coffee House) was exactly like the first few notes of the new jazz piece
all the radios in Pawtuxet were playing?
Ward, however, would not be quizzed long in this vein.
Modern and personal topics he waved aside quite summarily, whilst regarding
antique affairs he soon shewed the plainest boredom. What he wished clearly
enough was only to satisfy his visitor enough to make him depart without
the intention of returning. To this end he offered to shew Willett the
entire house, and at once
proceeded to lead the doctor through every room from
cellar to attic. Willett looked sharply, but noted that the visible books
were far too few and trivial to have ever filled the wide gaps on Ward's
shelves at home, and that the meagre so-called "laboratory" was the flimsiest
sort of a blind. Clearly, there were a library and a laboratory elsewhere;
but just where, it was impossible to
say. Essentially defeated in his quest for something
he could not name, Willett returned to town before evening and told the
senior Ward everything which had occurred. They agreed that the youth must
be definitely out of his mind, but decided that nothing drastic need be
done just then. Above all, Mrs. Ward must be kept in as complete an ignorance
as her son's own strange typed
notes would permit.
Mr. Ward now determined to call in person upon his son,
making it wholly a surprise visit. Dr. Willett took him in his car one
evening, guiding him to within sight of the bungalow and waiting patiently
for his return. The session was a long one, and the father emerged in a
very saddened and perplexed state. His reception had developed much like
Willett's, save that Charles had been an excessively long time in appearing
after the visitor had forced his way into the hall and sent the Portuguese
away with an imperative demand; and in the bearing of the altered son there
was no trace of filial affection. The lights had been dim, yet even so
the youth had complained that they dazzled him outrageously. He had not
spoken out loud at all, averring that his throat was in
very poor condition; but in his hoarse whisper there
was a quality so vaguely disturbing that Mr. Ward could not banish it from
his mind.
Now definitely leagued together to do all they could toward
the youth's mental salvation, Mr. Ward and Dr. Willett set about collecting
every scrap of data which the case might afford. Pawtuxet gossip was the
first item they studied, and this was relatively easy to glean since both
had friends in that region. Dr. Willett obtained the most rumours because
people talked more frankly
to him than to a parent of the central figure, and from
all he heard he could tell that young Ward's life had become indeed a strange
one. Common tongues would not dissociate his household from the vampirism
of the previous summer, while the nocturnal comings and goings of the motor
trucks provided their share of dark speculations. Local tradesmen spoke
of the queerness of the orders brought them by the evil-looking mulatto,
and in particular of the inordinate amounts of mean and fresh blood secured
from the two butcher shops in the immediate neighbourhood. For a household
of only three, these quantities were quite absurd.
Then there was the matter of the sounds beneath the earth.
Reports of these things were harder to point down, but all the vague hints
tallied in certain basic essentials. Noises of a ritual nature positively
existed, and at times when the bungalow was dark. They might, of course,
have come from the known cellar; but rumour insisted that there were deeper
and more spreading crypts.
Recalling the ancient tales of Joseph Curwen's catacombs,
and assuming for granted that the present bungalow had been selected because
of its situation on the old Curwen site as revealed in one of another of
the documents found behind the picture, Willett and Mr. Ward gave this
phase of the gossip much attention; and searched many times without success
for the door in the
river-bank which old manuscripts mentioned. As to popular
opinions of the bungalow's various inhabitants, it was soon plain that
the Brava Portuguese was loathed, the bearded and spectacled Dr. Allen
feared, and the pallid young scholar disliked to a profound degree. During
the last week or two Ward had obviously changed much, abandoning his attempts
at affability and
speaking only in hoarse but oddly repellent whispers
on the few occasions that he ventured forth.
Such were the shreds and fragments gathered here and there;
and over these Mr. Ward and Dr. Willett held many long and serious conferences.
They strove to exercise deduction, induction, and constructive imagination
to their utmost extent; and to correlate every known fact of Charles's
later life, including the frantic letter which the doctor now shewed the
father, with the meagre documentary evidence available concerning old Joseph
Curwen. They would have given much for a glimpse of the papers Charles
had found, for very clearly the key to the youth's madness lay in what
he had learned of the ancient wizard and his doings.
4
And yet, after all, it was from no step of Mr. Ward's
or Dr. Willett's that the next move in this singular case proceeded. The
father and the physician, rebuffed and confused by a shadow too shapeless
and intangible to combat, had rested uneasily on their oars while the typed
notes of young Ward to his parents grew fewer and fewer. Then came the
first of the month with its
customary financial adjustments, and the clerks at certain
banks began a peculiar shaking of heads and telephoning from one to the
other. Officials who knew Charles Ward by sight went down to the bungalow
to ask why every cheque of his appearing at this juncture was a clumsy
forgery, and were reassured less than they ought to have been when the
youth hoarsely explained that he hand had lately been so much affected
by a nervous shock as to make normal writing impossible. He could, he said,
from no written characters at all except with great difficulty; and could
prove it by the fact that he had been forced to type all his recent letters,
even those to his father and mother, who would bear out the assertion.
What made the investigators pause in confusion was not
this circumstance alone, for that was nothing unprecedented or fundamentally
suspicious, nor even the Pawtuxet gossip, of which one or two of them had
caught echoes. It was the muddled discourse of the young man which nonplussed
them, implying as it did a virtually total loss of memory concerning important
monetary matters which he had had at his fingertips only a month or two
before. Something was wrong; for despite the apparent coherence and rationality
of his speech, there could be no normal reason for this ill-concealed blankness
on vital points. Moreover, although none of these men knew Ward well, they
could not help observing the change in his language and manner. They had
heard he was an antiquarian, but even the most hopeless antiquarians do
not make daily use of obsolete phraseology and gestures. Altogether, this
combination of hoarseness, palsied hands, bad memory, and altered speech
and bearing must represent some disturbance or malady of genuine gravity,
which no doubt formed the basis of the prevailing odd rumours; and after
their departure the party of officials decided that a talk with the senior
Ward was imperative.
So on the sixth of March, 1928, there was a long and serious
conference in Mr. Ward's office, after which the utterly bewildered father
summoned Dr. Willett in a kind of helpless resignation. Willett looked
over the strained and awkward signatures of the cheque, and compared them
in his mind with the penmanship of that last frantic note. Certainly, the
change was radical and
profound, and yet there was something damnably familiar
about the new writing. It had crabbed and archaic tendencies of a very
curious sort, and seemed to result from a type of stroke utterly different
from that which the youth had always used. It was strange - but where had
he seen it before? On the whole, it was obvious that Charles was insane.
Of that there could be no doubt. And since it appeared unlikely that
he could handle his property or continue to deal with the outside world
much longer, something must quickly be done toward his oversight and possible
cure. It was then that the alienists were called in, Drs. Peck and Waite
of Providence and Dr. Lyman of Boston, to whom Mr. Ward and Dr. Willett
gave the most exhaustive possible history of the case, and who conferred
at length in the now unused library of their young patient, examining what
books and papers of his were left in order to gain some further notion
of his habitual mental cast. After scanning this material and examining
the ominous note to Willett they all agreed that Charles Ward's studies
had been enough to unseat or at least to warp any ordinary
intellect, and wished most heartily that they could see
his more intimate volumes and documents; but this latter they knew they
could do, if at all, only after a scene at the bungalow itself. Willett
now reviewed the whole case with febrile energy; it being at this time
that he obtained the statements of the workmen who had seen Charles find
the Curwen documents, and that he collated the incidents of the destroyed
newspaper items, looking up the latter at the Journal office.
On Thursday, the eighth of March, Drs. Willett, Peck,
Lyman, and Waite, accompanied by Mr. Ward, paid the youth their momentous
call; making no concealment of their object and questioning the now acknowledged
patient with extreme minuteness. Charles, although he was inordinately
long in answering the summons and was still redolent of strange and noxious
laboratory odours when he did finally make his agitated appearance, proved
a far from recalcitrant subject; and admitted freely that his memory and
balance had suffered somewhat from close application to abstruse studies.
He offered no resistance when his removal to other quarters was insisted
upon; and seemed, indeed, to display a high degree of intelligence as apart
from mere memory. His conduct would have sent his interviewers away
in bafflement had not the persistently archaic trend of his speech and
unmistakable replacement of modern by ancient ideas in his consciousness
marked him out as one definitely removed from the normal. Of his work he
would say no more to the group of doctors than he had formerly said to
his family and to Dr. Willett, and his frantic note of the previous month
he dismissed as mere nerves and hysteria. He insisted that this shadowy
bungalow possessed no library possessed no library or laboratory beyond
the visible ones, and waxed abstruse in explaining the absence from the
house of such odours as now saturated all his clothing. Neighbourhood gossip
he attributed to nothing more than the cheap inventiveness of baffled curiousity.
Of the whereabouts of Dr. Allen he said he did not feel at liberty to speak
definitely, but assured his inquisitors that the bearded and spectacled
man would return when needed. In paying off the stolid Brava who resisted
all questioning by the visitors, and in closing the bungalow which still
seemed to hold such nighted secrets, Ward shewed no signs of nervousness
save a barely noticed tendency to pause as though listening for something
very faint. He was apparently animated by a calmly philosophic resignation,
as if he removal were the merest transient incident which would cause the
least trouble if facilitated and disposed of once and for all. It was clear
that he trusted to his obviously unimpaired keenness of absolute mentality
to overcome all the embarrassments into which his twisted memory, his lost
voice and handwriting, and his secretive and eccentric behaviour had led
him. His mother, it was agreed, was not to be told of the change; his father
supplying typed notes in his name. Ward was taken to the restfully and
picturesquely situated private hospital maintained by Dr. Waite on Conanicut
Island in the bay, and subjected to the closest scrutiny and questioning
by all the physicians connected with the case. It was then that the physical
oddities were noticed; the slackened metabolism, the altered skin, and
the disproportionate neural reactions. Dr. Willett was the most perturbed
of the various examiners, for he had attended Ward all his life and could
appreciate with terrible keenness the extent of his physical disorganisation.
Even the familiar olive mark on his hip was gone, while on his chest was
a great black mole or cicatrice which had never been there before, and
which made Willett wonder whether the youth had ever submitted to any of
the witch markings reputed to be inflicted at certain unwholesome nocturnal
meetings in wild and lonely places. The doctor could not keep his mind
off a certain transcribed witch-trial record from Salem which Charles had
shewn him in the old non-secretive days, and which read: 'Mr. G. B. on
that Nighte putt ye Divell his Marke upon Bridget S., Jonathan A., Simon
O., Deliverance W., Joseph C., Susan P., Mehitable C., and Deborah B.'
Ward's face, too, troubled him horribly, till at length he suddenly discovered
why he was horrified. For above the young man's right eye was something
which he had never previously noticed - a small scar or pit precisely like
that in the crumbled painting of old Joseph Curwen, and perhaps attesting
some hideous ritualistic inoculation to which both had submitted at a certain
stage of their occult careers.
While Ward himself was puzzling all the doctors at the
hospital a very strict watch was kept on all mail addressed either to him
or to Dr. Allen, which Mr. Ward had ordered delivered at the family home.
Willett had predicted that very little would be found, since any communications
of a vital nature would probably have been exchanged by messenger; but
in the latter part of March
there did come a letter from Prague for Dr. Allen which
gave both the doctor and the father deep thought. It was in a very crabbed
and archaic hand; and though clearly not the effort of a foreigner, shewed
almost as singular a departure from modern English as the speech of young
Ward himself. It read:
Kleinstrasse 11,
Altstadt, Prague,
11th Feby. 1928.
Brother in Almonsin-Metraton:-
I this day receiv'd yr mention of what came up from the
Saltes I sent you. It was wrong, and meanes clearly that ye Headstones
had been chang'd when Barnabas gott me the Specimen. It is often so, as
you must be sensible of from the Thing you gott from ye Kings Chapell ground
in 1769 and what H. gott from Olde Bury'g Point in 1690, that was like
to ende him. I gott such a
Thing in Aegypt 75 yeares gone, from the which came that
Scar ye Boy saw on me here in 1924. As I told you longe ago, do not calle
up That which you can not put downe; either from dead Saltes or out of
ye Spheres beyond. Have ye Wordes for laying at all times readie, and stopp
not to be sure when there is any Doubte of Whom you have. Stones are all
chang'd now in Nine
groundes out of 10. You are never sure till you question.
I this day heard from H., who has had Trouble with the Soldiers. He is
like to be sorry Transylvania is pass't from Hungary to Roumania, and wou'd
change his Seat if the Castel weren't so fulle of What we Knowe. But of
this he hath doubtless writ you. In my next Send'g there will be Somewhat
from a Hill tomb from ye
East that will delight you greatly. Meanwhile forget
not I am desirous of B. F. if you can possibly get him for me. You know
G. in Philada. better than I. Have him upp firste if you will, but doe
not use him soe hard he will be Difficult, for I must speake to him in
ye End.
Yogg-Sothoth Neblod Zin
Simon O.
To Mr. J. C. in Providence.
Mr. Ward and Dr. Willett paused in utter chaos before
this apparent bit of unrelieved insanity. Only by degrees did they absorb
what it seemed to imply. So the absent Dr. Allen, and not Charles Ward,
had come to be the leading spirit at Pawtuxet? That must explain the wild
reference and denunciation in the youth's last frantic letter. And what
of this addressing of the bearded and
spectacled stranger as "Mr. J. C."? There was no escaping
the inference, but there are limits to possible monstrosity. Who was "Simon
O."; the old man Ward had visited in Prague four years previously? Perhaps,
but in the centuries behind there had been another Simon O. - Simon Orne,
alias Jedediah, of Salem, who vanished in 1771, and whose peculiar handwriting
Dr. Willett now unmistakably recognised from the photostatic copies of
the Orne formulae which Charles had once shown him. What horrors and mysteries,
what contradictions and contraventions of Nature, had come back after a
century and a half to harass Old Providence with her clustered spires and
domes?
The father and the old physician, virtually at a loss
what to do or think, went to see Charles at the hospital and questioned
him as delicately as they could about Dr. Allen, about the Prague visit,
and about what he had learned of Simon or Jedediah Orne of Salem. To all
these enquiries the youth was politely non-committal, merely barking in
his hoarse whisper that he had found Dr. Allen to have a remarkable spiritual
rapport with certain souls from the past, and that any correspondent the
bearded man might have in Prague would probably be similarly gifted. When
they left, Mr. Ward and Dr. Willett realised to their chagrin that they
had really been the ones under catechism; and that without imparting anything
vital himself, the confined youth had adroitly pumped them of everything
the Prague letter had contained.
Drs. Peck, Waite, and Lyman were not inclined to attach
much importance to the strange correspondence of young Ward's companion;
for they knew the tendency of kindred eccentrics and monomaniacs to band
together, and believed that Charles or Allen had merely unearthed an expatriated
counterpart - perhaps one who had seen Orne's handwriting and copied it
in an attempt to
pose as the bygone character's reincarnation. Allen himself
was perhaps a similar case, and may have persuaded the youth into accepting
him as an avatar of the long-dead Curwen. Such things had been known before,
and on the same basis the hard-headed doctors disposed of Willett's growing
disquiet about Charles Ward's present handwriting, as studied from unpremeditated
specimens obtained by various ruses. Willett thought
he had placed its odd familiarity at last, and that what it vaguely resembled
was the bygone penmanship of old Joseph Curwen himself; but this the other
physicians regarded as a phase of imitativeness only to be expected in
a mania of this sort, and refused to grant it any importance either favourable
or unfavourable. Recognising this prosaic attitude in his colleagues, Willett
advised Mr. Ward to keep to himself the letter which arrived for Dr. Allen
on the second of April from Rakus, Transylvania, in a handwriting so intensely
and fundamentally like that of the Hutchinson cipher that both father and
physician paused in awe before breaking the seal. This read as follows:
Castle Ferenczy 7 March 1928.
Dear C.:-
Hadd a Squad of 20 Militia up to talk about what the Country
Folk say. Must digg deeper and have less Hearde. These Roumanians plague
me damnably, being officious and particular where you cou'd buy a Magyar
off with a Drinke and Food.
Last monthe M. got me ye Sarcophagus of ye Five Sphinxes
from ye Acropolis where He whome I call'd up say'd it wou'd be, and I have
hadde 3 Talkes with What was therein inhum'd. It will go to S. O. in Prague
directly, and thence to you. It is stubborn but you know ye Way with Such.
You shew Wisdom in having lesse about than Before; for
there was no Neede to keep the Guards in Shape and eat'g off their Heads,
and it made Much to be founde in Case of Trouble, as you too welle knowe.
You can now move and worke elsewhere with no Kill'g Trouble if needful,
tho' I hope no Thing will soon force you to so Bothersome a Course.
I rejoice that you traffick not so much with Those Outside;
for there was ever a Mortall Peril in it, and you are sensible what it
did when you ask'd Protection of One not dispos'd to give it.
You excel me in gett'g ye Formulae so another may saye
them with Success, but Borellus fancy'd it wou'd be so if just ye right
Wordes were hadd. Does ye Boy use 'em often? I regret that he growes squeamish,
as I fear'd he wou'd when I hadde him here nigh 15 Monthes, but am sensible
you knowe how to deal with him. You can't saye him down with ye Formula,
for that will
Worke only upon such as ye other Formula hath call'd
up from Saltes; but you still have strong Handes and Knife and Pistol,
and Graves are not harde to digg, nor Acids loth to burne.
O. sayes you have promis'd him B. F. I must have him after.
B. goes to you soone, and may he give you what you wishe of that Darke
Thing belowe Memphis. Imploy care in what you calle up, and beware of ye
Boy.
It will be ripe in a yeare's time to have up ye Legions
from Underneath, and then there are no Boundes to what shal be oures. Have
Confidence in what I saye, for you knowe O. and I have hadd these 150 yeares
more than you to consulte these Matters in.
Nephreu - Ka nai Hadoth
Edw. H.
For J Curwen, Esq. Providence.
But if Willett and Mr. Ward refrained from shewing this
letter to the alienists, they did not refrain from acting upon it themselves.
No amount of learned sophistry could controvert the fact that the strangely
bearded and spectacled Dr. Allen, of whom Charles's frantic letter had
spoken as such a monstrous menace, was in close and sinister correspondence
with two inexplicable
creatures whom Ward had visited in his travels and who
plainly claimed to be survivals or avatars of Curwen's old Salem colleagues;
that he was regarding himself as the reincarnation of Joseph Curwen, and
that he entertained - or was at least advised to entertain - murderous
designs against a "boy" who could scarcely be other than Charles Ward.
There was organised horror afoot;
and no matter who had started it, the missing Allen was
by this time at the bottom of it. Therefore, thanking heaven that Charles
was now safe in the hospital, Mr. Ward lost no time in engaging detectives
to learn all they could of the cryptic, bearded doctor; finding whence
he had come and what Pawtuxet knew of him, and if possible discovering
his present whereabouts. Supplying the men with one of the bungalow keys
which Charles yielded up, he urged them to explore Allen's vacant room
which had been identified when the patient's belongings had been packed;
obtaining what clues they could from any effects he might have left about.
Mr. Ward talked with the detectives in his son's old library, and they
felt a marked relief when they left it at last; for there seemed to hover
about the place a vague aura of evil. Perhaps it was what they had heard
of the infamous old wizard whose picture had once stared from the panelled
overmantel, and perhaps it was something different and irrelevant; but
in any case they all half sensed an intangible miasma which centred in
that carven vestige of an older dwelling and which at times almost rose
to the intensity of a material emanation.
