Searchers
after horror haunt strange, far places. For them are the catacombs
of Ptolemais, and the carven mausolea of the nightmare countries.
They climb to the moonlit towers of ruined Rhine castles, and falter down
black cobwebbed steps beneath the scattered stones of forgotten cities
in Asia. The haunted wood and the desolate mountain are their shrines,
and they linger
around the sinister monoliths on
uninhabited islands. But the true epicure in the terrible, to whom
a new thrill of unutterable ghastliness is the chief end and justification
of existence, esteems most of all the ancient, lonely farmhouses of backwoods
New England; for there the dark elements of strength, solitude, grotesqueness
and ignorance combine to form the perfection of the
hideous.
Most horrible of all sights are
the little unpainted wooden houses remote from travelled ways, usually
squatted upon some damp grassy slope or leaning against some gigantic outcropping
of rock. Two hundred years and more they have leaned or squatted
there, while the vines have crawled and the trees have swelled and spread.
They are almost hidden now in lawless luxuriances
of green and guardian shrouds of
shadow; but the small-paned windows still stare shockingly, as if blinking
through a lethal stupor which wards off madness by dulling the memory of
unutterable things.
In such houses have dwelt generations
of strange people, whose like the world has never seen. Seized with
a gloomy and fanatical belief which exiled them from their kind, their
ancestors sought the wilderness for freedom. There the scions of
a conquering race indeed flourished free from the restrictions of their
fellows, but cowered in an appalling slavery to the dismal phantasms
of their own minds. Divorced
from the enlightenment of civilization, the strength of these Puritans
turned into singular channels; and in their isolation, morbid self-repression,
and struggle for life with relentless Nature, there came to them dark furtive
traits from the prehistoric depths of their cold Northern heritage.
By necessity practical and by philosophy stern, these folks were
not beautiful in their sins.
Erring as all mortals must, they were forced by their rigid code to seek
concealment above all else; so that they came to use less and less taste
in what they concealed. Only the silent, sleepy, staring houses in
the backwoods can tell all that has lain hidden since the early days, and
they are not communicative, being loath to shake off the drowsiness which
helps them forget. Sometimes
one feels that it would be merciful to tear down these houses, for they
must often dream.
It was to a time-battered edifice
of this description that I was driven one afternoon in November, 1896,
by a rain of such chilling copiousness that any shelter was preferable
to exposure. I had been travelling for some time amongst the people
of the Miskatonic Valley in quest of certain genealogical data; and from
the remote, devious, and problematical nature of my course, had
deemed it convenient to employ
a bicycle despite the lateness of the season. Now I found myself
upon an apparently abandoned road which I had chosen as the shortest cut
to Arkham, overtaken by the storm at a point far from any town, and confronted
with no refuge save the antique and repellent wooden building which blinked
with bleared windows from between two huge
leafless elms near the foot of
a rocky hill. Distant though it is from the remnant of a road, this
house none the less impressed me unfavorably the very moment I espied it.
Honest, wholesome structures do not stare at travellers so slyly and hauntingly,
and in my genealogical researches I had encountered legends of a century
before which biased me against places of this kind. Yet
the force of the elements was such
as to overcome my scruples, and I did not hesitate to wheel my machine
up the weedy rise to the closed door which seemed at once so suggestive
and secretive.
I had somehow taken it for granted
that the house was abandoned, yet as I approached it I was not so sure,
for though the walks were indeed overgrown with weeds, they seemed to retain
their nature a little too well to argue complete desertion. Therefore
instead of trying the door I knocked, feeling as I did so a trepidation
I could scarcely explain. As I waited on the rough,
mossy rock which served as a door-step,
I glanced at the neighboring windows and the panes of the transom above
me, and noticed that although old, rattling, and almost opaque with dirt,
they were not broken. The building, then, must still be inhabited,
despite its isolation and general neglect. However, my rapping evoked
no response, so after repeating the summons I tried the
rusty latch and found the door
unfastened. Inside was a little vestibule with walls from which the
plaster was falling, and through the doorway came a faint but peculiarly
hateful odor. I entered, carrying my bicycle, and closed the door
behind me. Ahead rose a narrow staircase, flanked by a small door
probably leading to the cellar, while to the left and right were closed
doors
leading to rooms on the ground
floor.
Leaning my cycle against the wall
I opened the door at the left, and crossed into a small low-ceiled chamber
but dimly lighted by its two dusty windows and furnished in the barest
and most primitive possible way. It appeared to be a kind of sitting-room,
for it had a table and several chairs, and an immense fireplace above which
ticked an antique clock on a mantel. Books and
papers were very few, and in the
prevailing gloom I could not readily discern the titles. What interested
me was the uniform air of archaism as displayed in every visible detail.
Most of the houses in this region I had found rich in relics of the past,
but here the antiquity was curiously complete; for in all the room I could
not discover a single article of definitely post-revolutionary
date. Had the furnishings
been less humble, the place would have been a collector's paradise.
As I surveyed this quaint apartment,
I felt an increase in that aversion first excited by the bleak exterior
of the house. Just what it was that I feared or loathed, I could
by no means define; but something in the whole atmosphere seemed redolent
of unhallowed age, of unpleasant crudeness, and of secrets which should
be forgotten. I felt disinclined to sit down, and wandered about
examining the various articles
which I had noticed. The first object of my curiosity was a book
of medium size lying upon the table and presenting such an antediluvian
aspect that I marvelled at beholding it outside a museum or library.
It was bound in leather with metal fittings, and was in an excellent state
of preservation; being altogether an unusual sort of volume to encounter
in an abode so lowly. When
I opened it to the title page my wonder grew even greater, for it proved
to be nothing less rare than Pigafetta's account of the Congo region, written
in Latin from the notes of the sailor Lopex and printed at Frankfurt in
1598. I had often heard of this work, with its curious illustrations
by the brothers De Bry, hence for a moment forgot my uneasiness in
my desire to turn the pages before
me. The engravings were indeed interesting, drawn wholly from imagination
and careless descriptions, and represented negroes with white skins and
Caucasian features; nor would I soon have closed the book had not an exceedingly
trivial circumstance upset my tired nerves and revived my sensation of
disquiet. What annoyed me was merely the
persistent way in which the volume
tended to fall open of itself at Plate XII, which represented in gruesome
detail a butcher's shop of the cannibal Anziques. I experienced some
shame at my susceptibility to so slight a thing, but the drawing nevertheless
disturbed me, especially in connection with some adjacent passages descriptive
of Anzique gastronomy.
I had turned to a neighboring shelf
and was examining its meagre literary contents - an eighteenth century
Bible, a "Pilgrim's Progress" of like period, illustrated with grotesque
woodcuts and printed by the almanack-maker Isaiah Thomas, the rotting bulk
of Cotton Mather's "Magnalia Christi Americana," and a few other books
of evidently equal age - when my attention was
aroused by the unmistakable sound
of walking in the room overhead. At first astonished and startled,
considering the lack of response to my recent knocking at the door, I immediately
afterward concluded that the walker had just awakened from a sound sleep,
and listened with less surprise as the footsteps sounded on the creaking
stairs. The tread was heavy, yet seemed to
contain a curious quality of cautiousness;
a quality which I disliked the more because the tread was heavy.
When I had entered the room I had shut the door behind me. Now, after
a moment of silence during which the walker may have been inspecting my
bicycle in the hall, I heard a fumbling at the latch and saw the paneled
portal swing open again.
In the doorway stood a person of
such singular appearance that I should have exclaimed aloud but for the
restraints of good breeding. Old, white-bearded, and ragged, my host
possessed a countenance and physique which inspired equal wonder and respect.
His height could not have been less than six feet, and despite a general
air of age and poverty he was stout and powerful in
proportion. His face, almost
hidden by a long beard which grew high on the cheeks, seemed abnormally
ruddy and less wrinkled than one might expect; while over a high forehead
fell a shock of white hair little thinned by the years. His blue
eyes, though a trifle bloodshot, seemed inexplicably keen and burning.
But for his horrible unkemptness the man would have been as
distinguished-looking as he was
impressive. This unkemptness, however, made him offensive despite
his face and figure. Of what his clothing consisted I could hardly
tell, for it seemed to me no more than a mass of tatters surmounting a
pair of high, heavy boots; and his lack of cleanliness surpassed description.
The appearance of this man, and
the instinctive fear he inspired, prepared me for something like enmity;
so that I almost shuddered through surprise and a sense of uncanny incongruity
when he motioned me to a chair and addressed me in a thin, weak voice full
of fawning respect and ingratiating hospitality. His speech was very
curious, an extreme form of Yankee dialect I had
thought long extinct; and I studied
it closely as he sat down opposite me for conversation.
"Ketched in the rain, be ye?" he
greeted. "Glad ye was nigh the haouse en' hed the sense ta come right
in. I calc'late I was alseep, else I'd a heerd ye-I ain't as young
as I uster be, an' I need a paowerful sight o' naps naowadays. Trav'lin
fur? I hain't seed many folks 'long this rud sence they tuk off the Arkham
stage."
I replied that I was going to Arkham,
and apologized for my rude entry into his domicile, whereupon he continued.
"Glad ta see ye, young Sir - new
faces is scurce arount here, an' I hain't got much ta cheer me up these
days. Guess yew hail from Bosting, don't ye? I never ben thar, but
I kin tell a taown man when I see 'im - we hed one fer deestrick schoolmaster
in 'eighty-four, but he quit suddent an' no one never heerd on 'im sence
- " here the old man lapsed into a kind of chuckle, and made no
explanation when I questioned him.
He seemed to be in an aboundingly good humor, yet to possess those eccentricities
which one might guess from his grooming. For some time he rambled
on with an almost feverish geniality, when it struck me to ask him how
he came by so rare a book as Pigafetta's "Regnum Congo." The effect of
this volume had not left me, and I felt a certain
hesitancy in speaking of it, but
curiosity overmastered all the vague fears which had steadily accumulated
since my first glimpse of the house. To my relief, the question did
not seem an awkward one, for the old man answered freely and volubly.
"Oh, that Afriky book? Cap'n Ebenezer
Holt traded me thet in 'sixty-eight - him as was kilt in the war." Something
about the name of Ebenezer Holt caused me to look up sharply. I had
encountered it in my genealogical work, but not in any record since the
Revolution. I wondered if my host could help me in the task at which
I was laboring, and resolved to ask him about it later
on. He continued.
"Ebenezer was on a Salem merchantman
for years, an' picked up a sight o' queer stuff in every port. He
got this in London, I guess - he uster like ter buy things at the shops.
I was up ta his haouse onct, on the hill, tradin' hosses, when I see this
book. I relished the picters, so he give it in on a swap. 'Tis
a queer book - here, leave me git on my spectacles-" The old man fumbled
among his rags, producing a pair
of dirty and amazingly antique glasses with small octagonal lenses and
steel bows. Donning these, he reached for the volume on the table
and turned the pages lovingly.
"Ebenezer cud read a leetle o' this-'tis
Latin - but I can't. I had two er three schoolmasters read me a bit,
and Passon Clark, him they say got draownded in the pond - kin yew make
anything outen it?" I told him that I could, and translated for his benefit
a paragraph near the beginning. If I erred, he was not scholar enough
to correct me; for he seemed childishly pleased at my
English version. His proximity
was becoming rather obnoxious, yet I saw no way to escape without offending
him. I was amused at the childish fondness of this ignorant old man
for the pictures in a book he could not read, and wondered how much better
he could read the few books in English which adorned the room. This
revelation of simplicity removed much of the ill-defined
apprehension I had felt, and I
smiled as my host rambled on:
"Queer haow picters kin set a body
thinkin'. Take this un here near the front. Hey yew ever seed
trees like thet, with big leaves a floppin' over an' daown? And them men
- them can't be niggers - they dew beat all. Kinder like Injuns,
I guess, even ef they be in Afriky. Some o' these here critters looks
like monkeys, or half monkeys an' half men, but I never heerd o' nothin'
like this
un." Here he pointed to a fabulous
creature of the artist, which one might describe as a sort of dragon with
the head of an alligator.
"But naow I'll show ye the best
un - over here nigh the middle - "The old man's speech grew a trifle thicker
and his eyes assumed a brighter glow; but his fumbling hands, though seemingly
clumsier than before, were entirely adequate to their mission. The
book fell open, almost of its own accord and as if from frequent consultation
at this place, to the repellent twelfth plate showing
a butcher's shop amongst the Anzique
cannibals. My sense of restlessness returned, though I did not exhibit
it. The especially bizarre thing was that the artist had made his
Africans look like white men - the limbs and quarters hanging about the
walls of the shop were ghastly, while the butcher with his axe was hideously
incongruous. But my host seemed to relish the view as much
as I disliked it.
"What d'ye think o' this - ain't
never see the like hereabouts, eh? When I see this I telled Eb Holt, 'That's
suthin' ta stir ye up an' make yer blood tickle.' When I read in Scripter
about slayin' - like them Midianites was slew - I kinder think things,
but I ain't got no picter of it. Here a body kin see all they is
to it - I s'pose 'tis sinful, but ain't we all born an' livin' in sin?
- Thet feller bein'
chopped up gives me a tickle every
time I look at 'im - I hey ta keep lookin' at 'im - see whar the butcher
cut off his feet? Thar's his head on thet bench, with one arm side of it,
an' t'other arm's on the other side o' the meat block."
As the man mumbled on in his shocking
ecstasy the expression on his hairy, spectacled face became indescribable,
but his voice sank rather than mounted. My own sensations can scarcely
be recorded. All the terror I had dimly felt before rushed upon me
actively and vividly, and I knew that I loathed the ancient and abhorrent
creature so near me with an infinite intensity. His
madness, or at least his partial
perversion, seemed beyond dispute. He was almost whispering now,
with a huskiness more terrible than a scream, and I trembled as I listened.
"As I says, 'tis queer haow picters
sets ye thinkin'. D'ye know, young Sir, I'm right sot on this un
here. Arter I got the book off Eb I uster look at it a lot, especial
when I'd heerd Passon Clark rant o' Sundays in his big wig. Onct
I tried suthin' funny - here, young Sir, don't git skeert - all I done
was ter look at the picter afore I kilt the sheep for market - killin'
sheep was kinder more
fun arter lookin' at it - " The
tone of the old man now sank very low, sometimes becoming so faint that
his words were hardly audible. I listened to the rain, and to the
rattling of the bleared, small-paned windows, and marked a rumbling of
approaching thunder quite unusual for the season. Once a terrific
flash and peal shook the frail house to its foundations, but the whisperer
seemed not to notice it.
"Killin' sheep was kinder more fun
- but d'ye know, 'twan't quite satisfyin'. Queer haow a cravin' gits
a holt on ye - As ye love the Almighty, young man, don't tell nobody, but
I swar ter Gawd thet picter begun to make me hungry fer victuals I couldn't
raise nor buy - here, set still, what's ailin' ye? - I didn't do nothin',
only I wondered haow 'twud be ef I did - They say meat makes
blood an' flesh, an' gives ye new
life, so I wondered ef 'twudn't make a man live longer an' longer ef 'twas
more the same - " But the whisperer never continued. The interruption
was not produced by my fright, nor by the rapidly increasing storm amidst
whose fury I was presently to open my eyes on a smoky solitude of blackened
ruins. It was produced by a very simple though
somewhat unusual happening.
The open book lay flat between us,
with the picture staring repulsively upward. As the old man whispered
the words "more the same" a tiny splattering impact was heard, and something
showed on the yellowed paper of the upturned volume. I thought of
the rain and of a leaky roof, but rain is not red. On the butcher's
shop of the Anzique cannibals a small red spattering glistened
picturesquely, lending vividness
to the horror of the engraving. The old man saw it, and stopped whispering
even before my expression of horror made it necessary; saw it and glanced
quickly toward the floor of the room he had left an hour before.
I followed his glance, and beheld just above us on the loose plaster of
the ancient ceiling a large irregular spot of wet crimson which
seemed to spread even as I viewed
it. I did not shriek or move, but merely shut my eyes. A moment
later came the titanic thunderbolt of thunderbolts; blasting that accursed
house of unutterable secrets and bringing the oblivion which alone saved
my mind.
