“If the Dreamer
finds himself in an unknown place, ignorant of the
country and the people,
let him be aware that such place is to be
understood of the Other
World.” - ONEIROCRITICA ACHMETIS.
In the morning I drove down to New
York. There were affairs demanding attention.
Also, I was pressed by an eagerness to get my over-night
work into the hands of the publisher. To be exact,
I wanted to put the manuscript out of reach of the
Thing at the house. Without reason, I had awakened
with that instinct strong within me.
The atmosphere of the city was tonic.
Merely driving through the friendly, crowded streets
was an exhilaration. The practical employment
of the day broomed away fantastic cobwebs. In
the evening I turned toward Connecticut with a feeling
of leaving home behind me. But I would not stay
away from the house for a night, risking that Desire
Michell might come and find me missing. She might
believe I had been seized by cowardice and deserted.
She might never return.
I will not deny that I had lied to
her. There was no intention in me of accepting
her fleeting visits as the utmost she could give.
I meant to snatch her out of darkness and mystery,
to set her in the wholesome sunlight where Phillida
flitted happily. If I could prevent, those gates
of which she vaguely spoke never should close between
us. But it was plain that I must tread warily.
Once frightened away, how could she be found?
Her home, her history, even her face, were unknown
to me. Tracing her by a perfume and a tress of
hair had been tried, and failed. Of her connection
with the Dark Thing I refused to think too deeply.
Her connection with me must come first.
It was not until I passed the cottage
of Mrs. Hill, glimmering whitely in the starlight,
where the road made an angle toward the farm, that
I recalled our talk in her “best room.”
“The Michell family always
owned it. The Reverend Cotton Mather Michell
went to foreign parts for missionary work twenty years
ago and died there”
My lady of the night was Desire Michell. A clue?
“He never married, so the family’s
run out.”
It was damp here in the hollow where
the road dipped down. A chill ran coldly over
me.
Arrived at the garage which had taken
the place of our tumble-down barn, I put the car away
as quietly as possible. Ten o’clock had
struck as I passed through the last village, and our
household was asleep. Moving without unnecessary
noise, I crossed to the house. Bagheera, the cat,
padded across the porch to meet me and rubbed himself
around my legs while I stooped to put the latch-key
in the lock.
As the key slid in place, I heard
the waterfall over the dam abruptly change the sound
of its flow, swelling and accelerating as when a gust
of wind hurries a greater volume of water over the
brink. But there was no wind. Immediately
followed that sound from the lake which I can liken
to nothing better than the smack of huge lips unclosing,
or the suck of a thick body drawing itself from a
bed of mud. The cat thrust himself violently
between my feet and pressed against the house-door
uttering a whimpering mew of urgency. Startled,
I looked in the direction of the lake.
At this distance it showed as a mere
expanse of darkness, only the reflection of a star
here and there revealing the surface as water.
What else could be shown, I rebuked my nerves by querying
of them; and turned the key. Bagheera rushed
into the hall when the door opened wide enough to
admit his body. I followed more sedately and closed
the door behind us both.
Now I was not acquainted with Bagheera’s
night privileges. Did Phillida allow him in the
house, or not? After an instant’s consideration,
I bent and picked him up from his repose on the hall
rug. He should spend the night shut in with me,
out of mischief yet comfortable. Purring in the
curve of my arm, he was carried upstairs without objection
on his part. Until we reached my room! On
its threshold I felt his body stiffen; his yellow
eyes snapped open alertly. Cat antipathy to a
strange place, I reflected, amused, as I switched
on the lights.
“All right, Bagheera,”
I spoke soothingly, and put him upon the rug.
He bounded erect, fur bristling, tail
lashing from side to side after the fashion of a miniature
panther. When I stooped to stroke him, he eluded
my hand. In a gliding run, body crouched, ears
flattened, he sped toward the doorway, was through
it and gone.
Well, I decided, he could not be pursued
all through the house. It would be easier to
explain him to Phillida next morning. I was tired;
pleasantly tired. The day had been filled with
the enthusiasm and congratulations of my associates,
with conferences and plans for launching the new music
via theatres and advertising. It ought to “go
big,” they assured me. In my optimism of
mood, I wondered if I had not already driven off the
Dark Thing, since the girl had come to me the night
past without It appearing before or afterward.
Perhaps, woman-timid, she exaggerated the danger and
It had retreated after the second failure to overpower
me.
I fell asleep with a tranquil conviction
that nothing would disturb my rest this night.
Stillness enveloped me, absolute,
desolate. Silence contained me. Yet the
thought of another scorched against my understanding
in a burning communication of intelligence.
“Man,” It commanded, “I am here.
Fear!”
And I knew that which was my body
did fear to the point of death, but that which was
myself stood up in revolt.
“Crouch,” It bade.
“Crouch, pygmy, and beg. Fear! The
blood crawls in the veins, the heart checks, the nerves
shrink and wither man, your life wanes
thin and faint. Down shall your race
affront mine?”
My heart did stagger and beat slow.
Life crept a sluggish current. But there was
another force that stiffened to resistance, and gathered
itself to compact strength within me.
“No,” my thought refused
the dark intelligence. “I am not yours.
Command your own, not me.”
“Weakling, you have touched
that which is mine. Into my path you have dared
step. Back for in my breath you die!”
The air my lungs drew in was foul
and poisonous. With more and more difficulty
my heart labored. Confused memories came to me
of men found dead in their beds in haunted rooms.
Would morning find me so? Better that way than
to yield to the Thing! Better
I struggled erect; or fancied so.
Now I saw myself as one who stood
with folded arms fronting a breach in a colossal wall.
Huge, immeasurably huge that cliff reared itself beyond
the sight and ranged away on either side into unknown
distances, dully glistening like gray ice, unbroken
save in this place. The gray strand on which
I stood was a narrow strip following the foot of the
wall. Behind me lay a vast, unmoving ocean banked
over with an all-concealing mist. Not a ripple
stirred along that weird beach, or a ray changed the
fixed gray twilight. And I was afraid, for my
danger was not of the common dangers of mankind, but
that which freezes the blood of man when he draws
near the supernatural; the ancient fear.
I stood there, while sweat poured
painfully from me, and fronted my enemy who pressed
me hard.
The Thing was at the breach, couched
in the great cleft that split the Barrier, darkness
within darkness. Unseen, I felt the glare of Its
hate beat upon me. From It emanated deathly cold,
like the nearness of an iceberg in the night, with
an odor of damp and mold.
“Puny earth-dweller, lost here,”
Its menace breathed, “what keeps you from destruction?
For you the circle has not been traced nor the pentagram
fixed, for you no law has been thrust down. Trespass
is death. Die, then.”
Only my will held It from me, and
I felt that will reel in sickened bewilderment.
I had no strength to answer, only the steadfast instinct
to oppose.
The Thing did not pass. There
in the breach It ravened for me, thrust Itself toward
me, pressed against the thin veil of separation between
us. I saw nothing, yet knew where It raised Itself,
gigantic in formlessness more dreadful than any shape.
Its whispered threats broke against me like an evil
surf.
“Man, the prey is mine.
Would you challenge me? The woman is mine by the
pact of centuries. Save yourself. Escape.”
The woman? Startled wonder filled
me. Was I then fighting for Desire Michell?
Out of the air I was answered as if
her voice had spoken; certainty came to grip me as
if with her small hands. She had no help but in
me. If I fell, she fell. If I stood firm?
Exultant resolve flared strong and high within me.
My will to protect leaped forward.
The Thing shrank. It dwindled
back through the gap in the Barrier. But as It
fled, a last venomous message drifted to me:
“Again! And again! Tire but once,
pygmy!”
I was sitting up in bed in my lighted
room, my fingers clutching the chain of the lamp beside
me. Was some dark bulk just fading from beyond
my window? Or was I still dreaming?
I was trembling with cold, drenched
as with water so that my relaxing hand made a wet
mark on the table beneath the lamp. This much
might have been caused by nightmare. But what
sane man had nightmares like these?
When I was able, I rose, changed to
dry garments and wrapped myself in a heavy bathrobe.
There was an electric coffee service in my room kept
for occasions when I worked late into the night.
I made strong black coffee now and drank it as near
boiling as practicable. Presently the blood again
moved warmly in my veins.
Then I knew that the chill in the
room was not a delusion of my chilled body. I
was warm, yet the air around me remained moist and
cold, unlike a summer night. It seemed air strangely
thickened and soiled, as pure water may be muddied
by the passage of some unclean body. In this
atmosphere persisted a fetid smell of mold and decay,
warring with the homely scent of coffee and the fragrance
of the pomander beneath my pillow.
I was more shaken, more exhausted
by this encounter with the unknown than by either
of my former experiences. A fact which drove home
the grim farewell of my enemy! Tire but once, pygmy!
Desire herself had foretold that the dark Thing would
wear me down.
Well, perhaps! But not without
fighting for Its victory. At least I would be
no supine victim. Already I had forced my way where?
Where was that Barrier before which I had stood?
Awe sank coldly through me at memory of that colossal
land where I was pygmy indeed, an insolent human intruder
upon the unhuman. What other shapes of dread stalked
and watched beyond that titanic wall? By what
swollen conceit could I hope to win against Them?
I would not consider escape by flight,
even if the end had been certain destruction.
But my head sank to my hands beneath the weight of
a profound depression and discouragement.
It was the hour before dawn, traditionally
the worst for man. The hour superstition sets
apart for its own, when the life flame burns lowest.
At a distance a dog had treed some little wood creature,
and bayed monotonously.
There was a weakness at the core of
my strength. I waged this combat for the sake
of Desire Michell. But what was she to whom the
Thing laid claim by the pact of centuries?
Darkness began to tinge with light.
Pale gray filtered into the dusk with grudging slowness.
As day approached I saw that a fog enfolded the house
in vapor, stealing into the room in coils and swirls
like thin smoke. The lamps looked sickly and
dim. I forced away my languor, rose and walked
to the nearest window.
Something was moving up the slope
from the lake; a dim shape about which the fog clung
in steamy billows. My shaken nerves thrilled unpleasantly.
What stirred at this empty hour? What should loom
so tall?
A moment later the figure was near
enough to be distinguished as Ethan Vere, bearing
several long fishing-rods over his shoulder.
“Vere!” I hailed him,
with mingled relief and utter disgust with myself.
“Anything going on so early?”
He looked up at me I never
saw Vere startled and came on to stop beneath
the window. Taking off his cap, he ran his fingers
through his black curls, pushing their wetness from
his forehead. I noticed how the mists painted
him with a spectral pallor.
“Good morning, Mr. Locke,”
he greeted me. “Just as I’ve been
thinking, there are some big snapping-turtles about
the lake and creek. I guessed there’d be
some war between them and me before that water was
safe for use! One of the fellows dragged a duck
under, drowned it and started feeding right before
my eyes, just now.”
“We will have to get a canoe.”
He nodded placid assent.
“That’ll look pretty on
the lake. Phillida will like it. But I guess
I’ll keep a homely old flat-bottomed punt out
of sight around some corner for work. The other
craft goes over too prompt for jobs like mine, and
don’t hold enough. I’m going to fetch
my rifle, now. I’d admire to blow that
duck-eater’s ugly head off.”
“I will get into some clothes
and be right with you,” I invited myself to
the hunt.
“I’d like to have you,”
he replied with his quaint politeness. There
were times when I could visualize Vere’s New
England mother as if I had known her.
The human interlude had been enough
to dispel the black humors of the night. When
I was ready to go out, I opened the drawer that held
the copper-bronze braid and took it into my hand.
How vital with youth its crisp resilience felt in
my clasp, I thought; young, too, were its luxuriance
and shining color. Nonsense, indeed, to fancy
ghostliness here or the passing of musty centuries
over the head that had worn this tress! A flood
of reassurance rose high in me. Whatever the Thing
might be, I would trust the girl Desire Michell.
Yes, and for her I would stand fast at that Barrier
until victory declared for the enemy or for me.
Until It passed me, It should not reach her.
I went downstairs to join Vere.
The brightening mist was cool and fresh. There
was neither horror nor defeat in the promise of the
morning.