H.P. Lovecraft. In The Vault
In The Vault
by H. P. Lovecraft
Written 18 Sep 1925
Published November 1925 in The Tryout, Vol. 10, No. 6, p. 3-17.
There is nothing more absurd, as I view it, than that conventional
association of the homely and the wholesome which seems to pervade the
psychology of the multitude. Mention a bucolic Yankee setting, a bungling
and thick-fibred village undertaker, and a careless mishap in a tomb, and
no average reader can be brought to expect more than a hearty albeit
grotesque phase of comedy. God knows, though, that the prosy tale which
George Birch's death permits me to tell has in it aspects beside which
some of our darkest tragedies are light.
Birch acquired a limitation and changed his business in 1881, yet never
discussed the case when he could avoid it. Neither did his old physician
Dr. Davis, who died years ago. It was generally stated that the affliction
and shock were results of an unlucky slip whereby Birch had locked himself
for nine hours in the receiving tomb of Peck Valley Cemetery, escaping
only by crude and disastrous mechanical means; but while this much was
undoubtedly true, there were other and blacker things which the man used
to whisper to me in his drunken delirium toward the last. He confided in
me because I was his doctor, and because he probably felt the need of
confiding in someone else after Davis died. He was a bachelor, wholly
without relatives.
Birch, before 1881, had been the village undertaker of Peck Valley; and
was a very calloused and primitive specimen even as such specimens go. The
practices I heard attributed to him would be unbelievable today, at least
in a city; and even Peck Valley would have shuddered a bit had it known
the easy ethics of its mortuary artist in such debatable matters as the
ownership of costly "laying-out" apparel invisible beneath the casket's
lid, and the degree of dignity to be maintained in posing and adapting the
unseen members of lifeless tenants to containers not always calculated
with sublimest accuracy. Most distinctly Birch was lax, insensitive, and
professionally undesirable; yet I still think he was not an evil man. He
was merely crass of fibre and function - thoughtless, careless, and
liquorish, as his easily avoidable accident proves, and without that
modicum of imagination which holds the average citizen within certain
limits fixed by taste.
Just where to begin Birch's story I can hardly decide, since I am no
practiced teller of tales. I suppose one should start in the cold December
of 1880, when the ground froze and the cemetery delvers found they could
dig no more graves till spring. Fortunately the village was small and the
death rate low, so that it was possible to give all of Birch's inanimate
charges a temporary haven in the single antiquated receiving tomb. The
undertaker grew doubly lethargic in the bitter weather, and seemed to
outdo even himself in carelessness. Never did he knock together flimsier
and ungainlier caskets, or disregard more flagrantly the needs of the
rusty lock on the tomb door which he slammed open and shut with such
nonchalant abandon.
At last the spring thaw came, and graves were laboriously prepared for the
nine silent harvests of the grim reaper which waited in the tomb. Birch,
though dreading the bother of removal and interment, began his task of
transference one disagreeable April morning, but ceased before noon
because of a heavy rain that seemed to irritate his horse, after having
laid but one mortal tenement to its permanent rest. That was Darius Peck,
the nonagenarian, whose grave was not far from the tomb. Birch decided
that he would begin the next day with little old Matthew Fenner, whose
grave was also near by; but actually postponed the matter for three days,
not getting to work till Good Friday, the 15th. Being without
superstition, he did not heed the day at all; though ever afterward he
refused to do anything of importance on that fateful sixth day of the
week. Certainly, the events of that evening greatly changed George Birch.
On the afternoon of Friday, April 15th, then, Birch set out for the tomb
with horse and wagon to transfer the body of Matthew Fenner. That he was
not perfectly sober, he subsequently admitted; though he had not then
taken to the wholesale drinking by which he later tried to forget certain
things. He was just dizzy and careless enough to annoy his sensitive
horse, which as he drew it viciously up at the tomb neighed and pawed and
tossed its head, much as on that former occasion when the rain had vexed
it. The day was clear, but a high wind had sprung up; and Birch was glad
to get to shelter as he unlocked the iron door and entered the side-hill
vault. Another might not have relished the damp, odorous chamber with the
eight carelessly placed coffins; but Birch in those days was insensitive,
and was concerned only in getting the right coffin for the right grave. He
had not forgotten the criticism aroused when Hannah Bixby's relatives,
wishing to transport her body to the cemetery in the city whither they had
moved, found the casket of Judge Capwell beneath her headstone.
The light was dim, but Birch's sight was good, and he did not get Asaph
Sawyer's coffin by mistake, although it was very similar. He had, indeed,
made that coffin for Matthew Fenner; but had cast it aside at last as too
awkward and flimsy, in a fit of curious sentimentality aroused by
recalling how kindly and generous the little old man had been to him
during his bankruptcy five years before. He gave old Matt the very best
his skill could produce, but was thrifty enough to save the rejected
specimen, and to use it when Asaph Sawyer died of a malignant fever.
Sawyer was not a lovable man, and many stories were told of his almost
inhuman vindictiveness and tenacious memory for wrongs real or fancied. To
him Birch had felt no compunction in assigning the carelessly made coffin
which he now pushed out of the way in his quest for the Fenner casket.
It was just as he had recognised old Matt's coffin that the door slammed
to in the wind, leaving him in a dusk even deeper than before. The narrow
transom admitted only the feeblest of rays, and the overhead ventilation
funnel virtually none at all; so that he was reduced to a profane fumbling
as he made his halting way among the long boxes toward the latch. In this
funereal twilight he rattled the rusty handles, pushed at the iron panels,
and wondered why the massive portal had grown so suddenly recalcitrant. In
this twilight too, he began to realise the truth and to shout loudly as if
his horse outside could do more than neigh an unsympathetic reply. For the
long-neglected latch was obviously broken, leaving the careless undertaker
trapped in the vault, a victim of his own oversight.
The thing must have happened at about three-thirty in the afternoon.
Birch, being by temperament phlegmatic and practical, did not shout long;
but proceeded to grope about for some tools which he recalled seeing in a
corner of the tomb. It is doubtful whether he was touched at all by the
horror and exquisite weirdness of his position, but the bald fact of
imprisonment so far from the daily paths of men was enough to exasperate
him thoroughly. His day's work was sadly interrupted, and unless chance
presently brought some rambler hither, he might have to remain all night
or longer. The pile of tools soon reached, and a hammer and chisel
selected, Birch returned over the coffins to the door. The air had begun
to be exceedingly unwholesome; but to this detail he paid no attention as
he toiled, half by feeling, at the heavy and corroded metal of the latch.
He would have given much for a lantern or bit of candle; but lacking
these, bungled semi-sightlessly as best he might.
When he perceived that the latch was hopelessly unyielding, at least to
such meagre tools and under such tenebrous conditions as these, Birch
glanced about for other possible points of escape. The vault had been dug
from a hillside, so that the narrow ventilation funnel in the top ran
through several feet of earth, making this direction utterly useless to
consider. Over the door, however, the high, slit-like transom in the brick
facade gave promise of possible enlargement to a diligent worker; hence
upon this his eyes long rested as he racked his brains for means to reach
it. There was nothing like a ladder in the tomb, and the coffin niches on
the sides and rear - which Birch seldom took the trouble to use - afforded
no ascent to the space above the door. Only the coffins themselves
remained as potential stepping-stones, and as he considered these he
speculated on the best mode of transporting them. Three coffin-heights, he
reckoned, would permit him to reach the transom; but he could do better
with four. The boxes were fairly even, and could be piled up like blocks;
so he began to compute how he might most stably use the eight to rear a
scalable platform four deep. As he planned, he could not but wish that the
units of his contemplated staircase had been more securely made. Whether
he had imagination enough to wish they were empty, is strongly to be
doubted.
Finally he decided to lay a base of three parallel with the wall, to place
upon this two layers of two each, and upon these a single box to serve as
the platform. This arrangement could be ascended with a minimum of
awkwardness, and would furnish the desired height. Better still, though,
he would utilise only two boxes of the base to support the superstructure,
leaving one free to be piled on top in case the actual feat of escape
required an even greater altitude. And so the prisoner toiled in the
twilight, heaving the unresponsive remnants of mortality with little
ceremony as his miniature Tower of Babel rose course by course. Several of
the coffins began to split under the stress of handling, and he planned to
save the stoutly built casket of little Matthew Fenner for the top, in
order that his feet might have as certain a surface as possible. In the
semi-gloom he trusted mostly to touch to select the right one, and indeed
came upon it almost by accident, since it tumbled into his hands as if
through some odd volition after he had unwittingly placed it beside
another on the third layer.
The tower at length finished, and his aching arms rested by a pause during
which he sat on the bottom step of his grim device, Birch cautiously
ascended with his tools and stood abreast of the narrow transom. The
borders of the space were entirely of brick, and there seemed little doubt
but that he could shortly chisel away enough to allow his body to pass. As
his hammer blows began to fall, the horse outside whinnied in a tone which
may have been encouraging and may have been mocking. In either case it
would have been appropriate; for the unexpected tenacity of the
easy-looking brickwork was surely a sardonic commentary on the vanity of
mortal hopes, and the source of a task whose performance deserved every
possible stimulus.
Dusk fell and found Birch still toiling. He worked largely by feeling now,
since newly gathered clouds hid the moon; and though progress was still
slow, he felt heartened at the extent of his encroachments on the top and
bottom of the aperture. He could, he was sure, get out by midnight -
though it is characteristic of him that this thought was untinged with
eerie implications. Undisturbed by oppressive reflections on the time, the
place, and the company beneath his feet, he philosophically chipped away
the stony brickwork; cursing when a fragment hit him in the face, and
laughing when one struck the increasingly excited horse that pawed near
the cypress tree. In time the hole grew so large that he ventured to try
his body in it now and then, shifting about so that the coffins beneath
him rocked and creaked. He would not, he found, have to pile another on
his platform to make the proper height; for the hole was on exactly the
right level to use as soon as its size might permit.
It must have been midnight at least when Birch decided he could get
through the transom. Tired and perspiring despite many rests, he descended
to the floor and sat a while on the bottom box to gather strength for the
final wriggle and leap to the ground outside. The hungry horse was
neighing repeatedly and almost uncannily, and he vaguely wished it would
stop. He was curiously unelated over his impending escape, and almost
dreaded the exertion, for his form had the indolent stoutness of early
middle age. As he remounted the splitting coffins he felt his weight very
poignantly; especially when, upon reaching the topmost one, he heard that
aggravated crackle which bespeaks the wholesale rending of wood. He had,
it seems, planned in vain when choosing the stoutest coffin for the
platform; for no sooner was his full bulk again upon it than the rotting
lid gave way, jouncing him two feet down on a surface which even he did
not care to imagine. Maddened by the sound, or by the stench which
billowed forth even to the open air, the waiting horse gave a scream that
was too frantic for a neigh, and plunged madly off through the night, the
wagon rattling crazily behind it.
Birch, in his ghastly situation, was now too low for an easy scramble out
of the enlarged transom; but gathered his energies for a determined try.
Clutching the edges of the aperture, he sought to pull himself up, when he
noticed a queer retardation in the form of an apparent drag on both his
ankles. In another moment he knew fear for the first time that night; for
struggle as he would, he could not shake clear of the unknown grasp which
held his feet in relentless captivity. Horrible pains, as of savage
wounds, shot through his calves; and in his mind was a vortex of fright
mixed with an unquenchable materialism that suggested splinters, loose
nails, or some other attribute of a breaking wooden box. Perhaps he
screamed. At any rate he kicked and squirmed frantically and automatically
whilst his consciousness was almost eclipsed in a half-swoon.
Instinct guided him in his wriggle through the transom, and in the crawl
which followed his jarring thud on the damp ground. He could not walk, it
appeared, and the emerging moon must have witnessed a horrible sight as he
dragged his bleeding ankles toward the cemetery lodge; his fingers clawing
the black mould in brainless haste, and his body responding with that
maddening slowness from which one suffers when chased by the phantoms of
nightmare. There was evidently, however, no pursuer; for he was alone and
alive when Armington, the lodge-keeper, answered his feeble clawing at the
door.
Armington helped Birch to the outside of a spare bed and sent his little
son Edwin for Dr. Davis. The afflicted man was fully conscious, but would
say nothing of any consequence; merely muttering such things as "oh, my
ankles!", "let go!", or "shut in the tomb". Then the doctor came with his
medicine-case and asked crisp questions, and removed the patient's outer
clothing, shoes, and socks. The wounds - for both ankles were frightfully
lacerated about the Achilles' tendons - seemed to puzzle the old physician
greatly, and finally almost to frighten him. His questioning grew more
than medically tense, and his hands shook as he dressed the mangled
members; binding them as if he wished to get the wounds out of sight as
quickly as possible.
For an impersonal doctor, Davis' ominous and awestruck cross-examination
became very strange indeed as he sought to drain from the weakened
undertaker every least detail of his horrible experience. He was oddly
anxious to know if Birch were sure - absolutely sure - of the identity of
that top coffin of the pile; how he had chosen it, how he had been certain
of it as the Fenner coffin in the dusk, and how he had distinguished it
from the inferior duplicate coffin of vicious Asaph Sawyer. Would the firm
Fenner casket have caved in so readily? Davis, an old-time village
practitioner, had of course seen both at the respective funerals, as
indeed he had attended both Fenner and Sawyer in their last illnesses. He
had even wondered, at Sawyer's funeral, how the vindictive farmer had
managed to lie straight in a box so closely akin to that of the diminutive
Fenner.
After a full two hours Dr. Davis left, urging Birch to insist at all times
that his wounds were caused entirely by loose nails and splintering wood.
What else, he added, could ever in any case be proved or believed? But it
would be well to say as little as could be said, and to let no other
doctor treat the wounds. Birch heeded this advice all the rest of his life
till he told me his story; and when I saw the scars - ancient and whitened
as they then were - I agreed that he was wise in so doing. He always
remained lame, for the great tendons had been severed; but I think the
greatest lameness was in his soul. His thinking processes, once so
phlegmatic and logical, had become ineffaceably scarred; and it was
pitiful to note his response to certain chance allusions such as "Friday",
"tomb", "coffin", and words of less obvious concatenation. His frightened
horse had gone home, but his frightened wits never quite did that. He
changed his business, but something always preyed upon him. It may have
been just fear, and it may have been fear mixed with a queer belated sort
of remorse for bygone crudities. His drinking, of course, only aggravated
what it was meant to alleviate.
When Dr. Davis left Birch that night he had taken a lantern and gone to
the old receiving tomb. The moon was shining on the scattered brick
fragments and marred facade, and the latch of the great door yielded
readily to a touch from the outside. Steeled by old ordeals in dissecting
rooms, the doctor entered and looked about, stifling the nausea of mind
and body that everything in sight and smell induced. He cried aloud once,
and a little later gave a gasp that was more terrible than a cry. Then he
fled back to the lodge and broke all the rules of his calling by rousing
and shaking his patient, and hurling at him a succession of shuddering
whispers that seared into the bewildered ears like the hissing of vitriol.
"It was Asaph's coffin, Birch, just as I thought! I knew his teeth, with
the front ones missing on the upper jaw - never, for God's sake, shew
those wounds! The body was pretty badly gone, but if ever I saw
vindictiveness on any face - or former face... You know what a fiend he
was for revenge - how he ruined old Raymond thirty years after their
boundary suit, and how he stepped on the puppy that snapped at him a year
ago last August... He was the devil incarnate, Birch, and I believe his
eye-for-an-eye fury could beat old Father Death himself. God, what a rage!
I'd hate to have it aimed at me!
"Why did you do it, Birch? He was a scoundrel, and I don't blame you for
giving him a cast-aside coffin, but you always did go too damned far! Well
enough to skimp on the thing some way, but you knew what a little man old
Fenner was.
"I'll never get the picture out of my head as long as I live. You kicked
hard, for Asaph's coffin was on the floor. His head was broken in, and
everything was tumbled about. I've seen sights before, but there was one
thing too much here. An eye for an eye! Great heavens, Birch, but you got
what you deserved. The skull turned my stomach, but the other was worse -
those ankles cut neatly off to fit Matt Fenner's cast-aside coffin!"
