H.P. Lovecraft. The Evil Clergyman
The Evil Clergyman
by H. P. Lovecraft
Written 1937
Published April 1939 in Weird Tales, Vol. 33, No. 4, p. 135-37
I was shown into the attic chamber by a grave, intelligent-looking man
with quiet clothes and an iron-gray beard, who spoke to me in this
fashion:
"Yes, he lived here - but I don't advise your doing anything. Your
curiosity makes you irresponsible. We never come here at night, and it's
only because of his will that we keep it this way. You know what he did.
That abominable society took charge at last, and we don't know where he is
buried. There was no way the law or anything else could reach the society.
"I hope you won't stay till after dark. And I beg of you to let that thing
on the table - the thing that looks like a match-box - alone. We don't
know what it is, but we suspect it has something to do with what he did.
We even avoid looking at it very steadily."
After a time the man left me alone in the attic room. It was very dingy
and dusty, and only primitively furnished, but it had a neatness which
showed it was not a slum-denizen's quarters. There were shelves full of
theological and classical books, and another bookcase containing treatises
on magic - Paracelsus, Albertus Magnus, Trithemius, Hermes Trismegistus,
Borellus, and others in a strange alphabet whose titles I could not
decipher. The furniture was very plain. There was a door, but it led only
into a closet. The only egress was the aperture in the floor up to which
the crude, steep staircase led. The windows were of bull's-eye pattern,
and the black oak beams bespoke unbelievable antiquity. Plainly, this
house was of the Old World. I seemed to know where I was, but cannot
recall what I then knew. Certainly the town was not London. My impression
is of a small seaport.
The small object on the table fascinated me intensely. I seemed to know
what to do with it, for I drew a pocket electric light - or what looked
like one - out of my pocket and nervously tested its flashes. The light
was not white but violet, and seemed less like true light than like some
radioactive bombardment. I recall that I did not regard it as a common
flashlight - indeed, I had a common flashlight in another pocket.
It was getting dark, and the ancient roofs and chimney-pots outside looked
very queer through the bull's-eye window-panes. Finally I summoned up
courage and propped the small object up on the table against a book - then
turned the rays of the peculiar violet light upon it. The light seemed now
to be more like a rain of hail or small violet particles than like a
continuous beam. As the particles struck the glassy surface at the center
of the strange device, they seemed to produce a crackling noise like the
sputtering of a vacuum tube through which sparks are passed. The dark
glassy surface displayed a pinkish glow, and a vague white shape seemed to
be taking form at its center. Then I noticed that I was not alone in the
room - and put the ray-projector back in my pocket.
But the newcomer did not speak - nor did I hear any sound whatever during
all the immediately following moments. Everything was shadowy pantomime,
as if seen at a vast distance through some intervening haze - although on
the other hand the newcomer and all subsequent comers loomed large and
close, as if both near and distant, according to some abnormal geometry.
The newcomer was a thin, dark man of medium height attired in the clerical
garb of the Anglican church. He was apparently about thirty years old,
with a sallow, olive complexion and fairly good features, but an
abnormally high forehead. His black hair was well cut and neatly brushed,
and he was clean-shaven though blue-chinned with a heavy growth of beard.
He wore rimless spectacles with steel bows. His build and lower facial
features were like other clergymen I had seen, but he had a vastly higher
forehead, and was darker and more intelligent-looking - also more subtly
and concealedly evil-looking. At the present moment - having just lighted
a faint oil lamp - he looked nervous, and before I knew it he was casting
all his magical books into a fireplace on the window side of the room
(where the wall slanted sharply) which I had not noticed before. The
flames devoured the volumes greedily - leaping up in strange colors and
emitting indescribably hideous odors as the strangely hieroglyphed leaves
and wormy bindings succumbed to the devastating element. All at once I saw
there were others in the room - grave-looking men in clerical costume, one
of whom wore the bands and knee-breeches of a bishop. Though I could hear
nothing, I could see that they were bringing a decision of vast import to
the first-comer. They seemed to hate and fear him at the same time, and he
seemed to return these sentiments. His face set itself into a grim
expression, but I could see his right hand shaking as he tried to grip the
back of a chair. The bishop pointed to the empty case and to the fireplace
(where the flames had died down amidst a charred, non-committal mass), and
seemed filled with a peculiar loathing. The first-comer then gave a wry
smile and reached out with his left hand toward the small object on the
table. Everyone then seemed frightened. The procession of clerics began
filing down the steep stairs through the trapdoor in the floor, turning
and making menacing gestures as they left. The bishop was last to go.
The first-comer now went to a cupboard on the inner side of the room and
extracted a coil of rope. Mounting a chair, he attached one end of the
rope to a hook in the great exposed central beam of black oak, and began
making a noose with the other end. Realizing he was about to hang himself,
I started forward to dissuade or save him. He saw me and ceased his
preparations, looking at me with a kind of triumph which puzzled and
disturbed me. He slowly stepped down from the chair and began gliding
toward me with a positively wolfish grin on his dark, thin-lipped face.
I felt somehow in deadly peril, and drew out the peculiar ray-projector as
a weapon of defense. Why I thought it could help me, I do not know. I
turned it on - full in his face, and saw the sallow features glow first
with violet and then with pinkish light. His expression of wolfish
exultation began to be crowded aside by a look of profound fear - which
did not, however, wholly displace the exultation. He stopped in his tracks
- then, flailing his arms wildly in the air, began to stagger backwards. I
saw he was edging toward the open stair-well in the floor, and tried to
shout a warning, but he did not hear me. In another instant he had lurched
backward through the opening and was lost to view.
I found difficulty in moving toward the stair-well, but when I did get
there I found no crushed body on the floor below. Instead there was a
clatter of people coming up with lanterns, for the spell of phantasmal
silence had broken, and I once more heard sounds and saw figures as
normally tri-dimensional. Something had evidently drawn a crowd to this
place. Had there been a noise I had not heard?
Presently the two people (simple villagers, apparently) farthest in the
lead saw me - and stood paralyzed. One of them shrieked loudly and
reverberantly:
"Ahrrh! ... It be'ee, zur? Again?"
Then they all turned and fled frantically. All, that is, but one. When the
crowd was gone I saw the grave-bearded man who had brought me to this
place - standing alone with a lantern. He was gazing at me gaspingly and
fascinatedly, but did not seem afraid. Then he began to ascend the stairs,
and joined me in the attic. He spoke:
"So you didn't let it alone! I'm sorry. I know what has happened. It
happened once before, but the man got frightened and shot himself. You
ought not to have made him come back. You know what he wants. But you
mustn't get frightened like the other man he got. Something very strange
and terrible has happened to you, but it didn't get far enough to hurt
your mind and personality. If you'll keep cool, and accept the need for
making certain radical readjustments in your life, you can keep right on
enjoying the world, and the fruits of your scholarship. But you can't live
here - and I don't think you'll wish to go back to London. I'd advise
America.
"You mustn't try anything more with that - thing. Nothing can be put back
now. It would only make matters worse to do - or summon - anything. You
are not as badly off as you might be - but you must get out of here at
once and stay away. You'd better thank Heaven it didn't go further...
"I'm going to prepare you as bluntly as I can. There's been a certain
change - in your personal appearance. He always causes that. But in a new
country you can get used to it. There's a mirror up at the other end of
the room, and I'm going to take you to it. You'll get a shock - though you
will see nothing repulsive."
I was now shaking with a deadly fear, and the bearded man almost had to
hold me up as he walked me across the room to the mirror, the faint lamp
(i.e., that formerly on the table, not the still fainter lantern he had
brought) in his free hand. This is what I saw in the glass:
A thin, dark man of medium stature attired in the clerical garb of the
Anglican church, apparently about thirty, and with rimless, steel-bowed
glasses glistening beneath a sallow, olive forehead of abnormal height.
It was the silent first-comer who had burned his books.
For all the rest of my life, in outward form, I was to be that man!