28085023 the dreams in the witch house

8/13/2019 28085023 the Dreams in the Witch House

1/22

The Dreams in the Witch-House

by H. P. LovecraftWhether the dreams brought on the fever or the fever brought on the dreams Walter

Gilman did not know. Behind everything crouched the brooding, festering horror of theancient town, and of the mouldy, unhallowed garret gable where he wrote and studied andwrestled with figures and formulae when he was not tossing on the meagre iron bed. Hisears were growing sensitive to a preternatural and intolerable degree, and he had long agostopped the cheap mantel clock whose ticking had come to seem like a thunder of artillery.t night the subtle stirring of the black city outside, the sinister scurrying of rats in the

wormy partitions, and the creaking of hidden timbers in the centuried house, were enoughto give him a sense of strident pandemonium. !he darkness always teemed withune"plained sound # and yet he sometimes shook with fear lest the noises he heard shouldsubside and allow him to hear certain other fainter noises which he suspected were lurkingbehind them.

He was in the changeless, legend#haunted city of rkham, with its clustering gambrel

roofs that sway and sag over attics where witches hid from the $ing%s men in the dark,olden years of the Province. &or was any spot in that city more steeped in macabre memorythan the gable room which harboured him # for it was this house and this room which hadlikewise harboured old $e'iah (ason, whose flight from )alem Gaol at the last no one wasever able to e"plain. !hat was in *+ - # the gaoler had gone mad and babbled of a smallwhite#fanged furry thing which scuttled out of $e'iah%s cell, and not even otton (athercould e"plain the curves and angles smeared on the grey stone walls with some red, stickyfluid.

Possibly Gilman ought not to have studied so hard. &on#/uclidean calculus and0uantum physics are enough to stretch any brain, and when one mi"es them with folklore,and tries to trace a strange background of multi#dimensional reality behind the ghoulish

hints of the Gothic tales and the wild whispers of the chimney#corner, one can hardly e"pectto be wholly free from mental tension. Gilman came from Haverhill, but it was only after hehad entered college in rkham that he began to connect his mathematics with the fantasticlegends of elder magic. )omething in the air of the hoary town worked obscurely on hisimagination. !he professors at (iskatonic had urged him to slacken up, and had voluntarilycut down his course at several points. (oreover, they had stopped him from consulting thedubious old books on forbidden secrets that were kept under lock and key in a vault at theuniversity library. But all these precautions came late in the day, so that Gilman had someterrible hints from the dreaded Necronomicon of bdul lha'red, the fragmentary Book ofEibon , and the suppressed Unaussprechlicken Kulten of von 1un't to correlate with hisabstract formulae on the properties of space and the linkage of dimensions known andunknown.

He knew his room was in the old Witch#House # that, indeed, was why he had taken it. !here was much in the /sse" ounty records about $e'iah (ason%s trial, and what she hadadmitted under pressure to the ourt of 2yer and !erminer had fascinated Gilman beyondall reason. )he had told 1udge Hathorne of lines and curves that could be made to point outdirections leading through the walls of space to other spaces beyond, and had implied thatsuch lines and curves were fre0uently used at certain midnight meetings in the dark valleyof the white stone beyond (eadow Hill and on the unpeopled island in the river. )he hadspoken also of the Black (an, of her oath, and of her new secret name of &ahab. !hen shehad drawn those devices on the walls of her cell and vanished.

*
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:H._P._Lovecrafthttp://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:H._P._Lovecraft


2/22

Gilman believed strange things about $e'iah, and had felt a 0ueer thrill on learningthat her dwelling was still standing after more than two hundred and thirty#five years. Whenhe heard the hushed rkham whispers about $e'iah%s persistent presence in the old houseand the narrow streets, about the irregular human tooth#marks left on certain sleepers inthat and other houses, about the childish cries heard near (ay#/ve, and Hallowmass, aboutthe stench often noted in the old house%s attic 3ust after those dreaded seasons, and aboutthe small, furry, sharp#toothed thing which haunted the mouldering structure and the town

and nu''led people curiously in the black hours before dawn, he resolved to live in the placeat any cost. room was easy to secure, for the house was unpopular, hard to rent, and longgiven over to cheap lodgings. Gilman could not have told what he e"pected to find there,but he knew he wanted to be in the building where some circumstance had more or lesssuddenly given a mediocre old woman of the )eventeenth entury an insight intomathematical depths perhaps beyond the utmost modern delvings of Planck, Heisenberg,/instein, and de )itter.

He studied the timber and plaster walls for traces of cryptic designs at every accessiblespot where the paper had peeled, and within a week managed to get the eastern attic roomwhere $e'iah was held to have practised her spells. 4t had been vacant from the first # for noone had ever been willing to stay there long # but the Polish landlord had grown wary about

renting it. 5et nothing whatever happened to Gilman till about the time of the fever. &oghostly $e'iah flitted through the sombre halls and chambers, no small furry thing crept intohis dismal eyrie to nu''le him, and no record of the witch%s incantations rewarded hisconstant search. )ometimes he would take walks through shadowy tangles of unpavedmusty#smelling lanes where eldritch brown houses of unknown age leaned and tottered andleered mockingly through narrow, small#paned windows. Here he knew strange things hadhappened once, and there was a faint suggestion behind the surface that everything of thatmonstrous past might not # at least in the darkest, narrowest, and most intricately crookedalleys # have utterly perished. He also rowed out twice to the ill#regarded island in the river,and made a sketch of the singular angles described by the moss#grown rows of greystanding stones whose origin was so obscure and immemorial.

Gilman%s room was of good si'e but 0ueerly irregular shape6 the north wall slatingperceptibly inward from the outer to the inner end, while the low ceiling slanted gentlydownward in the same direction. side from an obvious rat#hole and the signs of otherstopped#up ones, there was no access # nor any appearance of a former avenue of access #to the space which must have e"isted between the slanting wall and the straight outer wallon the house%s north side, though a view from the e"terior showed where a window hadheen boarded up at a very remote date. !he loft above the ceiling # which must have had aslanting floor # was likewise inaccessible. When Gilman climbed up a ladder to the cob#webbed level loft above the rest of the attic he found vestiges of a bygone aperture tightlyand heavily covered with ancient planking and secured by the stout wooden pegs commonin olonial carpentry. &o amount of persuasion, however, could induce the stolid landlord tolet him investigate either of these two closed spaces.

s time wore along, his absorption in the irregular wall and ceiling of his roomincreased6 for he began to read into the odd angles a mathematical significance whichseemed to offer vague clues regarding their purpose. 2ld $e'iah, he reflected, might havehad e"cellent reasons for living in a room with peculiar angles6 for was it not through certainangles that she claimed to have gone outside the boundaries of the world of space weknow7 His interest gradually veered away from the unplumbed voids beyond the slantingsurfaces, since it now appeared that the purpose of those surfaces concerned the side hewas on.

-


3/22


4/22

radically different species of conduct#pattern and basic motivation. 2f these categories oneseemed to him to include ob3ects slightly less illogical and irrelevant in their motions thanthe members of the other categories.

ll the ob3ects # organic and inorganic alike # were totally beyond description or evencomprehension. Gilman sometimes compared the inorganic matter to prisms, labyrinths,clusters of cubes and planes, and yclopean buildings6 and the organic things struck him

variously as groups of bubbles, octopi, centipedes, living Hindoo idols, and intricatearabes0ues roused into a kind of ophidian animation. /verything he saw was unspeakablymenacing and horrible6 and whenever one of the organic entities appeared by its motions tobe noticing him, he felt a stark, hideous fright which generally 3olted him awake. 2f how theorganic entities moved, he could tell no more than of how he moved himself. 4n time heobserved a further mystery # the tendency of certain entities to appear suddenly out ofempty space, or to disappear totally with e0ual suddenness. !he shrieking, roaringconfusion of sound which permeated the abysses was past all analysis as to pitch, timbre orrhythm6 but seemed to be synchronous with vague visual changes in all the indefiniteob3ects, organic and inorganic alike. Gilman had a constant sense of dread that it might riseto some unbearable degree of intensity during one or another of its obscure, relentlesslyinevitable fluctuations.

But it was not in these vortices of complete alienage that he saw Brown 1enkin. !hatshocking little horror was reserved for certain lighter, sharper dreams which assailed him

3ust before he dropped into the fullest depths of sleep. He would be lying in the dark fightingto keep awake when a faint lambent glow would seem to shimmer around the centuriedroom, showing in a violet mist the convergence of angled planes which had sei'ed his brainso insidiously. !he horror would appear to pop out of the rat#hole in the corner and pattertoward him over the sagging, wide#planked floor with evil e"pectancy in its tiny, beardedhuman face6 but mercifully, this dream always melted away before the ob3ect got closeenough to nu''le him. 4t had hellishly long, sharp, canine teeth6 Gilman tried to stop up therat#hole every day, but each night the real tenants of the partitions would gnaw away theobstruction, whatever it might be. 2nce he had the landlord nail a tin over it, but the ne"tnight the rats gnawed a fresh hole, in making which they pushed or dragged out into theroom a curious little fragment of bone.

Gilman did not report his fever to the doctor, for he knew he could not pass thee"aminations if ordered to the college infirmary when every moment was needed forcramming. s it was, he failed in alculus ; and dvanced General Psychology, though notwithout hope of making up lost ground before the end of the term.

4t was in (arch when the fresh element entered his lighter preliminary dreaming, andthe nightmare shape of Brown 1enkin began to be companioned by the nebulous blur whichgrew more and more to resemble a bent old woman. !his addition disturbed him more thanhe could account for, but finally he decided that it was like an ancient crone whom he hadtwice actually encountered in the dark tangle of lanes near the abandoned wharves. 2nthose occasions the evil, sardonic, and seemingly unmotivated stare of the beldame had sethim almost shivering # especially the first time when an overgrown rat darting across theshadowed mouth of a neighbouring alley had made him think irrationally of Brown 1enkin.&ow, he reflected, those nervous fears were being mirrored in his disordered dreams. !hatthe influence of the old house was unwholesome he could not deny, but traces of his earlymorbid interest still held him there. He argued that the fever alone was responsible for hisnightly fantasies, and that when the touch abated he would be free from the monstrousvisions. !hose visions, however, were of absorbing vividness and convincingness, andwhenever he awaked he retained a vague sense of having undergone much more than he


5/22

remembered. He was hideously sure that in unrecalled dreams he had talked with bothBrown 1enkin and the old woman, and that they had been urging him to go somewhere withthem and to meet a third being of greater potency.

!oward the end of (arch he began to pick up in his mathematics, though the otherstudies bothered him increasingly. He was getting an intuitive knack for solving =iemanniane0uations, and astonished Professor >pham by his comprehension of fourth#dimensional

and other problems which had floored all the rest of the class. 2ne afternoon there was adiscussion of possible freakish curvatures in space, and of theoretical points of approach oreven contact between our part of the cosmos and various other regions as distant as thefarthest stars or the transgalactic gulfs themselves # or even as fabulously remote as thetentatively conceivable cosmic units beyond the whole /insteinian space#time continuum.Gilman%s handling of this theme filled everyone with admiration, even though some of hishypothetical illustrations caused an increase in the always plentiful gossip about his nervousand solitary eccentricity. What made the students shake their heads was his sober theorythat a man might # given mathematical knowledge admittedly beyond all likelihood ofhuman ac0uirement # step deliberately from the earth to any other celestial body whichmight lie at one of an infinity of specifc points in the cosmic pattern.

)uch a step, he said, would re0uire only two stages6 first, a passage out of the three#dimensional sphere we know, and second, a passage back to the three#dimensional sphereat another point, perhaps one of infinite remoteness. !hat this could be accomplishedwithout loss of life was in many cases conceivable. ny being from any part of three#dimensional space could probably survive in the fourth dimension6 and its survival of thesecond stage would depend upon what alien part of three#dimensional space it might selectfor its re#entry. ;eni'ens of some planets might be able to live on certain others # evenplanets belonging to other gala"ies, or to similar dimensional phases of other space#timecontinua # though of course there must be vast numbers of mutually uninhabitable eventhough mathematically 3u"taposed bodies or 'ones of space.

4t was also possible that the inhabitants of a given dimensional realm could surviveentry to many unknown and incomprehensible realms of additional or indefinitely multiplieddimensions # be they within or outside the given space#time continuum # and that theconverse would be likewise true. !his was a matter for speculation, though one could befairly certain that the type of mutation involved in a passage from any given dimensionalplane to the ne"t higher one would not be destructive of biological integrity as weunderstand it. Gilman could not be very clear about his reasons for this last assumption, buthis ha'iness here was more than overbalanced by his clearness on other comple" points.Professor >pham especially liked his demonstration of the kinship of higher mathematics tocertain phases of magical lore transmitted down the ages from an ineffable anti0uity #human or pre#human # whose knowledge of the cosmos and its laws was greater than ours.

round * pril Gilman worried considerably because his slow fever did not abate. Hewas also troubled by what some of his fellow lodgers said about his sleep#walking. 4t seemedthat he was often absent from his bed and that the creaking of his floor at certain hours ofthe night was remarked by the man in the room below. !his fellow also spoke of hearing thetread of shod feet in the night6 but Gilman was sure he must have been mistaken in this,since shoes as well as other apparel were always precisely in place in the morning. 2necould develop all sorts of aural delusions in this morbid old house # for did not Gilmanhimself, even in daylight, now feel certain that noises other than rat#scratching came fromthe black voids beyond the slanting wall and above the slanting ceiling7 His pathologicallysensitive ears began to listen for faint footfalls in the immemorially sealed loft overhead,and sometimes the illusion of such things was agoni'ingly realistic.

?


6/22


7/22

had frightened him in the slums. Her bent back, long nose, and shrivelled chin wereunmistakable, and her shapeless brown garments were like those he remembered. !hee"pression on her face was one of hideous malevolence and e"ultation, and when heawaked he could recall a croaking voice that persuaded and threatened. He must meet theBlack (an and go with them all to the throne of 'athoth at the centre of ultimate chaos.

!hat was what she said. He must sign the book of 'athoth in his own blood and take a newsecret name now that his independent delvings had gone so far. What kept him from going

with her and Brown 1enkin and the other to the throne of haos where the thin flutes pipemindlessly was the fact that he had seen the name 9 'athoth9 in the &ecronomicon, andknew it stood for a primal evil too horrible for description.

!he old woman always appeared out of thin air near the corner where the downwardslant met the inward slant. )he seemed to crystalli'e at a point closer to the ceiling than tothe floor, and every night she was a little nearer and more distinct before the dream shifted.Brown 1enkin, too, was always a little nearer at the last, and its yellowish#white fangsglistened shockingly in that unearthly violet phosphorescence. 4ts shrill loathsome titteringstruck more and more into Gilman%s head, and he could remember in the morning how ithad pronounced the words 9 'athoth9 and 9&yarlathotep9.

4n the deeper dreams everything was likewise more distinct, and Gilman felt that thetwilight abysses around him were those of the fourth dimension. !hose organic entitieswhose motions seemed least flagrantly irrelevant and unmotivated were probablypro3ections of life#forms from our own planet, including human beings. What the others werein their own dimensional sphere or spheres he dared not try to think. !wo of the lessirrelevantly moving things # a rather large congeries of iridescent, prolately spheroidalbubbles and a very much smaller polyhedron of unknown colours and rapidly shiftingsurface angles # seemed to take notice of him and follow him about or float ahead as hechanged position among the titan prisms, labyrinths, cube#and#plane clusters and 0uasi#buildings6 and all the while the vague shrieking and roaring wa"ed louder and louder, as ifapproaching some monstrous clima" of utterly unendurable intensity.

;uring the night of * #-@ pril the new development occurred. Gilman was halfinvoluntarily moving about in the twilight abysses with the bubble#mass and the smallpolyhedron floating ahead when he noticed the peculiarly regular angles formed by theedges of some gigantic neighbouring prism#clusters. 4n another second he was out of theabyss and standing tremulously on a rocky hillside bathed in intense, diffused green light.He was barefooted and in his nightclothes. and when he tried to walk discovered that hecould scarcely lift his feet. swirling vapour hid everything but the immediate slopingterrain from sight, and he shrank from the thought of the sounds, that might surge out ofthat vapour.

!hen he saw the two shapes laboriously crawling toward him # the old woman and thelittle furry thing. !he crone strained up to her knees and managed to cross her arms in asingular fashion, while Brown 1enkin pointed in a certain direction with a horribly anthropoidforepaw which it raised with evident difficulty. )purred by an impulse he did not originate,Gilman dragged himself forward along a course determined by the angle of the old woman%sarms and the direction of the small monstrosity%s paw, and before he had shuffled threesteps he was back in the twilight abysses. Geometrical shapes seethed around him, and hefell di''ily and interminably. t last he woke in his bed in the cra'ily angled garret of theeldritch old house.

He was good for nothing that morning, and stayed away from all his classes. )omeunknown attraction was pulling his eyes in a seemingly irrelevant direction, for he could not

A


8/22

help staring at a certain vacant spot on the floor. s the day advanced, the focus of hisunseeing eyes changed position, and by noon he had con0uered the impulse to stare atvacancy. bout two o%clock he went out for lunch and as he threaded the narrow lanes ofthe city he found himself turning always to the southeast. 2nly an effort halted him at acafeteria in hurch )treet, and after the meal he felt the unknown pull still more strongly.

He would have to consult a nerve specialist after all # perhaps there was a connection

with his somnambulism # but meanwhile he might at least try to break the morbid spellhimself. >ndoubtedly he could still manage to walk away from the pull, so with greatresolution he headed against it and dragged himself deliberately north along Garrison)treet. By the time he had reached the bridge over the (iskatonic he was in a coldperspiration, and he clutched at the iron railing as he ga'ed upstream at the ill#regardedisland whose regular lines of ancient standing stones brooded sullenly in the afternoonsunlight.

!hen he gave a start. 8or there was a clearly visible living figure on that desolateisland, and a second glance told him it was certainly the strange old woman whose sinisteraspect had worked itself so disastrously into his dreams. !he tall grass near her wasmoving, too, as if some other living thing were crawling close to the ground. When the oldwoman began to turn toward him he fled precipitately off the bridge and into the shelter ofthe town%s labyrinthine waterfront alleys. ;istant though the island was, he felt that amonstrous and invincible evil could flow from the sardonic stare of that bent, ancient figurein brown.

!he southeastwards pull still held, and only with tremendous resolution could Gilmandrag himself into the old house and up the rickety stairs. 8or hours he sat silent and aimless,with his eyes shifting gradually westward. bout si" o%clock his sharpened ears caught thewhining prayers of 1oe (a'urewic' two floors below, and in desperation he sei'ed his hatand walked out into the sunset#golden streets, letting the now directly southward pull carryhim where it might. n hour later darkness found him in the open fields beyond Hangman%sBrook, with the glimmering spring stars shining ahead. !he urge to walk was graduallychanging to an urge to leap mystically into space, and suddenly he reali'ed 3ust where thesource of the pull lay.

4t was in the sky. definite point among the stars had a claim on him and was callinghim. pparently it was a point somewhere between Hydra and rgo &avis, and he knew thathe had been urged toward it ever since he had awaked soon after dawn. 4n the morning ithad been underfoot, and now it was roughly south but stealing toward the west. What wasthe meaning of this new thing7 Was he going mad7 How long would it last7 gain musteringhis resolution, Gilman turned and dragged himself back to the sinister old house.

(a'urewic' was waiting for him at the door, and seemed both an"ious and reluctant towhisper some fresh bit of superstition. 4t was about the witch#light. 1oe had been outcelebrating the night before # and it was Patriots% ;ay in (assachusetts # and had comehome after midnight. Looking up at the house from outside, he had thought at first thatGilman%s window was dark, but then he had seen the faint violet glow within. He wanted towarn the gentleman about that glow, for everybody in rkham knew it was $e'iah%s witch#light which played near Brown 1enkin and the ghost of the old crone herself. He had notmentioned this before, but now he must tell about it because it meant that $e'iah and herlong#toothed familiar were haunting the young gentleman. )ometimes he and Paul hoynskiand Landlord ;ombrowski thought they saw that light seeping out of cracks in the sealedloft above the young gentleman%s room, but they had all agreed not to talk about that.


9/22

However, it would be better for the gentleman to take another room and get a crucifi" fromsome good priest like 8ather 4wanicki.

s the man rambled on, Gilman felt a nameless panic clutch at his throat. He knewthat 1oe must have been half drunk when he came home the night before6 yet the mentionof a violet light in the garret window was of frightful import. 4t was a lambent glow of thissort which always played about the old woman and the small furry thing in those lighter,

sharper dreams which prefaced his plunge into unknown abysses, and the thought that awakeful second person could see the dream#luminance was utterly beyond sane harborage. 5et where had the fellow got such an odd notion7 Had he himself talked as well as walkedaround the house in his sleep7 &o, 1oe said, he had not # but he must check up on this.Perhaps 8rank /lwood could tell him something, though he hated to ask.

8ever # wild dreams # somnambulism # illusions of sounds # a pull toward a point in thesky # and now a suspicion of insane sleep#talkingC He must stop studying, see a nervespecialist, and take himself in hand. When he climbed to the second storey he paused at/lwood%s door but saw that the other youth was out. =eluctantly he continued up to hisgarret room and sat down in the dark. His ga'e was still pulled to the southward, but he alsofound himself listening intently for some sound in the closed loft above, and half imaginingthat an evil violet light seeped down through an infinitesimal crack in the low, slantingceiling.

!hat night as Gilman slept, the violet light broke upon him with heightened intensity,and the old witch and small furry thing, getting closer than ever before, mocked him withinhuman s0ueals and devilish gestures. He was glad to sink into the vaguely roaring twilightabysses, though the pursuit of that iridescent bubble#congeries and that kaleidoscopic littlepolyhedron was menacing and irritating. !hen came the shift as vast converging planes of aslippery#looking substance loomed above and below him # a shift which ended in a flash ofdelirium and a bla'e of unknown, alien light in which yellow, carmine, and indigo weremadly and ine"tricably blended.

He was half lying on a high, fantastically balustraded terrace above a boundless 3ungleof outlandish, incredible peaks, balanced planes, domes, minarets, hori'ontal disks poisedon pinnacles, and numberless forms of still greater wildness # some of stone and some ofmetal # which glittered gorgeously in the mi"ed, almost blistering glare from a poly#chromatic sky. Looking upward he saw three stupendous disks of flame, each of a differenthue, and at a different height above an infinitely distant curving hori'on of low mountains.Behind him tiers of higher terraces towered aloft as far as he could see. !he city belowstretched away to the limits of vision, and he hoped that no sound would well up from it.

!he pavement from which he easily raised himself was a veined polished stone beyondhis power to identify, and the tiles were cut in bi'arre#angled shapes which struck himm asless asymmetrical than based on some unearthly symmetry whose laws he could notcomprehend. !he balustrade was chest#high, delicate, and fantastically wrought, whilealong the rail were ranged at short intervals little figures of grotes0ue design and e"0uisiteworkmanship. !hey, like the whole balustrade, seemed to be made of some sort of shiningmetal whose colour could not be guessed in the chaos of mi"ed effulgences, and theirnature utterly defied con3ecture. !hey represented some ridged barrel#shaped ob3ects withthin hori'ontal arms radiating spoke#like from a central ring and with vertical knobs or bulbspro3ecting from the head and base of the barrel. /ach of these knobs was the hub of asystem of five long, flat, triangularly tapering arms arranged around it like the arms of astarfish # nearly hori'ontal, but curving slightly away from the central barrel. !he base of thebottom knob was fused to the long railing with so delicate a point of contact that several


10/22

figures had been broken off and were missing. !he figures were about four and a half inchesin height, while the spiky arms gave them a ma"imum diameter of about two and a halfinches.

When Gilman stood up, the tiles felt hot to his bare feet. He was wholly alone, and hisfirst act was to walk to the balustrade and look di''ily down at the endless, yclopean cityalmost two thousand feet below. s he listened he thought a rhythmic confusion of faint

musical pipings covering a wide tonal range welled up from the narrow streets beneath, andhe wished he might discern the deni'ens of the place. !he sight turned him giddy after awhile, so that he would have fallen to the pavement had he not clutched instinctively at thelustrous balustrade. His right hand fell on one of the pro3ecting figures, the touch seemingto steady him slightly. 4t was too much, however, for the e"otic delicacy of the metal#work,and the spiky figure snapped off under his grasp. )till half da'ed, he continued to clutch itas his other hand sei'ed a vacant space on the smooth railing.

But now his over#sensitive ears caught something behind him, and he looked backacross the level terrace. pproaching him softly though without apparent furtiveness werefive figures, two of which were the sinister old woman and the fanged, furry little animal.

!he other three were what sent him unconscious6 for they were living entities about eightfeet high, shaped precisely like the spiky images on the balustrade, and propellingthemselves by a spider#like wriggling of their lower set of starfish#arms.

Gilman awoke in his bed, drenched by a cold perspiration and with a smartingsensation in his face, hands and feet. )pringing to the floor, he washed and dressed infrantic haste, as if it were necessary for him to get out of the house as 0uickly as possible.He did not know where he wished to go, but felt that once more he would have to sacrificehis classes. !he odd pull toward that spot in the sky between Hydra and rgo had abated,but another of even greater strength had taken its place. &ow he felt that he must go north# infinitely north. He dreaded to cross the bridge that gave a view of the desolate island inthe (iskatonic, so went over the Peabody venue bridge. Dery often he stumbled, for hiseyes and ears were chained to an e"tremely lofty point in the blank blue sky.

fter about an hour he got himself under better control, and saw that he was far fromthe city. ll around him stretched the bleak emptiness of salt marshes, while the narrowroad ahead led to 4nnsmouth # that ancient, half#deserted town which rkham people wereso curiously unwilling to visit. !hough the northward pull had not diminished, he resisted itas he had resisted the other pull, and finally found that he could almost balance the oneagainst the other. Plodding back to town and getting some coffee at a soda fountain, hedragged himself into the public library and browsed aimlessly among the lighter maga'ines.2nce he met some friends who remarked how oddly sunburned he looked, but he did nottell them of his walk. t three o%clock he took some lunch at a restaurant, noting meanwhilethat the pull had either lessened or divided itself. fter that he killed the time at a cheapcinema show, seeing the inane performance over and over again without paying anyattention to it.

bout nine at night he drifted homeward and shuffled into the ancient house. 1oe(a'urewic' was whining unintelligible prayers, and Gilman hastened up to his own garretchamber without pausing to see if /lwood was in. 4t was when he turned on the feebleelectric light that the shock came. t once he saw there was something on the table whichdid not belong there, and a second look left no room for doubt. Lying on its side # for it couldnot stand up alone # was the e"otic spiky figure which in his monstrous dream he hadbroken off the fantastic balustrade. &o detail was missing. !he ridged, barrel#shaped center,the thin radiating arms, the knobs at each end, and the flat, slightly outward#curving

*@


11/22

starfish#arms spreading from those knobs # all were there. 4n the electric light the colourseemed to be a kind of iridescent grey veined with green6 and Gilman could see amidst hishorror and bewilderment that one of the knobs ended in a 3agged break, corresponding toits former point of attachment to the dream#railing.

2nly his tendency toward a da'ed stupor prevented him from screaming aloud. !hisfusion of dream and reality was too much to bear. )till da'ed, he clutched at the spiky thing

and staggered downstairs to Landlord ;ombrowski%s 0uarters. !he whining prayers of thesuperstitious loom#fi"er were still sounding through the mouldy halls, but Gilman did notmind them now. !he landlord was in, and greeted him pleasantly. &o, he had not seen thatthing before and did not know anything about it. But his wife had said she found a funny tinthing in one of the beds when she fi"ed the rooms at noon, and maybe that was it.;ombrowski called her, and she waddled in. 5es, that was the thing. )he had found it in theyoung gentleman%s bed # on the side ne"t the wall. 4t had looked very 0ueer to her, but ofcourse the young gentleman had lots of 0ueer things in his room # books and curios andpictures and markings on paper. )he certainly knew nothing about it.

)o Gilman climbed upstairs again in mental turmoil, convinced that he was either stilldreaming or that his somnambulism had run to incredible e"tremes and led him todepredations in unknown places. Where had he got this outrE thing7 He did not recall seeingit in any museum in rkham. 4t must have been somewhere, though6 and the sight of it ashe snatched it in his sleep must have caused the odd dream#picture of the balustradedterrace. &e"t day he would make some very guarded in0uiries # and perhaps see the nervespecialist.

(eanwhile he would try to keep track of his somnambulism. s he went upstairs andacross the garret hall he sprinkled about some flour which he had borrowed # with a frankadmission as to its purpose # from the landlord. He had stopped at /lwood%s door on theway, but had found all dark within. /ntering his room, he placed the spiky thing on thetable, and lay down in complete mental and physical e"haustion without pausing toundress. 8rom the closed loft above the slating ceiling he thought he heard a faintscratching and padding, but he was too disorgani'ed even to mind it. !hat cryptical pullfrom the north was getting very strong again, though it seemed now to come from a lowerplace in the sky.

4n the da''ling violet light of dream the old woman and the fanged, furry thing cameagain and with a greater distinctness than on any former occasion. !his time they actuallyreached him, and he felt the crone%s withered claws clutching at him. He was pulled out ofbed and into empty space, and for a moment he heard a rhythmic roaring and saw thetwilight amorphousness of the vague abysses seething around him. But that moment wasvery brief, for presently he was in a crude, windowless little space with rough beams andplanks rising to a peak 3ust above his head, and with a curious slanting floor underfoot.Propped level on that floor were low cases full of books of every degree of anti0uity anddisintegration, and in the centre were a table and bench, both apparently fastened in place.)mall ob3ects of unknown shape and nature were ranged on the tops of the cases, and inthe flaming violet light Gilman thought he saw a counterpart of the spiky image which hadpu''led him so horribly. 2n the left the floor fell abruptly away, leaving a black triangulargulf out of which, after a second%s dry rattling, there presently climbed the hateful little furrything with the yellow fangs and bearded human face.

!he evilly#grinning beldame still clutched him, and beyond the table stood a figure hehad never seen before # a tall, lean man of dead black colouration but without the slightestsign of negroid featuresF wholly devoid of either hair or beard, and wearing as his only

**


12/22

garment a shapeless robe of some heavy black fabric. His feet were indistinguishablebecause of the table and bench, but he must have been shod, since there was a clickingwhenever he changed position. !he man did not speak, and bore no trace of e"pression onhis small, regular features. He merely pointed to a book of prodigious si'e which lay open onthe table, while the beldame thrust a huge grey 0uill into Gilman%s right hand. 2vereverything was a pall of intensely maddening fear, and the clima" was reached when thefurry thing ran up the dreamer%s clothing to his shoulders and then down his left arm, finally

biting him sharply in the wrist 3ust below his cuff. s the blood spurted from this woundGilman lapsed into a faint.

He awaked on the morning of the twenty#second with a pain in his left wrist, and sawthat his cuff was brown with dried blood. His recollections were very confused, but thescene with the black man in the unknown space stood out vividly. !he rats must have bittenhim as he slept, giving rise to the clima" of that frightful dream. 2pening the door, he sawthat the flour on the corridor floor was undisturbed e"cept for the huge prints of the loutishfellow who roomed at the other end of the garret. )o he had not been sleep#walking thistime. But something would have to be done about those rats. He would speak to thelandlord about them. gain he tried to stop up the hole at the base of the slanting wall,wedging in a candlestick which seemed of about the right si'e. His ears were ringing

horribly, as if with the residual echoes of some horrible noise heard in dreams.

s he bathed and changed clothes he tried to recall what he had dreamed after thescene in the violet#litten space, but nothing definite would crystalli'e in his mind. !hat sceneitself must have corresponded to the sealed loft overhead, which had begun to attack hisimagination so violently, but later impressions were faint and ha'y. !here were suggestionsof the vague, twilight abysses, and of still vaster, blacker abysses beyond them # abysses inwhich all fi"ed suggestions were absent. He had been taken there by the bubble#congeriesand the little polyhedron which always dogged him6 but they, like himself, had changed towisps of mist in this farther void of ultimate blackness. )omething else had gone on ahead #a larger wisp which now and then condensed into nameless appro"imations of form # and hethought that their progress had not been in a straight line, but rather along the alien curvesand spirals of some ethereal vorte" which obeyed laws unknown to the physics andmathematics of any conceivable cosmos. /ventually there had been a hint of vast, leapingshadows, of a monstrous, half#acoustic pulsing, and of the thin, monotonous piping of anunseen flute # but that was all. Gilman decided he had picked up that last conception fromwhat he had read in the &ecronomicon about the mindless entity 'athoth, which rules alltime and space from a black throne at the centre of haos.

When the blood was washed away the wrist wound proved very slight, and Gilmanpu''led over the location of the two tiny punctures. 4t occurred to him that there was noblood on the bedspread where he had lain # which was very curious in view of the amounton his skin and cuff. Had he been sleep#walking within his room, and had the rat bitten himas he sat in some chair or paused in some less rational position7 He looked in every cornerfor brownish drops or stains, but did not find any. He had better, he thought, spinkle flourwithin the room as well as outside the door # though after all no further proof of his sleep#walking was needed. He knew he did walk and the thing to do now was to stop it. He mustask 8rank /lwood for help. !his morning the strange pulls from space seemed lessened,though they were replaced by another sensation even more ine"plicable. 4t was a vague,insistent impulse to fly away from his present situation, but held not a hint of the specificdirection in which he wished to fly. s he picked up the strange spiky image on the table hethought the older northward pull grew a trifle stronger6 but even so, it was wholly overruledby the newer and more bewildering urge.

*-


13/22

He took the spiky image down to /lwood%s room, steeling himself against the whines ofthe loom#fi"er which welled up from the ground floor. /lwood was in, thank heaven, andappeared to be stirring about. !here was time for a little conversation before leaving forbreakfast and college, so Gilman hurriedly poured forth an account of his recent dreams andfears. His host was very sympathetic, and agreed that something ought to be done. He wasshocked by his guest%s drawn, haggard aspect, and noticed the 0ueer, abnormal#lookingsunburn which others had remarked during the past week.

!here was not much, though, that he could say. He had not seen Gilman on any sleep#walking e"pedition, and had no idea what the curious image could be. He had, though,heard the 8rench# anadian who lodged 3ust under Gilman talking to (a'urewic' oneevening. !hey were telling each other how badly they dreaded the coming of Walpurgis&ight, now only a few days off6 and were e"changing pitying comments about the poor,doomed young gentleman. ;esrochers, the fellow under Gilman%s room, had spoken ofnocturnal footsteps shod and unshod, and of the violet light he saw one night when he hadstolen fearfully up to peer through Gilman%s keyhole. He had not dared to peer, he told(a'urewic', after he had glimpsed that light through the cracks around the door. !here hadbeen soft talking, too # and as he began to describe it his voice had sunk to an inaudiblewhisper.

/lwood could not imagine what had set these superstitious creatures gossiping, butsupposed their imaginations had been roused by Gilman%s late hours and somnolent walkingand talking on the one hand, and by the nearness of traditionally#feared (ay /ve on theother hand. !hat Gilman talked in his sleep was plain, and it was obviously from ;esrochers%keyhole listenings that the delusive notion of the violet dream#light had got abroad. !hesesimple people were 0uick to imagine they had seen any odd thing they had heard about. sfor a plan of action # Gilman had better move down to /lwood%s room and avoid sleepingalone. /lwood would, if awake, rouse him whenever he began to talk or rise in his sleep.Dery soon, too, he must see the specialist. (eanwhile they would take the spiky imagearound to the various museums and to certain professors6 seeking identification and slatingthat it had been found in a public rubbish#can. lso, ;ombrowski must attend to thepoisoning of those rats in the walls.

Braced up by /lwood%s companionship, Gilman attended classes that day. )trangeurges still tugged at him, but he could sidetrack them with considerable success. ;uring afree period he showed the 0ueer image to several professors, all of whom were intenselyinterested, though none of them could shed any light upon its nature or origin. !hat night heslept on a couch which /lwood had had the landlord bring to the second#storey room, andfor the first time in weeks was wholly free from dis0uieting dreams. But the feverishness stillhung on, and the whines of the loom#fi"er were an unnerving influence.

;uring the ne"t few days Gilman en3oyed an almost perfect immunity from morbidmanifestations. He had, /lwood said, showed no tendency to talk or rise in his sleep6 andmeanwhile the landlord was putting rat#poison everywhere. !he only disturbing elementwas the talk among the superstitious foreigners, whose imaginations had become highlye"cited. (a'urewic' was always trying to make him get a crucifi", and finally forced oneupon him which he said had been blessed by the good 8ather 4wanicki. ;esrochers, too, hadsomething to say6 in fact, he insisted that cautious steps had sounded in the now vacantroom above him on the first and second nights of Gilinan%s absence from it. Paul hoynskithought he heard sounds in the halls and on the stairs at night, and claimed that his doorhad been softly tried, while (rs. ;ombrowski vowed she had seen Brown 1enkin for the firsttime since ll#Hallows. But such na ve reports could mean very little, and Gilman let thecheap metal crucifi" hang idly from a knob on his host%s dresser.

*:


14/22


15/22

(a'urewic' reel into the house half drunk, and shuddered at the desperate wildness of hiswhining prayers.

!hat night Gilman saw the violet light again. 4n his dream he had heard a scratchingand gnawing in the partitions, and thought that someone fumbled clumsily at the latch.

!hen he saw the old woman and the small furry thing advancing toward him over thecarpeted floor. !he beldame%s face was alight with inhuman e"ultation, and the little yellow#

toothed morbidity tittered mockingly as it pointed at the heavily#sleeping form of /lwood onthe other couch across the room. paralysis of fear stifled all attempts to cry out. s oncebefore, the hideous crone sei'ed Gilman by the shoulders, yanking him out of bed and intoempty space. gain the infinitude of the shrieking abysses flashed past him, but in anothersecond he thought he was in a dark, muddy, unknown alley of foetid odors with the rottingwalls of ancient houses towering up on every hand.

head was the robed black man he had seen in the peaked space in the other dream,while from a lesser distance the old woman was beckoning and grimacing imperiously.Brown 1enkin was rubbing itself with a kind of affectionate playfulness around the ankles ofthe black man, which the deep mud largely concealed. !here was a dark open doorway onthe right, to which the black man silently pointed. 4nto this the grinning crone started,dragging Gilman after her by his pa3ama sleeves. !here were evil#smelling staircases whichcreaked ominously, and on which the old woman seemed to radiate a faint violet light6 andfinally a door leading off a landing. !he crone fumbled with the latch and pushed the dooropen, motioning to Gilman to wait, and disappearing inside the black aperture.

!he youth%s over#sensitive ears caught a hideous strangled cry, and presently thebeldame came out of the room bearing a small, senseless form which she thrust at thedreamer as if ordering him to carry it. !he sight of this form, and the e"pression on its face,broke the spell. )till too da'ed to cry out, he plunged recklessly down the noisome staircaseand into the mud outside, halting only when sei'ed and choked by the waiting black man.s consciousness departed he heard the faint, shrill tittering of the fanged, rat#like

abnormality.

2n the morning of the twenty#ninth Gilman awaked into a maelstrom of horror. !heinstant he opened his eyes he knew something was terribly wrong, for he was back in hisold garret room with the slanting wall and ceiling, sprawled on the now unmade bed. Histhroat was aching ine"plicably, and as he struggled to a sitting posture he saw with growingfright that his feet and pa3ama bottoms were brown with caked mud. 8or the moment hisrecollections were hopelessly ha'y, but he knew at least that he must have been sleep#walking. /lwood had been lost too deeply in slumber to hear and stop him. 2n the floor wereconfused muddy prints, but oddly enough they did not e"tend all the way to the door. !hemore Gilman looked at them, the more peculiar they seemed6 for in addition to those hecould recogni'e as his there were some smaller, almost round markings # such as the legs ofa large chair or a table might make, e"cept that most of them tended to be divided intohalves. !here were also some curious muddy rat#tracks leading out of a fresh hole and backinto it again. >tter bewilderment and the fear of madness racked Gilman as he staggered tothe door and saw that there were no muddy prints outside. !he more he remembered of hishideous dream the more terrified he felt, and it added to his desperation to hear 1oe(a'urewic' chanting mournfully two floors below.

;escending to /lwood%s room he roused his still#sleeping host and began telling of howhe had found himself, but /lwood could form no idea of what might really have happened.Where Gilman could have been, how he got back to his room without making tracks in thehall, and how the muddy, furniture#like prints came to be mi"ed with his in the garret

*?


16/22


17/22

wrist#wound # the une"plained image # the muddy feet # the throat marks # the tales andfears of the superstitious foreigners # what did all this mean7 !o what e"tent could the lawsof sanity apply to such a case7

!here was no sleep for either of them that night, but ne"t day they both cut classesand drowsed. !his was pril thirtieth, and with the dusk would come the hellish )abbat#timewhich all the foreigners and the superstitious old folk feared. (a'urewic' came home at si"

o%clock and said people at the mill were whispering that the Walpurgis revels would be heldin the dark ravine beyond (eadow Hill where the old white stone stands in a place 0ueerlydevoid of all plant#life. )ome of them had even told the police and advised them to lookthere for the missing Wole3ko child, but they did not believe anything would be done. 1oeinsisted that the poor young gentleman wear his nickel#chained crucifi", and Gilman put iton and dropped it inside his shirt to humour the fellow.

Late at night the two youths sat drowsing in their chairs, lulled by the praying of theloom#fi"er on the floor below. Gilman listened as he nodded, his preternaturally sharpenedhearing seeming to strain for some subtle, dreaded murmur beyond the noises in theancient house. >nwholesome recollections of things in the &ecronomicon and the BlackBook welled up, and he found himself swaying to infandous rhythms said to pertain to theblackest ceremonies of the )abbat and to have an origin outside the time and space wecomprehend.

Presently he reali'ed what he was listening for # the hellish chant of the celebrants inthe distant black valley. How did he know so much about what they e"pected7 How did heknow the time when &ahab and her acolyte were due to bear the brimming bowl whichwould follow the black cock and the black goat7 He saw that /lwood had dropped asleep,and tried to call out and waken him. )omething, however, closed his throat. He was not hisown master. Had he signed the black man%s book after all7

!hen his fevered, abnormal hearing caught the distant, windborne notes. 2ver miles ofhill and field and alley they came, but he recogni'ed them none the less. !he fires must belit, and the dancers must be starting in. How could he keep himself from going7 What was itthat had enmeshed him7 (athematics # folklore # the house # old $e'iah # Brown 1enkin ...and now he saw that there was a fresh rat#hole in the wall near his couch. bove the distantchanting and the nearer praying of 1oe (a'urewic' came another sound # a stealthy,determined scratching in the partitions. He hoped the electric lights would not go out. !henhe saw the fanged, bearded little face in the rat#hole # the accursed little face which he atlast reali'ed bore such a shocking, mocking resemblance to old $e'iah%s # and heard thefaint fumbling at the door.

!he screaming twilight abysses flashed before him, and he felt himself helpless in theformless grasp of the iridescent bubble#congeries. head raced the small, kaleidoscopicpolyhedron and all through the churning void there was a heightening and acceleration ofthe vague tonal pattern which seemed to foreshadow some unutterable and unendurableclima". He seemed to know what was coming # the monstrous burst of Walpurgis#rhythm inwhose cosmic timbre would be concentrated all the primal, ultimate space#time seethingswhich lie behind the massed spheres of matter and sometimes break forth in measuredreverberations that penetrate faintly to every layer of entity and give hideous significancethroughout the worlds to certain dreaded periods.

But all this vanished in a second. He was again in the cramped, violet#litten peakedspace with the slanting floor, the low cases of ancient books, the bench and table, the 0ueerob3ects, and the triangular gulf at one side. 2n the table lay a small white figure # an infant

*A


18/22

boy, unclothed and unconscious # while on the other side stood the monstrous, leering oldwoman with a gleaming, grotes0ue#hafted knife in her right hand, and a 0ueerlyproportioned pale metal bowl covered with curiously chased designs and having delicatelateral handles in her left. )he was intoning some croaking ritual in a language whichGilman could not understand, but which seemed like something guardedly 0uoted in the&ecronomicon.

s the scene grew clearer he saw the ancient crone bend forward and e"tend theempty bowl across the table # and unable to control his own emotions, he reached farforward and took it in both hands, noticing as he did so its comparative lightness. t thesame moment the disgusting form of Brown 1enkin scrambled up over the brink of thetriangular black gulf on his left. !he crone now motioned him to hold the bowl in a certainposition while she raised the huge, grotes0ue knife above the small white victim as high asher right hand could reach. !he fanged, furry thing began tittering a continuation of theunknown ritual, while the witch croaked loathsome responses. Gilman felt a gnawingpoignant abhorrence shoot through his mental and emotional paralysis, and the light metalbowl shook in his grasp. second later the downward motion of the knife broke the spellconpletely, and he dropped the bowl with a resounding bell#like clangour while his handsdarted out frantically to stop the monstrous deed.

4n an instant he had edged up the slanting floor around the end of the table andwrenched the knife from the old woman%s claws6 sending it clattering over the brink of thenarrow triangular gulf. 4n another instant, however, matters were reversed6 for thosemurderous claws had locked themselves tightly around his own throat, while the wrinkledface was twisted with insane fury. He felt the chain of the cheap crucifi" grinding into hisneck, and in his peril wondered how the sight of the ob3ect itself would affect the evilcreature. Her strength was altogether superhuman, but as she continued her choking hereached feebly in his shirt and drew out the metal symbol, snapping the chain and pulling itfree.

t sight of the device the witch seemed struck with panic, and her grip rela"ed longenough to give Gilman a chance to break it entirely. He pulled the steel#like claws from hisneck, and would have dragged the beldame over the edge of the gulf had not the clawsreceived a fresh access of strength and closed in again. !his time he resolved to reply inkind, and his own hands reached out for the creature%s throat. Before she saw what he wasdoing he had the chain of the crucifi" twisted about her neck, and a moment later he hadtightened it enough to cut off her breath. ;uring her last struggle he felt something bite athis ankle, and saw that Brown 1enkin had come to her aid. With one savage kick he sent themorbidity over the edge of the gulf and heard it whimper on some level far below.

Whether he had killed the ancient crone he did not know, but he let her rest on thefloor where she had fallen. !hen, as he turned away, he saw on the table a sight whichnearly snapped the last thread of his reason. Brown 1enkin, tough of sinew and with four tinyhands of demoniac de"terity, had been busy while the witch was throttling him, and hisefforts had been in vain. What he had prevented the knife from doing to the victim%s chest,the yellow fangs of the furry blasphemy had done to a wrist # and the bowl so lately on thefloor stood full beside the small lifeless body.

4n his dream#delirium Gilman heard the hellish alien#rhythmed chant of the )abbatcoming from an infinite distance, and knew the black man must be there. onfusedmemories mi"ed themselves with his mathematics, and he believed his subconscious mindheld the angles which he needed to guide him back to the normal world alone and unaidedfor the first time. He felt sure he was in the immemorially sealed loft above his own room,

*


19/22

but whether he could ever escape through the slanting floor or the long#stooped egress hedoubted greatly. Besides, would not an escape from a dream#loft bring him merely into adream#house # an abnormal pro3ection of the actual place he sought7 He was whollybewildered as to the relation betwi"t dream and reality in all his e"periences.

!he passage through the vague abysses would be frightful, for the Walpurgis#rhythmwould be vibrating, and at last he would have to hear that hitherto#veiled cosmic pulsing

which he so mortally dreaded. /ven now he could detect a low, monstrous shaking whosetempo he suspected all too well. t )abbat#time it always mounted and reached through tothe worlds to summon the initiate to nameless rites. Half the chants of the )abbat werepatterned on this faintly overheard pulsing which no earthly ear could endure in its unveiledspatial fulness. Gilman wondered, too, whether he could trust his instincts to take him backto the right part of space. How could he be sure he would not land on that green#littenhillside of a far planet, on the tessellated terrace above the city of tentacled monsterssomewhere beyond the gala"y or in the spiral black vortices of that ultimate void of haoswhere reigns the mindless demon#sultan 'athoth7

1ust before he made the plunge the violet light went out and left him in utterblackness. !he witch # old $e'iah # &ahab # that must have meant her death. nd mi"edwith the distant chant of the )abbat and the whimpers of Brown 1enkin in the gulf below hethought he heard another and wilder whine from unknown depths. 1oe (a'urewic' # theprayers against the rawling haos now turning to an ine"plicably triumphant shriek #worlds of sardonic actuality impinging on vortices of febrile dream # 4 C )hub#&iggurathC !heGoat with a !housand 5oung...

!hey found Gilman on the floor of his 0ueerly#angled old garret room long beforedawn, for the terrible cry had brought ;esrochers and hoynski and ;ombrowski and(a'urewic' at once, and had even wakened the soundly sleeping /lwood in his chair. Hewas alive, and with open, staring eyes, but seemed largely unconscious. 2n his throat werethe marks of murderous hands, and on his left ankle was a distressing rat#bite. His clothingwas badly rumpled and 1oe%s crucifi" was missing, /lwood trembled, afraid even tospeculate what new form his friend%s sleep#walking had taken. (a'urewic' seemed halfda'ed because of a 9sign9 he said he had had in response to his prayers, and he crossedhimself frantically when the s0uealing and whimpering of a rat sounded from beyond theslanting partition.

When the dreamer was settled on his couch in /lwood%s room they sent for ;octor(alkowski # a local practitioner who would repeat no tales where they might proveembarrassing # and he gave Gilman two hypodermic in3ections which caused him to rela" insomething like natural drowsiness. ;uring the day the patient regained consciousness attimes and whispered his newest dream dis3ointedly to /lwood. 4t was a painful process, andat its very start brought out a fresh and disconcerting fact.

Gilman # whose ears had so lately possessed an abnormal sensitiveness # was nowstone#deaf. ;octor (alkowski, summoned again in haste, told /lwood that both ear#drumswere ruptured, as if by the impact of some stupendous sound intense beyond all humanconception or endurance. How such a sound could have been heard in the last few hourswithout arousing all the (iskatonic Dalley was more than the honest physician could say.

/lwood wrote his part of the collo0uy on paper, so that a fairly easy communicationwas maintained. &either knew what to make of the whole chaotic business, and decided itwould be better if they thought as little as possible about it. Both, though, agreed that theymust leave this ancient and accursed house as soon as it could be arranged. /vening papers

*


20/22

spoke of a police raid on some curious revellers in a ravine beyond (eadow Hill 3ust beforedawn, and mentioned that the white stone there was an ob3ect of age#long superstitiousregard. &obody had been caught, but among the scattering fugitives had been glimpsed ahuge negro. 4n another column it was stated that no trace of the missing child LadislasWole3ko had been found.

!he crowning horror came that very night. /lwood will never forget it, and was forced

to stay out of college the rest of the term because of the resulting nervous breakdown. Hehad thought he heard rats in the partition all the evening, but paid little attention to them. !hen, long after both he and Gilman had retired, the atrocious shrieking began. /lwood 3umped up, turned on the lights and rushed over to his guest%s couch. !he occupant wasemitting sounds of veritably inhuman nature, as if racked by some torment beyonddescription. He was writhing under the bedclothes, and a great stain was beginning toappear on the blankets.

/lwood scarcely dared to touch him, but gradually the screaming and writhingsubsided. By this time ;ombrowski, hoynski, ;esrochers, (a'urewic', and the top#floorlodger were all crowding into the doorway, and the landlord had sent his wife back totelephone for ;octor (alkowaki. /verybody shrieked when a large rat#like form suddenly

3umped out from beneath the ensanguined bedclothes and scuttled across the floor to afresh, open hole close by. When the doctor arrived and began to pull down those frightfulcovers Walter Gilman was dead.

4t would be barbarous to do more than suggest what had killed Gilman. !here had beenvirtually a tunnel through his body # something had eaten his heart out. ;ombrowski, franticat the failure of his rat#poisoning efforts, cast aside all thought of his lease and within aweek had moved with all his older lodgers to a dingy but less ancient house in Walnut)treet. !he worst thing for a while was keeping 1oe (a'urewic' 0uiet6 for the brooding loom#fi"er would never stay sober, and was constantly whining and muttering about spectral andterrible things.

4t seems that on that last hideous night 1oe had stooped to look at the crimson rat#tracks which led from Gilman%s couch to the near#by hole. 2n the carpet they were veryindistinct, but a piece of open flooring intervened between the carpet%s edge and thebaseboard. !here (a'urewic' had found something monstrous # or thought he had, for noone else could 0uite agree with him despite the undeniable 0ueerness of the prints. !hetracks on the flooring were certainly vastly unlike the average prints of a rat but evenhoynski and ;esrochers would not admit that they were like the prints of four tiny humanhands.

!he house was never rented again. s soon as ;ombrowski left it the pall of its finaldesolation began to descend, for people shunned it both on account of its old reputationand because of the new foetid odour. Perhaps the e"#landlord%s rat#poison had worked afterall, for not long after his departure the place became a neighbourhood nuisance. Healthofficials traced the smell to the closed spaces above and beside the eastern garret room,and agreed that the number of dead rats must be enormous. !hey decided, however, that itwas not worth their while to hew open and disinfect the long#sealed spaces6 for the foetorwould soon be over, and the locality was not one which encouraged fastidious standards.4ndeed, there were always vague local tales of une"plained stenches upstairs in the Witch#House 3ust after (ay#/ve and Hallowmass. !he neighbours ac0uiesced in the inertia # butthe foetor none the less formed an additional count against the place. !oward the last thehouse was condemned as a habitation by the building inspector.

-@


21/22

Gilman%s dreams and their attendant circumstances have never been e"plained./lwood, whose thoughts on the entire episode are sometimes almost maddening, cameback to college the ne"t autumn and was graduated in the following 1une. He found thespectral gossip of the town much disminished, and it is indeed a fact that # notwithstandingcertain reports of a ghostly tittering in the deserted house which lasted almost as long asthat edifice itself # no fresh appearances either of 2ld $e'iah or of Brown 1enkin have beenmuttered of since Gilman%s death. 4t is rather fortunate that /lwood was not in rkham in

that later year when certain events abruptly renewed the local whispers about elder horrors.2f course he heard about the matter afterward and suffered untold torments of black andbewildered speculation6 but even that was not as bad as actual nearness and severalpossible sights would have been.

4n (arch, * :*, a gale wrecked the roof and great chimney of the vacant Witch#House,so that a chaos of crumbling bricks, blackened, moss#grown shingles, and rotting planks andtimbers crashed down into the loft and broke through the floor beneath. !he whole atticstorey was choked with debris from above, but no one took the trouble to touch the messbefore the inevitable ra'ing of the decrepit structure. !hat ultimate step came in thefollowing ;ecember, and it was when Gilman%s old room was cleared out by reluctant,apprehensive workmen that the gossip began.

mong the rubbish which had crashed through the ancient slanting ceiling wereseveral things which made the workmen pause and call in the police. Later the police in turncalled in the coroner and several professors from the university. !here were bones # badlycrushed and splintered, but clearly recogni'able as human # whose manifestly modern dateconflicted pu''lingly with the remote period at which their only possible lurking place, thelow, slant#floored loft overhead, had supposedly been sealed from all human access. !hecoroner%s physician decided that some belonged to a small child, while certain others #found mi"ed with shreds of rotten brownish cloth # belonged to a rather undersi'ed, bentfemale of advanced years. areful sifting of debris also disclosed many tiny bones of ratscaught in the collapse, as well as older rat#bones gnawed by small fangs in a fashion nowand then highly productive of controversy and reflection.

2ther ob3ects found included the mangled fragments of many books and papers,together with a yellowish dust left from the total disintegration of still older books andpapers. ll, without e"ception, appeared to deal with black magic in its most advanced andhorrible forms6 and the evidently recent date of certain items is still a mystery as unsolvedas that of the modern human bones. n even greater mystery is the absolute homogeneityof the crabbed, archaic writing found on a wide range of papers whose conditions andwatermarks suggest age differences of at least one hundred and fifty to two hundred years.

!o some, though, the greatest mystery of all is the variety of utterly ine"plicable ob3ects #ob3ects whose shapes, materials, types of workmanship, and purposes baffle all con3ecture #found scattered amidst the wreckage in evidently diverse states of in3ury. 2ne of thesethings # which e"cited several (iskatonie professors profoundly is a badly damagedmonstrosity plainly resembling the strange image which Gilman gave to the collegemuseum, save that it is large, wrought of some peculiar bluish stone instead of metal, andpossessed of a singularly angled pedestal with undecipherable hieroglyphics.

rchaeologists and anthropologists are still trying to e"plain the bi'arre designs chasedon a crushed bowl of light metal whose inner side bore ominous brownish stains whenfound. 8oreigners and credulous grandmothers are e0ually garrulous about the modernnickel crucifi" with broken chain mi"ed in the rubbish and shiveringly identified by 1oe(aturewic' as that which he had given poor Gilman many years before. )ome believe thiscrucifi" was dragged up to the sealed loft by rats, while others think it must have been on

-*


22/22

the floor in some corner of Gilman%s old room at the time. )till others, including 1oe himself,have theories too wild and fantastic for sober credence.

When the slanting wall of Gilman%s room was torn out, the once#sealed triangular spacebetween that partition and the house%s north wall was found to contain much less structuraldebris, even in proportion to its si'e, than the room itself, though it had a ghastly layer ofolder materials which paraly'ed the wreckers with horror. 4n brief, the floor was a veritable

ossuary of the bones of small children # some fairly modern, but others e"tending back ininfinite gradations to a period so remote that crumbling was almost complete. 2n this deepbony layer rested a knife of great si'e, obvious anti0uity, and grotes0ue, ornate, and e"oticdesign # above which the debris was piled.

4n the midst of this debris, wedged between a fallen plank and a cluster of cementedbricks from the ruined chimney, was an ob3ect destined to cause more bafflement, veiledfright, and openly superstitious talk in rkham than anything else discovered in the hauntedand accursed building.

!his ob3ect was the partly crushed skeleton of a huge diseased rat, whoseabnormalities of form are still a topic of debate and source of singular reticence among themembers of (iskatonic%s department of comparative anatomy. Dery little concerning thisskeleton has leaked out, but the workmen who found it whisper in shocked tones about thelong, brownish hairs with which it was associated.

!he bones of the tiny paws, it is rumoured, imply prehensile characteristics moretypical of a diminutive monkey than of a rat, while the small skull with its savage yellowfangs is of the utmost anomalousness, appearing from certain angles like a miniature,monstrously degraded parody of a human skull. !he workmen crossed themselves in frightwhen they came upon this blasphemy, but later burned candles of gratitude in )t.)tanislaus% hurch because of the shrill, ghostly tittering they felt they would never hearagain.

28085023 the dreams in the witch house

Documents