H.P. Lovecraft. The Statement of Randolph Carter
The Statement of Randolph Carter
by H. P. Lovecraft
Written 1919
Published May 1920 in The Vagrant, No. 13, p. 41-48.
Again I say, I do not know what has become of Harley Warren, though I
think--almost hope--that he is in peaceful oblivion, if there be anywhere
so blessed a thing. It is true that I have for five years been his closest
friend, and a partial sharer of his terrible researches into the unknown.
I will not deny, though my memory is uncertain and indistinct, that this
witness of yours may have seen us together as he says, on the Gainsville
pike, walking toward Big Cypress Swamp, at half past 11 on that awful
night. That we bore electric lanterns, spades, and a curious coil of wire
with attached instruments, I will even affirm; for these things all played
a part in the single hideous scene which remains burned into my shaken
recollection. But of what followed, and of the reason I was found alone
and dazed on the edge of the swamp next morning, I must insist that I know
nothing save what I have told you over and over again. You say to me that
there is nothing in the swamp or near it which could form the setting of
that frightful episode. I reply that I knew nothing beyond what I saw.
Vision or nightmare it may have been--vision or nightmare I fervently hope
it was--yet it is all that my mind retains of what took place in those
shocking hours after we left the sight of men. And why Harley Warren did
not return, he or his shade--or some nameless thing I cannot describe--
alone can tell.
As I have said before, the weird studies of Harley Warren were well known
to me, and to some extent shared by me. Of his vast collection of strange,
rare books on forbidden subjects I have read all that are written in the
languages of which I am master; but these are few as compared with those
in languages I cannot understand. Most, I believe, are in Arabic; and the
fiend-inspired book which brought on the end--the book which he carried in
his pocket out of the world--was written in characters whose like I never
saw elsewhere. Warren would never tell me just what was in that book. As
to the nature of our studies--must I say again that I no longer retain
full comprehension? It seems to me rather merciful that I do not, for they
were terrible studies, which I pursued more through reluctant fascination
than through actual inclination. Warren always dominated me, and sometimes
I feared him. I remember how I shuddered at his facial expression on the
night before the awful happening, when he talked so incessantly of his
theory, why certain corpses never decay, but rest firm and fat in their
tombs for a thousand years. But I do not fear him now, for I suspect that
he has known horrors beyond my ken. Now I fear for him.
Once more I say that I have no clear idea of our object on that night.
Certainly, it had much to do with something in the book which Warren
carried with him--that ancient book in undecipherable characters which had
come to him from India a month before--but I swear I do not know what it
was that we expected to find. Your witness says he saw us at half past 11
on the Gainsville pike, headed for Big Cypress Swamp. This is probably
true, but I have no distinct memory of it. The picture seared into my soul
is of one scene only, and the hour must have been long after midnight; for
a waning crescent moon was high in the vaporous heavens.
The place was an ancient cemetery; so ancient that I trembled at the
manifold signs of immemorial years. It was in a deep, damp hollow,
overgrown with rank grass, moss, and curious creeping weeds, and filled
with a vague stench which my idle fancy associated absurdly with rotting
stone. On every hand were the signs of neglect and decrepitude, and I
seemed haunted by the notion that Warren and I were the first living
creatures to invade a lethal silence of centuries. Over the valley's rim a
wan, waning crescent moon peered through the noisome vapors that seemed to
emanate from unheard of catacombs, and by its feeble, wavering beams I
could distinguish a repellent array of antique slabs, urns, cenotaphs, and
mausoleum facades; all crumbling, moss-grown, and moisture-stained, and
partly concealed by the gross luxuriance of the unhealthy vegetation.
My first vivid impression of my own presence in this terrible necropolis
concerns the act of pausing with Warren before a certain half- obliterated
sepulcher and of throwing down some burdens which we seemed to have been
carrying. I now observed that I had with me an electric lantern and two
spades, whilst my companion was supplied with a similar lantern and a
portable telephone outfit. No word was uttered, for the spot and the task
seemed known to us; and without delay we seized our spades and commenced
to clear away the grass, weeds, and drifted earth from the flat, archaic
mortuary. After uncovering the entire surface, which consisted of three
immense granite slabs, we stepped back some distance to survey the charnel
scene; and Warren appeared to make some mental calculations. Then he
returned to the sepulcher, and using his spade as a lever, sought to pry
up the slab lying nearest to a stony ruin which may have been a monument
in its day. He did not succeed, and motioned to me to come to his
assistance. Finally our combined strength loosened the stone, which we
raised and tipped to one side.
The removal of the slab revealed a black aperture, from which rushed an
effluence of miasmal gases so nauseous that we started back in horror.
After an interval, however, we approached the pit again, and found the
exhalations less unbearable. Our lanterns disclosed the top of a flight of
stone steps, dripping with some detestable ichor of the inner earth, and
bordered by moist walls encrusted with niter. And now for the first time
my memory records verbal discourse, Warren addressing me at length in his
mellow tenor voice; a voice singularly unperturbed by our awesome
surroundings.
"I'm sorry to have to ask you to stay on the surface," he said, "but it
would be a crime to let anyone with your frail nerves go down there. You
can't imagine, even from what you have read and from what I've told you,
the things I shall have to see and do. It's fiendish work, Carter, and I
doubt if any man without ironclad sensibilities could ever see it through
and come up alive and sane. I don't wish to offend you, and Heaven knows
I'd be glad enough to have you with me; but the responsibility is in a
certain sense mine, and I couldn't drag a bundle of nerves like you down
to probable death or madness. I tell you, you can't imagine what the thing
is really like! But I promise to keep you informed over the telephone of
every move--you see I've enough wire here to reach to the center of the
earth and back!"
I can still hear, in memory, those coolly spoken words; and I can still
remember my remonstrances. I seemed desperately anxious to accompany my
friend into those sepulchral depths, yet he proved inflexibly obdurate. At
one time he threatened to abandon the expedition if I remained insistent;
a threat which proved effective, since he alone held the key to the thing.
All this I can still remember, though I no longer know what manner of
thing we sought. After he had obtained my reluctant acquiescence in his
design, Warren picked up the reel of wire and adjusted the instruments. At
his nod I took one of the latter and seated myself upon an aged,
discolored gravestone close by the newly uncovered aperture. Then he shook
my hand, shouldered the coil of wire, and disappeared within that
indescribable ossuary.
For a minute I kept sight of the glow of his lantern, and heard the rustle
of the wire as he laid it down after him; but the glow soon disappeared
abruptly, as if a turn in the stone staircase had been encountered, and
the sound died away almost as quickly. I was alone, yet bound to the
unknown depths by those magic strands whose insulated surface lay green
beneath the struggling beams of that waning crescent moon.
I constantly consulted my watch by the light of my electric lantern, and
listened with feverish anxiety at the receiver of the telephone; but for
more than a quarter of an hour heard nothing. Then a faint clicking came
from the instrument, and I called down to my friend in a tense voice.
Apprehensive as I was, I was nevertheless unprepared for the words which
came up from that uncanny vault in accents more alarmed and quivering than
any I had heard before from Harley Warren. He who had so calmly left me a
little while previously, now called from below in a shaky whisper more
portentous than the loudest shriek:
"God! If you could see what I am seeing!"
I could not answer. Speechless, I could only wait. Then came the frenzied
tones again:
"Carter, it's terrible--monstrous--unbelievable!"
This time my voice did not fail me, and I poured into the transmitter a
flood of excited questions. Terrified, I continued to repeat, "Warren,
what is it? What is it?"
Once more came the voice of my friend, still hoarse with fear, and now
apparently tinged with despair:
"I can't tell you, Carter! It's too utterly beyond thought--I dare not
tell you--no man could know it and live--Great God! I never dreamed of
this!"
Stillness again, save for my now incoherent torrent of shuddering inquiry.
Then the voice of Warren in a pitch of wilder consternation:
"Carter! for the love of God, put back the slab and get out of this if you
can! Quick!--leave everything else and make for the outside--it's your
only chance! Do as I say, and don't ask me to explain!"
I heard, yet was able only to repeat my frantic questions. Around me were
the tombs and the darkness and the shadows; below me, some peril beyond
the radius of the human imagination. But my friend was in greater danger
than I, and through my fear I felt a vague resentment that he should deem
me capable of deserting him under such circumstances. More clicking, and
after a pause a piteous cry from Warren:
"Beat it! For God's sake, put back the slab and beat it, Carter!"
Something in the boyish slang of my evidently stricken companion unleashed
my faculties. I formed and shouted a resolution, "Warren, brace up! I'm
coming down!" But at this offer the tone of my auditor changed to a scream
of utter despair:
"Don't! You can't understand! It's too late--and my own fault. Put back
the slab and run--there's nothing else you or anyone can do now!"
The tone changed again, this time acquiring a softer quality, as of
hopeless resignation. Yet it remained tense through anxiety for me.
"Quick--before it's too late!"
I tried not to heed him; tried to break through the paralysis which held
me, and to fulfil my vow to rush down to his aid. But his next whisper
found me still held inert in the chains of stark horror.
"Carter--hurry! It's no use--you must go--better one than two--the slab--"
A pause, more clicking, then the faint voice of Warren:
"Nearly over now--don't make it harder--cover up those damned steps and
run for your life--you're losing time--so long, Carter--won't see you
again."
Here Warren's whisper swelled into a cry; a cry that gradually rose to a
shriek fraught with all the horror of the ages--
"Curse these hellish things--legions--My God! Beat it! Beat it! BEAT IT!"
After that was silence. I know not how many interminable eons I sat
stupefied; whispering, muttering, calling, screaming into that telephone.
Over and over again through those eons I whispered and muttered, called,
shouted, and screamed, "Warren! Warren! Answer me--are you there?"
And then there came to me the crowning horror of all--the unbelievable,
unthinkable, almost unmentionable thing. I have said that eons seemed to
elapse after Warren shrieked forth his last despairing warning, and that
only my own cries now broke the hideous silence. But after a while there
was a further clicking in the receiver, and I strained my ears to listen.
Again I called down, "Warren, are you there?" and in answer heard the
thing which has brought this cloud over my mind. I do not try, gentlemen,
to account for that thing--that voice--nor can I venture to describe it in
detail, since the first words took away my consciousness and created a
mental blank which reaches to the time of my awakening in the hospital.
Shall I say that the voice was deep; hollow; gelatinous; remote;
unearthly; inhuman; disembodied? What shall I say? It was the end of my
experience, and is the end of my story. I heard it, and knew no
more--heard it as I sat petrified in that unknown cemetery in the hollow,
amidst the crumbling stones and the falling tombs, the rank vegetation and
the miasmal vapors-- heard it well up from the innermost depths of that
damnable open sepulcher as I watched amorphous, necrophagous shadows dance
beneath an accursed waning moon.
And this is what it said:
"You fool, Warren is DEAD!"
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The Statement of Randolph Carter is based on a dream, which Lovecraft
described in a letter to August Derleth on December 11, 1919.