H.P. Lovecraft. The Thing on the Doorstep
The Thing on the Doorstep
by H. P. Lovecraft
Written 21-24 Aug 1933
Published January 1937 in Weird Tales, Vol. 29, No. 1, p. 52-70.
I
It is true that I have sent six bullets through the head of my best
friend, and yet I hope to show by this statement that I am not his
murderer. At first I shall be called a madman - madder than the man I shot
in his cell at the Arkham Sanitarium. Later some of my readers will weigh
each statement, correlate it with the known facts, and ask themselves how
I could have believed otherwise than I did after facing the evidence of
that horror - that thing on the doorstep.
Until then I also saw nothing but madness in the wild tales I have acted
on. Even now I ask myself whether I was misled - or whether I am not mad
after all. I do not know - but others have strange things to tell of
Edward and Asenath Derby, and even the stolid police are at their wits'
ends to account for that last terrible visit. They have tried weakly to
concoct a theory of a ghastly jest or warning by discharged servants, yet
they know in their hearts that the truth is something infinitely more
terrible and incredible.
So I say that I have not murdered Edward Derby. Rather have I avenged him,
and in so doing purged the earth of a horror whose survival might have
loosed untold terrors on all mankind. There are black zones of shadow
close to our daily paths, and now and then some evil soul breaks a passage
through. When that happens, the man who knows must strike before reckoning
the consequences.
I have known Edward Pickman Derby all his life. Eight years my junior, he
was so precocious that we had much in common from the time he was eight
and I was sixteen. He was the most phenomenal child scholar I have ever
known, and at seven was writing verse of a sombre, fantastic, almost
morbid cast which astonished the tutors surrounding him. Perhaps his
private education and coddled seclusion had something to do with his
premature flowering. An only child, he had organic weaknesses which
startled his doting parents and caused them to keep him closely chained to
their side. He was never allowed out without his nurse, and seldom had a
chance to play unconstrainedly with other children. All this doubtless
fostered a strange secretive life in the boy, with imagination as his one
avenue of freedom.
At any rate, his juvenile learning was prodigious and bizarre; and his
facile writings such as to captivate me despite my greater age. About that
time I had leanings toward art of a somewhat grotesque cast, and I found
in this younger child a rare kindred spirit. What lay behind our joint
love of shadows and marvels was, no doubt, the ancient, mouldering, and
subtly fearsome town in which we live - witch-cursed, legend-haunted
Arkham, whose huddled, sagging gambrel roofs and crumbling Georgian
balustrades brood out the centuries beside the darkly muttering
Miskatonic.
As time went by I turned to architecture and gave up my design of
illustrating a book of Edward's demoniac poems, yet our comradeship
suffered no lessening. Young Derby's odd genius developed remarkably, and
in his eighteenth year his collected nightmare-lyrics made a real
sensation when issued under the title Azathoth and Other Horrors. He was a
close correspondent of the notorious Baudelairean poet Justin Geoffrey,
who wrote The People of the Monolith and died screaming in a madhouse in
1926 after a visit to a sinister, ill-regarded village in Hungary.
In self-reliance and practical affairs, however, Derby was greatly
retarded because of his coddled existence. His health had improved, but
his habits of childish dependence were fostered by over-careful parents,
so that he never travelled alone, made independent decisions, or assumed
responsibilities. It was early seen that he would not be equal to a
struggle in the business or professional arena, but the family fortune was
so ample that this formed no tragedy. As he grew to years of manhood he
retained a deceptive aspect of boyishness. Blond and blue-eyed, he had the
fresh complexion of a child; and his attempt to raise a moustache were
discernible only with difficulty. His voice was soft and light, and his
unexercised life gave him a juvenile chubbiness rather than the
paunchiness of premature middle age. He was of good height, and his
handsome face would have made him a notable gallant had not his shyness
held him to seclusion and bookishness.
Derby's parents took him abroad every summer, and he was quick to seize on
the surface aspects of European thought and expression. His Poe-like
talents turned more and more toward the decadent, and other artistic
sensitiveness and yearnings were half-aroused in him. We had great
discussions in those days. I had been through Harvard, had studied in a
Boston architect's office, had married, and had finally returned to Arkham
to practise my profession - settling in the family homestead in
Saltonstall Street since my father had moved to Florida for his health.
Edward used to call almost every evening, till I came to regard him as one
of the household. He had a characteristic way of ringing the doorbell or
sounding the knocker that grew to be a veritable code signal, so that
after dinner I always listened for the familiar three brisk strokes
followed by two more after a pause. Less frequently I would visit at his
house and note with envy the obscure volumes in his constantly growing
library.
Derby went through Miskatonic University in Arkahm since his parents would
not let him board away from them. He entered at sixteen and completed his
course in three years, majoring in English and French literature and
receiving high marks in everything but mathematics and the sciences. He
mingled very little with the other students, though looking enviously at
the "daring" or "Bohemian" set - whose superficially "smart" language and
meaningless ironic pose he aped, and whose dubious conduct he wished he
dared adopt.
What he did do was to become an almost fanatical devotee of subterranean
magical lore, for which Miskatonic's library was and is famous. Always a
dweller on the surface of phantasy and strangeness, he now delved deep
into the actual runes and riddles left by a fabulous past for the guidance
or puzzlement of posterity. He read things like the frightful Book of
Eibon, the Unaussprechlichen Kulten of von Junzt, and the forbidden
Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, though he did not tell his
parents he had seen them. Edward was twenty when my son and only child was
born, and seemed pleased when I named the newcomer Edward Derby Upton
after him.
By the time he was twenty-five Edward Derby was a prodigiously learned man
and a fairly well known poet and fantaisiste though his lack of contacts
and responsibilities had slowed down his literary growth by making his
products derivative and over-bookish. I was perhaps his closest friend -
finding him an inexhaustible mine of vital theoretical topics, while he
relied on me for advice in whatever matters he did not wish to refer to
his parents. He remained single - more through shyness, inertia, and
parental protectiveness than through inclination - and moved in society
only to the slightest and most perfunctory extent. When the war came both
health and ingrained timidity kept him at home. I went to Plattsburg for a
commission but never got overseas.
So the years wore on. Edward's mother died when he was thirty four and for
months he was incapacitated by some odd psychological malady. His father
took him to Europe, however, and he managed to pull out of his trouble
without visible effects. Afterward he seemed to feel a sort of grotesque
exhilaration, as if of partial escape from some unseen bondage. He began
to mingle in the more "advanced" college set despite his middle age, and
was present at some extremely wild doings - on one occasion paying heavy
blackmail (which he borrowed of me) to keep his presence at a certain
affair from his father's notice. Some of the whispered rumors about the
wild Miskatonic set were extremely singular. There was even talk of black
magic and of happenings utterly beyond credibility.
II
Edward was thirty-eight when he met Asenath Waite. She was, I judge, about
twenty-three at the time; and was taking a special course in mediaeval
metaphysics at Miskatonic. The daughter of a friend of mine had met her
before - in the Hall School at Kingsport - and had been inclined to shun
her because of her odd reputation. She was dark, smallish, and very
good-looking except for overprotuberant eyes; but something in her
expression alienated extremely sensitive people. It was, however, largely
her origin and conversation which caused average folk to avoid her. She
was one of the Innsmouth Waites, and dark legends have clustered for
generations about crumbling, half-deserted Innsmouth and its people. There
are tales of horrible bargains about the year 1850, and of a strange
element "not quite human" in the ancient families of the run-down fishing
port - tales such as only old-time Yankees can devise and repeat with
proper awesomeness.
Asenath's case was aggravated by the fact that she was Ephraim Waite's
daughter - the child of his old age by an unknown wife who always went
veiled. Ephraim lived in a half-decayed mansion in Washington Street,
Innsmouth, and those who had seen the place (Arkham folk avoid going to
Innsmouth whenever they can) declared that the attic windows were always
boarded, and that strange sounds sometimes floated from within as evening
drew on. The old man was known to have been a prodigious magical student
in his day, and legend averred that he could raise or quell storms at sea
according to his whim. I had seen him once or twice in my youth as he came
to Arkham to consult forbidden tomes at the college library, and had hated
his wolfish, saturnine face with its tangle of iron-grey beard. He had
died insane - under rather queer circumstances - just before his daughter
(by his will made a nominal ward of the principal) entered the Hall
School, but she had been his morbidly avid pupil and looked fiendishly
like him at times.
The friend whose daughter had gone to school with Asenath Waite repeated
many curious things when the news of Edward's acquaintance with her began
to spread about. Asenath, it seemed, had posed as a kind of magician at
school; and had really seemed able to accomplish some highly baffling
marvels. She professed to be able to raise thunderstorms, though her
seeming success was generally laid to some uncanny knack at prediction.
All animals markedly disliked her, and she could make any dog howl by
certain motions of her right hand. There were times when she displayed
snatches of knowledge and language very singular - and very shocking - for
a young girl; when she would frighten her schoolmates with leers and winks
of an inexplicable kind, and would seem to extract an obscene zestful
irony from her present situation.
Most unusual, though, were the well-attested cases of her influence over
other persons. She was, beyond question, a genuine hypnotist. By gazing
peculiarly at a fellow-student she would often give the latter a distinct
feeling of exchanged personality - as if the subject were placed
momentarily in the magician's body and able to stare half across the room
at her real body, whose eyes blazed and protruded with an alien
expression. Asenath often made wild claims about the nature of
consciousness and about its independence of the physical frame - or at
least from the life-processes of the physical frame. Her crowning rage,
however, was that she was not a man; since she believed a male brain had
certain unique and far-reaching cosmic powers. Given a man's brain, she
declared, she could not only equal but surpass her father in mastery of
unknown forces.
Edward met Asenath at a gathering of "intelligentsia" held in one of the
students' rooms, and could talk of nothing else when he came to see me the
next day. He had found her full of the interests and erudition which
engrossed him most, and was in addition wildly taken with her appearance.
I had never seen the young woman, and recalled casual references only
faintly, but I knew who she was. It seemed rather regrettable that Derby
should become so upheaved about her; but I said nothing to discourage him,
since infatuation thrives on opposition. He was not, he said, mentioning
her to his father.
In the next few weeks I heard of very little but Asenath from young Derby.
Others now remarked Edward's autumnal gallantry, though they agreed that
he did not look even nearly his actual age, or seem at all inappropriate
as an escort for his bizarre divinity. He was only a trifle paunchy
despite his indolence and self-indulgence, and his face was absolutely
without lines. Asenath, on the other hand, had the premature crow's feet
which come from the exercises of an intense will.
About this time Edward brought the girl to call on me, and I at once saw
that his interest was by no means one-sided. She eyed him continually with
an almost predatory air, and I perceived that their intimacy was beyond
untangling. Soon afterward I had a visit from old Mr. Derby, whom I had
always admired and respected. He had heard the tales of his son's new
friendship, and had wormed the whole truth out of "the boy." Edward meant
to marry Asenath, and had even been looking at houses in the suburbs.
Knowing my usually great influence with his son, the father wondered if I
could help to break the ill-advised affair off; but I regretfully
expressed my doubts. This time it was not a question of Edward's weak will
but of the woman's strong will. The perennial child had transferred his
dependence from the parental image to a new and stronger image, and
nothing could be done about it.
The wedding was performed a month later - by a justice of the peaoe,
according to the bride's request. Mr. Derby, at my advice, offered no
opposition, and he, my wife, my son, and I attended the brief ceremony -
the other guests being wild young people from the college. Asenath had
bought the old Crowninshield place in the country at the end of High
Street, and they proposed to settle there after a short trip to Innsmouth,
whence three servants and some books and household goods were to be
brought. It was probably not so much consideration for Edward and his
father as a personal wish to be near the college, its library, and its
crowd of "sophisticates," that made Asenath settle in Arkham instead of
returning permanently home.
When Edward called on me after the honeymoon I thought he looked slightly
changed. Asenath had made him get rid of the undeveloped moustache, but
there was more than that. He looked soberer and more thoughtful, his
habitual pout of childish rebelliousness being exchanged for a look almost
of genuine sadness. I was puzzled to decide whether I liked or disliked
the change. Certainly he seemed for the moment more normally adult than
ever before. Perhaps the marriage was a good thing - might not the change
of dependence form a start toward actual neutralisaton, leading ultimately
to responsible independence? He came alone, for Asenath was very busy. She
had brought a vast store of books and apparatus from Innsmouth (Derby
shuddered as he spoke the name), and was finishing the restoration of the
Crowninshield house and grounds.
Her home - in that town - was a rather disgusting place, but certain
objects in it had taught him some surprising things. He was progressing
fast in esoteric lore now that he had Asenath's guidance. Some of the
experiments she proposed were very daring and radical - he did not feel at
liberty to describe them - but he had confidence in her powers and
intentions. The three servants were very queer - an incredibly aged couple
who had been with old Ephraim and referred occasionally to him and to
Asenath's dead mother in a cryptic way, and a swarthy young wench who had
marked anomalies of feature and seemed to exude a perpetual odour of fish.
III
For the next two years I saw less and less of Derby. A fortnight would
sometimes slip by without the familiar three-and-two strokes at the front
door; and when he did call - or when, as happened with increasing
infrequency, I called on him - he was very little disposed to converse on
vital topics. He had become secretive about those occult studies which he
used to describe and discuss so minutely, and preferred not to talk of his
wife. She had aged tremendously since her marriage, till now - oddly
enough - she seemed the elder of the two. Her face held the most
concentratedly determined expression I had ever seen, and her whole aspect
seemed to gain a vague, unplaceable repulsiveness. My wife and son noticed
it as much as I, and we all ceased gradually to call on her - for which,
Edward admitted in one of his boyishly tactless moments, she was
unmitigatedly grateful. Occasionally the Derbys would go on long trips -
ostensibly to Europe, though Edward sometimes hinted at obscurer
destinations.
It was after the first year that people began talking about the change in
Edward Derby. It was very casual talk, for the change was purely
psychological; but it brought up some interesting points. Now and then, it
seemed Edward was observed to wear an expression and to do things wholly
incompatible with his usual flabby nature. For example - although in the
old days he could not drive a car, he was now seen occasionally to dash
into or out of the old Crowninshield driveway with Asenath's powerful
Packard, handling it like a master, and meeting traffic entanglements with
a skill and determination utterly alien to his accustomed nature. In such
cases he seemed always to be just back from some trip or just starting on
one - what sort of trip, no one could guess, although he mostly favoured
the Innsmouth road.
Oddly, the metamorphosis did not seem altogether pleasing. People said he
looked too much like his wife, or like old Ephraim Waite himself, in these
moments - or perhaps these moments seemed unnatural because they were so
rare. Sometimes, hours after starting out in this way, he would return
listlessly sprawled on the rear seat of the car while an obviously hired
chauffeur or mechanic drove. Also, his preponderant aspect on the streets
during his decreasing round of social contacts (including, I may say, his
calls on me) was the old-time indecisive one - its irresponsible
childishness even more marked than in the past. While Asenath's face aged,
Edward - aside from those exceptional occasions - actually relaxed into a
kind of exaggerated immaturity, save when a trace of the new sadness or
understanding would flash across it. It was really very puzzling.
Meanwhile the Derbys almost dropped out of the gay college circle - not
through their own disgust, we heard, but because something about their
present studies shocked even the most callous of the other decadents.
It was in the third year of the marriage that Edward began to hint openly
to me of a certain fear and dissatisfaction. He would let fall remarks
about things "going too far," and would talk darkly about the need of
"gaining his identity." At first I ignored such references, but in time I
began to question him guardedly, remembering what my friend's daughter had
said about Asenath's hypnotic influence over the other girls at school -
the cases where students had thought they were in her body looking across
the room at themselves. This questioning seemed to make him at once
alarmed and grateful, and once he mumbled something about having a serious
talk with me later. About this time old Mr. Derby died, for which I was
afterward very thankful. Edward was badly upset, though by no means
disorganized. He had seen astonishingly little of his parent since his
marriage, for Asenath had concentrated in herself all his vital sense of
family linkage. Some called him callous in his loss - especially since
those jaunty and confident moods in the car began to increase. He now
wished to move back into the old family mansion, but Asenath insisted on
staying in the Crowninshield house to which she had become well adjusted.
Not long afterward my wife heard a curious thing from a friend - one of
the few who had not dropped the Derbys. She had been out to the end of
High Street to call on the couple, and had seen a car shoot briskly out of
the drive with Edward's oddly confident and almost sneering face above the
wheel. Ringing the bell, she had been told by the repulsive wench that
Asenath was also out; but had chanced to look at the house in leaving.
There, at one of Edward's library windows, she had glimpsed a hastily
withdrawn face - a face whose expression of pain, defeat, and wistful
hopelessness was poignant beyond description. It was - incredibly enough
in view of its usual domineering cast - Asenath's; yet the caller had
vowed that in that instant the sad, muddled eyes of poor Edward were
gazing out from it.
Edward's calls now grew a trifle more frequent, and his hints occasionally
became concrete. What he said was not to be believed, even in centuried
and legend-haunted Arkham; but he threw out his dark lore with a sincerity
and convincingness which made one fear for his sanity. He talked about
terrible meetings in lonely places, of cyclopean ruins in the heart of the
Maine woods beneath which vast staircases led down to abysses of nighted
secrets, of complex angles that led through invisible walls to other
regions of space and time, and of hideous exchanges of personality that
permitted explorations in remote and forbidden places, on other worlds,
and in different space-time continua.
He would now and then back up certain crazy hints by exhibiting objects
which utterly nonplussed me - elusively coloured and bafflingly textured
objects like nothing ever heard of on earth, whose insane curves and
surfaces answered no conceivable purpose, and followed no conceivable
geometry. These things, he said, came "from outside"; and his wife knew
how to get them. Sometimes - but always in frightened and ambiguous
whisper - he would suggest things about old Ephraim Waite, whom he had
seen occasionally at the college library in the old days. These
adumbrations were never specific, but seemed to revolve around some
especially horrible doubt as to whether the old wizard were really dead -
in a spiritual as well as corporeal sense.
At times Derby would halt abruptly in his revelations, and I wondered
whether Asenath could possibly have divined his speech at a distance and
cut him off through some unknown sort of telepathic mesmerism - some power
of the kind she had displayed at school. Certainly, she suspected that he
told me things, for as the weeks passed she tried to stop his visits with
words and glances of a most inexplicable potency. Only with difficulty
could he get to see me, for although he would pretend to be going
somewhere else, some invisible force would generally clog his motions or
make him forget his destination for the time being. His visits usually
came when Asenath was way - "away in her own body," as he once oddly put
it. She always found out later - the servants watched his goings and
coming - but evidently she thought it inexpedient to do anything drastic.
IV
Derby had been married more than three years on that August day when I got
that telegram from Maine. I had not seen him for two months, but had heard
he was away "on business." Asenath was supposed to be with him, though
watchful gossip declared there was someone upstairs in the house behind
the doubly curtained windows. They had watched the purchases made by the
servants. And now the town marshal of Chesuncook had wired of the draggled
madman who stumbled out of the woods with delirious ravings and screamed
to me for protection. It was Edward - and he had been just able to recall
his own name and address.
Chesuncook is close to the wildest, deepest, and least explored forest
belt in Maine, and it took a whole day of feverish jolting through
fantastic and forbidding scenery to get there in a car. I found Derby in a
cell at the town farm, vacillating between frenzy and apathy. He knew me
at once, and began pouring out a meaningless, half-incoherent torrent of
words in my direction.
"Dan, for God's sake! The pit of the shoggoths! Down the six thousand
steps... the abomination of abominations... I never would let her take me,
and then I found myself there - Ia! Shub-Niggurath! - The shape rose up
from the altar, and there were five hundred that howled - The Hooded Thing
bleated 'Kamog! Kamog!' - that was old Ephraim's secret name in the coven
- I was there, where she promised she wouldn't take me - A minute before I
was locked in the library, and then I was there where she had gone with my
body - in the place of utter blasphemy, the unholy pit where the black
realm begins and the watcher guards the gate - I saw a shoggoth - it
changed shape - I can't stand it - I'll kill her if she ever sends me
there again - I'll kill that entity - her, him, it - I'll kill it! I'll
kill it with my own hands!"
It took me an hour to quiet him, but he subsided at last. The next day I
got him decent clothes in the village, and set out with him for Arkham.
His fury of hysteria was spent, and he was inclined to be silent, though
he began muttering darkly to himself when the car passed through Augusta -
as if the sight of a city aroused unpleasant memories. It was clear that
he did not wish to go home; and considering the fantastic delusions he
seemed to have about his wife - delusions undoubtedly springing from some
actual hypnotic ordeal to which he had been subjected - I thought it would
be better if he did not. I would, I resolved, put him up myself for a
time; no matter what unpleasantness it would make with Asenath. Later I
would help him get a divorce, for most assuredly there were mental factors
which made this marriage suicidal for him. When we struck open country
again Derby's muttering faded away, and I let him nod and drowse on the
seat beside me as I drove.
During our sunset dash through Portland the muttering commenced again,
more distinctly than before, and as I listened I caught a stream of
utterly insane drivel about Asenath. The extent to which she had preyed on
Edward's nerves was plain, for he had woven a whole set of hallucinations
around her. His present predicament, he mumbled furtively, was only one of
a long series. She was getting hold of him, and he knew that some day she
would never let go. Even now she probably let him go only when she had to,
because she couldn't hold on long at a time. She constantly took his body
and went to nameless places for nameless rites, leaving him in her body
and locking him upstairs - but sometimes she couldn't hold on, and he
would find himself suddenly in his own body again in some far-off,
horrible, and perhaps unknown place. Sometimes she'd get hold of him again
and sometimes she couldn't. Often he was left stranded somewhere as I had
found him - time and again he had to find his way home from frightful
distances, getting somebody to drive the car after he found it.
The worst thing was that she was holding on to him longer and longer at a
time. She wanted to be a man - to be fully human - that was why she got
hold of him. She had sensed the mixture of fine-wrought brain and weak
will in him. Some day she would crowd him out and disappear with his body
- disappear to become a great magician like her father and leave him
marooned in that female shell that wasn't even quite human. Yes, he knew
about the Innsmouth blood now. There had been traffick with things from
the sea - it was horrible... And old Ephraim - he had known the secret,
and when he grew old did a hideous thing to keep alive - he wanted to live
forever - Asenath would succeed - one successful demonstration had taken
place already.
As Derby muttered on I turned to look at him closely, verifying the
impression of change which an earlier scrutiny had given me.
Paradoxically, he seemed in better shape than usual - harder, more
normally developed, and without the trace of sickly flabbiness caused by
his indolent habits. It was as if he had been really active and properly
exercised for the first time in his coddled life, and I judged that
Asenath's force must have pushed him into unwonted channels of motion and
alertness. But just now his mind was in a pitiable state; for he was
mumbling wild extravagances about his wife, about black magic, about old
Ephraim, and about some revelation which would convince even me. He
repeated names which I recognized from bygone browsings in forbidden
volumes, and at times made me shudder with a certain thread of
mythological consistency - or convincing coherence - which ran through his
maundering. Again and again he would pause, as if to gather courage for
some final and terrible disclosure.
"Dan, Dan, don't you remember him - wild eyes and the unkempt beard that
never turned white? He glared at me once, and I never forgot it. Now she
glares that way. And I know why! He found it in the Necronomicon - the
formula. I don't dare tell you the page yet, but when I do you can read
and understand. Then you will know what has engulfed me. On, on, on, on -
body to body to body - he means never to die. The life-glow - he knows how
to break the link... it can flicker on a while even when the body is dead.
I'll give you hints and maybe you'll guess. Listen, Dan - do you know why
my wife always takes such pains with that silly backhand writing? Have you
ever seen a manuscript of old Ephraim's? Do you want to know why I
shivered when I saw some hasty notes Asenath had jotted down?
"Asenath - is there such a person? Why did they half-think there was
poison in old Ephraim's stomach? Why do the Gilmans whisper about the way
he shrieked - like a frightened child - when he went mad and Asenath
locked him up in the padded attic room where - the other - had been? Was
it old Ephraim's soul that was locked in? Who locked in whom? Why had he
been looking for months for someone with a fine mind and a weak will? -
Why did he curse that his daughter wasn't a son? Tell me? Daniel Upton -
what devilish exchange was perpetrated in the house of horror where that
blasphemous monster had his trusting, weak-willed half-human child at his
mercy? Didn't he make it permanent - as she'll do in the end with me? Tell
me why that thing that calls itself Asenath writes differently off guard,
so that you can't tell its script from - "
Then the thing happened. Derby's voice was rising to a thin treble scream
as he raved, when suddenly it was shut off with an almost mechanical
click. I thought of those other occasions at my home when his confidences
had abruptly ceased - when I had half-fancied that some obscure telepathic
wave of Asenath's mental force was intervening to keep him silent. This,
though, was something altogether different - and, I felt, infinitely more
horrible. The face beside me was twisted almost unrecognizably for a
moment, while through the whole body there passed a shivering motion - as
if all the bones, organs, muscles, nerves, and glands were adjusting
themselves to a radically different posture, set of stresses, and general
personality.
Just where the supreme horror lay, I could not for my life tell; yet there
swept over me such a swamping wave of sickness and repulsion - such a
freezing, petrifying sense of utter alienage and abnormality - that my
grasp of the wheel grew feeble and uncertain. The figure beside me seemed
less like a lifelong friend than like some monstrous intrusion from outer
space - some damnable, utterly accursed focus of unknown and malign cosmic
forces.
I had faltered only a moment, but before another moment was over my
companion had seized the wheel and forced me to change places with him.
The dusk was now very thick, and the lights of Portland far behind, so I
could not see much of his face. The blaze of his eyes, though, was
phenomenal; and I knew that he must now be in that queerly energized state
- so unlike his usual self - which so many people had noticed. It seemed
odd and incredible that listless Edward Derby - he who could never assert
himself, and who had never learned to drive - should be ordering me about
and taking the wheel of my own car, yet that was precisely what had
happened. He did not speak for some time, and in my inexplicable horror I
was glad he did not.
In the lights of Biddeford and Saco I saw his firmly set mouth, and
shivered at the blaze of his eyes. The people were right - he did look
damnably like his wife and like old Ephraim when in these moods. I did not
wonder that the moods were disliked - there was certainly something
unnatural in them, and I felt the sinister element all the more because of
the wild ravings I had been hearing. This man, for all my lifelong
knowledge of Edward Pickman Derby, was a stranger - an intrusion of some
sort from the black abyss.
He did not speak until we were on a dark stretch of road, and when he did
his voice seemed utterly unfamiliar. It was deeper, firmer, and more
decisive than I had ever known it to be; while its accent and
pronunciation were altogether changed - though vaguely, remotely, and
rather disturbingly recalling something I could not quite place. There
was, I thought, a trace of very profound and very genuine irony in the
timbre - not the flashy, meaninglessly jaunty pseudo-irony of the callow
"sophisticate," which Derby had habitually affected, but something grim,
basic, pervasive, and potentially evil. I marvelled at the self-possession
so soon following the spell of panic-struck muttering.
"I hope you'll forget my attack back there, Upton," he was saying. "You
know what my nerves are, and I guess you can excuse such things. I'm
enormously grateful, of course, for this lift home.
"And you must forget, too, any crazy things I may have been saying about
my wife - and about things in general. That's what comes from overstudy in
a field like mine. My philosophy is full of bizarre concepts, and when the
mind gets worn out it cooks up all sorts of imaginary concrete
applications. I shall take a rest from now on - you probably won't see me
for some time, and you needn't blame Asenath for it.
"This trip was a bit queer, but it's really very simple. There are certain
Indian relics in the north wood - standing stones, and all that - which
mean a good deal in folklore, and Asenath and I are following that stuff
up. It was a hard search, so I seem to have gone off my head. I must send
somebody for the car when I get home. A month's relaxation will put me on
my feet."
I do not recall just what my own part of the conversation was, for the
baffling alienage of my seatmate filled all my consciousness. With every
moment my feeling of elusive cosmic horror increased, till at length I was
in a virtual delirium of longing for the end of the drive. Derby did not
offer to relinquish the wheel, and I was glad of the speed with which
Portsmouth and Newburyport flashed by.
At the junction where the main highway runs inland and avoids Innsmouth, I
was half-afraid my driver would take the bleak shore road that goes
through that damnable place. He did not, however, but darted rapidly past
Rowley and Ipswich toward our destination. We reached Arkham before
midnight, and found the lights still on at the old Crowninshield house.
Derby left the car with a hasty repetition of his thanks, and I drove home
alone with a curious feeling of relief. It had been a terrible drive - all
the more terrible because I could not quite tell why - and I did not
regret Derby's forecast of a long absence from my company.
The next two months were full of rumours. People spoke of seeing Derby
more and more in his new energized state, and Asenath was scarcely ever in
to her callers. I had only one visit from Edward, when he called briefly
in Asenath's car - duly reclaimed from wherever he had left it in Maine -
to get some books he had lent me. He was in his new state, and paused only
long enough for some evasively polite remarks. It was plain that he had
nothing to discuss with me when in this condition - and I noticed that he
did not even trouble to give the old three-and-two signal when ringing the
doorbell. As on that evening in the car, I felt a faint, infinitely deep
horror which I could not explain; so that his swift departure was a
prodigious relief.
In mid-September Derby was away for a week, and some of the decadent
college set talked knowingly of the matter - hinting at a meeting with a
notorious cult-leader, lately expelled from England, who had established
headquarters in New York. For my part I could not get that strange ride
from Maine out of my head. The transformation I had witnessed had affected
me profoundly, and I caught myself again and again trying to account for
the thing - and for the extreme horror it had inspired in me.
But the oddest rumours were those about the sobbing in the old
Crowninshield house. The voice seemed to be a woman's, and some of the
younger people thought it sounded like Asenath's. It was heard only at
rare intervals, and would sometimes be choked off as if by force. There
was talk of an investigation, but this was dispelled one day when Asenath
appeared in the streets and chatted in a sprightly way with a large number
of acquaintances - apologizing for her recent absence and speaking
incidentally about the nervous breakdown and hysteria of a guest from
Boston. The guest was never seen, but Asenath's appearance left nothing to
be said. And then someone complicated matters by whispering that the sobs
had once or twice been in a man's voice.
One evening in mid-October, I heard the familiar three-and-two ring at the
front door. Answering it myself, I found Edward on the steps, and saw in a
moment that his personality was the old one which I had not encountered
since the day of his ravings on that terrible ride from Chesuncook. His
face was twitching with a mixture of odd emotions in which fear and
triumph seemed to share dominion, and he looked furtively over his
shoulder as I closed the door behind him.
Following me clumsily to the study, he asked for some whiskey to steady
his nerves. I forbore to question him, but waited till he felt like
beginning whatever he wanted to say. At length he ventured some
information in a choking voice.
"Asenath has gone, Dan. We had a long talk last night while the servants
were out, and I made her promise to stop preying on me. Of course I had
certain - certain occult defences I never told you about. She had to give
in, but got frightfully angry. Just packed up and started for New York -
walked right out to catch the eight-twenty in to Boston. I suppose people
will talk, but I can't help that. You needn't mention that there was any
trouble - just say she's gone on a long research trip.
"She's probably going to stay with one of her horrible groups of devotees.
I hope she'll go west and get a divorce - anyhow, I've made her promise to
keep away and let me alone. It was horrible, Dan - she was stealing my
body - crowding me out - making a prisoner of me. I lay low and pretended
to let her do it, but I had to be on the watch. I could plan if I was
careful, for she can't read my mind literally, or in detail. All she could
read of my planning was a sort of general mood of rebellion - and she
always thought I was helpless. Never thought I could get the best of
her... but I had a spell or two that worked."
Derby looked over his shoulder and took some more whiskey.
"I paid off those damned servants this morning when they got back. They
were ugly about it, and asked questions, but they went. They're her kin -
Innsmouth people - and were hand and glove with her. I hope they'll let me
alone - I didn't like the way they laughed when they walked away. I must
get as many of Dad's old servants again as I can. I'll move back home now.
"I suppose you think I'm crazy, Dan - but Arkham history ought to hint at
things that back up what I've told you - and what I'm going to tell you.
You've seen one of the changes, too - in your car after I told you about
Asenath that day coming home from Maine. That was when she got me - drove
me out of my body. The last thing I remember was when I was all worked up
trying to tell you what that she-devil is. Then she got me, and in a flash
I was back at the house - in the library where those damned servants had
me locked up - and in that cursed fiend's body that isn't even human...
You know it was she you must have ridden home with - that preying wolf in
my body - You ought to have known the difference!"
I shuddered as Derby paused. Surely, I had known the difference - yet
could I accept an explanation as insane as this? But my distracted caller
was growing even wilder.
"I had to save myself - I had to, Dan! She'd have got me for good at
Hallowmass - they hold a Sabbat up there beyond Chesuncook, and the
sacrifice would have clinched things. She'd have got me for good - she'd
have been I, and I'd have been she - forever - too late - My body'd have
been hers for good - She'd have been a man, and fully human, just as she
wanted to be - I suppose she'd have put me out of the way - killed her own
ex-body with me in it, damn her, just as she did before - just as she did,
or it did before - " Edward's face was now atrociously distorted, and he
bent it uncomfortably close to mine as his voice fell to a whisper.
"You must know what I hinted in the car - that she isn't Asenath at all,
but really old Ephraim himself. I suspected it a year and a half ago, and
I know it now. Her handwriting shows it when she goes off guard -
sometimes she jots down a note in writing that's just like her father's
manuscripts, stroke for stroke - and sometimes she says things that nobody
but an old man like Ephraim could say. He changed forms with her when he
felt death coming - she was the only one he could find with the right kind
of brain and a weak enough will - he got her body permanently, just as she
almost got mine, and then poisoned the old body he'd put her into. Haven't
you seen old Ephraim's soul glaring out of that she-devil's eyes dozens of
times - and out of mine when she has control of my body?"
The whisperer was panting, and paused for breath. I said nothing; and when
he resumed his voice was nearer normal. This, I reflected, was a case for
the asylum, but I would not be the one to send him there. Perhaps time and
freedom from Asenath would do its work. I could see that he would never
wish to dabble in morbid occultism again.
"I'll tell you more later - I must have a long rest now. I'll tell you
something of the forbidden horrors she led me into - something of the
age-old horrors that even now are festering in out-of-the-way corners with
a few monstrous priests to keep them alive. Some people know things about
the universe that nobody ought to know, and can do things that nobody
ought to be able to do. I've been in it up to my neck, but that's the end.
Today I'd burn that damned Necronomicon and all the rest if I were
librarian at Miskatonic.
"But she can't get me now. I must get out of that accursed house as soon
as I can, and settle down at home. You'll help me, I know, if I need help.
Those devilish servants, you know - and if people should get too
inquisitive about Asenath. You see, I can't give them her address... Then
there are certain groups of searchers - certain cults, you know - that
might misunderstand our breaking up... some of them have damnably curious
ideas and methods. I know you'll stand by me if anything happens - even if
I have to tell you a lot that will shock you..."
I had Edward stay and sleep in one of the guest-chambers that night, and
in the morning he seemed calmer. We discussed certain possible
arrangements for his moving back into the Derby mansion, and I hoped he
would lose no time in making the change. He did not call the next evening,
but I saw him frequently during the ensuing weeks. We talked as little as
possible about strange and unpleasant things, but discussed the renovation
of the old Derby house, and the travels which Edward promised to take with
my son and me the following summer.
Of Asenath we said almost nothing, for I saw that the subject was a
peculiarly disturbing one. Gossip, of course, was rife; but that was no
novelty in connection with the strange menage at the old Crowninshield
house. One thing I did not like was what Derby's banker let fall in an
over-expansive mood at the Miskatonic Club - about the cheques Edward was
sending regularly to a Moses and Abigail Sargent and a Eunice Babson in
Innsmouth. That looked as if those evil-faced servants were extorting some
kind of tribute from him - yet he had not mentioned the matter to me.
I wished that the summer - and my son's Harvard vacation - would come, so
that we could get Edward to Europe. He was not, I soon saw, mending as
rapidly as I had hoped he would; for there was something a bit hysterical
in his occasional exhilaration, while his moods of fright and depression
were altogether too frequent. The old Derby house was ready by December,
yet Edward constantly put off moving. Though he hated and seemed to fear
the Crowninshield place, he was at the same time queerly enslaved by it.
He could not seem to begin dismantling things, and invented every kind of
excuse to postpone action. When I pointed this out to him he appeared
unaccountably frightened. His father's old butler - who was there with
other reacquired servants - told me one day that Edward's occasional
prowlings about the house, and especially down cellar, looked odd and
unwholesome to him. I wondered if Asenath had been writing disturbing
letters, but the butler said there was no mail which could have come from
her.
It was about Christmas that Derby broke down one evening while calling on
me. I was steering the conversation toward next summer's travels when he
suddenly shrieked and leaped up from his chair with a look of shocking,
uncontrollable fright - a cosmic panic and loathing such as only the
nether gulfs of nightmare could bring to any sane mind.
"My brain! My brain! God, Dan - it's tugging - from beyond - knocking -
clawing - that she-devil - even now - Ephraim - Kamog! Kamog! - The pit of
the shoggoths - Ia! Shub-Niggurath! The Goat with a Thousand Young!...
"The flame - the flame - beyond body, beyond life - in the earth - oh,
God!"
I pulled him back to his chair and poured some wine down his throat as his
frenzy sank to a dull apathy. He did not resist, but kept his lips moving
as if talking to himself. Presently I realized that he was trying to talk
to me, and bent my ear to his mouth to catch the feeble words.
"Again, again - she's trying - I might have known - nothing can stop that
force; not distance nor magic, nor death - it comes and comes, mostly in
the night - I can't leave - it's horrible - oh, God, Dan, if you only knew
as I do just how horrible it is..."
When he had slumped down into a stupor I propped him with pillows and let
normal sleep overtake him. I did not call a doctor, for I knew what would
be said of his sanity, and wished to give nature a chance if I possibly
could. He waked at midnight, and I put him to bed upstairs, but he was
gone by morning. He had let himself quietly out of the house - and his
butler, when called on the wire, said he was at home pacing about the
library.
Edward went to pieces rapidly after that. He did not call again, but I
went daily to see him. He would always be sitting in his library, staring
at nothing and having an air of abnormal listening. Sometimes he talked
rationally, but always on trivial topics. Any mention of his trouble, of
future plans, or of Asenath would send him into a frenzy. His butler said
he had frightful seizures at night, during which he might eventually do
himself harm.
I had a long talk with his doctor, banker, and lawyer, and finally took
the physician with two specialist colleagues to visit him. The spasms that
resulted from the first questions were violent and pitiable - and that
evening a closed car took his poor struggling body to the Arkham
Sanitarium. I was made his guardian and called on him twice weekly -
almost weeping to hear his wild shrieks, awesome whispers, and dreadful,
droning repetitions of such phrases as "I had to do it - I had to do it -
it'll get me - it'll get me - down there - down there in the dark -
Mother! Mother! Dan! Save me - save me -"
How much hope of recovery there was, no one could say, but I tried my best
to be optimistic. Edward must have a home if he emerged, so I transferred
his servants to the Derby mansion, which would surely be his sane choice.
What to do about the Crowninshield place with its complex arrangements and
collections of utterly inexplicable objects I could not decide, so left it
momentarily untouched - telling the Derby household to go over and dust
the chief rooms once a week, and ordering the furnace man to have a fire
on those days.
The final nightmare came before Candlemas - heralded, in cruel irony, by a
false gleam of hope. One morning late in January the sanitarium telephoned
to report that Edward's reason had suddenly come back. His continuous
memory, they said, was badly impaired; but sanity itself was certain. Of
course he must remain some time for observation, but there could be little
doubt of the outcome. All going well, he would surely be free in a week.
I hastened over in a flood of delight, but stood bewildered when a nurse
took me to Edward's room. The patient rose to greet me, extending his hand
with a polite smile; but I saw in an instant that he bore the strangely
energized personality which had seemed so foreign to his own nature - the
competent personality I had found so vaguely horrible, and which Edward
himself had once vowed was the intruding soul of his wife. There was the
same blazing vision - so like Asenath's and old Ephraim's - and the same
firm mouth; and when he spoke I could sense the same grim, pervasive irony
in his voice - the deep irony so redolent of potential evil. This was the
person who had driven my car through the night five months before - the
person I had not seen since that brief call when he had forgotten the
oldtime doorbell signal and stirred such nebulous fears in me - and now he
filled me with the same dim feeling of blasphemous alienage and ineffable
cosmic hideousness.
He spoke affably of arrangements for release - and there was nothing for
me to do but assent, despite some remarkable gaps in his recent memories.
Yet I felt that something was terribly, inexplicably wrong and abnormal.
There were horrors in this thing that I could not reach. This was a sane
person - but was it indeed the Edward Derby I had known? If not, who or
what was it - and where was Edward? Ought it to be free or confined - or
ought it to be extirpated from the face of the earth? There was a hint of
the abysmally sardonic in everything the creature said - the Asenath-like
eyes lent a special and baffling mockery to certain words about the early
liberty earned by an especially close confinement! I must have behaved
very awkwardly, and was glad to beat a retreat.
All that day and the next I racked my brain over the problem. What had
happened? What sort of mind looked out through those alien eyes in
Edward's face? I could think of nothing but this dimly terrible enigma,
and gave up all efforts to perform my usual work. The second morning the
hospital called up to say that the recovered patient was unchanged, and by
evening I was close to a nervous collapse-a state I admit, though others
will vow it coloured my subsequent vision. I have nothing to say on this
point except that no madness of mine could account for all the evidence.
V
It was in the night-after that second evening - that stark, utter horror
burst over me and weighted my spirit with a black, clutching panic from
which it can never shake free. It began with a telephone call just before
midnight. I was the only one up, and sleepily took down the receiver in
the library. No one seemed to be on the wire, and I was about to hang up
and go to bed when my ear caught a very faint suspicion of sound at the
other end. Was someone trying under great difficulties to talk? As I
listened I thought I heard a sort of half-liquid bubbling noise - "glub...
glub... glub" - which had an odd suggestion of inarticulate,
unintelligible word and syllable divisions. I called "Who is it?" But the
only answer was "glub... glub... glub-glub." I could only assume that the
noise was mechanical; but fancying that it might be a case of a broken
instrument able to receive but not to send, I added, "I can't hear you.
Better hang up and try Information." Immediately I heard the receiver go
on the hook at the other end.
This, I say, was just about midnight. When the call was traced afterward
it was found to come from the old Crowninshield house, though it was fully
half a week from the housemaid's day to be there. I shall only hint what
was found at that house - the upheaval in a remote cellar storeroom, the
tracks, the dirt, the hastily rifled wardrobe, the baffling marks on the
telephone, the clumsily used stationery, and the detestable stench
lingering over everything. The police, poor fools, have their smug little
theories, and are still searching for those sinister discharged servants -
who have dropped out of sight amidst the present furore. They speak of a
ghoulish revenge for things that were done, and say I was included because
I was Edward's best friend and adviser.
Idiots! Do they fancy those brutish clowns could have forged that
handwriting? Do they fancy they could have brought what later came? Are
they blind to the changes in that body that was Edward's? As for me, I now
believe all that Edward Derby ever told me. There are horrors beyond
life's edge that we do not suspect, and once in a while man's evil prying
calls them just within our range. Ephraim - Asenat - that devil called
them in, and they engulfed Edward as they are engulfing me.
Can I be sure that I am safe? Those powers survive the life of the
physical form. The next day - in the afternoon, when I pulled out of my
prostration and was able to walk and talk coherently - I went to the
madhouse and shot him dead for Edward's and the world's sake, but can I be
sure till he is cremated? They are keeping the body for some silly
autopsies by different doctors - but I say he must be cremated. He must be
cremated - he who was not Edward Derby when I shot him. I shall go mad if
he is not, for I may be the next. But my will is not weak - and I shall
not let it be undermined by the terrors I know are seething around it. One
life - Ephraim, Asenath, and Edward - who now? I will not be driven out of
my body... I will not change souls with that bullet-ridden lich in the
madhouse!
But let me try to tell coherently of that final horror. I will not speak
of what the police persistently ignored - the tales of that dwarfed,
grotesque, malodorous thing met by at least three wayfarers in High Street
just before two o'clock, and the nature of the single footprints in
certain places. I will say only that just about two the doorbell and
knocker waked me - doorbell and knocker both, aplied alternately and
uncertainly in a kind of weak desperation, and each trying to keep
Edward's old signal of three-and-two strokes.
Roused from sound sleep, my mind leaped into a turmoil. Derby at the door
- and remembering the old code! That new personality had not remembered
it... was Edward suddenly back in his rightful state? Why was he here in
such evident stress and haste? Had he been released ahead of time, or had
he escaped? Perhaps, I thought as I flung on a robe and bounded
downstairs, his return to his own self had brought raving and violence,
revoking his discharge and driving him to a desperate dash for freedom.
Whatever had happened, he was good old Edward again, and I would help him!
When I opened the door into the elm-arched blackness a gust of
insufferably foetid wind almost flung me prostrate. I choked in nausea,
and for a second scarcely saw the dwarfed, humped figure on the steps. The
summons had been Edward's, but who was this foul, stunted parody? Where
had Edward had time to go? His ring had sounded only a second before the
door opened.
The caller had on one of Edward's overcoats - its bottom almost touching
the ground, and its sleeves rolled back yet still covering the hands. On
the head was a slouch hat pulled low, while a black silk muffler concealed
the face. As I stepped unsteadily forward, the figure made a semi-liquid
sound like that I had heard over the telephone - "glub... glub..." - and
thrust at me a large, closely written paper impaled on the end of a long
pencil. Still reeling from the morbid and unaccountable foetor, I seized
the paper and tried to read it in the light from the doorway.
Beyond question, it was in Edward's script. But why had he written when he
was close enough to ring - and why was the script so awkward, coarse and
shaky? I could make out nothing in the dim half light, so edged back into
the hall, the dwarf figure clumping mechanically after but pausing on the
inner door's threshold. The odour of this singular messenger was really
appalling, and I hoped (not in vain, thank God!) that my wife would not
wake and confront it.
Then, as I read the paper, I felt my knees give under me and my vision go
black. I was lying on the floor when I came to, that accursed sheet still
clutched in my fear-rigid hand. This is what it said.
"Dan - go to the sanitarium and kill it. Exterminate it. It isn't Edward
Derby any more. She got me - it's Asenath - and she has been dead three
months and a half. I lied when I said she had gone away. I killed her. I
had to. It was sudden, but we were alone and I was in my right body. I
saw a candlestick and smashed her head in. She would have got me for
good at Hallowmass.
"I buried her in the farther cellar storeroom under some old boxes and
cleaned up all the traces. The servants suspected next morning, but they
have such secrets that they dare not tell the police. I sent them off,
but God knows what they - and others of the cult - will do.
"I thought for a while I was all right, and then I felt the tugging at
my brain. I knew what it was - I ought to have remembered. A soul like
hers - or Ephraim's - is half detached, and keeps right on after death
as long as the body lasts. She was getting me - making me change bodies
with her-seizing my body and purting me in that corpse of hers buried in
the cellar.
"I knew what was coming - that's why I snapped and had to go to the
asylum. Then it came - I found myself choked in the dark - in Asenath's
rotting carcass down there in the cellar under the boxes where I put it.
And I knew she must be in my body at the sanitarium - permanently, for
it was after Hallowmass, and the sacrifice would work even without her
being there - sane, and ready for release as a menace to the world. I
was desperate, and in spite of everything I clawed my way out.
"I'm too far gone to talk - I couldn't manage to telephone - but I can
still write. I'll get fixed up somehow and bring this last word and
warning. Kill that fiend if you value the peace and comfort of the
world. See that it is cremated. If you don't, it will live on and on,
body to body forever, and I can't tell you what it will do. Keep clear
of black magic, Dan, it's the devil's business. Goodbye - you've been a
great friend. Tell the police whatever they'll believe - and I'm
damnably sorry to drag all this on you. I'll be at peace before long -
this thing won't hold together much more. Hope you can read this. And
kill that thing - kill it.
Yours - Ed."
It was only afterward that I read the last half of this paper, for I had
fainted at the end of the third paragraph. I fainted again when I saw and
smelled what cluttered up the threshold where the warm air had struck it.
The messenger would not move or have consciousness any more.
The butler, tougher-fibred than I, did not faint at what met him in the
hall in the morning. Instead, he telephoned the police. When they came I
had been taken upstairs to bed, but the - other mass - lay where it had
collapsed in the night. The men put handkerchiefs to their noses.
What they finally found inside Edward's oddly-assorted clothes was mostly
liquescent horror. There were bones, to - and a crushed-in skull. Some
dental work positively identified the skull as Asenath's.