He awaked on the morning of the twenty-second with a
pain in his left wrist, and saw that his cuff was brown with dried blood.
His recollections were very confused, but the scene with the black man
in the unknown space stood out vividly. The rats must have bitten him as
he slept, giving rise to the climax of that frightful dream. Opening the
door, he saw that the flour on the corridor floor was undisturbed except
for the huge prints of the loutish fellow who roomed at the other end of
the garret. So he had not been sleep-walking this time. But something would
have to be done about those rats. He would speak to the landlord about
them. Again he tried to stop up the hole at the base of the slanting wall,
wedging in a candlestick which seemed of about the right size. His ears
were ringing horribly, as if with the residual echoes of some horrible
noise heard in dreams.
As he bathed and changed clothes he tried to recall what
he had dreamed after the scene in the violet-litten space, but nothing
definite would crystallize in his mind. That scene itself must have corresponded
to the sealed loft overhead, which had begun to attack his imagination
so violently, but later impressions were faint and hazy. There were suggestions
of the vague, twilight abysses, and of still vaster, blacker abysses beyond
them - abysses in which all fixed suggestions were absent. He had been
taken there by the bubble-congeries and the little polyhedron which always
dogged him; but they, like himself, had changed to wisps of mist in this
farther void of ultimate blackness. Something else had gone on ahead -
a larger wisp which now and then condensed into nameless approximations
of form - and he thought that their progress had not been in a straight
line, but rather along the alien curves and spirals of some ethereal vortex
which obeyed laws unknown to the physics and mathematics of any conceivable
cosmos. Eventually there had been a hint of vast, leaping shadows, of a
monstrous, half-acoustic pulsing, and of the thin, monotonous piping of
an unseen flute - but that was all. Gilman decided he had picked up that
last conception from what he had read in the Necronomicon about
the mindless entity Azathoth, which rules all time and space from a black
throne at the centre of Chaos.
When the blood was washed away the wrist wound proved
very slight, and Gilman puzzled over the location of the two tiny punctures.
It occurred to him that there was no blood on the bedspread where he had
lain - which was very curious in view of the amount on his skin and cuff.
Had he been sleep-walking within his room, and had the rat bitten him as
he sat in some chair or paused in some less rational position? He looked
in every corner for brownish drops or stains, but did not find any. He
had better, he thought, spinkle flour within the room as well as outside
the door - though after all no further proof of his sleep-walking was needed.
He knew he did walk and the thing to do now was to stop it. He must ask
Frank Elwood for help. This morning the strange pulls from space seemed
lessened, though they were replaced by another sensation even more inexplicable.
It was a vague, insistent impulse to fly away from his present situation,
but held not a hint of the specific direction in which he wished to fly.
As he picked up the strange spiky image on the table he thought the older
northward pull grew a trifle stronger; but even so, it was wholly overruled
by the newer and more bewildering urge.
He took the spiky image down to Elwood's room, steeling
himself against the whines of the loom-fixer which welled up from the ground
floor. Elwood was in, thank heaven, and appeared to be stirring about.
There was time for a little conversation before leaving for breakfast and
college, so Gilman hurriedly poured forth an account of his recent dreams
and fears. His host was very sympathetic, and agreed that something ought
to be done. He was shocked by his guest's drawn, haggard aspect, and noticed
the queer, abnormal-looking sunburn which others had remarked during the
past week.
There was not much, though, that he could say. He had
not seen Gilman on any sleep-walking expedition, and had no idea what the
curious image could be. He had, though, heard the French-Canadian who lodged
just under Gilman talking to Mazurewicz one evening. They were telling
each other how badly they dreaded the coming of Walpurgis Night, now only
a few days off; and were exchanging pitying comments about the poor, doomed
young gentleman. Desrochers, the fellow under Gilman's room, had spoken
of nocturnal footsteps shod and unshod, and of the violet light he saw
one night when he had stolen fearfully up to peer through Gilman's keyhole.
He had not dared to peer, he told Mazurewicz, after he had glimpsed that
light through the cracks around the door. There had been soft talking,
too - and as he began to describe it his voice had sunk to an inaudible
whisper.
Elwood could not imagine what had set these superstitious
creatures gossiping, but supposed their imaginations had been roused by
Gilman's late hours and somnolent walking and talking on the one hand,
and by the nearness of traditionally-feared May Eve on the other hand.
That Gilman talked in his sleep was plain, and it was obviously from Desrochers'
keyhole listenings that the delusive notion of the violet dream-light had
got abroad. These simple people were quick to imagine they had seen any
odd thing they had heard about. As for a plan of action - Gilman had better
move down to Elwood's room and avoid sleeping alone. Elwood would, if awake,
rouse him whenever he began to talk or rise in his sleep. Very soon, too,
he must see the specialist. Meanwhile they would take the spiky image around
to the various museums and to certain professors; seeking identification
and slating that it had been found in a public rubbish-can. Also, Dombrowski
must attend to the poisoning of those rats in the walls.
Braced up by Elwood's companionship, Gilman attended classes
that day. Strange urges still tugged at him, but he could sidetrack them
with considerable success. During a free period he showed the queer image
to several professors, all of whom were intensely interested, though none
of them could shed any light upon its nature or origin. That night he slept
on a couch which Elwood had had the landlord bring to the second-storey
room, and for the first time in weeks was wholly free from disquieting
dreams. But the feverishness still hung on, and the whines of the loom-fixer
were an unnerving influence.
During the next few days Gilman enjoyed an almost perfect
immunity from morbid manifestations. He had, Elwood said, showed no tendency
to talk or rise in his sleep; and meanwhile the landlord was putting rat-poison
everywhere. The only disturbing element was the talk among the superstitious
foreigners, whose imaginations had become highly excited. Mazurewicz was
always trying to make him get a crucifix, and finally forced one upon him
which he said had been blessed by the good Father Iwanicki. Desrochers,
too, had something to say; in fact, he insisted that cautious steps had
sounded in the now vacant room above him on the first and second nights
of Gilinan's absence from it. Paul Choynski thought he heard sounds in
the halls and on the stairs at night, and claimed that his door had been
softly tried, while Mrs. Dombrowski vowed she had seen Brown Jenkin for
the first time since All-Hallows. But such naïve reports could mean
very little, and Gilman let the cheap metal crucifix hang idly from a knob
on his host's dresser.
For three days Gilman and Elwood canvassed the local museums
in an effort to identify the strange spiky image, but always without success.
In every quarter, however, interest was intense; for the utter alienage
of the thing was a tremendous challenge to scientific curiosity. One of
the small radiating arms was broken off and subjected to chemical analysis.
Professor Ellery found platinum, iron and tellurium in the strange alloy;
but mixed with these were at least three other apparent elements of high
atomic weight which chemistry was absolutely powerless to classify. Not
only did they fail to correspond with any known element, but they did not
even fit the vacant places reserved for probable elements in the periodic
system. The mystery remains unsolved to this day, though the image is on
exhibition at the museum of Miskatonic University.
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