H.P. Lovecraft. Beyond the Wall of Sleep
Beyond the Wall of Sleep
by H. P. Lovecraft
Written 1919
Published October 1919 in Pine Cones, Vol. 1, No. 6, p. 2-10
I have often wondered if the majority of mankind ever pause to reflect
upon the occasionally titanic significance of dreams, and of the obscure
world to which they belong. Whilst the greater number of our nocturnal
visions are perhaps no more than faint and fantastic reflections of our
waking experiences - Freud to the contrary with his puerile symbolism -
there are still a certain remainder whose immundane and ethereal character
permit of no ordinary interpretation, and whose vaguely exciting and
disquieting effect suggests possible minute glimpses into a sphere of
mental existence no less important than physical life, yet separated from
that life by an all but impassable barrier. From my experience I cannot
doubt but that man, when lost to terrestrial consciousness, is indeed
sojourning in another and uncorporeal life of far different nature from
the life we know, and of which only the slightest and most indistinct
memories linger after waking. From those blurred and fragmentary memories
we may infer much, yet prove little. We may guess that in dreams life,
matter, and vitality, as the earth knows such things, are not necessarily
constant; and that time and space do not exist as our waking selves
comprehend them. Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our
truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is itself
the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon.
It was from a youthful revery filled with speculations of this sort that I
arose one afternoon in the winter of 1900-01, when to the state
psychopathic institution in which I served as an intern was brought the
man whose case has ever since haunted me so unceasingly. His name, as
given on the records, was Joe Slater, or Slaader, and his appearance was
that of the typical denizen of the Catskill Mountain region; one of those
strange, repellent scions of a primitive Colonial peasant stock whose
isolation for nearly three centuries in the hilly fastnesses of a
little-traveled countryside has caused them to sink to a kind of barbaric
degeneracy, rather than advance with their more fortunately placed
brethren of the thickly settled districts. Among these odd folk, who
correspond exactly to the decadent element of "white trash" in the South,
law and morals are non-existent; and their general mental status is
probably below that of any other section of native American people.
Joe Slater, who came to the institution in the vigilant custody of four
state policemen, and who was described as a highly dangerous character,
certainly presented no evidence of his perilous disposition when I first
beheld him. Though well above the middle stature, and of somewhat brawny
frame, he was given an absurd appearance of harmless stupidity by the
pale, sleepy blueness of his small watery eyes, the scantiness of his
neglected and never-shaven growth of yellow beard, and the listless
drooping of his heavy nether lip. His age was unknown, since among his
kind neither family records nor permanent family ties exist; but from the
baldness of his head in front, and from the decayed condition of his
teeth, the head surgeon wrote him down as a man of about forty.
From the medical and court documents we learned all that could be gathered
of his case: this man, a vagabond, hunter and trapper, had always been
strange in the eyes of his primitive associates. He had habitually slept
at night beyond the ordinary time, and upon waking would often talk of
unknown things in a manner so bizarre as to inspire fear even in the
hearts of an unimaginative populace. Not that his form of language was at
all unusual, for he never spoke save in the debased patois of his
environment; but the tone and tenor of his utterances were of such
mysterious wildness, that none might listen without apprehension. He
himself was generally as terrified and baffled as his auditors, and within
an hour after awakening would forget all that he had said, or at least all
that had caused him to say what he did; relapsing into a bovine,
half-amiable normality like that of the other hilldwellers.
As Slater grew older, it appeared, his matutinal aberrations had gradually
increased in frequency and violence; till about a month before his arrival
at the institution had occurred the shocking tragedy which caused his
arrest by the authorities. One day near noon, after a profound sleep begun
in a whiskey debauch at about five of the previous afternoon, the man had
roused himself most suddenly, with ululations so horrible and unearthly
that they brought several neighbors to his cabin - a filthy sty where he
dwelt with a family as indescribable as himself. Rushing out into the
snow, he had flung his arms aloft and commenced a series of leaps directly
upward in the air; the while shouting his determination to reach some
"big, big cabin with brightness in the roof and walls and floor and the
loud queer music far away". As two men of moderate size sought to restrain
him, he had struggled with maniacal force and fury, screaming of his
desire and need to find and kill a certain "thing that shines and shakes
and laughs". At length, after temporarily felling one of his detainers
with a sudden blow, he had flung himself upon the other in a demoniac
ecstasy of blood-thirstiness, shrieking fiendishly that he would "jump
high in the air and burn his way through anything that stopped him".
Family and neighbors had now fled in a panic, and when the more courageous
of them returned, Slater was gone, leaving behind an unrecognizable
pulp-like thing that had been a living man but an hour before. None of the
mountaineers had dared to pursue him, and it is likely that they would
have welcomed his death from the cold; but when several mornings later
they heard his screams from a distant ravine they realized that he had
somehow managed to survive, and that his removal in one way or another
would be necessary. Then had followed an armed searching-party, whose
purpose (whatever it may have been originally) became that of a sheriff's
posse after one of the seldom popular state troopers had by accident
observed, then questioned, and finally joined the seekers.
On the third day Slater was found unconscious in the hollow of a tree, and
taken to the nearest jail, where alienists from Albany examined him as
soon as his senses returned. To them he told a simple story. He had, he
said, gone to sleep one afternoon about sundown after drinking much
liquor. He had awakened to find himself standing bloody-handed in the snow
before his cabin, the mangled corpse of his neighbor Peter Slader at his
feet. Horrified, he had taken to the woods in a vague effort to escape
from the scene of what must have been his crime. Beyond these things he
seemed to know nothing, nor could the expert questioning of his
interrogators bring out a single additional fact.
That night Slater slept quietly, and the next morning he awakened with no
singular feature save a certain alteration of expression. Doctor Barnard,
who had been watching the patient, thought he noticed in the pale blue
eyes a certain gleam of peculiar quality, and in the flaccid lips an all
but imperceptible tightening, as if of intelligent determination. But when
questioned, Slater relapsed into the habitual vacancy of the mountaineer,
and only reiterated what he had said on the preceding day.
On the third morning occurred the first of the man's mental attacks. After
some show of uneasiness in sleep, he burst forth into a frenzy so powerful
that the combined efforts of four men were needed to bind him in a
straightjacket. The alienists listened with keen attention to his words,
since their curiosity had been aroused to a high pitch by the suggestive
yet mostly conflicting and incoherent stories of his family and neighbors.
Slater raved for upward of fifteen minutes, babbling in his backwoods
dialect of green edifices of light, oceans of space, strange music, and
shadowy mountains and valleys. But most of all did he dwell upon some
mysterious blazing entity that shook and laughed and mocked at him. This
vast, vague personality seemed to have done him a terrible wrong, and to
kill it in triumphant revenge was his paramount desire. In order to reach
it, he said, he would soar through abysses of emptiness, burning every
obstacle that stood in his way. Thus ran his discourse, until with the
greatest suddenness he ceased. The fire of madness died from his eyes, and
in dull wonder he looked at his questioners and asked why he was bound.
Dr. Barnard unbuckled the leather harness and did not restore it till
night, when he succeeded in persuading Slater to don it of his own
volition, for his own good. The man had now admitted that he sometimes
talked queerly, though he knew not why.
Within a week two more attacks appeared, but from them the doctors learned
little. On the source of Slater's visions they speculated at length, for
since he could neither read nor write, and had apparently never heard a
legend or fairy-tale, his gorgeous imagery was quite inexplicable. That it
could not come from any known myth or romance was made especially clear by
the fact that the unfortunate lunatic expressed himself only in his own
simple manner. He raved of things he did not understand and could not
interpret; things which he claimed to have experienced, but which he could
not have learned through any normal or connected narration. The alienists
soon agreed that abnormal dreams were the foundation of the trouble;
dreams whose vividness could for a time completely dominate the waking
mind of this basically inferior man. With due formality Slater was tried
for murder, acquitted on the ground of insanity, and committed to the
institution wherein I held so humble a post.
I have said that I am a constant speculator concerning dream-life, and
from this you may judge of the eagerness with which I applied myself to
the study of the new patient as soon as I had fully ascertained the facts
of his case. He seemed to sense a certain friendliness in me, born no
doubt of the interest I could not conceal, and the gentle manner in which
I questioned him. Not that he ever recognized me during his attacks, when
I hung breathlessly upon his chaotic but cosmic word-pictures; but he knew
me in his quiet hours, when he would sit by his barred window weaving
baskets of straw and willow, and perhaps pining for the mountain freedom
he could never again enjoy. His family never called to see him; probably
it had found another temporary head, after the manner of decadent mountain
folk.
By degrees I commenced to feel an overwhelming wonder at the mad and
fantastic conceptions of Joe Slater. The man himself was pitiably inferior
in mentality and language alike; but his glowing, titanic visions, though
described in a barbarous disjointed jargon, were assuredly things which
only a superior or even exceptional brain could conceive How, I often
asked myself, could the stolid imagination of a Catskill degenerate
conjure up sights whose very possession argued a lurking spark of genius?
How could any backwoods dullard have gained so much as an idea of those
glittering realms of supernal radiance and space about which Slater ranted
in his furious delirium? More and more I inclined to the belief that in
the pitiful personality who cringed before me lay the disordered nucleus
of something beyond my comprehension; something infinitely beyond the
comprehension of my more experienced but less imaginative medical and
scientific colleagues.
And yet I could extract nothing definite from the man. The sum of all my
investigation was, that in a kind of semi-corporeal dream-life Slater
wandered or floated through resplendent and prodigious valleys, meadows,
gardens, cities, and palaces of light, in a region unbounded and unknown
to man; that there he was no peasant or degenerate, but a creature of
importance and vivid life, moving proudly and dominantly, and checked only
by a certain deadly enemy, who seemed to be a being of visible yet
ethereal structure, and who did not appear to be of human shape, since
Slater never referred to it as a man, or as aught save a thing. This thing
had done Slater some hideous but unnamed wrong, which the maniac (if
maniac he were) yearned to avenge.
From the manner in which Slater alluded to their dealings, I judged that
he and the luminous thing had met on equal terms; that in his dream
existence the man was himself a luminous thing of the same race as his
enemy. This impression was sustained by his frequent references to flying
through space and burning all that impeded his progress. Yet these
conceptions were formulated in rustic words wholly inadequate to convey
them, a circumstance which drove me to the conclusion that if a dream
world indeed existed, oral language was not its medium for the
transmission of thought. Could it be that the dream soul inhabiting this
inferior body was desperately struggling to speak things which the simple
and halting tongue of dullness could not utter? Could it be that I was
face to face with intellectual emanations which would explain the mystery
if I could but learn to discover and read them? I did not tell the older
physicians of these things, for middle age is skeptical, cynical, and
disinclined to accept new ideas. Besides, the head of the institution had
but lately warned me in his paternal way that I was overworking; that my
mind needed a rest.
It had long been my belief that human thought consists basically of atomic
or molecular motion, convertible into ether waves or radiant energy like
heat, light and electricity. This belief had early led me to contemplate
the possibility of telepathy or mental communication by means of suitable
apparatus, and I had in my college days prepared a set of transmitting and
receiving instruments somewhat similar to the cumbrous devices employed in
wireless telegraphy at that crude, pre-radio period. These I had tested
with a fellow-student, but achieving no result, had soon packed them away
with other scientific odds and ends for possible future use.
Now, in my intense desire to probe into the dream-life of Joe Slater, I
sought these instruments again, and spent several days in repairing them
for action. When they were complete once more I missed no opportunity for
their trial. At each outburst of Slater's violence, I would fit the
transmitter to his forehead and the receiver to my own, constantly making
delicate adjustments for various hypothetical wave-lengths of intellectual
energy. I had but little notion of how the thought-impressions would, if
successfully conveyed, arouse an intelligent response in my brain, but I
felt certain that I could detect and interpret them. Accordingly I
continued my experiments, though informing no one of their nature.
It was on the twenty-first of February, 1901, that the thing occurred. As
I look back across the years I realize how unreal it seems, and sometimes
wonder if old Doctor Fenton was not right when he charged it all to my
excited imagination. I recall that he listened with great kindness and
patience when I told him, but afterward gave me a nerve-powder and
arranged for the half-year's vacation on which I departed the next week.
That fateful night I was wildly agitated and perturbed, for despite the
excellent care he had received, Joe Slater was unmistakably dying. Perhaps
it was his mountain freedom that he missed, or perhaps the turmoil in his
brain had grown too acute for his rather sluggish physique; but at all
events the flame of vitality flickered low in the decadent body. He was
drowsy near the end, and as darkness fell he dropped off into a troubled
sleep.
I did not strap on the straightjacket as was customary when he slept,
since I saw that he was too feeble to be dangerous, even if he woke in
mental disorder once more before passing away. But I did place upon his
head and mine the two ends of my cosmic "radio", hoping against hope for a
first and last message from the dream world in the brief time remaining.
In the cell with us was one nurse, a mediocre fellow who did not
understand the purpose of the apparatus, or think to inquire into my
course. As the hours wore on I saw his head droop awkwardly in sleep, but
I did not disturb him. I myself, lulled by the rhythmical breathing of the
healthy and the dying man, must have nodded a little later.
The sound of weird lyric melody was what aroused me. Chords, vibrations,
and harmonic ecstasies echoed passionately on every hand, while on my
ravished sight burst the stupendous spectacle ultimate beauty. Walls,
columns, and architraves of living fire blazed effulgently around the spot
where I seemed to float in air, extending upward to an infinitely high
vaulted dome of indescribable splendor. Blending with this display of
palatial magnificence, or rather, supplanting it at times in kaleidoscopic
rotation, were glimpses of wide plains and graceful valleys, high
mountains and inviting grottoes, covered with every lovely attribute of
scenery which my delighted eyes could conceive of, yet formed wholly of
some glowing, ethereal plastic entity, which in consistency partook as
much of spirit as of matter. As I gazed, I perceived that my own brain
held the key to these enchanting metamorphoses; for each vista which
appeared to me was the one my changing mind most wished to behold. Amidst
this elysian realm I dwelt not as a stranger, for each sight and sound was
familiar to me; just as it had been for uncounted eons of eternity before,
and would be for like eternities to come.
Then the resplendent aura of my brother of light drew near and held
colloquy with me, soul to soul, with silent and perfect interchange of
thought. The hour was one of approaching triumph, for was not my
fellow-being escaping at last from a degrading periodic bondage; escaping
forever, and preparing to follow the accursed oppressor even unto the
uttermost fields of ether, that upon it might be wrought a flaming cosmic
vengeance which would shake the spheres? We floated thus for a little
time, when I perceived a slight blurring and fading of the objects around
us, as though some force were recalling me to earth - where I least wished
to go. The form near me seemed to feel a change also, for it gradually
brought its discourse toward a conclusion, and itself prepared to quit the
scene, fading from my sight at a rate somewhat less rapid than that of the
other objects. A few more thoughts were exchanged, and I knew that the
luminous one and I were being recalled to bondage, though for my brother
of light it would be the last time. The sorry planet shell being well-nigh
spent, in less than an hour my fellow would be free to pursue the
oppressor along the Milky Way and past the hither stars to the very
confines of infinity.
A well-defined shock separates my final impression of the fading scene of
light from my sudden and somewhat shamefaced awakening and straightening
up in my chair as I saw the dying figure on the couch move hesitantly. Joe
Slater was indeed awaking, though probably for the last time. As I looked
more closely, I saw that in the sallow cheeks shone spots of color which
had never before been present. The lips, too, seemed unusual, being
tightly compressed, as if by the force of a stronger character than had
been Slater's. The whole face finally began to grow tense, and the head
turned restlessly with closed eyes.
I did not rouse the sleeping nurse, but readjusted the slightly
disarranged headband of my telepathic "radio", intent to catch any parting
message the dreamer might have to deliver. All at once the head turned
sharply in my direction and the eyes fell open, causing me to stare in
blank amazement at what I beheld. The man who had been Joe Slater, the
Catskill decadent, was gazing at me with a pair of luminous, expanding
eyes whose blue seemed subtly to have deepened. Neither mania nor
degeneracy was visible in that gaze, and I felt beyond a doubt that I was
viewing a face behind which lay an active mind of high order.
At this juncture my brain became aware of a steady external influence
operating upon it. I closed my eyes to concentrate my thoughts more
profoundly and was rewarded by the positive knowledge that my long-sought
mental message had come at last. Each transmitted idea formed rapidly in
my mind, and though no actual language was employed, my habitual
association of conception and expression was so great that I seemed to be
receiving the message in ordinary English.
"Joe Slater is dead," came the soul-petrifying voice of an agency from
beyond the wall of sleep. My opened eyes sought the couch of pain in
curious horror, but the blue eyes were still calmly gazing, and the
countenance was still intelligently animated. "He is better dead, for he
was unfit to bear the active intellect of cosmic entity. His gross body
could not undergo the needed adjustments between ethereal life and planet
life. He was too much an animal, too little a man; yet it is through his
deficiency that you have come to discover me, for the cosmic and planet
souls rightly should never meet. He has been in my torment and diurnal
prison for forty-two of your terrestrial years.
"I am an entity like that which you yourself become in the freedom of
dreamless sleep. I am your brother of light, and have floated with you in
the effulgent valleys. It is not permitted me to tell your waking
earth-self of your real self, but we are all roamers of vast spaces and
travelers in many ages. Next year I may be dwelling in the Egypt which you
call ancient, or in the cruel empire of Tsan Chan which is to come three
thousand years hence. You and I have drifted to the worlds that reel about
the red Arcturus, and dwelt in the bodies of the insect-philosophers that
crawl proudly over the fourth moon of Jupiter. How little does the earth
self know life and its extent! How little, indeed, ought it to know for
its own tranquility!
"Of the oppressor I cannot speak. You on earth have unwittingly felt its
distant presence - you who without knowing idly gave the blinking beacon
the name of Algol, the Demon-Star. It is to meet and conquer the oppressor
that I have vainly striven for eons, held back by bodily encumbrances.
Tonight I go as a Nemesis bearing just and blazingly cataclysmic
vengeance. Watch me in the sky close by the Demon-Star.
"I cannot speak longer, for the body of Joe Slater grows cold and rigid,
and the coarse brains are ceasing to vibrate as I wish. You have been my
only friend on this planet - the only soul to sense and seek for me within
the repellent form which lies on this couch. We shall meet again - perhaps
in the shining mists of Orion's Sword, perhaps on a bleak plateau in
prehistoric Asia, perhaps in unremembered dreams tonight, perhaps in some
other form an eon hence, when the solar system shall have been swept
away."
At this point the thought-waves abruptly ceased, the pale eyes of the
dreamer - or can I say dead man? - commenced to glaze fishily. In a
half-stupor I crossed over to the couch and felt of his wrist, but found
it cold, stiff, and pulseless. The sallow cheeks paled again, and the
thick lips fell open, disclosing the repulsively rotten fangs of the
degenerate Joe Slater. I shivered, pulled a blanket over the hideous face,
and awakened the nurse. Then I left the cell and went silently to my room.
I had an instant and unaccountable craving for a sleep whose dreams I
should not remember.
The climax? What plain tale of science can boast of such a rhetorical
effect? I have merely set down certain things appealing to me as facts,
allowing you to construe them as you will. As I have already admitted, my
superior, old Doctor Fenton, denies the reality of everything I have
related. He vows that I was broken down with nervous strain, and badly in
need of a long vacation on full pay which he so generously gave me. He
assures me on his professional honor that Joe Slater was but a low-grade
paranoiac, whose fantastic notions must have come from the crude
hereditary folk-tales which circulated in even the most decadent of
communities. All this he tells me - yet I cannot forget what I saw in the
sky on the night after Slater died. Lest you think me a biased witness,
another pen must add this final testimony, which may perhaps supply the
climax you expect. I will quote the following account of the star Nova
Persei verbatim from the pages of that eminent astronomical authority,
Professor Garrett P. Serviss:
"On February 22, 1901, a marvelous new star was discovered by Doctor
Anderson of Edinburgh, not very far from Algol. No star had been visible
at that point before. Within twenty-four hours the stranger had become so
bright that it outshone Capella. In a week or two it had visibly faded,
and in the course of a few months it was hardly discernible with the naked
eye."
