Short Story - Within the Walls of Eryx (Lovecraft)

Within the Walls of Eryx
By H. P. Lovecraft and Kenneth Sterling
Written Jan 1936
Published October 1939 in Weird Tales, Vol. 34, No. 4, p. 50-68.

Before I try to rest I will set down these notes in preparation for the report I
must make. What I have found is so singular, and so contrary to all past
experience and expectations, that it deserves a very careful description.
I reached the main landing on Venus, March 18, terrestrial time; VI, 9 of the
planet's calendar. Being put in the main group under Miller, I received my
equipment - watch tuned to Venus's slightly quicker rotation - and went through
the usual mask drill. After two days I was pronounced fit for duty.
Leaving the Crystal Company's post at Terra Nova around dawn, VI, 12, I followed
the southerly route which Anderson had mapped out from the air. The going was
bad, for these jungles are always half impassable after a rain. It must be the
moisture that gives the tangled vines and creepers that leathery toughness; a
toughness so great that a knife has to work ten minutes on some of them. By noon
it was dryer - the vegetation getting soft and rubbery so that my knife went
through it easily - but even then I could not make much speed. These Carter
oxygen masks are too heavy - just carrying one half wears an ordinary man out. A
Dubois mask with sponge-reservoir instead of tubes would give just as good air
at half the weight.
The crystal-detector seemed to function well, pointing steadily in a direction
verifying Anderson's report. It is curious how that principle of affinity works
- without any of the fakery of the old 'divining rods' back home. There must be
a great deposit of crystals within a thousand miles, though I suppose those
damnable man-lizards always watch and guard it. Possibly they think we are just
as foolish for coming to Venus to hunt the stuff as we think they are for
grovelling in the mud whenever they see a piece of it, or for keeping that great
mass on a pedestal in their temple. I wish they'd get a new religion, for they
have no use for the crystals except to pray to. Barring theology, they would let
us take all we want - and even if they learned to tap them for power there'd be
more than enough for their planet and the earth besides. I for one am tired of
passing up the main deposits and merely seeking separate crystals out of jungle
river-beds. Sometime I'll urge the wiping out of these scaly beggars by a good
stiff army from home. About twenty ships could bring enough troops across to
turn the trick. One can't call the damned things men for all their 'cities' and
towers. They haven't any skill except building - and using swords and poison
darts - and I don't believe their so-called 'cities' mean much more than
ant-hills or beaver-dams. I doubt if they even have a real language - all the
talk about psychological communication through those tentacles down their chests
strikes me as bunk. What misleads people is their upright posture; just an
accidental physical resemblance to terrestrial man.
I'd like to go through a Venus jungle for once without having to watch out for
skulking groups of them or dodge their cursed darts. They may have been all
right before we began to take the crystals, but they're certainly a bad enough
nuisance now - with their dart-shooting and their cutting of our water pipes.
More and more I come to believe that they have a special sense like our
crystal-detectors. No one ever knew them to bother a man - apart from
long-distance sniping - who didn't have crystals on him.
Around 1 P.M. a dart nearly took my helmet off, and I thought for a second one
of my oxygen tubes was punctured. The sly devils hadn't made a sound, but three
of them were closing in on me. I got them all by sweeping in a circle with my
flame pistol, for even though their colour blended with the jungle, I could spot
the moving creepers. One of them was fully eight feet tall, with a snout like a
tapir's. The other two were average seven-footers. All that makes them hold
their own is sheer numbers - even a single regiment of flame throwers could
raise hell with them. It is curious, though, how they've come to be dominant on
the planet. Not another living thing higher than the wriggling akmans and
skorahs, or the flying tukahs of the other continent - unless of course those
holes in the Dionaean Plateau hide something.
About two o'clock my detector veered westward, indicating isolated crystals
ahead on the right. This checked up with Anderson, and I turned my course
accordingly. It was harder going - not only because the ground was rising, but
because the animal life and carnivorous plants were thicker. I was always
slashing ugrats and stepping on skorahs, and my leather suit was all speckled
from the bursting darohs which struck it from all sides. The sunlight was all
the worse because of the mist, and did not seem to dry up the mud in the least.
Every time I stepped my feet sank down five or six inches, and there was a
sucking sort of blup every time I pulled them out. I wish somebody would invent
a safe kind of suiting other than leather for this climate. Cloth of course
would rot; but some thin metallic tissue that couldn't tear - like the surface
of this revolving decay-proof record scroll - ought to be feasible sometime.
I ate about 3:30 - if slipping these wretched food tablets through my mask can
be called eating. Soon after that I noticed a decided change in the landscape -
the bright, poisonous-looking flowers shifting in colour and getting
wraith-like. The outlines of everything shimmered rhythmically, and bright
points of light appeared and danced in the same slow, steady tempo. After that
the temperature seemed to fluctuate in unison with a peculiar rhythmic drumming.
The whole universe seemed to be throbbing in deep, regular pulsations that
filled every corner of space and flowed through my body and mind alike. I lost
all sense of equilibrium and staggered dizzily, nor did it change things in the
least when I shut my eyes and covered my ears with my hands. However, my mind
was still clear, and in a very few minutes I realized what had happened.
I had encountered at last one of those curious mirage-plants about which so many
of our men told stories. Anderson had warned me of them, and described their
appearance very closely - the shaggy stalk, the spiky leaves, and the mottled
blossoms whose gaseous, dream-breeding exhalations penetrate every existing make
of mask.
Recalling what happened to Bailey three years ago, I fell into a momentary
panic, and began to dash and stagger about in the crazy, chaotic world which the
plant's exhalations had woven around me. Then good sense came back, and I
realized all I need do was retreat from the dangerous blossoms - heading away
from the source of the pulsations, and cutting a path blindly - regardless of
what might seem to swirl around me - until safely out of the plant's effective
radius.
Although everything was spinning perilously, I tried to start in the right
direction and hack my way ahead. My route must have been far from straight, for
it seemed hours before I was free of the mirage-plant's pervasive influence.
Gradually the dancing lights began to disappear, and the shimmering spectral
scenery began to assume the aspect of solidity. When I did get wholly clear I
looked at my watch and was astonished to find that the time was only 4:20.
Though eternities had seemed to pass, the whole experience could have consumed
little more than a half-hour.
Every delay, however, was irksome, and I had lost ground in my retreat from the
plant. I now pushed ahead in the uphill direction indicated by the
crystal-detector, bending every energy toward making better time. The jungle was
still thick, though there was less animal life. Once a carnivorous blossom
engulfed my right foot and held it so tightly that I had to hack it free with my
knife; reducing the flower to strips before it let go.
In less than an hour I saw that the jungle growths were thinning out, and by
five o'clock - after passing through a belt of tree-ferns with very little
underbrush - I emerged on a broad mossy plateau. My progress now became rapid,
and I saw by the wavering of my detector-needle that I was getting relatively
close to the crystal I sought. This was odd, for most of the scattered, egg-like
spheroids occurred in jungle streams of a sort not likely to be found on this
treeless upland.
The terrain sloped upward, ending in a definite crest. I reached the top about
5:30 and saw ahead of me a very extensive plain with forests in the distance.
This, without question, was the plateau mapped by Matsugawa from the air fifty
years ago, and called on our maps 'Eryx' or the 'Erycinian Highland.' But what
made my heart leap was a smaller detail, whose position could not have been far
from the plain's exact centre. It was a single point of light, blazing through
the mist and seeming to draw a piercing, concentrated luminescence from the
yellowish, vapour-dulled sunbeams. This, without doubt, was the crystal I sought
- a thing possibly no larger than a hen's egg, yet containing enough power to
keep a city warm for a year. I could hardly wonder, as I glimpsed the distant
glow, that those miserable man-lizards worship such crystals. And yet they have
not the least notion of the powers they contain.
Breaking into a rapid run, I tried to reach the unexpected prize as soon as
possible; and was annoyed when the firm moss gave place to a thin, singularly
detestable mud studded with occasional patches of weeds and creepers. But I
splashed on heedlessly - scarcely thinking to look around for any of the
skulking man-lizards. In this open space I was not very likely to be waylaid. As
I advanced, the light ahead seemed to grow in size and brilliancy, and I began
to notice some peculiarity in its situation. Clearly, this was a crystal of the
very finest quality, and my elation grew with every spattering step.
It is now that I must begin to be careful in making my report, since what I
shall henceforward have to say involves unprecedented - though fortunately
verifiable - matters. I was racing ahead with mounting eagerness, and had come
within a hundred yards or so of the crystal - whose position on a sort of raised
place in the omnipresent slime seemed very odd - when a sudden, overpowering
force struck my chest and the knuckles of my clenched fists and knocked me over
backward into the mud. The splash of my fall was terrific, nor did the softness
of the ground and the presence of some slimy weeds and creepers save my head
from a bewildering jarring. For a moment I lay supine, too utterly startled to
think. Then I half mechanically stumbled to my feet and began to scrape the
worst of the mud and scum from my leather suit.
Of what I had encountered I could not form the faintest idea. I had seen nothing
which could have caused the shock, and I saw nothing now. Had I, after all,
merely slipped in the mud? My sore knuckles and aching chest forbade me to think
so. Or was this whole incident an illusion brought on by some hidden
mirage-plant? It hardly seemed probable, since I had none of the usual symptoms,
and since there was no place near by where so vivid and typical a growth could
lurk unseen. Had I been on the earth, I would have suspected a barrier of
N-force laid down by some government to mark a forbidden zone, but in this
humanless region such a notion would have been absurd.
Finally pulling myself together, I decided to investigate in a cautious way.
Holding my knife as far as possible ahead of me, so that it might be first to
feel the strange force, I started once more for the shining crystal - preparing
to advance step by step with the greatest deliberation. At the third step I was
brought up short by the impact of the knife - point on an apparently solid
surface - a solid surface where my eyes saw nothing.
After a moment's recoil I gained boldness. Extending my gloved left hands I
verified the presence of invisible solid matter - or a tactile illusion of solid
matter - ahead of me. Upon moving my hand I found that the barrier was of
substantial extent, and of an almost glassy smoothness, with no evidence of the
joining of separate blocks. Nerving myself for further experiments, I removed a
glove and tested the thing with my bare hand. It was indeed hard and glassy, and
of a curious coldness as contrasted with the air around. I strained my eyesight
to the utmost in an effort to glimpse some trace of the obstructing substance,
but could discern nothing whatsoever. There was not even any evidence of
refractive power as judged by the aspect of the landscape ahead. Absence of
reflective power was proved by the lack of a glowing image of the sun at any
point.
Burning curiosity began to displace all other feelings, and I enlarged my
investigations as best I could. Exploring with my hands, I found that the
barrier extended from the ground to some level higher than I could reach, and
that it stretched off indefinitely on both sides. It was, then, a wall of some
kind - though all guesses as to its materials and its purpose were beyond me.
Again I thought of the mirage-plant and the dreams it induced, but a moment's
reasoning put this out of my head.
Knocking sharply on the barrier with the hilt of my knife, and kicking at it
with my heavy boots, I tried to interpret the sounds thus made. There was
something suggestive of cement or concrete in these reverberations, though my
hands had found the surface more glassy or metallic in feel. Certainly, I was
confronting something strange beyond all previous experience.
The next logical move was to get some idea of the wall's dimensions. The height
problem would be hard, if not insoluble, but the length and shape problem could
perhaps be sooner dealt with. Stretching out my arms and pressing close to the
barrier, I began to edge gradually to the left - keeping very careful track of
the way I faced. After several steps I concluded that the wall was not straight,
but that I was following part of some vast circle or ellipse. And then my
attention was distracted by something wholly different - something connected
with the still-distant crystal which had formed the object of my quest.
I have said that even from a great distance the shining object's position seemed
indefinably queer - on a slight mound rising from the slime. Now - at about a
hundred yards - I could see plainly despite the engulfing mist just what that
mound was. It was the body of a man in one of the Crystal Company's leather
suits, lying on his back, and with his oxygen mask half buried in the mud a few
inches away. In his right hand, crushed convulsively against his chest, was the
crystal which had led me here - a spheroid of incredible size, so large that the
dead fingers could scarcely close over it. Even at the given distance I could
see that the body was a recent one. There was little visible decay, and I
reflected that in this climate such a thing meant death not more than a day
before. Soon the hateful farnoth-flies would begin to cluster about the corpse.
I wondered who the man was. Surely no one I had seen on this trip. It must have
been one of the old-timers absent on a long roving commission, who had come to
this especial region independently of Anderson's survey. There he lay, past all
trouble, and with the rays of the great crystal streaming out from between his
stiffened fingers.
For fully five minutes I stood there staring in bewilderment and apprehension. A
curious dread assailed me, and I had an unreasonable impulse to run away. It
could not have been done by those slinking man-lizards, for he still held the
crystal he had found. Was there any connexion with the invisible wall? Where had
he found the crystal? Anderson's instrument had indicated one in this quarter
well before this man could have perished. I now began to regard the unseen
barrier as something sinister, and recoiled from it with a shudder. Yet I knew I
must probe the mystery all the more quickly and thoroughly because of this
recent tragedy.
Suddenly - wrenching my mind back to the problem I faced - I thought of a
possible means of testing the wall's height, or at least of finding whether or
not it extended indefinitely upward. Seizing a handful of mud, I let it drain
until it gained some coherence and then flung it high in the air toward the
utterly transparent barrier. At a height of perhaps fourteen feet it struck the
invisible surface with a resounding splash, disintegrating at once and oozing
downward in disappearing streams with surprising rapidity. Plainly, the wall was
a lofty one. A second handful, hurled at an even sharper angle, hit the surface
about eighteen feet from the ground and disappeared as quickly as the first.
I now summoned up all my strength and prepared to throw a third handful as high
as I possibly could. Letting the mud drain, and squeezing it to maximum dryness,
I flung it up so steeply that I feared it might not reach the obstructing
surface at all. It did, however, and this time it crossed the barrier and fell
in the mud beyond with a violent spattering. At last I had a rough idea of the
height of the wall, for the crossing had evidently occurred some twenty or
twenty-one feet aloft.
With a nineteen - or twenty-foot vertical wall of glassy flatness, ascent was
clearly impossible. I must, then, continue to circle the barrier in the hope of
finding a gate, an ending, or some sort of interruption. Did the obstacle form a
complete round or other closed figure, or was it merely an arc or semi-circle?
Acting on my decision, I resumed my slow leftward circling, moving my hands up
and down over the unseen surface on the chance of finding some window or other
small aperture. Before starting, I tried to mark my position by kicking a hole
in the mud, but found the slime too thin to hold any impression. I did, though,
gauge the place approximately by noting a tall cycad in the distant forest which
seemed just on a line with the gleaming crystal a hundred yards away. If no gate
or break existed I could now tell when I had completely circumnavigated the
wall.
I had not progressed far before I decided that the curvature indicated a
circular enclosure of about a hundred yards' diameter - provided the outline was
regular. This would mean that the dead man lay near the wall at a point almost
opposite the region where I had started. Was he just inside or just outside the
enclosure? This I would soon ascertain.
As I slowly rounded the barrier without finding any gate, window, or other
break, I decided that the body was lying within. On closer view the features of
the dead man seemed vaguely disturbing. I found something alarming in his
expression, and in the way the glassy eyes stared. By the time I was very near I
believed I recognized him as Dwight, a veteran whom I had never known, but who
was pointed out to me at the post last year. The crystal he clutched was
certainly a prize - the largest single specimen I had ever seen.
I was so near the body that I could - but for the barrier - have touched it,
when my exploring left hand encountered a corner in the unseen surface. In a
second I had learned that there was an opening about three feet wide, extending
from the ground to a height greater than I could reach. There was no door, nor
any evidence of hingemarks bespeaking a former door. Without a moment's
hesitation I stepped through and advanced two paces to the prostrate body -
which lay at right angles to the hallway I had entered, in what seemed to be an
intersecting doorless corridor. It gave me a fresh curiosity to find that the
interior of this vast enclosure was divided by partitions.
Bending to examine the corpse, I discovered that it bore no wounds. This
scarcely surprised me, since the continued presence of the crystal argued
against the pseudo-reptilian natives. Looking about for some possible cause of
death, my eyes lit upon the oxygen mask lying close to the body's feet. Here,
indeed, was something significant. Without this device no human being could
breathe the air of Venus for more than thirty seconds, and Dwight - if it were
he - had obviously lost his. Probably it had been carelessly buckled, so that
the weight of the tubes worked the straps loose - a thing which could not happen
with a Dubois sponge-reservoir mask. The half-minute of grace had been too short
to allow the man to stoop and recover his protection - or else the cyanogen
content of the atmosphere was abnormally high at the time. Probably he had been
busy admiring the crystal - wherever he may have found it. He had, apparently,
just taken it from the pouch in his suit, for the flap was unbuttoned.
I now proceeded to extricate the huge crystal from the dead prospector's fingers
- a task which the body's stiffness made very difficult. The spheroid was larger
than a man's fist, and glowed as if alive in the reddish rays of the weltering
sun. As I touched the gleaming surface I shuddered involuntarily - as if by
taking this precious object I had transferred to myself the doom which had
overtaken its earlier bearer. However, my qualms soon passed, and I carefully
buttoned the crystal into the pouch of my leather suit. Superstition has never
been one of my failings.
Placing the man's helmet over his dead, staring face, I straightened up and
stepped back through the unseen doorway to the entrance hall of the great
enclosure. All my curiosity about the strange edifice now returned, and I racked
my brains with speculations regarding its material, origin, and purpose. That
the hands of men had reared it I could not for a moment believe. Our ships first
reached Venus only seventy-two years ago, and the only human beings on the
planet have been those at Terra Nova. Nor does human knowledge include any
perfectly transparent, non-refractive solid such as the substance of this
building. Prehistoric human invasions of Venus can be pretty well ruled out, so
that one must turn to the idea of native construction. Did a forgotten race of
highly-evolved beings precede the man-lizards as masters of Venus? Despite their
elaborately-built cities, it seemed hard to credit the pseudo-reptiles with
anything of this kind. There must have been another race aeons ago, of which
this is perhaps the last relique. Or will other ruins of kindred origin be found
by future expeditions? The purpose of such a structure passes all conjecture -
but its strange and seemingly non-practical material suggests a religious use.
Realizing my inability to solve these problems, I decided that all I could do
was to explore the invisible structure itself. That various rooms and corridors
extended over the seemingly unbroken plain of mud I felt convinced; and I
believed that a knowledge of their plan might lead to something significant. So,
feeling my way back through the doorway and edging past the body, I began to
advance along the corridor toward those interior regions whence the dead man had
presumably come. Later on I would investigate the hallway I had left.
Groping like a blind man despite the misty sunlight, I moved slowly onward. Soon
the corridor turned sharply and began to spiral in toward the centre in
ever-diminishing curves. Now and then my touch would reveal a doorless
intersecting passage, and I several times encountered junctions with two, three,
and four diverging avenues. In these latter cases I always followed the inmost
route, which seemed to form a continuation of the one I had been traversing.
There would be plenty of time to examine the branches after I had reached and
returned from the main regions. I can scarcely describe the strangeness of the
experience - threading the unseen ways of an invisible structure reared by
forgotten hands on an alien planet!
At last, still stumbling and groping, I felt the corridor end in a sizeable open
space. Fumbling about, I found I was in a circular chamber about ten feet
across; and from the position of the dead man against certain distant forest
landmarks I judged that this chamber lay at or near the centre of the edifice.
Out of it opened five corridors besides the one through which I had entered, but
I kept the latter in mind by sighting very carefully past the body to a
particular tree on the horizon as I stood just within the entrance.
There was nothing in this room to distinguish it - merely the floor of thin mud
which was everywhere present. Wondering whether this part of the building had
any roof, I repeated my experiment with an upward-flung handful of mud, and
found at once that no covering existed. If there had ever been one, it must have
fallen long ago, for not a trace of debris or scattered blocks ever halted my
feet. As I reflected, it struck me as distinctly odd that this apparently
primordial structure should be so devoid of tumbling masonry, gaps in the walls,
and other common attributes of dilapidation.
What was it? What had it ever been? Of what was it made? Why was there no
evidence of separate blocks in the glassy, bafflingly homogenous walls? Why were
there no traces of doors, either interior or exterior? I knew only that I was in
a round, roofless, doorless edifice of some hard, smooth, perfectly transparent,
non-refractive and non-reflective material, a hundred yards in diameter, with
many corridors, and with a small circular room at the centre. More than this I
could never learn from a direct investigation.
I now observed that the sun was sinking very low in the west - a golden-ruddy
disc floating in a pool of scarlet and orange above the mist-clouded trees of
the horizon. Plainly, I would have to hurry if I expected to choose a
sleeping-spot on dry ground before dark. I had long before decided to camp for
the night on the firm, mossy rim of the plateau near the crest whence I had
first spied the shining crystal, trusting to my usual luck to save me from an
attack by the man-lizards. It has always been my contention that we ought to
travel in parties of two or more, so that someone can be on guard during
sleeping hours, but the really small number of night attacks makes the Company
careless about such things. Those scaly wretches seem to have difficulty in
seeing at night, even with curious glow torches.
Having picked out again the hallway through which I had come, I started to
return to the structure's entrance. Additional exploration could wait for
another day. Groping a course as best I could through the spiral corridors -
with only general sense, memory, and a vague recognition of some of the
ill-defined weed patches on the plain as guides - I soon found myself once more
in close proximity to the corpse. There were now one or two farnoth flies
swooping over the helmet-covered face, and I knew that decay was setting in.
With a futile instinctive loathing I raised my hand to brush away his vanguard
of the scavengers - when a strange and astonishing thing became manifest. An
invisible wall, checking the sweep of my arm, told me that - notwithstanding my
careful retracing of the way - I had not indeed returned to the corridor in
which the body lay. Instead, I was in a parallel hallway, having no doubt taken
some wrong turn or fork among the intricate passages behind.
Hoping to find a doorway to the exit hall ahead, I continued my advance, but
presently came to a blank wall. I would, then, have to return to the central
chamber and steer my course anew. Exactly where I had made my mistake I could
not tell. I glanced at the ground to see if by any miracle guiding footprints
had remained, but at once realized that the thin mud held impressions only for a
very few moments. There was little difficulty in finding my way to the centre
again, and once there I carefully reflected on the proper outward course. I had
kept too far to the right before. This time I must take a more leftward fork
somewhere - just where, I could decide as I went.
As I groped ahead a second time I felt quite confident of my correctness, and
diverged to the left at a junction I was sure I remembered. The spiralling
continued, and I was careful not to stray into any intersecting passages. Soon,
however, I saw to my disgust that I was passing the body at a considerable
distance; this passage evidently reached the outer wall at a point much beyond
it. In the hope that another exit might exist in the half of the wall I had not
yet explored, I pressed forward for several paces, but eventually came once more
to a solid barrier. Clearly, the plan of the building was even more complicated
than I had thought.
I now debated whether to return to the centre again or whether to try some of
the lateral corridors extending toward the body. If I chose this second
alternative, I would run the risk of breaking my mental pattern of where I was;
hence I had better not attempt it unless I could think of some way of leaving a
visible trail behind me. Just how to leave a trail would be quite a problem, and
I ransacked my mind for a solution. There seemed to be nothing about my person
which could leave a mark on anything, nor any material which I could scatter -
or minutely subdivide and scatter.
My pen had no effect on the invisible wall, and I could not lay a trail of my
precious food tablets. Even had I been willing to spare the latter, there would
not have been even nearly enough - besides which the small pellets would have
instantly sunk from sight in the thin mud. I searched my pockets for an
old-fashioned note-book - often used unofficially on Venus despite the quick
rotting-rate of paper in the planet's atmosphere - whose pages I could tear up
and scatter, but could find none. It was obviously impossible to tear the tough,
thin metal of this revolving decay-proof record scroll, nor did my clothing
offer any possibilities. In Venus's peculiar atmosphere I could not safely spare
my stout leather suit, and underwear had been eliminated because of the climate.
I tried to smear mud on the smooth, invisible walls after squeezing it as dry as
possible, but found that it slipped from sight as quickly as did the
height-testing handfuls I had previously thrown. Finally I drew out my knife and
attempted to scratch a line on the glassy, phantom surface - something I could
recognize with my hand, even though I would not have the advantage of seeing it
from afar. It was useless, however, for the blade made not the slightest
impression on the baffling, unknown material.
Frustrated in all attempts to blaze a trail, I again sought the round central
chamber through memory. It seemed easier to act back to this room than to steer
a definite, predetermined course away from it, and I had little difficulty in
finding it anew. This time I listed on my record scroll every turn I made -
drawing a crude hypothetical diagram of my route, and marking all diverging
corridors. It was, of course, maddeningly slow work when everything had to be
determined by touch, and the possibilities of error were infinite; but I
believed it would pay in the long run.
The long twilight of Venus was thick when I reached the central room, but I
still had hopes of gaining the outside before dark. Comparing my fresh diagram
with previous recollections, I believed I had located my original mistake, so
once more set out confidently along the invisible hall-ways. I veered further to
the left than during my previous attempts, and tried to keep track of my
turnings on the records scroll in case I was still mistaken. In the gathering
dusk I could see the dim line of the corpse, now the centre of a loathsome cloud
of farnoth-flies. Before long, no doubt, the mud-dwelling sificlighs would be
oozing in from the plain to complete the ghastly work. Approaching the body with
some reluctance I was preparing to step past it when a sudden collision with a
wall told me I was again astray.
I now realized plainly that I was lost. The complications of this building were
too much for offhand solution, and I would probably have to do some careful
checking before I could hope to emerge. Still, I was eager to get to dry ground
before total darkness set in; hence I returned once more to the centre and began
a rather aimless series of trials and errors - making notes by the light of my
electric lamp. When I used this device I noticed with interest that it produced
no reflection - not even the faintest glistening - in the transparent walls
around me. I was, however, prepared for this; since the sun had at no time
formed a gleaming image in the strange material.
I was still groping about when the dusk became total. A heavy mist obscured most
of the stars and planets, but the earth was plainly visible as a glowing,
bluish-green point in the southeast. It was just past opposition, and would have
been a glorious sight in a telescope. I could even make out the moon beside it
whenever the vapours momentarily thinned. It was now impossible to see the
corpse - my only landmark - so I blundered back to the central chamber after a
few false turns. After all, I would have to give up hope of sleeping on dry
ground. Nothing could be done till daylight, and I might as well make the best
of it here. Lying down in the mud would not be pleasant, but in my leather suit
it could be done. On former expeditions I had slept under even worse conditions,
and now sheer exhaustion would help to conquer repugnance.
So here I am, squatting in the slime of the central room and making these notes
on my record scroll by the light of the electric lamp. There is something almost
humorous in my strange, unprecedented plight. Lost in a building without doors -
a building which I cannot see! I shall doubtless get out early in the morning,
and ought to be back at Terra Nova with the crystal by late afternoon. It
certainly is a beauty - with surprising lustre even in the feeble light of this
lamp. I have just had it out examining it. Despite my fatigue, sleep is slow in
coming, so I find myself writing at great length. I must stop now. Not much
danger of being bothered by those cursed natives in this place. The thing I like
least is the corpse - but fortunately my oxygen mask saves me from the worst
effects. I am using the chlorate cubes very sparingly. Will take a couple of
food tablets now and turn in. More later.
LATER - AFTERNOON, VI, 13
There has been more trouble than I expected. I am still in the building, and
will have to work quickly and wisely if I expect to rest on dry ground tonight.
It took me a long time to get to sleep, and I did not wake till almost noon
today. As it was, I would have slept longer but for the glare of the sun through
the haze. The corpse was a rather bad sight - wriggling with sificlighs, and
with a cloud of farnoth-flies around it. Something had pushed the helmet away
from the face, and it was better not to look at it. I was doubly glad of my
oxygen mask when I thought of the situation.
At length I shook and brushed myself dry, took a couple of food tablets, and put
a new potassium chlorate cube in the electrolyser of the mask. I am using these
cubes slowly, but wish I had a larger supply. I felt much better after my sleep,
and expected to get out of the building very shortly.
Consulting the notes and sketches I had jotted down, I was impressed by the
complexity of the hallways, and by the possibility that I had made a fundamental
error. Of the six openings leading out of the central space, I had chosen a
certain one as that by which I had entered - using a sighting-arrangement as a
guide. When I stood just within the opening, the corpse fifty yards away was
exactly in line with a particular lepidodendron in the far-off forest. Now it
occurred to me that this sighting might not have been of sufficient accuracy -
the distance of the corpse making its difference of direction in relation to the
horizon comparatively slight when viewed from the openings next to that of my
first ingress. Moreover, the tree did not differ as distinctly as it might from
other lepidodendra on the horizon.
Putting the matter to a test, I found to my chagrin that I could not be sure
which of three openings was the right one. Had I traversed a different set of
windings at each attempted exit? This time I would be sure. It struck me that
despite the impossibility of trail-blazing there was one marker I could leave.
Though I could not spare my suit, I could - because of my thick head of hair -
spare my helmet; and this was large and light enough to remain visible above the
thin mud. Accordingly I removed the roughly hemi-spherical device and laid it at
the entrance of one of the corridors - the right-hand one of the three I must
try.
I would follow this corridor on the assumption that it was correct; repeating
what I seemed to recall as the proper turns, and constantly consulting and
making notes. If I did not get out, I would systematically exhaust all possible
variations; and if these failed, I would proceed to cover the avenues extending
from the next opening in the same way - continuing to the third opening if
necessary. Sooner or later I could not avoid hitting the right path to the exit,
but I must use patience. Even at worst, I could scarcely fail to reach the open
plain in time for a dry night's sleep.
Immediate results were rather discouraging, though they helped me eliminate the
right-hand opening in little more than an hour. Only a succession of blind
alleys, each ending at a great distance from the corpse, seemed to branch from
this hallway; and I saw very soon that it had not figured at all in the previous
afternoon's wanderings. As before, however, I always found it relatively easy to
grope back to the central chamber.
About 1 P.M. I shifted my helmet marker to the next opening and began to explore
the hallways beyond it. At first I thought I recognized the turnings, but soon
found myself in a wholly unfamiliar set of corridors. I could not get near the
corpse, and this time seemed cut off from the central chamber as well, even
though I thought I had recorded every move I made. There seemed to be tricky
twists and crossings too subtle for me to capture in my crude diagrams, and I
began to develop a kind of mixed anger and discouragement. While patience would
of course win in the end, I saw that my searching would have to be minute,
tireless and long-continued.
Two o'clock found me still wandering vainly through strange corridors -
constantly feeling my way, looking alternately at my helmet and at the corpse,
and jotting data on my scroll with decreasing confidence. I cursed the stupidity
and idle curiosity which had drawn me into this tangle of unseen walls -
reflecting that if I had let the thing alone and headed back as soon as I had
taken the crystal from the body, I would even now be safe at Terra Nova.
Suddenly it occurred to me that I might be able to tunnel under the invisible
walls with my knife, and thus effect a short cut to the outside - or to some
outward-leading corridor. I had no means of knowing how deep the building's
foundations were, but the omnipresent mud argued the absence of any floor save
the earth. Facing the distant and increasingly horrible corpse, I began a course
of feverish digging with the broad, sharp blade.
There was about six inches of semi-liquid mud, below which the density of the
soil increased sharply. This lower soil seemed to be of a different colour - a
greyish clay rather like the formations near Venus's north pole. As I continued
downward close to the unseen barrier I saw that the ground was getting harder
and harder. Watery mud rushed into the excavation as fast as I removed the clay,
but I reached through it and kept on working. If I could bore any kind of a
passage beneath the wall, the mud would not stop my wriggling out.
About three feet down, however, the hardness of the soil halted my digging
seriously. Its tenacity was beyond anything I had encountered before, even on
this planet, and was linked with an anomalous heaviness. My knife had to split
and chip the tightly packed clay, and the fragments I brought up were like solid
stones or bits of metal. Finally even this splitting and chipping became
impossible, and I had to cease my work with no lower edge of wall in reach.
The hour-long attempt was a wasteful as well as futile one, for it used up great
stores of my energy and forced me both to take an extra food tablet, and to put
an additional chlorate cube in the oxygen mask. It has also brought a pause in
the day's gropings, for I am still much too exhausted to walk. After cleaning my
hands and arms of the worst of the mud I sat down to write these notes - leaning
against an invisible wall and facing away from the corpse.
That body is simply a writhing mass of vermin now - the odour has begun to draw
some of the slimy akmans from the far-off jungle. I notice that many of the
efjeh-weeds on the plain are reaching out necrophagous feelers toward the thing;
but I doubt if any are long enough to reach it. I wish some really carnivorous
organisms like the skorahs would appear, for then they might scent me and
wriggle a course through the building toward me. Things like that have an odd
sense of direction. I could watch them as they came, and jot down their
approximate route if they failed to form a continuous line. Even that would be a
great help. When I met any the pistol would make short work of them.
But I can hardly hope for as much as that. Now that these notes are made I shall
rest a while longer, and later will do some more groping. As soon as I get back
to the central chamber - which ought to be fairly easy - I shall try the extreme
left-hand opening. Perhaps I can get outside by dusk after all.
NIGHT - VI, 13
New trouble. My escape will be tremendously difficult, for there are elements I
had not suspected. Another night here in the mud, and a fight on my hands
tomorrow. I cut my rest short and was up and groping again by four o'clock.
After about fifteen minutes I reached the central chamber and moved my helmet to
mark the last of the three possible doorways. Starting through this opening, I
seemed to find the going more familiar, but was brought up short less than five
minutes by a sight that jolted me more than I can describe.
It was a group of four or five of those detestable man-lizards emerging from the
forest far off across the plain. I could not see them distinctly at that
distance, but thought they paused and turned toward the trees to gesticulate,
after which they were joined by fully a dozen more. The augmented party now
began to advance directly toward the invisible building, and as they approached
I studied them carefully. I had never before had a close view of the things
outside the steamy shadows of the jungle.
The resemblance to reptiles was perceptible, though I knew it was only an
apparent one, since these beings have no point of contact with terrestrial life.
When they drew nearer they seemed less truly reptilian - only the flat head and
the green, slimy, frog-like skin carrying out the idea. They walked erect on
their odd, thick stumps, and their suction-discs made curious noises in the mud.
These were average specimens, about seven feet in height, and with four long,
ropy pectoral tentacles. The motions of those tentacles - if the theories of
Fogg, Ekberg, and Janat are right, which I formerly doubted but am now more
ready to believe - indicate that the things were in animated conversation.
I drew my flame pistol and was ready for a hard fight. The odds were bad, but
the weapon gave me a certain advantage. If the things knew this building they
would come through it after me, and in this way would form a key to getting out;
just as carnivorous skorahs might have done. That they would attack me seemed
certain; for even though they could not see the crystal in my pouch, they could
divine its presence through that special sense of theirs.
Yet, surprisingly enough, they did not attack me. Instead they scattered and
formed a vast circle around me - at a distance which indicated that they were
pressing close to the unseen wall. Standing there in a ring, the beings stared
silently and inquisitively at me, waving their tentacles and sometimes nodding
their heads and gesturing with their upper limbs. After a while I saw others
issue from the forest, and these advanced and joined the curious crowd. Those
near the corpse looked briefly at it but made no move to disturb it. It was a
horrible sight, yet the man-lizards seemed quite unconcerned. Now and then one
of them would brush away the farnoth-flies with its limbs or tentacles, or crush
a wriggling sificligh or akman, or an out-reaching efjeh-weed, with the suction
discs on its stumps.
Staring back at these grotesque and unexpected intruders, and wondering uneasily
why they did not attack me at once, I lost for the time being the will-power and
nervous energy to continue my search for a way out. Instead I leaned limply
against the invisible wall of the passage where I stood, letting my wonder merge
gradually into a chain of the wildest speculations. A hundred mysteries which
had previously baffled me seemed all at once to take on a new and sinister
significance, and I trembled with an acute fear unlike anything I had
experienced before.
I believed I knew why these repulsive beings were hovering expectantly around
me. I believed, too, that I had the secret of the transparent structure at last.
The alluring crystal which I had seized, the body of the man who had seized it
before me - all these things began to acquire a dark and threatening meaning.
It was no common series of mischances which had made me lose my way in this
roofless, unseen tangle of corridors. Far from it. Beyond doubt, the place was a
genuine maze - a labyrinth deliberately built by these hellish things whose
craft and mentality I had so badly underestimated. Might I not have suspected
this before, knowing of their uncanny architectural skill? The purpose was all
too plain. It was a trap - a trap set to catch human beings, and with the
crystal spheroid as bait. These reptilian things, in their war on the takers of
crystals, had turned to strategy and were using our own cupidity against us.
Dwight - if this rotting corpse were indeed he - was a victim. He must have been
trapped some time ago, and had failed to find his way out. Lack of water had
doubtless maddened him, and perhaps he had run out of chlorate cubes as well.
Probably his mask had not slipped accidentally after all. Suicide was a likelier
thing. Rather than face a lingering death he had solved the issue by removing
the mask deliberately and letting the lethal atmosphere do its work at once. The
horrible irony of his fate lay in his position - only a few feet from the saving
exit he had failed to find. One minute more of searching and he would have been
safe.
And now I was trapped as he had been. Trapped, and with this circling herd of
curious starers to mock at my predicament. The thought was maddening, and as it
sank in I was seized with a sudden flash of panic which set me running aimlessly
through the unseen hallways. For several moments I was essentially a maniac -
stumbling, tripping, bruising myself on the invisible walls, and finally
collapsing in the mud as a panting, lacerated heap of mindless, bleeding flesh.
The fall sobered me a bit, so that when I slowly struggled to my feet I could
notice things and exercise my reason. The circling watchers were swaying their
tentacles in an odd, irregular way suggestive of sly, alien laughter, and I
shook my fist savagely at them as I rose. My gesture seemed to increase their
hideous mirth - a few of them clumsily imitating it with their greenish upper
limbs. Shamed into sense, I tried to collect my faculties and take stock of the
situation.
After all, I was not as badly off as Dwight has been. Unlike him, I knew what
the situation was - and forewarned is forearmed. I had proof that the exit was
attainable in the end, and would not repeat his tragic act of impatient despair.
The body - or skeleton, as it would soon be - was constantly before me as a
guide to the sought - for aperture, and dogged patience would certainly take me
to it if I worked long and intelligently enough.
I had, however, the disadvantage of being surrounded by these reptilian devils.
Now that I realized the nature of the trap - whose invisible material argued a
science and technology beyond anything on earth - I could no longer discount the
mentality and resources of my enemies. Even with my flame-pistol I would have a
bad time getting away - though boldness and quickness would doubtless see me
through in the long run.
But first I must reach the exterior - unless I could lure or provoke some of the
creatures to advance toward me. As I prepared my pistol for action and counted
over my generous supply of ammunition it occurred to me to try the effect of its
blasts on the invisible walls. Had I overlooked a feasible means of escape?
There was no clue to the chemical composition of the transparent barrier, and
conceivably it might be something which a tongue of fire could cut like cheese.
Choosing a section facing the corpse, I carefully discharged the pistol at close
range and felt with my knife where the blast had been aimed. Nothing was
changed. I had seen the flame spread when it struck the surface, and now I
realized that my hope had been vain. Only a long, tedious search for the exit
would ever bring me to the outside.
So, swallowing another food tablet and putting another cube in the elecrolyser
of my mask, I recommenced the long quest; retracing my steps to the central
chamber and starting out anew. I constantly consulted my notes and sketches, and
made fresh ones - taking one false turn after another, but staggering on in
desperation till the afternoon light grew very dim. As I persisted in my quest I
looked from time to time at the silent circle of mocking stares, and noticed a
gradual replacement in their ranks. Every now and then a few would return to the
forest, while others would arrive to take their places. The more I thought of
their tactics the less I liked them, for they gave me a hint of the creatures'
possible motives. At any time these devils could have advanced and fought me,
but they seemed to prefer watching my struggles to escape. I could not but infer
that they enjoyed the spectacle - and this made me shrink with double force from
the prospect of falling into their hands.
With the dark I ceased my searching, and sat down in the mud to rest. Now I am
writing in the light of my lamp, and will soon try to get some sleep. I hope
tomorrow will see me out; for my canteen is low, and lacol tablets are a poor
substitute for water. I would hardly dare to try the moisture in this slime, for
none of the water in the mud-regions is potable except when distilled. That is
why we run such long pipe lines to the yellow clay regions - or depend on
rain-water when those devils find and cut our pipes. I have none too many
chlorate cubes either, and must try to cut down my oxygen consumption as much as
I can. My tunnelling attempt of the early afternoon, and my later panic flight,
burned up a perilous amount of air. Tomorrow I will reduce physical exertion to
the barest minimum until I meet the reptiles and have to deal with them. I must
have a good cube supply for the journey back to Terra Nova. My enemies are still
on hand; I can see a circle of their feeble glow-torches around me. There is a
horror about those lights which will keep me awake.
NIGHT - VI, 14
Another full day of searching and still no way out! I am beginning to be worried
about the water problem, for my canteen went dry at noon. In the afternoon there
was a burst of rain, and I went back to the central chamber for the helmet which
I had left as a marker - using this as a bowl and getting about two cupfuls of
water. I drank most of it, but have put the slight remainder in my canteen.
Lacol tablets make little headway against real thirst, and I hope there will be
more rain in the night. I am leaving my helmet bottom up to catch any that
falls. Food tablets are none too plentiful, but not dangerously low. I shall
halve my rations from now on. The chlorate cubes are my real worry, for even
without violent exercise the day's endless tramping burned a dangerous number. I
feel weak from my forced economies in oxygen, and from my constantly mounting
thirst. When I reduce my food I suppose I shall feel still weaker.
There is something damnable - something uncanny - about this labyrinth. I could
swear that I had eliminated certain turns through charting, and yet each new
trial belies some assumption I had thought established. Never before did I
realize how lost we are without visual landmarks. A blind man might do better -
but for most of us sight is the king of the senses. The effect of all these
fruitless wanderings is one of profound discouragement. I can understand how
poor Dwight must have felt. His corpse is now just a skeleton, and the
sificlighs and akmans and farnoth-flies are gone. The efjen-weeds are nipping
the leather clothing to pieces, for they were longer and faster-growing than I
had expected. And all the while those relays of tentacled starers stand
gloatingly around the barrier laughing at me and enjoying my misery. Another day
and I shall go mad if I do not drop dead from exhaustion.
However, there is nothing to do but persevere. Dwight would have got out if he
had kept on a minute longer. It is just possible that somebody from Terra Nova
will come looking for me before long, although this is only my third day out. My
muscles ache horribly, and I can't seem to rest at all lying down in this
loathesome mud. Last night, despite my terrific fatigue, I slept only fitfully,
and tonight I fear will be no better. I live in an endless nightmare - poised
between waking and sleeping, yet neither truly awake nor truly asleep. My hand
shakes, I can write no more for the time being. That circle of feeble
glow-torches is hideous.
LATE AFTERNOON - VI, 15
Substantial progress! Looks good. Very weak, and did not sleep much till
daylight. Then I dozed till noon, though without being at all rested. No rain,
and thirst leaves me very weak. Ate an extra food tablet to keep me going, but
without water it didn't help much. I dared to try a little of the slime water
just once, but it made me violently sick and left me even thirstier than before.
Must save chlorate cubes, so am nearly suffocating for lack of oxygen. Can't
walk much of the time, but manage to crawl in the mud. About 2 P.M. I thought I
recognized some passages, and got substantially nearer to the corpse - or
skeleton - than I had been since the first day's trials. I was sidetracked once
in a blind alley, but recovered the main trail with the aid of my chart and
notes. The trouble with these jottings is that there are so many of them. They
must cover three feet of the record scroll, and I have to stop for long periods
to untangle them.
My head is weak from thirst, suffocation, and exhaustion, and I cannot
understand all I have set down. Those damnable green things keep staring and
laughing with their tentacles, and sometimes they gesticulate in a way that
makes me think they share some terrible joke just beyond my perception.
It was three o'clock when I really struck my stride. There was a doorway which,
according to my notes, I had not traversed before; and when I tried it I found I
could crawl circuitously toward the weed-twined skeleton. The route was a sort
of spiral, much like that by which I had first reached the central chamber.
Whenever I came to a lateral doorway or junction I would keep to the course
which seemed best to repeat that original journey. As I circled nearer and
nearer to my gruesome landmark, the watchers outside intensified their cryptic
gesticulations and sardonic silent laughter. Evidently they saw something grimly
amusing in my progress - perceiving no doubt how helpless I would be in any
encounter with them. I was content to leave them to their mirth; for although I
realized my extreme weakness, I counted on the flame pistol and its numerous
extra magazines to get me through the vile reptilian phalanx.
Hope now soared high, but I did not attempt to rise to my feet. Better crawl
now, and save my strength for the coming encounter with the man-lizards. My
advance was very slow, and the danger of straying into some blind alley very
great, but nonetheless I seemed to curve steadily toward my osseous goal. The
prospect gave me new strength, and for the nonce I ceased to worry about my
pain, my thirst, and my scant supply of cubes. The creatures were now all
massing around the entrance - gesturing, leaping, and laughing with their
tentacles. Soon, I reflected, I would have to face the entire horde - and
perhaps such reinforcements as they would receive from the forest.
I am now only a few yards from the skeleton, and am pausing to make this entry
before emerging and breaking through the noxious band of entities. I feel
confident that with my last ounce of strength I can put them to flight despite
their numbers, for the range of this pistol is tremendous. Then a camp on the
dry moss at the plateau's edge, and in the morning a weary trip through the
jungle to Terra Nova. I shall be glad to see living men and the buildings of
human beings again. The teeth of that skull gleam and grin horribly.
TOWARD NIGHT - VI, I 5
Horror and despair. Baffled again! After making the previous entry I approached
still closer to the skeleton, but suddenly encountered an intervening wall. I
had been deceived once more, and was apparently back where I had been three days
before, on my first futile attempt to leave the labyrinth. Whether I screamed
aloud I do not know - perhaps I was too weak to utter a sound. I merely lay
dazed in the mud for a long period, while the greenish things outside leaped and
laughed and gestured.
After a time I became more fully conscious. My thirst and weakness and
suffocation were fast gaining on me, and with my last bit of strength I put a
new cube in the electrolyser - recklessly, and without regard for the needs of
my journey to Terra Nova. The fresh oxygen revived me slightly, and enabled me
to look about more alertly.
It seemed as if I were slightly more distant from poor Dwight than I had been at
that first disappointment, and I dully wondered if I could be in some other
corridor a trifle more remote. With this faint shadow of hope I laboriously
dragged myself forward - but after a few feet encountered a dead end as I had on
the former occasion.
This, then, was the end. Three days had taken me nowhere, and my strength was
gone. I would soon go mad from thirst, and I could no longer count on cubes
enough to get me back. I feebly wondered why the nightmare things had gathered
so thickly around the entrance as they mocked me. Probably this was part of the
mockery - to make me think I was approaching an egress which they knew did not
exist.
I shall not last long, though I am resolved not to hasten matters as Dwight did.
His grinning skull has just turned toward me, shifted by the groping of one of
the efjeh-weeds that are devouring his leather suit. The ghoulish stare of those
empty eye-sockets is worse than the staring of those lizard horrors. It lends a
hideous meaning to that dead, white-toothed grin.
I shall lie very still in the mud and save all the strength I can. This record -
which I hope may reach and warn those who come after me - will soon be done.
After I stop writing I shall rest a long while. Then, when it is too dark for
those frightful creatures to see, I shall muster up my last reserves of strength
and try to toss the record scroll over the wall and the intervening corridor to
the plain outside. I shall take care to send it toward the left, where it will
not hit the leaping band of mocking beleaguers. Perhaps it will be lost forever
in the thin mud - but perhaps it will land in some widespread clump of weeds and
ultimately reach the hands of men.
If it does survive to be read, I hope it may do more than merely warn men of
this trap. I hope it may teach our race to let those shining crystals stay where
they are. They belong to Venus alone. Our planet does not truly need them, and I
believe we have violated some obscure and mysterious law - some law buried deep
in the arcane of the cosmos - in our attempts to take them. Who can tell what
dark, potent, and widespread forces spur on these reptilian things who guard
their treasure so strangely? Dwight and I have paid, as others have paid and
will pay. But it may be that these scattered deaths are only the prelude of
greater horrors to come. Let us leave to Venus that which belongs only to Venus.
I am very near death now, and fear I may not be able to throw the scroll when
dusk comes. If I cannot, I suppose the man-lizards will seize it, for they will
probably realize what it is. They will not wish anyone to be warned of the
labyrinth - and they will not know that my message holds a plea in their own
behalf. As the end approaches I feel more kindly towards the things. In the
scale of cosmic entity who can say which species stands higher, or more nearly
ap-proaches a space-wide organic norm - theirs or mine?
I have just taken the great crystal out of my pouch to look at in my last
moments. It shines fiercely and menacingly in the red rays of the dying day. The
leaping horde have noticed it, and their gestures have changed in a way I cannot
understand. I wonder why they keep clustered around the entrance instead of
concentrating at a still closer point in the transparent wall.
I am growing numb and cannot write much more. Things whirl around me, yet I do
not lose consciousness. Can I throw this over the wall? That crystal glows so,
yet the twilight is deepening.
Dark. Very weak. They are still laughing and leaping around the doorway, and
have started those hellish glow-torches.
Are they going away? I dreamed I heard a sound... light in the sky.
REPORT OF WESLEY P. MILLER, SUPT. GROUP A, VENUS CRYSTAL CO.
(TERRA NOVA ON VENUS - Vl, 16)
Our Operative A-49, Kenton J. Stanfield of 5317 Marshall Street, Richmond, Va.,
left Terra Nova early on VI, 12, for a short-term trip indicated by detector.
Due back 13th or 14th. Did not appear by evening of 15th, so Scouting Plane
FR-58 with five men under my command set out at 8 P.M. to follow route with
detector. Needle showed no change from earlier readings.
Followed needle to Erycinian Highland, played strong searchlights all the way.
Triple-range flame-guns and D-radiation cylinders could have dispersed any
ordinary hostile force of natives, or any dangerous aggregation of carnivorous
skorahs.
When over the open plain on Eryx we saw a group of moving lights which we knew
were native glow-torches. As we approached, they scattered into the forest.
Probably seventy-five to a hundred in all. Detector indicated crystal on spot
where they had been. Sailing low over this spot, our lights picked out objects
on the ground. Skeleton tangled in efjeh-weeds, and complete body ten feet from
it. Brought plane down near bodies, and corner of wing crashed on unseen
obstruction.
Approaching bodies on foot, we came up short against a smooth, invisible barrier
which puzzled us enormously. Feeling along it near the skeleton, we struck an
opening, beyond which was a space with another opening leading to the skeleton.
The latter, though robbed of clothing by weeds, had one of the company's
numbered metal helmets beside it. It was Operative B-9, Frederick N. Dwight of
Koenig's division, who had been out of Terra Nova for two months on a long
commission.
Between this skeleton and the complete body there seemed to be another wall, but
we could easily identify the second man as Stanfield. He had a record scroll in
his left hand and a pen in his right, and seemed to have been writing when he
died. No crystal was visible, but the detector indicated a huge specimen near
Stanfield's body.
We had great difficulty in getting at Stanfield, but finally succeeded. The body
was still warm, and a great crystal lay beside it, covered by the shallow mud.
We at once studied the record scroll in the left hand, and prepared to take
certain steps based on its data. The contents of the scroll forms the long
narrative prefixed to this report; a narrative whose main descriptions we have
verified, and which we append as an explanation of what was found. The later
parts of this account show mental decay, but there is no reason to doubt the
bulk of it. Stanfield obviously died of a combination of thirst, suffocation,
cardiac strain, and psychological depression. His mask was in place, and freely
generating oxygen despite an alarmingly low cube supply.
Our plane being damaged, we sent a wireless and called out Anderson with Repair
Plane PG-7, a crew of wreckers, and a set of blasting materials. By morning
FH-58 was fixed, and went back under Anderson carrying the two bodies and the
crystal. We shall bury Dwight and Stanfield in the company graveyard, and ship
the crystal to Chicago on the next earth-bound liner. Later, we shall adopt
Stanfield's suggestion - the sound one in the saner, earlier part of his report
- and bring across enough troops to wipe out the natives altogether. With a
clear field, there can be scarcely any limit to the amount of crystal we can
secure.
In the afternoon we studied the invisible building or trap with great care,
exploring it with the aid of long guiding cords, and preparing a complete chart
for our archives. We were much impressed by the design, and shall keep specimens
of the substance for chemical analysis. All such knowledge will be useful when
we take over the various cities of the natives. Our type C diamond drills were
able to bite into the unseen material, and wreckers are now planting dynamite
preparatory to a thorough blasting. Nothing will be left when we are done. The
edifice forms a distinct menace to aerial and otter possible traffic.
In considering the plan of the labyrinth one is impressed not only with the
irony of Dwight's fate, but with that of Stanfield as well. When trying to reach
the second body from the skeleton, we could find no access on the right, but
Markheim found a doorway from the first inner space some fifteen feet past
Dwight and four or five past Stanfield. Beyond this was a long hall which we did
not explore till later, but on the right-hand side of that hall was another
doorway leading directly to the body. Stanfield could have reached the outside
entrance by walking twenty-two or twenty-three feet if he had found the opening
which lay directly behind him - an opening which he overlooked in his exhaustion
and despair.

Short Story - Pickman's Model (Lovecraft)

Pickman's Model
By H. P. Lovecraft
Written 1926
Published October 1927 in Weird Tales, Vol. 10, No. 4, p. 505-14.

You needn't think I'm crazy, Eliot - plenty of others have queerer prejudices
than this. Why don't you laugh at Oliver's grandfather, who won't ride in a
motor? If I don't like that damned subway, it's my own business; and we got here
more quickly anyhow in the taxi. We'd have had to walk up the hill from Park
Street if we'd taken the car.
I know I'm more nervous than I was when you saw me last year, but you don't need
to hold a clinic over it. There's plenty of reason, God knows, and I fancy I'm
lucky to be sane at all. Why the third degree? You didn't use to be so
inquisitive.
Well, if you must hear it, I don't know why you shouldn't. Maybe you ought to,
anyhow, for you kept writing me like a grieved parent when you heard I'd begun
to cut the Art Club and keep away from Pickman. Now that he's disappeared I go
round to the club once in a while, but my nerves aren't what they were.
No, I don't know what's become of Pickman, and I don't like to guess. You might
have surmised I had some inside information when I dropped him - and that's why
I don't want to think where he's gone. Let the police find what they can - it
won't be much, judging from the fact that they don't know yet of the old North
End place he hired under the name of Peters.
I'm not sure that I could find it again myself - not that I'd ever try, even in
broad daylight!
Yes, I do know, or am afraid I know, why he maintained it. I'm coming to that.
And I think you'll understand before I'm through why I don't tell the police.
They would ask me to guide them, but I couldn't go back there even if I knew the
way. There was something there - and now I can't use the subway or (and you may
as well have your laugh at this, too) go down into cellars any more.
I should think you'd have known I didn't drop Pickman for the same silly reasons
that fussy old women like Dr. Reid or Joe Minot or Rosworth did. Morbid art
doesn't shock me, and when a man has the genius Pickman had I feel it an honour
to know him, no matter what direction his work takes. Boston never had a greater
painter than Richard Upton Pickman. I said it at first and I say it still, and I
never swenved an inch, either, when he showed that 'Ghoul Feeding'. That, you
remember, was when Minot cut him.
You know, it takes profound art and profound insight into Nature to turn out
stuff like Pickman's. Any magazine-cover hack can splash paint around wildly and
call it a nightmare or a Witches' Sabbath or a portrait of the devil, but only a
great painter can make such a thing really scare or ring true. That's because
only a real artist knows the actual anatomy of the terrible or the physiology of
fear - the exact sort of lines and proportions that connect up with latent
instincts or hereditary memories of fright, and the proper colour contrasts and
lighting effects to stir the dormant sense of strangeness. I don't have to tell
you why a Fuseli really brings a shiver while a cheap ghost-story frontispiece
merely makes us laugh. There's something those fellows catch - beyond life -
that they're able to make us catch for a second. Doré had it. Sime has it.
Angarola of Chicago has it. And Pickman had it as no man ever had it before or -
I hope to Heaven - ever will again.
Don't ask me what it is they see. You know, in ordinary art, there's all the
difference in the world between the vital, breathing things drawn from Nature or
models and the artificial truck that commercial small fry reel off in a bare
studio by rule. Well, I should say that the really weird artist has a kind of
vision which makes models, or summons up what amounts to actual scenes from the
spectral world he lives in. Anyhow, he manages to turn out results that differ
from the pretender's mince-pie dreams in just about the same way that the life
painter's results differ from the concoctions of a correspondence-school
cartoonist. If I had ever seen what Pickman saw - but no! Here, let's have a
drink before we get any deeper. Gad, I wouldn't be alive if I'd ever seen what
that man - if he was a man - saw !
You recall that Pickman's forte was faces. I don't believe anybody since Goya
could put so much of sheer hell into a set of features or a twist of expression.
And before Goya you have to go back to the mediaeval chaps who did the gargoyles
and chimaeras on Notre Dame and Mont Saint-Michel. They believed all sorts of
things - and maybe they saw all sorts of things, too, for the Middle Ages had
some curious phases I remember your asking Pickman yourself once, the year
before you went away, wherever in thunder he got such ideas and visions. Wasn't
that a nasty laugh he gave you? It was partly because of that laugh that Reid
dropped him. Reid, you know, had just taken up comparative pathology, and was
full of pompous 'inside stuff' about the biological or evolutionary significance
of this or that mental or physical symptom. He said Pickman repelled him more
and more every day, and almost frightened him towards the last - that the
fellow's features and expression were slowly developing in a way he didn't like;
in a way that wasn't human. He had a lot of talk about diet, and mid Pickman
must be abnormal and eccentric to the last degree. I suppose you told Reid, if
you and he had any correspondence over it, that he'd let Pickman's paintings get
on his nerves or harrow up his imagination. I know I told him that myself -
then.
But keep in mind that I didn't drop Pickman for anything like this. On the
contrary, my admiration for him kept growing; for that 'Ghoul Feeding' was a
tremendous achievement. As you know, the club wouldn't exhibit it, and the
Museum of Fine Arts wouldn't accept it as a gift; and I can add that nobody
would buy it, so Pickman had it right in his house till he went. Now his father
has it in Salem - you know Pickman comes of old Salem stock, and had a witch
ancestor hanged in 1692.
I got into the habit of calling on Pickman quite often, especially after I began
making notes for a monograph on weird art. Probably it was his work which put
the idea into my head, and anyhow, I found him a mine of data and suggestions
when I came to develop it. He showed me all the paintings and drawings he had
about; including some pen-and-ink sketches that would, I verily believe, have
got him kicked out of the club if many of the members had seen them. Before long
I was pretty nearly a devotee, and would listen for hours like a schoolboy to
art theories and philosophic speculations wild enough to qualify him for the
Danvers asylum. My hero-worship, coupled with the fact that people generally
were commencing to have less and less to do with him, made him get very
confidential with me; and one evening he hinted that if I were fairly
close-mouthed and none too squeamish, he might show me something rather unusual
- something a bit stronger than anything he had in the house.
'You know,' he said, 'there are things that won't do for Newbury Street - things
that are out of place here, and that can't be conceived here, anyhow. It's my
business to catch the overtones of the soul, and you won't find those in a
parvenu set of artificial streets on made land. Back Bay isn't Boston - it isn't
anything yet, because it's had no time to pick up memories and attract local
spirits. If there are any ghosts here, they're the tame ghosts of a salt marsh
and a shallow cove; and I want human ghosts - the ghosts of beings highly
organized enough to have looked on hell and known the meaning of what they saw.
'The place for an artist to live is the North End. If any aesthete were sincere,
he'd put up with the slums for the sake of the massed traditions. God, man!
Don't you realize that places like that weren't merely made, but actually grew?
Generation after generation lived and felt and died there, and in days when
people weren't afraid to live and fed and die. Don't you know there was a mill
on Copp's Hill in 1632, and that half the present streets were laid out by 1650?
I can show you houses that have stood two centuries and a half and more; houses
that have witnessed what would make a modern house crumble into powder. What do
moderns know of life and the forces behind it? You call the Salem witchcraft a
delusion, but I'll wager my four-times-great-grandmother could have told you
things. They hanged her on Gallows Hill, with Cotton Mather looking
sanctimoniously on. Mather, damn him, was afraid somebody might succeed in
kicking free of this accursed cage of monotony - I wish someone had laid a spell
on him or sucked his blood in the night!
'I can show you a house he lived in, and I can show you another one he was
afraid to enter in spite of all his fine bold talk. He knew things he didn't
dare put into that stupid Magnalia or that puerile Wonders of the Invisible
World. Look here, do you know the whole North End once had a set of tunnels that
kept certain people in touch with each other's houses, and the burying ground,
and the sea? Let them prosecute and persecute above ground - things went on
every day that they couldn't reach, and voices laughed at night that they
couldn't place!
'Why, man, out of ten surviving houses built before 1700 and not moved since
I'll wager that in eight I can show you something queer in the cellar. There's
hardly a month that you don't read of workmen finding bricked-up arches and
wells leading nowhere in this or that old place as it comes down - you could see
one near Henchman Street from the elevated last year. There were witches and
what their spells summoned; pirates and what they brought in from the sea;
smugglers; privateers - and I tell you, people knew how to live, and how to
enlarge the bounds of life, in the old time! This wasn't the only world a bold
and wise man could know - faugh! And to think of today in contrast, with such
pale-pink brains that even a club of supposed artists gets shudders and
convulsions if a picture goes beyond the feelings of a Beacon Street tea-table!
'The only saving grace of the present is that it's too damned stupid to question
the past very closely. What do maps and records and guide-books really tell of
the North End? Bah! At a guess I'll guarantee to lead you to thirty or forty
alleys and networks of alleys north of Prince Street that aren't suspected by
ten living beings outside of the foreigners that swarm them. And what do those
Dagoes know of their meaning? No, Thurber, these ancient places are dreaming
gorgeously and over-flowing with wonder and terror and escapes from the
commonplace, and yet there's not a living soul to understand or profit by them.
Or rather, there's only one living soul - for I haven't been digging around in
the past for nothing !
'See here, you're interested in this sort of thing. What if I told you that I've
got another studio up there, where I can catch the night-spirit of antique
horror and paint things that I couldn't even think of in Newbury Street?
Naturally I don't tell those cursed old maids at the club - with Reid, damn him,
whispering even as it is that I'm a sort of monster bound down the toboggan of
reverse evolution. Yes, Thurber, I decided long ago that one must paint terror
as well as beauty from life, so I did some exploring in places where I had
reason to know terror lives.
'I've got a place that I don't believe three living Nordic men besides myself
have ever seen. It isn't so very far from the elevated as distance goes, but
it's centuries away as the soul goes. I took it because of the queer old brick
well in the cellar - one of the sort I told you about. The shack's almost
tumbling down so that nobody else would live there, and I'd hate to tell you how
little I pay for it. The windows are boarded up, but I like that all the better,
since I don't want daylight for what I do. I paint in the cellar, where the
inspiration is thickest, but I've other rooms furnished on the ground floor. A
Sicilian owns it, and I've hired it under the name of Peters.
'Now, if you're game, I'll take you there tonight. I think you'd enjoy the
pictures, for, as I said, I've let myself go a bit there. It's no vast tour - I
sometimes do it on foot, for I don't want to attract attention with a taxi in
such a place. We can take the shuttle at the South Station for Battery Street,
and after that the wall isn't much.'
Well, Eliot, there wasn't much for me to do after that harangue but to keep
myself from running instead of walking for the first vacant cab we could sight.
We changed to the elevated at the South Station, and at about twelve o'clock had
climbed down the steps at Battery Street and struck along the old waterfront
past Constitution Wharf. I didn't keep track of the cross streets, and can't
tell you yet which it was we turned up, but I know it wasn't Greenough Lane.
When we did turn, it was to climb through the deserted length of the oldest and
dirtiest alley I ever saw in my life, with crumbling-looking gables, broken
small-paned windows, and archaic chimneys that stood out half-disintegrated
against the moonlit sky. I don't believe there were three houses in sight that
hadn't been standing in Cotton Mather's time - certainly I glimpsed at least two
with an overhang, and once I thought I saw a peaked roof-line of the almost
forgotten pre-gambrel type, though antiquarians tell us there are none left in
Boston.
From that alley, which had a dim light, we turned to the left into an equally
silent and still narrower alley with no light at all: and in a minute made what
I think was an obtuse-angled bend towards the right in the dark. Not long after
this Pickman produced a flashlight and revealed an antediluvian ten-panelled
door that looked damnably worm-eaten. Unlocking it, he ushered me into a barren
hallway with what was once splendid dark-oak panelling - simple, of course, but
thrillingly suggestive of the times of Andros and Phipps and the Witchcraft.
Then he took me through a door on the left, lighted an oil lamp, and told me to
make myself at home.
Now, Eliot, I'm what the man in the street would call fairly 'hard-boiled,' but
I'll confess that what I saw on the walls of that room gave me a bad turn. They
were his pictures, you know - the ones he couldn't paint or even show in Newbury
Street - and he was right when he said he had 'let himself go.' Here - have
another drink - I need one anyhow!
There's no use in my trying to tell you what they were like, because the awful,
the blasphemous horror, and the unbelievable loathsomeness and moral foetor came
from simple touches quite beyond the power of words to classify. There was none
of the exotic technique you see in Sidney Sime, none of the trans-Saturnian
landscapes and lunar fungi that Clark Ashton Smith uses to freeze the blood. The
backgrounds were mostly old churchyards, deep woods, cliffs by the sea, brick
tunnels, ancient panelled rooms, or simple vaults of masonry. Copp's Hill
Burying Ground, which could not be many blocks away from this very house, was a
favourite scene.
The madness and monstrosity lay in the figures in the foreground - for Pickman's
morbid art was pre-eminently one of daemoniac portraiture. These figures were
seldom completely human, but often approached humanity in varying degree. Most
of the bodies, while roughly bipedal, had a forward slumping, and a vaguely
canine cast. The texture of the majority was a kind of unpleasant rubberiness.
Ugh! I can see them now! Their occupations - well, don't ask me to be too
precise. They were usually feeding - I won't say on what. They were sometimes
shown in groups in cemeteries or underground passages, and often appeared to be
in battle over their prey - or rather, their treasure-trove. And what damnable
expressiveness Pickman sometimes gave the sightless faces of this charnel booty!
Occasionally the things were shown leaping through open windows at night, or
squatting on the chests of sleepers, worrying at their throats. One canvas
showed a ring of them baying about a hanged witch on Gallows Hill, whose dead
face held a close kinship to theirs.
But don't get the idea that it was all this hideous business of theme and
setting which struck me faint. I'm not a three-year-old kid, and I'd seen much
like this before. It was the faces, Eliot, those accursed faces, that leered and
slavered out of the canvas with the very breath of life! By God, man, I verily
believe they were alive! That nauseous wizard had waked the fires of hell in
pigment, and his brush had been a nightmare-spawning wand. Give me that
decanter, Eliot!
There was one thing called 'The Lesson' - Heaven pity me, that I ever saw it!
Listen - can you fancy a squatting circle of nameless dog-like things in a
churchyard teaching a small child how to feed like themselves? The price of a
changeling, I suppose - you know the old myth about how the weird people leave
their spawn in cradles in exchange for the human babes they steal. Pickman was
showing what happens to those stolen babes - how they grow up - and then I began
to see a hideous relationship in the faces of the human and non-human figures.
He was, in all his gradations of morbidity between the frankly non-human and the
degradedly human, establishing a sardonic linkage and evolution. The dog-things
were developed from mortals!
And no sooner had I wondered what he made of their own young as left with
mankind in the form of changelings, than my eye caught a picture embodying that
very thought. It was that of an ancient Puritan interior - a heavily beamed room
with lattice windows, a settle, and clumsy seventeenth-century furniture, with
the family sitting about while the father read from the Scriptures. Every face
but one showed nobility and reverence, but that one reflected the mockery of the
pit. It was that of a young man in years, and no doubt belonged to a supposed
son of that pious father, but in essence it was the kin of the unclean things.
It was their changeling - and in a spirit of supreme irony Pickman had given the
features a very perceptible resemblance to his own.
By this time Pickman had lighted a lamp in an adjoining room and was politely
holding open the door for me; asking me if I would care to see his 'modern
studies.' I hadn't been able to give him much of my opinions - I was too
speechless with fright and loathing - but I think he fully understood and felt
highly complimented. And now I want to assure you again, Eliot, that I'm no
mollycoddle to scream at anything which shows a bit of departure from the usual.
I'm middle-aged and decently sophisticated, and I guess you saw enough of me in
France to know I'm not easily knocked out. Remember, too, that I'd just about
recovered my wind and gotten used to those frightful pictures which turned
colonial New England into a kind of annexe of hell. Well, in spite of all this,
that next room forced a real scream out of me, and I had to clutch at the
doorway to keep from keeling over. The other chamber had shown a pack of ghouls
and witches over-running the world of our forefathers, but this one brought the
horror right into our own daily life!
Gad, how that man could paint! There was a study called 'Subway Accident,' in
which a flock of the vile things were clambering up from some unknown catacomb
through a crack in the floor of the Boylston Street subway and attacking a crowd
of people on the platform. Another showed a dance on Copp's Hill among the tombs
with the background of today. Then there were any number of cellar views, with
monsters creeping in through holes and rifts in the masonry and grinning as they
squatted behind barrels or furnaces and waited for their first victim to descend
the stairs.
One disgusting canvas seemed to depict a vast cross-section of Beacon Hill, with
ant-like armies of the mephitic monsters squeezing themselves through burrows
that honeycombed the ground. Dances in the modern cemeteries were freely
pictured, and another conception somehow shocked me more than all the rest - a
sense in an unknown vault, where scores of the beasts crowded about one who hod
a well-known Boston guidebook and was evidently reading aloud. All were pointing
to a certain passage, and every face seemed so distorted with epileptic and
reverberant laughter that I almost thought I heard the fiendish echoes. The
title of the picture was, 'Holmes, Lowell and Longfellow Lie Buried in Mount
Auburn.'
As I gradually steadied myself and got readjusted to this second room of
deviltry and morbidity, I began to analyse some of the points in my sickening
loathing. In the first place, I said to myself, these things repelled because of
the utter inhumanity and callous crudity they showed in Pickman. The fellow must
be a relentless enemy of all mankind to take such glee in the torture of brain
and flesh and the degradation of the mortal tenement. In the second place, they
terrified because of their very greatness. Their art was the art that convinced
- when we saw the pictures we saw the daemons themselves and were afraid of
them. And the queer part was, that Pickman got none of his power from the use of
selectiveness or bizarrerie. Nothing was blurred, distorted, or
conventionalized; outlines were sharp and lifelike, and details were almost
painfully defined. And the faces!
It was not any mere artist's interpretation that we saw; it was pandemonium
itself, crystal clear in stark objectivity. That was it, by Heaven! The man was
not a fantaisiste or romanticist at all - he did not even try to give us the
churning, prismatic ephemera of dreams, but coldly and sardonically reflected
some stable, mechanistic, and well--established horror - world which he saw
fully, brilliantly, squarely, and unfalteringly. God knows what that world can
have been, or where he ever glimpsed the blasphemous shapes that loped and
trotted and crawled through it; but whatever the baffling source of his images,
one thing was plain. Pickman was in every sense - in conception and in execution
- a thorough, painstaking, and almost scientific realist.
My host was now leading the way down the cellar to his actual studio, and I
braced myself for some hellish efforts among the unfinished canvases. As we
reached the bottom of the damp stairs he fumed his flash-light to a comer of the
large open space at hand, revealing the circular brick curb of what was
evidently a great well in the earthen floor. We walked nearer, and I saw that it
must be five feet across, with walls a good foot thick and some six inches above
the ground level - solid work of the seventeenth century, or I was much
mistaken. That, Pickman said, was the kind of thing he had been talking about -
an aperture of the network of tunnels that used to undermine the hill. I noticed
idly that it did not seem to be bricked up, and that a heavy disc of wood formed
the apparent cover. Thinking of the things this well must have been connected
with if Pickman's wild hints had not been mere rhetoric, I shivered slightly;
then turned to follow him up a step and through a narrow door into a room of
fair size, provided with a wooden floor and furnished as a studio. An acetylene
gas outfit gave the light necessary for work.
The unfinished pictures on easels or propped against the walls were as ghastly
as the finished ones upstairs, and showed the painstaking methods of the artist.
Scenes were blocked out with extreme care, and pencilled guide lines told of the
minute exactitude which Pickman used in getting the right perspective and
proportions. The man was great - I say it even now, knowing as much as I do. A
large camera on a table excited my notice, and Pickman told me that he used it
in taking scenes for backgrounds, so that he might paint them from photographs
in the studio instead of carting his oufit around the town for this or that
view. He thought a photograph quite as good as an actual scene or model for
sustained work, and declared he employed them regularly.
There was something very disturbing about the nauseous sketches and
half-finished monstrosities that leered round from every side of the room, and
when Pickman suddenly unveiled a huge canvas on the side away from the light I
could not for my life keep back a loud scream - the second I had emitted that
night. It echoed and echoed through the dim vaultings of that ancient and
nitrous cellar, and I had to choke back a flood of reaction that threatened to
burst out as hysterical laughter. Merciful Creator! Eliot, but I don't know how
much was real and how much was feverish fancy. It doesn't seem to me that earth
can hold a dream like that!
It was a colossal and nameless blasphemy with glaring red eyes, and it held in
bony claws a thing that had been a man, gnawing at the head as a child nibbles
at a stick of candy. Its position was a kind of crouch, and as one looked one
felt that at any moment it might drop its present prey and seek a juicier
morsel. But damn it all, it wasn't even the fiendish subject that made it such
an immortal fountain - head of all panic - not that, nor the dog face with its
pointed ears, bloodshot eyes, flat nose, and drooling lips. It wasn't the scaly
claws nor the mould-caked body nor the half-hooved feet - none of these, though
any one of them might well have driven an excitable man to madness.
It was the technique, Eliot - the cursed, the impious, the unnatural technique!
As I am a living being, I never elsewhere saw the actual breath of life so fused
into a canvas. The monster was there - it glared and gnawed and gnawed and
glared - and I knew that only a suspen-sion of Nature's laws could ever let a
man paint a thing like that without a model - without some glimpse of the nether
world which no mortal unsold to the Fiend has ever had.
Pinned with a thumb-tack to a vacant part of the canvas was a piece of paper now
badly curled up - probably, I thought, a photograph from which Pickman meant to
paint a background as hideous as the night-mare it was to enhance. I reached out
to uncurl and look at it, when suddenly I saw Pickman start as if shot. He had
been listening with peculiar intensity ever since my shocked scream had waked
unaccus-tomed echoes in the dark cellar, and now he seemed struck with a fright
which, though not comparable to my own, had in it more of the physical than of
the spiritual. He drew a revolver and motioned me to silence, then stepped out
into the main cellar and closed the door behind him.
I think I was paralysed for an instant. Imitating Pickman's listening, I fancied
I heard a faint scurrying sound somewhere, and a series of squeals or beats in a
direction I couldn't determine. I thought of huge rats and shuddered. Then there
came a subdued sort of clatter which somehow set me all in gooseflesh - a
furtive, groping kind of clatter, though I can't attempt to convey what I mean
in words. It was like heavy wood falling on stone or brick - wood on brick -
what did that make me think of?
It came again, and louder. There was a vibration as if the wood had fallen
farther than it had fallen before. After that followed a sharp grating noise, a
shouted gibberish from Pickman, and the deafening dis-charge of all six chambers
of a revolver, fired spectacularly as a lion--tamer might fire in the air for
effect. A muffled squeal or squawk, and a thud. Then more wood and brick
grating, a pause, and the opening of the door - at which I'll confess I started
violently. Pickman reappeared with his smoking weapon, cursing the bloated rats
that infested the ancient well.
'The deuce knows what they eat, Thurber,' he grinned, 'for those archaic tunnels
touched graveyard and witch-den and sea-coast. But whatever it is, they must
have run short, for they were devilish anxious to get out. Your yelling stirred
them up, I fancy. Better be cautious in these old places- our rodent friends are
the one drawback, though I sometimes think they're a positive asset by way of
atmosphere and colour.'
Well, Eliot, that was the end of the night's adventure. Pickman had promised to
show me the place, and Heaven knows he had done it. He led me out of that tangle
of alleys in another direction, it seems, for when we sighted a lamp-post we
were in a half-familiar street with monotonous rows of mingled tenement blocks
and old houses. Charter Street, it turned out to be, but I was too flustered to
notice just where we hit it. We were too late for the elevated, and walked back
downtown through Hanover Street. I remember that wall:. We switched from Tremont
up Beacon, and Pickman left me at the corner of Joy, where I turned off. I never
spoke to him again.
Why did I drop hirn? Don't be impatient. Wait till I ring for coffee. We've had
enough of the other stuff, but I for one need something. No -it wasn't the
paintings I saw in that place; though I'll swear they were enough to get him
ostracised in nine-tenths of the homes and clubs of Boston, and I guess you
won't wonder now why I have to steer clear of subways and cellars. It was -
something I found in my coat the next morning. You know, the curled-up paper
tacked to the frightful canvas in the cellar; the thing I thought was a
photograph of some scene he meant to use as a background for that monster. That
last scare had come while I was reaching to uncurl it, and it seems I had
vacantly crumpled it into my pocket. But here's the coffee - take it black,
Eliot, if you're wise.
Yes, that paper was the reason I dropped Pickman; Richard Upton Pickman, the
greatest artist I have ever known - and the foulest being that ever leaped the
bounds of life into the pits of myth and madness. Eliot - old Reid was right. He
wasn't strictly human. Either he was born in strange shadow, or he'd found a way
to unlock the forbidden gate. It's all the same now, for he's gone - back into
the fabulous darkness he loved to haunt. Here, let's have the chandelier going.
Don't ask me to explain or even conjecture about what I burned. Don't ask me,
either, what lay behind that mole-like scrambling Pickman was so keen to pass
off as rats. There are secrets, you know, which might have come down from old
Salem times, and Cotton Mather tells even stranger things. You know how damned
lifelike Pickman's paintings were - how we all wondered where he got those
faces.
Well - that paper wasn't a photograph of any background, after all. What it
showed was simply the monstrous being he was painting on that awful canvas. It
was the model he was using - and its background was merely the wall of the
cellar studio in minute detail. But by God, Eliot, it was a photograph from
life!