“I have made a
story that hath not been heard;
A great feat of arms
that hath not been seen!”
- AMENEMHE’ET.
I woke slowly. It seemed that
I struggled to wakefulness as a spent swimmer struggles
toward shore. Up, up through deep poles of sleep
I dragged myself, driven by some dimly sensed necessity.
Peril had stolen upon me in my unconsciousness, a
stalking beast. I knew that with nightmare certainty.
It was as if my soul stood affrighted beside my brain,
wailing upon its ally to arouse and stand with it against
the menace. And my brain answered, but with infinite
difficulty; like a drugged warrior who hears the clang
of battle and forces numbed limbs to stir, arise and
grasp the sword.
I was awake. Suddenly; the swimmer reaching the
surface!
How shall I describe Fear incarnate?
The Horror was at the open window opposite the foot
of my bed, staring in upon me with slavering covetousness
of the prey It watched. I lay there, and felt
It seek for me across the darkness with tentacles
of evil that groped for some part of me upon which
It might lay hold.
The room was still. Between the
draperies, the window showed nothing to the eye except
a dark square faintly tinged with the night luminance
of the sky. There was nothing to see; nothing
to hear. But gradually I became aware of a hideous
odor of mould and mildew, of must and damp decay that
loaded the air with disgust.
I lay there, and opposed the approach
of the Thing with all the will of resistance in me.
The sweat poured from my whole body, so that I lay
as in water and the drenched linen of my sleeping-suit
clung coldly to me.
It could not pass the defense of my
will. I felt the malevolent fury of Its striving.
Like the antennæ of some monstrous insect brushing
about my body, I felt Its evil desires wavering about
my mental self, examining, searching where It might
seize. It had not yet found the weakness It sought.
If It did?
The sickening, vault-like air I must
breathe fought for It. So did the darkness.
All this time, or the time that seemed so long, I had
no more command of my body than a cataleptic patient.
Every ounce of force in me had rushed to support the
two warriors of the battle: the brain and will
that opposed the clutching menace. But now, as
I grew more and more fully awake, out of very loathing
and danger I drew determination. Slowly, painfully,
I began to free my right arm and hand from this paralysis.
As I advanced in resolution, the Thing
seemed to recoil. Inch by inch, I moved my hand
across the bed toward my reading-lamp on the stand
beside me. In proportion as I moved, the dreadful
tentacles drew back and away. A last effort,
and the chain was in my fingers. I jerked spasmodically.
Rosy light from the lamp flashed over
the room. All the quiet comfort of the place
sprang into view as if to reassure me; the piano open
as I had left it, the table strewn with my evening’s
work, each bit of furniture, each drapery or trinket
undisturbed.
The Thing was gone. In the hush
I heard my panting breath and the tick of my watch
on the stand. It was two o’clock in the
morning. As I mechanically read the hour, a cock
somewhere shrilled its second call before dawn.
The Horror had been true to the legendary time of
apparitions.
Weak and chilled, I presently made
an attempt to rise. But at the movement, a wave
of sickness swept through me. The room seemed
to rock and swing. I had just time to recognize
the grip of faintness before I fell back on the pillow.
Vivifying sweetness was in my nostrils,
which expanded avidly for this new air. Perfume
that was a tonic, a subtle elixir; that sparkled upon
the senses, sank suavely and healingly through me,
so that I seemed to draw refreshment with each breath.
Reluctantly, I aroused more and more in response to
this unusual stimulant; which somehow gave delicious
rest yet drew me from it into life.
I could have sworn someone had touched
me. With some exclamation on my lips, I started
up; to find myself in darkness. The lamps I had
left lighted burned no longer.
This time there was no terror in my
awakening. No Thing of nightmare pressed against
my window-space. The fragrance persisted; the
ghastly smell of mould and corruption was gone.
But I wanted light for all that! Reaching for
the lamp beside me on its stand, I found the little
chain. I felt the chain draw in my fingers and
heard the click that should have meant light; but
no answering brightness sprang up.
Instead, across the dark came a voice;
a voice low-pitched, soft without weakness, keen with
exultation:
“Victory! Victory!
You have no need of light who conquered
in darkness! The Enemy has fled. It has
covered the Unspeakable Eyes from the eyes of a man.
By the will of a man Its will has been forbidden.
It has dragged Itself back to the Barrier and cowers
there for this time. Oh, soldier on the dreadful
Frontier, be proud, putting off your armor tonight!
Be proud, and rest.”
Those practical people who are never
unnerved by the intangible, may gauge if they can
the weirdness of this address following my first experience,
and then smile their contempt of me. For I confess
to a moment of uncanny chill. The voice was that
of the woman who had trailed her braid of hair into
my grasp, the night I first slept here. But, how
did she know of the Thing’s visit to me?
I had not spoken nor uttered a cry throughout Its
visitation. How could she have knowledge of that
silent struggle between It and me, or of my escape
so narrowly won. How, unless she too?
I groped for a glass of water left
on my stand. I drank, and felt my dry throat
relax.
“Who are you?” I asked.
A sigh trembled toward me.
“I am one who stands on the
threshold of your beautiful world, as a traveler stands
outside a lighted palace, gazing where she may not
enter, and feeling the winter about her.”
“Do not suppose me quite a superstitious
fool,” I said bruskly. “You are a
woman. The woman who left a very real braid of
hair in my hands, not long ago, to save herself from
capture!”
“Yes. Yet, I am neither
more nor less real than the One which came for you
a while since.”
“Then my nightmare was real?
A thing of flesh and blood, or clever mechanism?
You know it. Perhaps you produced it?”
The rush of my angry suspicion dashed
in useless heat against her cool melancholy.
“Real? What is real?”
she challenged me. “Turn to the sciences
that you should understand better than I, and ask.
Stretch out your arm. For a million years men
have vowed you touch empty air. They saw and felt
it empty. But now a child knows air swarms with
life. In that thin nothingness, crowd and move
the distributors of death, disease, health, vigor existence
itself. The water you have just tasted is pure
and clear in the glass? Pure? Each drop
is an ocean of inhabitants clean and unclean.
I speak commonplaces. But is there no knowledge
not yet commonplace? Oh man, with all the unfathomed
universe about us, dare you pronounce what
is real?”
“What is natural,” I began.
She interrupted me.
“Doubtless what is not natural
cannot and does not exist. Have you, then, measured
Nature? He was a great thinker, one of deep knowledge,
who compared Man to a child wandering on the shore
of a vast ocean and picking up a pebble here and there.”
“Of what would you convince me? And, why?”
“Of what? Danger!
Why? Would you watch a man enter a jungle where
some hideous beast crouched in ambush, while you neither
warned nor armed him? I am here to turn you back.
I am the native of that country who runs to cry warning
to a stranger; to put into his hand the weapon of
understanding.”
So solemn, so urgent a sincerity was
in her voice, that again chill touched me. The
clammy dampness of my garments hung on my limbs as
a reminder of the Thing, real or unreal, that twice
had made Its presence felt beyond denial. Wild
as her words might be, their incredible suggestion
was matched by my experience. I sought with my
eyes for her, before answering. The room was
dark, yet the darker bulk of furniture loomed out
enough to be distinguishable. No figure was visible,
even traced by the direction of her voice. I
was certain that any movement to seek her would mean
her flight.
“Do you mean that you want me
to go away from this place?” I questioned.
The sigh came again, just audibly.
“Yes. Why should you die?”
Was I wrong in fancying the sigh regretful?
Did I not hear a wistful reluctance in her tone?
Excitement ran along my veins like burning oil on
flowing water. The woman hidden in the dark, the
association of her voice with the strange, exquisite
fragrance I breathed, the thought of beauty in her
born of that lovely braid of hair I had seized all
blended in a spell of human magic. I have said
I was a man much alone, and a lame man who craved
adventure.
“Just now,” I said, “you spoke of
some victory. You called me soldier.”
“Is it not victory to have driven
back the Dark One? Is he not a soldier who, aroused
in the night to meet dreadful assault, sets his face
to the enemy and battles front to front? Before
the Eyes men and women have died or lost reason, or
fled across half the world, broken by fear. What
are the wars of man with man, compared with a man’s
battle against the Unknown? I honor you!
I salute you! But soldier alone on
the forbidden Frontier, go! Join your fellows
in the world alloted to you; live, nor seek to tread
where mankind is not sent.”
“How can there be wrong in facing a situation
that I did not cause?”
“There is no wrong. There is danger.”
“What danger?” I persisted.
“Can you ask me?” she
retorted with a hint of impatience. “You
who have felt Its grope toward your inner spirit?”
I shuddered, remembering the brush
of those antennæ, exploring, examining! But
I persisted, beyond my every-day nature. Her speech
was for me like that liquor distilled from honey that
inflamed the Norsemen to war fury.
“You say I came off victor,” I reminded
her.
“Yes. But can you conquer
again, and again, and again? Will you not feel
strength fail, health break, madness creep close?
Will you not be worn down by the Thing that knows
no weariness and fall its prey at last?”
“It will come often?”
“Until one conquers, It will come.”
I forced away a qualm of panic.
“How can you know?” I demanded.
“Ask me not. I do know.”
“But, look here!” I argued.
“If as you say, this creature was not meant
to meet mankind, how can It come after me this way?”
She seemed to pause, finally answering with reluctance:
“Because, two centuries ago
one of the race of man here broke through the awful
Barrier that rears a wall between human kind and those
dark forms of life to which It belongs. For know
that a human will to evil can force a breach in that
Barrier, which those on the other side never could
pass without such aid.”
I neither understood nor believed.
At least, I told myself that I did not believe her
wild, legendary explanation of the nightmare Thing
that visited me. I did not want to believe.
Neither did I wish to offend her by saying so!
“You will go,” she presently
mistook my silence for surrender. “You are
wise as well as brave. Good go with you!
Good walk beside you in that happy world where you
live!”
“Wait!” I cried sharply.
Her voice had seemed to recede from me, a retreating
whisper at the last word. “No! I will
not go. I must I will know more of
you. You are no phantom. Who are you?
Where when can I see you in daylight?”
“Never.”
“Why not?”
“I came to hold a light before the dreadful
path. The warning is given.”
“But you will come again?”
“Never.”
“What? The Thing will come, and not you?”
“What have I to do with It,
who am more helpless before It than you? Go;
and give thanks that you may.”
“Listen,” I commanded,
as firmly as I could. “I am not going away
from this house without better reason. All this
is too sudden and too new to me. If you have
more knowledge than I, you have no right to desert
me half-convinced of what I should do.”
“I can stay no longer.”
“Why can you not come again?”
“You plan to trap me,” she reproached.
“No. Word of honor!
You shall come and go as you please; I will not make
a movement toward you.”
“Not try to see me, even?”
she hesitated.
“Not even that, if you forbid.”
There was a long pause.
“Perhaps”
drifted to me, a faint distant word on the wind that
had begun to stir the tree-branches and flutter through
my room.
She was gone. There sounded a
click whose meaning did not at once strike me, intent
as I was upon the girl. Twice I spoke to her,
receiving no reply, before judging that I might rise
without breaking my promise. Then I recognized
the click of a moment before, as that of the electric
switch beside my door. No doubt she had turned
off my lights at her entrance and now restored them.
I pulled the chain of my reading-lamp, and this time
light flashed over the room.
I had known no one would be there,
and no one was. Yet I was disappointed.
As I drew on my dressing-gown I heard
a clock downstairs strike four. Not a breath
or a step stirred in the house. The damp freshness
of coming dawn crept in my windows, bringing scents
of tansy and bitter-sweet from the fields to strive
against the unknown fragrance in my room. The
melancholy depression of the hour weighed upon me.
Beneath the gentle strife of sweet odors, my nostrils
seemed to detect a lurking foulness of mould and decay.
I sat down at my desk, to wait beside
the lamp for the coming of sunrise.