H.P. Lovecraft. The Man of Stone
The Man of Stone
by H. P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald
Written 1932
Published October 1932 in Wonder Stories, Volume 4, Number 5, pages
440-45, 470.
Ben Hayden was always a stubborn chap, and once he had heard about those
strange statues in the upper Adirondacks, nothing could keep him from
going to see them. I had been his closest acquaintance for years, and our
Damon and Pythias friendship made us inseparable at all times. So when Ben
finally decided to go - well, I had to trot along too, like a faithful
collie.
"Jack," he said, "you know Henry Jackson, who was up in a shack beyond
Lake Placid for that beastly spot in his lung? Well, he came back the
other day nearly cured, but had a lot to say about some devilish queer
conditions up there. He ran into the business all of a sudden and can't be
sure yet that it's anything more than a case of bizarre sculpture; but
just the same his uneasy impression sticks.
"It seems he was out hunting one day, and came across a cave with what
looked like a dog in front of it. Just as he was expecting the dog to bark
he looked again, and saw the thing wasn't alive at all. It was a stone dog
- such a perfect image, down to the smallest whisker, that he couldn't
decide whether it was a supernaturally clever statue or a petrified
animal. He was almost afraid to touch it, but when he did he realized it
was surely made of stone.
"After a while he nerved himself up to go into the cave - and there he got
a still bigger jolt. Only a little way in there was another stone figure -
or what looked like it - but this time it was a man's. It lay on the
floor, on its side, wore clothes, and had a peculiar smile on its face.
This time Henry didn't stop to do any touching, but beat it straight to
the village, Mountain Top, you know. Of course he asked questions - but
they did not get him very far. He found he was on a ticklish subject, for
the natives only shook their heads, crossed their fingers, and muttered
something about a 'Mad Dan' - whoever he was.
"It was too much for Jackson, so he came home weeks ahead of his planned
time. He told me all about it because he knows how fond I am of strange
things - and oddly enough, I was able to fish up a recollection that
dovetailed pretty neatly with his yarn. Do you remember Arthur Wheeler,
the sculptor who was such a realist that people began calling him nothing
but a solid photographer? I think you knew him slightly. Well, as a matter
of fact, he ended up in that part of the Adirondacks himself. Spent a lot
of time there, and then dropped out of sight. Never heard from again. Now
if stone statues that look like men and dogs are turning up around there,
it looks to me as if they might be his work - no matter what the rustics
say, or refuse to say, about them. Of course a fellow with Jackson's
nerves might easily get flighty and disturbed over things like that; but
I'd have done a lot of examining before running away.
"In fact, Jack, I'm going up there now to look things over - and you're
coming along with me. It would mean a lot to find Wheeler - or any of his
work. Anyhow, the mountain air will brace us both up."
So less then a week later, after a long train ride and a jolting bus trip
through breathlessly exquisite scenery, we arrived at Mountain Top in the
late, golden sunlight of a June evening. The village comprised only a few
small houses, a hotel, and the general store at which our bus drew up; but
we knew that the latter would probably prove a focus for such information.
Surely enough, the usual group of idlers was gathered around the steps;
and when we represented ourselves as health-seekers in search of lodgings
they had many recommendations to offer.
Though we had not planned to do any investigating till the next day, Ben
could not resist venturing some vague, cautious questions when he noticed
the senile garrulousness of one of the ill-clad loafers. He felt, from
Jackson's previous experience, that it would be useless to begin with
references to the queer statues; but decided to mention Wheeler as one
whom we had known, and in whose fate we consequently had a right to be
interested.
The crowd seemed uneasy when Sam stopped his whittling and started
talking, but they had slight occasion for alarm. Even this barefoot old
mountain decadent tightened up when he heard Wheeler's name, and only with
difficulty could Ben get anything coherent out of him.
"Wheeler?" he had finally wheezed. "Oh, yeh - that feller as was all the
time blastin' rocks and cuttin' 'em up into statues. So yew knowed him,
hey? Wal, they ain't much we kin tell ye, and mebbe that's too much. He
stayed out to Mad Dan's cabin in the hills - but not so very long. Got so
he wa'nt wanted around no more...by Dan, that is. Kinder soft-spoken and
got around Dan's wife till the old devil took notice. Pretty sweet on her,
I guess. But he took the trail sudden, and nobody's seen hide nor hair of
him since. Dan must a told him sumthin' pretty plain - bad feller to get
agin ye, Dan is! Better keep away from thar, boys, for they ain't no good
in that part of the hills. Dan's ben workin' up a worse and worse mood,
and ain't seen about no more. Nor his wife, neither. Guess he's penned her
up so's nobody else kin make eyes at her!"
As Sam resumed his whittling after a few more observations, Ben and I
exchanged glances. Here, surely, was a new lead which deserved intensive
following up. Deciding to lodge at the hotel, we settled ourselves as
quickly as possible; planning for a plunge into the wild hilly country on
the next day.
At sunrise we made our start, each bearing a knapsack laden with
provisions and such tools as we thought we might need. The day before us
had an almost stimulating air of invitation - through which only a faint
undercurrent of the sinister ran. Our rough mountain road quickly became
steep and winding, so that before long our feet ached considerably.
After about two miles we left the road - crossing a stone wall on our
right near a great elm and striking off diagonally toward a steeper slope
according to the chart and directions which Jackson had prepared for us.
It was rough and briery travelling, but we knew that the cave could not be
far off. In the end we came upon the aperture quite suddenly - a black,
bush-grown crevice where the ground shot abruptly upward, and beside it,
near a shallow rock pool, a small, still figure stood rigid - as if
rivalling its own uncanny petrification.
It was a grey dog - or a dog's statue - and as our simultaneous gasp died
away we scarcely knew what to think. Jackson had exaggerated nothing, and
we could not believe that any sculptor's hand had succeeded in producing
such perfection. Every hair of the animal's magnificent coat seemed
distinct, and those on the back were bristled up as if some unknown thing
had taken his unaware. Ben, at last half-kindly touching the delicate
stony fur, gave vent to an exclamation.
"Good God, Jack, but this can't be any statue! Look at it - all the little
details, and the way the hair lies! None of Wheeler's technique here! This
is a real dog - though heaven only knows how he ever got in this state.
Just like stone - feel for yourself. Do you suppose there's any strange
gas that sometimes comes out of the cave and does this to animal life? We
ought to have looked more into the local legends. And if this is a real
dog - or was a real dog - then that man inside must be the real thing
too."
It was with a good deal of genuine solemnity - almost dread - that we
finally crawled on hands and knees through the cave-mouth, Ben leading.
The narrowness looked hardly three feet, after which the grotto expanded
in every direction to form a damp, twilight chamber floored with rubble
and detritus. For a time we could make out very little, but as we rose to
our feet and strained our eyes we began slowly to descry a recumbent
figure amidst the greater darkness ahead. Ben fumbled with his flashlight,
but hesitated for a moment before turning it on the prostate figure. We
had little doubt that the stony thing was what had once been a man, and
something in the thought unnerved us both.
When Ben at last sent forth the electric beam we saw that the object lay
on its side, back toward us. It was clearly of the same material as the
dog outside, but was dressed in the mouldering and unpetrified remains of
rough sport clothing. Braced as we were for a shock, we approached quite
calmly to examine the thing; Ben going around to the other side to glimpse
the averted face. Neither could possibly have been prepared for what Ben
saw when he flashed the light on those stony features. His cry was wholly
excusable, and I could not help echoing it as I leaped to his side and
shared the sight. Yet it was nothing hideous or intrinsically terrifying.
It was merely a matter of recognition, for beyond the least shadow of a
doubt this chilly rock figure with its half-frightened, half-bitter
expression had at one time been our old acquaintance, Arthur Wheeler.
Some instinct sent us staggering and crawling out of the cave, and down
the tangled slope to a point whence we could not see the ominous stone
dog. We hardly knew what to think, for our brains were churning with
conjectures and apprehensions. Ben, who had known Wheeler well, was
especially upset; and seemed to be piecing together some threads I had
overlooked.
Again and again as we passed on the green slope he repeated "Poor Arthur,
poor Arthur!" but not till he muttered the name "Mad Dan" did I recall the
trouble into which, just before his disappearance. Mad Dan, Ben implied,
would doubtless be glad to see what had happened. For a moment it flashed
over both of us that the jealous host might have been responsible for the
sculptor's presence in this evil cave, but the thought went as quickly as
it came.
The thing that puzzled us most was to account for the phenomenon itself.
What gaseous emanation or mineral vapour could have wrought this change in
so relatively short a time was utterly beyond us. Normal petrification, we
know, is a slow chemical replacement process requiring vast ages for
completion; yet here were two stone images which had been living things -
or at least Wheeler had - only a few weeks before. Conjecture was useless.
Clearly, nothing remained but to notify the authorities and let them guess
what they might; and yet at the back of Ben's head that notion about Mad
Dan still persisted. Anyhow, we clawed our way back to the road, but Ben
did not turn toward the village, but looked along upward toward where old
Sam had said Dan's cabin lay. It was the second house from the village,
the ancient loafer had wheezed, and lay on the left far back from the road
in a thick copse of scrub oaks. Before I knew it Ben was dragging me up
the sandy highway past a dingy farmstead and into a region of increasing
wildness.
It did not occur to me to protest, but I felt a certain sense of mounting
menace as the familiar marks of agriculture and civilization grew fewer
and fewer. At last the beginning of a narrow, neglected path opened up on
our left, while the peaked roof of a squalid, unpainted building shewed
itself beyond a sickly growth of half-dead trees. This, I knew, must be
Mad Dan's cabin; and I wondered that wheeler had ever chosen so
unprepossessing a place for his headquarters. I dreaded to walk up that
weedy, uninviting path, but could not lag behind, when Ben strode
determinedly along and began a vigorous rapping at the rickety,
musty-smelling door.
There was no response to the knock, and something in its echoes sent a
series of shivers through one. Ben, however, was quite unperturbed; and at
once began to circle the house in quest of unlocked windows. The third
that he tried - in the rear of the dismal cabin - proved capable of
opening, and after a boost and a vigorous spring he was safely inside and
helping me after him.
The room in which we landed was full of limestone and granite blocks,
chiselling tools and clay models, and we realised at once that it was
Wheeler's erstwhile studio. So far we had not met with any sign of life,
but over everything hovered a damnably ominous dusty odour. On our left
was an open door evidently leading to a kitchen on the chimney side of the
house, and through this Ben started, intent on finding anything he could
concerning his friend's last habitat. He was considerably ahead of me when
he crossed the threshold, so that I could not see at first what brought
him up short and wrung a low cry of horror from his lips.
In another moment, though, I did see - and repeated his cry as
instinctively as I had done in the cave. For here in this cabin - far from
any subterranean depths which could breed strange gases and work strange
mutations - were two stony figures which I knew at once were no products
of Arthur Wheeler's chisel. In a rude armchair before the fireplace, bound
in position by the lash of a long rawhide whip, was the form of a man -
unkempt, elderly, and with a look of fathomless horror on its evil,
petrified face.
On the floor beside it lay a woman's figure; graceful, and with a face
betokening considerable youth and beauty. Its expression seemed to be one
of sardonic satisfaction, and near its outflung right hand was a large tin
pail, somewhat stained on the inside, as with a darkish sediment.
We made no move to approach those inexplicably petrified bodies, nor did
we exchange any but the simplest conjectures. That this stony couple hand
been Mad Dan and his wife we could not well doubt, but how to account for
their present condition was another matter. As we looked horrifiedly
around we saw the suddenness with which the final development must have
come - for everything about us seemed, despite a heavy coating of dust, to
have been left in the midst of commonplace household activities.
The only exception to this rule of casualness was on the kitchen table; in
whose cleared centre, as if to attract attention, lay a thin, battered,
blank-book weighed down by a sizeable tin funnel. Crossing to read the
thing, Ben saw that it was a kind of diary or set of dated entries,
written in a somewhat cramped and none too practiced hand. The very first
words riveted my attention, and before ten seconds had elapsed he was
breathlessly devouring the halting text - I avidly following as I peered
over his shoulder. As we read on - moving as we did so into the less
loathsome atmosphere of the adjoining room - many obscure things became
terribly clear to us, and we trembled with a mixture of complex emotions.
This is what we read - and what the coroner read later on. The public has
seen a highly twisted and sensationalised version in the cheap newspapers,
but not even that has more than a fraction of the genuine terror which the
original held for us as we puzzled it out alone in that musty cabin among
the wild hills, with two monstrous stone abnormalities lurking in the
death-like silence of the next room. When we had finished Ben pocketed the
book with a gesture half of repulsion, and his first words were "Let's get
out of here."
Silently and nervously we stumbled to the front of the house, unlocked the
door, and began the long tramp back to the village. There were many
statements to make and questions to answer in the days that followed, and
I do not think that either Ben or I can ever shake off the effects of the
whole harrowing experience. Neither can some of the local authorities and
city reporters who flocked around - even though they burned a certain book
and many papers found in attic boxes, and destroyed considerable apparatus
in the deepest part of that sinister hillside cave. But here is the text
itself:
"Nov. 5 - My name is Daniel Morris. Around here they call me 'Mad Dan'
because I believe in powers that nobody else believes in nowadays. When I
go up on Thunder Hill to keep the Feast of the Foxes they think I am crazy
- all except the back country folks that are afraid of me. They try to
stop me from sacrificing the Black Goat at Hallow Eve, and always prevent
my doing the Great Rite that would open the gate. They ought to know
better, for they know that I am a Van Kauran on my mother's side, and
anybody this side of the Hudson can tell what the Van Kaurans have handed
down. We come from Nicholas Van Kauran, the wizard, who was hanged in
Wijtgaart in 1587, and everybody knows he had made the bargain with the
Black Man.
"The soldiers never got his Book of Eibon when they burned his house, and
his grandson, William Van Kauran, brought it over when he came to
Rensselaerwyck and later crossed the river to Esopus. Ask anybody in
Kingston or Hurley about what the William Van Kauran line could do to
people that got in their way. Also, ask them if my Uncle Hendrik didn't
manage to keep hold of the Book of Eibon when they ran him out of town and
he went up the river to this place with his family.
"I am writing this - and am going to keep writing this - because I want
people to know the truth after I am gone. Also, I am afraid I shall really
go mad if I don't set things down in plain black and white. Everything is
going against me, and if it keeps up I shall have to use the secrets in
the Book and call in certain Powers. Three months ago that sculptor Arthur
Wheeler came to Mountain Top, and they sent him up to me because I am the
only man in the place who knows anything except farming, hunting, and
fleecing summer boarders. The fellow seemed to be interested in what I had
to say, and made a deal to stop in here for $13.00 a week with meals. I
gave him the back room beside the kitchen for his lumps of stone and his
chiselling, and arranged with Nate Williams to tend to his rock blasting
and haul his big pieces with a drag and yoke of oxen.
"That was three months ago. Now I know why that cursed son of hell took so
quick to the place. It wasn't my talk at all, but the looks of my wife
Rose, that is Osborne Chandler's oldest girl. She is sixteen years younger
than I am, and is always casting sheep's eyes at the fellows in town. But
we always managed to get along fine enough till this dirty rat shewed up,
even if she did balk at helping me with the Rites on Roodmas and
Hallowmass. I can see now that Wheeler is working on her feelings and
getting her so fond of him that she hardly looks at me, and I suppose
he'll try to elope with her sooner or later.
"But he works slow like all sly, polished dogs, and I've got plenty of
time to think up what to do about it. They don't either of them know I
suspect anything, but before long they'll both realise it doesn't pay to
break up a Van Kauran's home. I promise them plenty of novelty in what
I'll do.
"Nov. 25 - Thanksgiving Day! That's a pretty good joke! But at that I'll
have something to be thankful for when I finish what I've started. No
question but that Wheeler is trying to steal my wife. For the time being,
though, I'll let him keep on being a star boarder. Got the Book of Eibon
down from Uncle Hendrik's old trunk in the attic last week, and am looking
up something good which won't require sacrifices that I can't make around
here. I want something that'll finish these two sneaking traitors, and at
the same time get me into no trouble. If it has a twist of drama in it, so
much the better. I've thought of calling in the emanation of Yoth, but
that needs a child's blood and I must be careful about the neighbours. The
Green Decay looks promising, but that would be a bit unpleasant for me as
well as for them. I don't like certain sights and smells.
"Dec. 10 - Eureka! I've got the very thing at last! Revenge is sweet - and
this is the perfect climax! Wheeler, the sculptor - this is too good! Yes,
indeed, that damned sneak is going to produce a statue that will sell
quicker than any of the things he's been carving these past weeks! A
realist, eh? Well - the new statuary won't lack any realism! I found the
formula in a manuscript insert opposite page 679 of the Book. From the
handwriting I judge it was put there by my great-grandfather Bareut
Picterse Van Kauran - the one who disappeared from New Paltz in 1839. Ia:!
Shub-Niggurath! The Goat with a Thousand Young!
"To be plain, I've found a way to turn those wretched rats into stone
statues. It's absurdly simple, and really depends more on plain chemistry
than on the Outer Powers. If I can get hold of the right stuff I can brew
a drink that'll pass for home-made wine, and one swig ought to finish any
ordinary being short of an elephant. What it amounts to is a kind of
petrification infinitely speeded up. Shoots the whole system full of
calcium and barium salts and replaces living cells with mineral matter so
fast that nothing can stop it. It must have been one of those things
great-grandfather got at the Great Sabbat on Sugar-Loaf in the Catskills.
Queer things used to go on there. Seems to me I heard of a man in New
Paltz - Squire Hasbruck - turned to stone or something like that in 1834.
He was an enemy of the Van Kaurans. First thing I must do is order the
five chemicals I need from Albany and Montreal. Plenty of time later to
experiment. When everything is over I'll round up all the statues and sell
them as Wheeler's work to pay for his overdue board bill! He always was a
realist and an egoist - wouldn't it be natural for him to make a
self-portrait in stone, and to use my wife for another model - as indeed
he's really been doing for the past fortnight? Trust the dull public not
to ask what quarry the queer stone came from!
"Dec. 25 - Christmas. Peace on earth, and so forth! These two swine are
goggling at each other as if I didn't exist. They must think I'm deaf,
dumb, and blind! Well, the barium sulphate and calcium chloride came from
Albany last Thursday, and the acids, catalytics, and instruments are due
from Montreal any day now. The mills of the gods - and all that! I'll do
the work in Allen's Cave near the lower wood lot, and at the same time
will be openly making some wine in the cellar here. There ought to be some
excuse for offering a new drink - though it won't take much planning to
fool those two moonstruck nincompoops. The trouble will be to make Rose
take wine, for she pretends not to like it. Any experiments that I make on
animals will be down at the cave, and nobody ever thinks of going there in
winter. I'll do some wood-cutting to account for my time away. A small
load or two brought in will keep him off the track.
"Jan. 20 - It's harder work than I thought. a lot depends on the exact
proportions. The stuff came from Montreal, but I had to send again for
some better scales and an acetylene lamp. They're getting curious down at
the village. Wish the express office weren't in Steenwyck's store. Am
trying various mixtures on the sparrows that drink and bathe in the pool
in front of the cave - when it's melted. Sometimes it kills them, but
sometimes they fly away. Clearly, I've missed some important reaction. I
suppose Rose and that upstart are making the most of my absence - but I
can afford to let them. there can be no doubt of my success in the end.
"Feb. 11 - Have got it at last! Put a fresh lot in the little pond - which
is well melted today - and the first bird that drank toppled over as if he
were shot. I picked him up a second later, and he was a perfect piece of
stone, down to the smallest claws and feather. Not a muscle changed since
he was poised for drinking, so he must have died the instant any of the
stuff got to his stomach. I didn't expect the petrification to come so
soon. But a sparrow isn't a fair test of the way the thing would act with
a large animal. I must get something bigger to try it on, for it must be
the right strength when I give it to those swine. I guess Rose's dog Rex
will do. I'll take him along the next time and say a timber wolf got him.
she thinks a lot of him, and I shan't be sorry to give her something to
sniffle over before the big reckoning. I must be careful where I keep this
book. Rose sometimes pries around in the queerest places.
"Feb. 15 - Getting warm! Tried it on Rex and it worked like a charm with
only double the strength. I fixed the rock pool and got him to drink. He
seemed to know something queer had hit him, for he bristled and growled,
but he was a piece of stone before he could turn his head. the solution
ought to have been stronger, and for a human being ought to be very much
stronger. I think I'm getting the hang of it now, and am about ready for
that cur Wheeler. The stuff seems to be tasteless, but to make sure I'll
flavour it with the new wine I'm making up at the house. Wish I were surer
about the tastelessness, so I could give it to Rose in water without
trying to urge wine on her. I'll get the two separately - Wheeler out here
and Rose at home. Have just fixed a strong solution and cleared away all
strange objects in front of the cave. Rose whimpered like a puppy when I
told her a wolf had got Rex, and Wheeler gurgled a lot of sympathy.
"March 1 - Ia: R'lyeh! Praise the Lord Tsathoggua! I've got the son of
hell at last! Told him I'd found a new ledge of friable limestone down
this way, and he trotted after me like the yellow cur he is! I had the
wine-flavoured stuff in a bottle on my hip, and he was glad of a swig when
we got here. Gulped it down without a wink - and dropped in his tracks
before you could count three. But he knows I've had my vengeance, for I
made a face at him that he couldn't miss. I saw the look of understanding
come into his face as he keeled over. In two minutes he was solid stone.
"I dragged him into the cave and put Rex's figure outside again. that
bristling dog shape will help to scare people off. It's getting time for
the spring hunters, and besides, there's a damned 'lunger' named Jackson
in a cabin over the hill who does a lot of snooping around in the snow. I
wouldn't want my laboratory and storeroom to be found just yet! when I got
home I told Rose that Wheeler had found a telegram at the village
summoning him suddenly home. I don't know whether she believed me or not
but I doesn't matter. For form's sake, I packed Wheeler's things and took
them down the hill, telling her I was going to ship them after him. I put
them in the dry well at the abandoned Rapelye place. Now for Rose!
"March 3 - Can't get Rose to drink any wine. I hope that stuff is
tasteless enough to go unnoticed in water. I tried it in tea and coffee,
but it forms a precipitate and can't be used that way. If I use it in
water I'll have to cut down the dose and trust to a more gradual action.
Mr. and Mrs. Hoog dropped in this noon, and I had hard work keeping the
conversation away from Wheeler's departure. It mustn't get around that we
say he was called back to New York when everybody at the village knows
that no telegram came, and that he didn't leave on the bus. Rose is acting
damned queer about the whole thing. I'll have to pick a quarrel with her
and keep her locked in the attic. The best way is to try to make her drink
that doctored wine - and if she does give in, so much better.
"March 7 - Have started in on Rose. She wouldn't drink the wine so I took
a whip to her and drove her up to the attic. She'll never come down alive.
I pass her a platter of salty bread and salt meat, and a pail of slightly
doctored water, twice a day. The salt food ought to make her drink a lot,
and it can't be long before the action sets in. I don't like the way she
shouts about Wheeler when I'm at the door. The rest of the time she is
absolutely silent.
"March 9 - It's damned peculiar how slow that stuff is in getting hold of
Rose. I'll have to make it stronger - probably she'll never taste it with
all the salt I've been feeding her. well, if it doesn't get there are
plenty of other ways to fall back on. but I would like to carry this neat
statue plan through! Went to the cave this morning and all is well there.
I sometimes hear Rose's footsteps on the ceiling overhead, and I think
they're getting more and more dragging. The stuff is certainly working,
but it's too slow. Not strong enough. From now on I'll rapidly stiffen up
the dose.
"March 11 - It is very queer. She is still alive and moving. Tuesday night
I heard her piggling with a window, so went up and gave her a rawhiding.
She acts more sullen than frightened, and her eyes look swollen. But she
could never drop to the ground from that height and there's nowhere she
could climb down. I have had dreams at night, for her slow, dragging
pacing on the floor above gets on my nerves. Sometimes I think she works
at the lock on the door.
"March 15 - Still alive, despite all the strengthening of the dose.
There's something queer about it. she crawls now, and doesn't pace very
often. But the sound of her crawling is horrible. She rattles the windows,
too, and fumbles with the door. I shall have to finish her off with the
rawhide if this keeps up. I'm getting very sleepy. Wonder if Rose has got
on her guard somehow. But she must be drinking the stuff. This sleepiness
is abnormal - I think the strain is telling on me. I'm sleepy..."
(Here the cramped handwriting trails out in a vague scrawl, giving place
to a note in a firmer, evidently feminine handwriting, indicative of great
emotional tension.)
"March 16 - 4 a.m. - This is added by Rose C. Morris, about to die. Please
notify my father, Osborne E. Chandler, Route 2, Mountain Top, N.Y. I have
just read what the beast has written. I felt sure he had killed Arthur
Wheeler, but did not know till I read this terrible notebook. Now I know
what I escaped. I noticed the water tasted queer, so took none of it after
the first sip. I threw it all out of the window. That one sip has half
paralysed me, but I can still get about. The thirst was terrible, but I
ate as little as possible of the salty food and was able to get a little
water up here under places where the roof leaked.
"There were two great rains. I thought he was trying to poison me, though
I didn't know what the poison was like. What he has written about himself
and me is a lie. We were never happy together and I think I married him
only under one of those spells that he was able to lay on people. I guess
he hypnotised both my father and me, for he was always hated and feared
and suspected of dark dealings with the devil. My father once called him
The Devil's Kin, and he was right.
"No one will ever know what I went through as his wife. It was not simply
common cruelty - though God knows he was cruel enough, and beat me often
with a leather whip. It was more - more than anyone in this age can ever
understand. He was a monstrous creature, and practiced all sorts of
hellish ceremonies handed down by his mother's people. He tried to make me
help in the rites - and I don't dare even hint what they were. I would
not, so he beat me. It would be blasphemy to tell what he tried to make me
do. I can say he was a murderer even then, for I know what he sacrificed
one night on Thunder Hill. He was surely the Devil's Kin. I tried four
times to run away, but he always caught and beat me. Also, he had a sort
of hold over my mind, and even over my father's mind.
"About Arthur Wheeler I have nothing to be ashamed of. We did come to love
each other, but only in an honorable way. He gave me the first kind
treatment I had ever had since leaving my father's, and meant to help me
get out of the clutches of that fiend. He had several talks with my
father, and was going to help me get out west. After my divorce we would
have been married.
"Ever since that brute locked me in the attic I have planned to get out
and finish him. I always kept the poison overnight in case I could escape
and find him asleep and give it to him somehow. At first he waked easily
when I worked on the lock of the door and tested the conditions at the
windows, but later he began to get more tired and sleep sounder. I could
always tell by his snoring when he asleep.
"Tonight he was so fast asleep I forced the lock without waking him. it
was hard work getting downstairs with my partial paralysis, but I did. I
found him here with the lamp burning - asleep at the table, where he had
been writing in this book. In the corner was the long rawhide whip he had
so often beaten me with. I used it to tie him to the chair so he could not
move a muscle. I lashed his neck so that I could pour anything down his
throat without his resisting.
"He waked up just as I was finishing and I guess he saw right off that he
was done for. he shouted frightful things and tried to chant mystical
formulas, but I choked him off a dish towel from the sink. Then I saw this
book he had been writing in, and stopped to read it. the shock was
terrible, and I almost fainted four or five time. My mind was not ready
for such things. After that I talked to that fiend for two or three hours
steady. I told everything I had wanted to tell him through all the years I
had been his slave, and lot of other things that had to with what I read
in this awful book.
"He looked almost purple when I was through, and I think he was half
delirious. Then I got a funnel from the cupboard and jammed it into his
mouth after taking out the gag. He knew what I was going to do, but was
helpless. I had brought down the pail of poisoned water, and without a
qualm, I poured a good half of it into the funnel.
"It must have been a very strong dose, for almost at once I saw that brute
begin to stiffen and turn a dull stony grey. In ten minutes I knew he was
solid stone. I could bear to touch him, but the tin funnel clinked
horribly when I pulled it out of his mouth. I wish I could have given that
Kin of the Devil a more painful, lingering death, but surely this was the
most appropriate he could have had.
"There is not much more to say. I am half-paralysed, and with Arthur
murdered I have nothing to live for. I shall make things complete by
drinking the rest of the poison after placing this book where it will be
found. In a quarter of an hour I shall be a stone statue. My only wish is
to be buried beside the statue that was Arthur - when it is found in that
cave where the fiend left it. Poor trusting Rex ought to lie at our feet.
I do not care what becomes of the stone devil tied in the chair...."
The Lovecraft Library wishes to extend its gratitude to Chilek al-Hassad
for transcribing this text.