Eldritch Tales Read online

  Leaving me floating in the hellish grasp

  Of body’d blackness, from whose beating wings

  Came ghoulish blasts of charnel-scented mist.

  Things vague, unseen, unfashion’d, and unnam’d

  Jostled each other in the seething void

  That gap’d, chaotic, downward to a sea

  Of speechless horror, foul with writhing thoughts.

  All this I felt, and felt the mocking eyes

  Of the curs’d universe upon my soul;

  Yet naught I saw nor heard, till flash’d a beam

  Of lurid lustre thro’ the rotting heav’ns,

  Playing on scenes I labour’d not to see.

  Methought the nameless tarn, alight at last,

  Reflected shapes, and more reveal’d within

  Those shocking depths than ne’er were seen before;

  Methought from out the cave a demon train,

  Grinning and smirking, reel’d in fiendish rout;

  Bearing within their reeking paws a load

  Of carrion viands for an impious feast.

  Methought the stunted trees with hungry arms

  Grop’d greedily for things I dare not name;

  The while a stifling, wraith-like noisomeness

  Fill’d all the dale, and spoke a larger life

  Of uncorporeal hideousness awake

  In the half-sentient wholeness of the spot.

  Now glow’d the ground, and tarn, and cave, and trees,

  And moving forms, and things not spoken of,

  With such a phosphorescence as men glimpse

  In the putrescent thickets of the swamp

  Where logs decaying lie, and rankness reigns.

  Methought a fire-mist drap’d with lucent fold

  The well-remember’d features of the grove,

  Whilst whirling ether bore in eddying streams

  The hot, unfinish’d stuff of nascent worlds

  Hither and thither thro’ infinities

  Of light and darkness, strangely intermix’d;

  Wherein all entity had consciousness,

  Without th’ accustom’d outward shape of life.

  Of these swift-circling currents was my soul,

  Free from the flesh, a true constituent part;

  Nor felt I less myself, for want of form.

  Then clear’d the mist, and o’er a star-strown scene,

  Divine and measureless, I gaz’d in awe.

  Alone in space, I view’d a feeble fleck

  Of silvern light, marking the narrow ken

  Which mortals call the boundless universe.

  On ev’ry side, each as a tiny star,

  Shone more creations, vaster than our own,

  And teeming with unnumber’d forms of life;

  Tho’ we as life would recognise it not,

  Being bound to earthy thoughts of human mould.

  As on a moonless night the Milky Way

  In solid sheen displays its countless orbs

  To weak terrestrial eyes, each orb a sun;

  So beam’d the prospect on my wond’ring soul:

  A spangled curtain, rich with twinkling gems,

  Yet each a mighty universe of suns.

  But as I gaz’d, I sens’d a spirit voice

  In speech didactic, tho’ no voice it was,

  Save as it carried thought. It bade me mark

  That all the universes in my view

  Form’d but an atom in infinity;

  Whose reaches pass the ether-laden realms

  Of heat and light, extending to far fields

  Where flourish worlds invisible and vague,

  Fill’d with strange wisdom and uncanny life,

  And yet beyond; to myriad spheres of light,

  To spheres of darkness, to abysmal voids

  That know the pulses of disorder’d force.

  Big with these musings, I survey’d the surge

  Of boundless being, yet I us’d not eyes,

  For spirit leans not on the props of sense.

  The docent presence swell’d my strength of soul;

  All things I knew, but knew with mind alone.

  Time’s endless vista spread before my thought

  With its vast pageant of unceasing change

  And sempiternal strife of force and will;

  I saw the ages flow in stately stream

  Past rise and fall of universe and life;

  I saw the birth of suns and worlds, their death,

  Their transmutation into limpid flame,

  Their second birth and second death, their course

  Perpetual thro’ the aeons’ termless flight,

  Never the same, yet born again to serve

  The varying purpose of omnipotence.

  And whilst I watch’d, I knew each second’s space

  Was greater than the lifetime of our world.

  Then turn’d my musings to that speck of dust

  Whereon my form corporeal took its rise;

  That speck, born but a second, which must die

  In one brief second more; that fragile earth;

  That crude experiment; that cosmic sport

  Which holds our proud, aspiring race of mites

  And moral vermin; those presuming mites

  Whom ignorance with empty pomp adorns,

  And misinstructs in specious dignity;

  Those mites who, reas’ning outward, vaunt themselves

  As the chief work of Nature, and enjoy

  In fatuous fancy the particular care

  Of all her mystic, super-regnant pow’r.

  And as I strove to vision the sad sphere

  Which lurk’d, lost in ethereal vortices,

  Methought my soul, tun’d to the infinite,

  Refus’d to glimpse that poor atomic blight;

  That misbegotten accident of space;

  That globe of insignificance, whereon

  (My guide celestial told me) dwells no part

  Of empyrean virtue, but where breed

  The coarse corruptions of divine disease;

  The fest’ring ailments of infinity;

  The morbid matter by itself call’d man:

  Such matter (said my guide) as oft breaks forth

  On broad Creation’s fabric, to annoy

  For a brief instant, ere assuaging death

  Heal up the malady its birth provok’d.

  Sicken’d, I turn’d my heavy thoughts away.

  Then spake th’ ethereal guide with mocking mien,

  Upbraiding me for searching after Truth;

  Visiting on my mind the searing scorn

  Of mind superior; laughing at the woe

  Which rent the vital essence of my soul.

  Methought he brought remembrance of the time

  When from my fellows to the grove I stray’d,

  In solitude and dusk to meditate

  On things forbidden, and to pierce the veil

  Of seeming good and seeming beauteousness

  That covers o’er the tragedy of Truth,

  Helping mankind forget his sorry lot,

  And raising Hope where Truth would crush it down.

  He spake, and as he ceas’d, methought the flames

  Of fuming Heav’n resolv’d in torments dire;

  Whirling in maelstroms of rebellious might,

  Yet ever bound by laws I fathom’d not.

  Cycles and epicycles, of such girth

  That each a cosmos seem’d, dazzled my gaze

  Till all a wild phantasmal glow became.

  Now burst athwart the fulgent formlessness

  A rift of purer sheen, a sight supernal,

  Broader than all the void conceiv’d by man,

  Yet narrow here. A glimpse of heav’ns beyond;

  Of weird creations so remote and great

  That ev’n my guide assum’d a tone of awe.

  Borne on the wings of stark immensity,

  A touch of rhythm celestial reach’d my soul;r />
  Thrilling me more with horror than with joy.

  Again the spirit mock’d my human pangs,

  And deep revil’d me for presumptuous thoughts:

  Yet changing now his mien, he bade me scan

  The wid’ning rift that clave the walls of space;

  He bade me search it for the ultimate;

  He bade me find the Truth I sought so long;

  He bade me brave th’ unutterable Thing,

  The final Truth of moving entity.

  All this he bade and offer’d – but my soul,

  Clinging to life, fled without aim or knowledge,

  Shrieking in silence thro’ the gibbering deeps.

  Thus shriek’d the young Lucullus, as he fled

  Thro’ gibbering deeps – and tumbled out of bed;

  Within the room the morning sunshine gleams,

  Whilst the poor youth recalls his troubled dreams.

  He feels his aching limbs, whose woeful pain

  Informs his soul his body lives again,

  And thanks his stars – or cosmoses – or such

  That he survives the noxious nightmare’s clutch.

  Thrill’d with the music of th’ eternal spheres

  (Or is it the alarm-clock that he hears?),

  He vows to all the Pantheon, high and low,

  No more to feed on cake, or pie, or Poe.

  And now his gloomy spirits seem to rise,

  As he the world beholds with clearer eyes;

  The cup he thought too full of dregs to quaff

  Affords him wine enough to raise a laugh.

  (All this is metaphor – you must not think

  Our late Endymion prone to stronger drink!)

  With brighter visage and with lighter heart,

  He turns his fancies to the grocer’s mart;

  And strange to say, at last he seems to find

  His daily duties worthy of his mind.

  Since Truth prov’d such a high and dang’rous goal,

  Our bard seeks one less trying to his soul;

  With deep-drawn breath he flouts his dreary woes,

  And a good clerk from a bad poet grows!

  Now close attend my lay, ye scribbling crew

  That bay the moon in numbers strange and new;

  That madly for the spark celestial bawl

  In metres short or long, or none at all:

  Curb your rash force, in numbers or at tea,

  Nor overzealous for high fancies be;

  Reflect, ere ye the draught Pierian take,

  What worthy clerks or plumbers ye might make;

  Wax not too frenzied in the leaping line

  That neither sense nor measure can confine,

  Lest ye, like young Lucullus Languish, groan

  Beneath Poe-etic nightmares of your own!

  MEMORY

  IN THE VALLEY OF NIS the accursed waning moon shines thinly, tearing a path for its light with feeble horns through the lethal foliage of a great uperas-tree. And within the depths of the valley, where the light reaches not, move forms not meant to be beheld. Rank is the herbage on each slope, where evil vines and creeping plants crawl amidst the stones of ruined palaces, twining tightly about broken columns and strange monoliths, and heaving up marble pavements laid by forgotten hands. And in trees that grow gigantic in crumbling courtyards leap little apes, while in and out of deep treasure-vaults writhe poison serpents and scaly things without a name.

  Vast are the stones which sleep beneath coverlets of dank moss, and mighty were the walls from which they fell. For all time did their builders erect them, and in sooth they yet serve nobly, for beneath them the grey toad makes his habitation.

  At the very bottom of the valley lies the river Than, whose waters are slimy and filled with weeds. From hidden springs it rises, and to subterranean grottoes it flows, so that the Daemon of the Valley knows not why its waters are red, nor whither they are bound.

  The Genie that haunts the moonbeams spake to the Daemon of the Valley, saying, ‘I am old, and forget much. Tell me the deeds and aspect and name of them who built these things of Stone.’ And the Daemon replied, ‘I am Memory, and am wise in lore of the past, but I too am old. These beings were like the waters of the river Than, not to be understood. Their deeds I recall not, for they were but of the moment. Their aspect I recall dimly, it was like to that of the little apes in the trees. Their name I recall clearly, for it rhymed with that of the river. These beings of yesterday were called Man.’

  So the Genie flew back to the thin horned moon, and the Daemon looked intently at a little ape in a tree that grew in a crumbling courtyard.

  DESPAIR

  O’ER THE MIDNIGHT moorlands crying,

  Thro’ the cypress forests sighing,

  In the night-wind madly flying,

  Hellish forms with streaming hair;

  In the barren branches creaking,

  By the stagnant swamp-pools speaking,

  Past the shore-cliffs ever shrieking;

  Damn’d daemons of despair.

  Once, I think I half remember,

  Ere the grey skies of November

  Quench’d my youth’s aspiring ember,

  Liv’d there such a thing as bliss;

  Skies that now are dark were beaming,

  Gold and azure, splendid seeming

  Till I learn’d it all was dreaming—

  Deadly drowsiness of Dis.

  But the stream of Time, swift flowing,

  Brings the torment of half-knowing—

  Dimly rushing, blindly going

  Past the never-trodden lea;

  And the voyager, repining,

  Sees the wicked death-fires shining,

  Hears the wicked petrel’s whining

  As he helpless drifts to sea.

  Evil wings in ether beating;

  Vultures at the spirit eating;

  Things unseen forever fleeting

  Black against the leering sky.

  Ghastly shades of bygone gladness,

  Clawing fiends of future sadness,

  Mingle in a cloud of madness

  Ever on the soul to lie.

  Thus the living, lone and sobbing,

  In the throes of anguish throbbing,

  With the loathsome Furies robbing

  Night and noon of peace and rest.

  But beyond the groans and grating

  Of abhorrent Life, is waiting

  Sweet Oblivion, culminating

  All the years of fruitless quest.

  THE PICTURE IN THE HOUSE

  SEARCHERS AFTER HORROR haunt strange, far places. For them are the catacombs of Ptolemais, and the carven mausolea of the nightmare countries. They climb to the moonlit towers of ruined Rhine castles, and falter down black cobwebbed steps beneath the scattered stones of forgotten cities in Asia. The haunted wood and the desolate mountain are their shrines, and they linger around the sinister monoliths on uninhabited islands. But the true epicure in the terrible, to whom a new thrill of unutterable ghastliness is the chief end and justification of existence, esteems most of all the ancient, lonely farmhouses of backwoods New England; for there the dark elements of strength, solitude, grotesqueness, and ignorance combine to form the perfection of the hideous.

  Most horrible of all sights are the little unpainted wooden houses remote from travelled ways, usually squatted upon some damp, grassy slope or leaning against some gigantic outcropping of rock. Two hundred years and more they have leaned or squatted there, while the vines have crawled and the trees have swelled and spread. They are almost hidden now in lawless luxuriances of green and guardian shrouds of shadow; but the small-paned windows still stare shockingly, as if blinking through a lethal stupor which wards off madness by dulling the memory of unutterable things.

  In such houses have dwelt generations of strange people, whose like the world has never seen. Seized with a gloomy and fanatical belief which exiled them from their kind, their ancestors sought the wilderness for freed
om. There the scions of a conquering race indeed flourished free from the restrictions of their fellows, but cowered in an appalling slavery to the dismal phantasms of their own minds. Divorced from the enlightenment of civilisation, the strength of these Puritans turned into singular channels; and in their isolation, morbid self-repression, and struggle for life with relentless Nature, there came to them dark furtive traits from the prehistoric depths of their cold Northern heritage. By necessity practical and by philosophy stern, these folk were not beautiful in their sins. Erring as all mortals must, they were forced by their rigid code to seek concealment above all else; so that they came to use less and less taste in what they concealed. Only the silent, sleepy, staring houses in the backwoods can tell all that has lain hidden since the early days; and they are not communicative, being loath to shake off the drowsiness which helps them forget. Sometimes one feels that it would be merciful to tear down these houses, for they must often dream.

  It was to a time-battered edifice of this description that I was driven one afternoon in November, 1896, by a rain of such chilling copiousness that any shelter was preferable to exposure. I had been travelling for some time amongst the people of the Miskatonic Valley in quest of certain genealogical data; and from the remote, devious, and problematical nature of my course, had deemed it convenient to employ a bicycle despite the lateness of the season. Now I found myself upon an apparently abandoned road which I had chosen as the shortest cut to Arkham; overtaken by the storm at a point far from any town, and confronted with no refuge save the antique and repellent wooden building which blinked with bleared windows from between two huge leafless elms near the foot of a rocky hill. Distant though it was from the remnant of a road, the house none the less impressed me unfavourably the very moment I espied it. Honest, wholesome structures do not stare at travellers so slyly and hauntingly, and in my genealogical researches I had encountered legends of a century before which biased me against places of this kind. Yet the force of the elements was such as to overcome my scruples, and I did not hesitate to wheel my machine up the weedy rise to the closed door which seemed at once so suggestive and secretive.