Latest / Lights Out / Colour Out of Space-H. P. Lovecraft

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Colour Out of Space-H. P. Lovecraft · Lights Out

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  Speaker 1: Part one of The Color Out of Space. This is
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  Speaker 1: a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Recording by Phil Schinever The Color Out of Space by H. P. Lovecraft,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Part one. West of Arkham, the hills rise wild, and
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has
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  Speaker 1: ever cut. There are dark, narrow glens where the tree
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: caught the glint of sunlight. On the gentler slopes, there
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: are forms ancient and rocky, with squat moss coated cottages
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  Speaker 1: brooding eternally over old New England secrets in the Lee
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: of Great Ledges. But these are all vacant now, the
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: white chimneys crumbling, and the shingle sides bolding perilously beneath
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: low gambrel roofs. The old folk have gone away, and
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: the foreigners do not like to live there. French Canadians
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: have tried it, Italians have tried it, and the Poles
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  Speaker 1: have come and departed. It is not because of anything
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  Speaker 1: that can be seen or heard or handled, but because
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  Speaker 1: of something that is imagined. The place is not good
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  Speaker 1: for imagination and does not bring RESTful dreams at night.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: It must be this which keeps the foreigners away. For
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: old Ami Pierce has never told him of anything he
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: recalls from the strange days. Amy, whose head has been
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: a little queer for years, is the only one who
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: still remains or who ever talks of the strange days,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: and he dares to do this because his house is
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  Speaker 1: so near the open fields and the traveled roads around Orkham.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: There was once a road over the hills and through
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: the valleys that ran straight where the Blasted Heath is now,
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: but people ceased to use it, and a new road
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: was laid, curving far toward the south. Traces of the
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: old wind can still be found amid the weed of
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: a returning wilderness, and some of them will doubtless linger
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: even when half the hollows are flooded for the new reservoir.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Then the dark woods will be cut down, and the
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: Blasted Heath will slumber far below blue waters whose surface
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: will mirror the sky and ripple in the sun, and
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: the secrets of the strange days will be one with
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: the deep secrets, one with the hidden lore. Of old
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: ocean and all the mystery of primal Earth. When I
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: went into the hills and vales to survey for the
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: new reservoir, they told me the place was evil. They
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: told me this in Orkhambe, And because that is a
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: very old town, full of which legends, I thought the
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: evil must be something which grandmaws had whispered to children
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: through centuries. The name blasted Heath seemed to me very
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: odd and theatrical, and I wondered how it had come
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: into the folklore of a Puritan people. Then I saw
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: that dark westward tangle of glens and slopes for myself,
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: and ceased to wonder at anything besides its own elder mystery.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: It was morning when I saw it, but shadow lurked
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: always there. The trees grew too thickly, and their trunks
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: were too big for any healthy New England wood. There
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: was too much silence in the dim alleys between them,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: and the floor was too soft with the dank moss
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: and mattings of infinite years of decay. In the open spaces,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: mostly along the line of the old road, there were
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: little hillside farms, sometimes with all the buildings standing, sometimes
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: with only one or two and sometimes with only a
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: lone chimney or fast filling cellar. Weeds and briar reigned
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: and furtive wild things rustled in the undergrowth. Upon everything
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: was a haze of restlessness and oppression, a touch of
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  Speaker 1: the unreal and the grotesque, as if some vital element
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: of prospective archiadoscuro were awry. I did not wonder that
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: the foreigners would not stay, for this is no region
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: to sleep in. It was too much like a landscape
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: of salvator rosa, too much like some forbidding wood cut
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: in a tale of terror. But even all this was
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: not so bad as the blasted heath. I knew it
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: the moment I came upon it at the bottom of
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: a spacious valley. For no other name could fit such thing,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: or any other thing fit such a name. It was
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  Speaker 1: as if the poet had coined the phrase from having
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: seen this one particular region. It must, I thought, as
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  Speaker 1: I viewed it, be the outcome of a fire. But
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: why had nothing new ever grown over those five acres
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: of gray desolation that sprawled open to the sky like
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: a great spot eaten by acid In the woods and fields.
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  Speaker 1: It lay largely to the north of the ancient road line,
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  Speaker 1: but encroached a little on the other side. I felt
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  Speaker 1: an odd reluctance about approaching, and did so at last
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  Speaker 1: only because my business took me through and passed it.
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  Speaker 1: There was no vegetation of any kind on that broad expanse,
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  Speaker 1: but only a fine gray dust or ash, which no
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: wind seemed ever to blow about. The trees near it
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: were sickly and stunted, and many dead trunks stood on
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  Speaker 1: a rotting at the rim. As I walked hurriedly by,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: I saw the tumbled bricks and stones of an old
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: chimney and cellar on my right, and the yawning black
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: maw of an abandoned well, whose stagnant vapors played strange
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: tricks with the hues of the sunlight. Even the long
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: dark woodland climbed beyond seemed welcome in contrast, and I
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: marveled no more that the frightened whispers of Arkham people.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: There had been no house or ruin near even in
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  Speaker 1: the old days. The place must have been lonely and remote,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: and at twilight, dreading to repass that ominous spot, I
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: walked circuitously back to the town by the curving road
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: on the south I vaguely wished some clouds would gather,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: for an odd timidity about the deep sky voids above
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: had crept into my soul. In the evening I asked
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: old people in Arkham about the blasted heath and what
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: was meant by that phrase strange days, which so many
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: evasively muttered. I could not, however, get any good answers,
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  Speaker 1: except that all the mystery was much more recent than
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: I had dreamed. It was not a matter of old
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: legendary at all, but something within the time of those
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: who spoke. It had happened in the eighties, and a
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: family had disappeared or was killed. Speakers would not be exact,
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  Speaker 1: And because they all told me to pay no attention
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: to old Ammy Pierce's crazy tales, I sought him out
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: the next morning, having heard that he lived alone in
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: the ancient Tottering cottage where the trees first began to
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: get very thick. It was a fearsomely ancient place, and
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: had begun to exude the faint miasmal odor which clings
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: about houses that have stood too long. Only with persistent
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: knocking could I rouse the aged man, And when he
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: shuffled timidly to the door. I could tell he was
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  Speaker 1: not glad to see me. He was not so feeble
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  Speaker 1: as I had expected, but his eyes drooped in a
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  Speaker 1: curious way, and his unkempt clothing and white beard made
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: him seem very worn and dismal. Not knowing just how
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: he could best be launched on his tails, I feigned
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  Speaker 1: a matter of business, told him of my surveying, and
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: asked vague questions about the district. He was far brighter
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  Speaker 1: and more educated than I had been led to think,
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: and before I knew it, he grasped quite as much
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  Speaker 1: of the subject as any man I had talked with
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  Speaker 1: in Arkham. He was not like other rustics I had
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  Speaker 1: known in the regions where reservoirs were to be from him.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: There were no protests at the miles of old wood
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: and farm land to be blotted out, though perhaps there
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: would have been, had not his home lain outside the
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: bounds of the future lake. Relief was all that he showed,
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  Speaker 1: relief at the doom of the dark ancient valleys through
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  Speaker 1: which he had roamed all his life. They were better
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  Speaker 1: under water, now better under water since the strange days.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: And with this opening, his husky voice sank low, while
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: his body leaned forward, and his right forefinger began to point,
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  Speaker 1: shakily and impressively. It was then that I heard the story,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: and as the rambling voice scraped and whispered on, I
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: shivered again and again. Despite the summer day. Often I
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: had to recall the speaker from ramblings peace out scientific
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: points which he knew only by fading parrot memory of
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Professor's talk our bridge over gaps, where his sense of
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: logic and continuity broke down. When he was done, I
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  Speaker 1: did not wonder that his mind had snapped a trifle,
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  Speaker 1: or that the folk of Arkham would not speak much
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  Speaker 1: of the blasted heath. I hurried back before sunset to
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  Speaker 1: my hotel, unwilling to have the stars come out above
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  Speaker 1: me in the open, and the next day returned to
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  Speaker 1: Boston to give up my position. I could not go
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: into that dim chaos of old forest and slope again,
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: or face another time the gray blasted heath, where the
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: black well yawned deep beside the tumbled bricks and stones.
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  Speaker 1: The reservoir will soon be built now than all those
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: elder secrets will lie safe forever under watery fathoms. But
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: even then I do not believe I would like to
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: visit that country by night, at least, not when the
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: sinister stars are out, And nothing could bribe me to
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  Speaker 1: drink the new city water of Arkham. It all began,
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: old Amy said, with the meteorite. Before that time, there
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  Speaker 1: had been no wild legends at all, since the witch trials.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: And even then these western woods were not feared half
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  Speaker 1: so much as a small island in the Meskatonic where
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: the devil held court beside a curious stone altar older
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: than the Indians. These were not haunted woods, and their
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: fantastic dusk was never terrible till the strange days. Then
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: there had come that white noontide cloud, that string of
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: explosions in the air, and that pillar of smoke from
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  Speaker 1: the valley far in the wood, And by night all
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: Arkham had heard of the great rock that fell out
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  Speaker 1: of the sky and bedded itself in the ground beside
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  Speaker 1: the well at the Nahom Gardner place. That was the
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  Speaker 1: house which had stood where the blasted heath was to come,
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  Speaker 1: the trim white Nahom Gardener House amidst its fertile gardens
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: and orchards. Nahoum had come to town to tell people
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: about the stone, and had dropped in at Amy Pierce's
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: on the way. Amy was forty then, and all the
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: queer things were fixed very strongly in his mind. He
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: and his wife had gone with the three professors from
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  Speaker 1: Miskatonic University, who hastened out the next morning to see
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: the weird visitor from unknown stellar space and had wondered
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: why Nahom had called it so large the day before.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: It had shrunk, Nahom said, as he pointed out the
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: big brownish mound above the ripped earth and charred grass
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: near the archaic well sweep in his front yard. But
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: the the wise men answered that stones do not shrink.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: Its heat lingered persistently, and Naholm declared it had glowed
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: faintly in the night. The professors tried it with a
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: geologist's hammer and found it to be oddly soft. It was,
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: in truth so soft as to be almost plastic, and
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: they gouged rather than chipped a specimen to take back
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: to the college for testing. They took it in an
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: old pale borrowed from Nahum's kitchen, or even the small
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: piece refused to grow cool. On the trip back, they
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: stopped at Amy's to rest, and seemed thoughtful when Missus
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Pearce remarked that the fragment was growing smaller and burning
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: the bottom of the pail. Truly it was not large,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: but perhaps they had taken less than they thought. The
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  Speaker 1: day after that, all this was in June of eighty two,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: the professors had trooped out again in great excitement. As
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: they passed to AMI's, they told him what queer things
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: the specimen had done, and how it had faded wholly
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: away when they put it in a glass speaker. The
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: beaker was gone too, and the wise men talked of
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: the strange stone's affinity for silicon. It had acted quite
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: unbelievably in that well ordered laboratory, doing nothing at all
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: and showing no occluded gases when heated on charuckhole, being
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: wholly negative in the borax speed, and soon proving itself
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  Speaker 1: absolutely none volatile at any producible temperature, including that of
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: the oxy hydrogen blowpipe on an anvil. It appeared highly meliable,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: and in the dark its luminosity was very marked. Stubbornly
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: refusing to grow cool, it soon had the college in
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: a state of real excitement, and when upon heating before
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: the spectroscope, it displayed shining bands unlike any known colors
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: of the normal spectrum. There was much breathless talk of
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: new elements, bizarre optical properties, and other things which puzzled
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: men of science. Are wont to say when faced by
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: the unknown hot as it was, they tested it in
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: a crucible with all the proper reagents. Water did nothing,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: Hydrochloric acid was the same nitric acid, and even aquabrigia
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: merely hissed and spattered against its torred invulnerability. AMI had
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: difficulty in recalling all these things, but recognized some solvents
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: as I mentioned them in the usual auto of use.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: There were ammonia and caustic soda, alcohol and ether nauseaus,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: carbon disulfide, and a dozen others. But although the weight
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: grew steadily less as time passed and the fragments seemed
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: to be slightly cooling, there was no change in the
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: solvents to show that they had attacked the substance at all.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: It was metal, though beyond a doubt it was magnetic
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: for one thing, and after its immersion in the acid solvents,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: there seemed to be faint trait of the wind mustatn
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: figures found on meteoric iron When the cooling had grown
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: very considerable. The testing was carried on in glass, and
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: it was in a glass beaker that they left all
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: the chips made of the original fragment during the work.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: The next morning, both chips and beaker were gone without trace,
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: and only a charred spot marked the place on the
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: wooden shelf where they had been. All this, the professors
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: told Amy as they paused at his door, and once
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: more he went with them to see the stony messenger
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: from the stars, though this time his wife did not
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: accompany him. It had now most certainly shrunk, and even
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: the sober professors could not doubt the truth of what
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: they saw. All around the dwindling brown lump near the
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: well was a vacant space, except where the earth had
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: caved in, and where as it had been a good
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: seven feet across the day before, it was now scarcely five.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: It was still hot, and the sages studied its surface
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: curiously as they detached another and larger piece with hammer
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: and chisel. They gouged deeply this time, and as they
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: pried away the smaller mass, they saw that the core
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: of the thing was not quite homogeneous. They had uncovered
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: what seemed to be the side of a large colored
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: globule embedded in the substance. The collar, which resembled some
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: of the bands of the meteor's strange spectrum, was almost
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: impossible to describe, and it was only by analogy that
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: they called it color at all. Its texture was glossy,
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: and upon tapping it appeared to promise both brittleness and hollowness.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: One of the professors gave it a smart blow with
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: a hammer and it burst with a nervous little pup.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Nothing was emitted, and all trace of the thing vanished.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: With the puncturing, it left a small hollow spherical space
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: about three inches across, and all thought it probable that
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: others would be discovered as the enclosing substance wasted away.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: Conjecture was vain, so after a futile attempt to find
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: additional globules by drilling, the seekers left again with their
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: new specimen, which proved, however, as baffling in the laboratory
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: as its predecessor, aside from being almost plastic, having heat
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: magnetism and slight luminosity, cooling slightly in powerful acids, possessing
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: an unknown spectrum, wasting away in air, and attacking silicone
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: compounds with mutual destruction. As a result, it presented no
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: identifying features whatsoever, and at the end of the tests
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: the college scientists were forced to own that they could
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: not place it. It was nothing of this earth, but
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: a piece of the great outside, and as such dowered
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: with outside properties and obedient to outside laws. That night
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: there was a thunder storm, and with the professor went
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: out to Naholmes. The next day they met with bitter disappointment.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: The stone magnetic, as it had been, must have had
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: some peculiar electrical property, for it had drawn the lightning,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: as Nahoum said, with a singular persistence, six times within
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: an hour. The former saw the lightning strike the furrow
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: in the front yard, and when the storm was over
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: nothing remained but a ragged pit by the ancient well sweep,
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: half choked with caved in earth. Digging had borne no fruit,
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: and the scientists verified the fact of the utter vanishment.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: The failure was total, so that nothing was left to
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: do but go back to the laboratory and test again
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: the disappearing fragment, left carefully cased in lead. That fragment
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: lasted a week, at the end of which nothing of
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: value had been learned of it. When it had gone,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: no residue was left behind, and in time the professors
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: felt scarcely sure they had seen with waking eyes that
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: cryptic vestige of the fathomless gulfs outside, that lone weird
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: message from other universes and other realms of matter, force
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: and entity, as was natural. The Arkham Papers made much
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: of the incident with its collegial sponsoring, and sent reporters
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: to talk with Nahoum Gardner and his family. At least
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: one Boston Daily also sent a scribe, and Nahom quickly
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: became a kind of local celebrity. He was a lean,
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: genial person of about fifty, living with his wife and
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: three sons on the pleasant farmstead in the valley. He
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: and Amy exchanged visits frequently, as did their wives, and
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: Amy had nothing but praise for him after all these years.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: He seemed slightly proud of the notice his place had attracted,
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: and talked often of the meteorite. In the succeeding weeks
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: that July and August were hot, and Nahom worked hard
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: at his haying in the ten acre pasture across Chapam Brook,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: His rattling wain wearing deep ruts in the shadowy lanes
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: between the labor tired him more than it had in
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: other years, and he felt that age was beginning to
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: tell on him. Then fell the time of fruit and harvest.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: The pears and apples slowly ripened, and Nahum vowed that
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: his arches were prospering as never before. The fruit was
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: growing to phenomenal size and unwonted gloss, and in such
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: abundance that extra barrels were ordered to handle the future crop.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: But with the ripening came sore disappointment, for of all
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: the gorgeous array of specious lusciousness, at a single jot
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: was fit to eat into the fine flavor of the
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: pears and apples had crept a stealthy bitterness and sickishness,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: so that even the smallest of bites induced a lasting disgust.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: It was the same with the melons and tomatoes, and
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Nahum sadly saw that his entire crop was lost. Quick
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: to connect events, he declared that the meteorite had poisoned
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: the soil, and thanked heaven that most of the other
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: crops were in the upland lot along the road. Winter
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: came early and was very cold, Ami saw Nahum less
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: often than usual, and observed that he had begun to
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: look worried. The rest of his family, too, seemed to
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: have grown taciturn, and were far from study in their
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: church going or their attendants at the various social events
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: of the countryside. For this reserve or melancholy, no cause
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: could be found, though all the household confessed now and
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: then to poor health and a feeling of vague disquiet.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: Nahum himself gave the most definite statement of anyone when
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: he said he was disturbed about certain footprints in the snow.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: They were the usual winter prints of red squirrels, white rabbits,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: and foxes, but the brooding farmer professed to see something
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: not quite right about their nature and arrangement. He was
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: never specific, but appeared to think that they were not
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: as characteristic of the anatomy and habits of squirrels and
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: rabbits and foxes as they ought to be. Amy listened
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: without interest to this talk until one night, when he
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: drove past Nahoum's house in the sleigh on the way
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: back from Clark's Corners. There had been a moon and
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: a rabbit had run across the road, and the leaves
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: of the rabbit were longer than either Amy or his
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: horse liked. The latter indeed had almost run away when
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: brought up by a firm rain. Thereafter, Amy gave Nahoum's
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: tales more respect and wondered why the gardener's dogs seemed
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: so cowed and quivering every morning they had it developed
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: nearly lost the spirit to bark. In February, the Magregger
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: boys from Meadow Hill were out shooting woodchucks, and not
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: far from the gardener place, bagged a very peculiar specimen.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: The proportions of its body seemed slightly altered in a
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: queer way impossible to describe, while its face had taken
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: on an expression which no one ever saw in a
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: woodchuck before. The boys were genuinely frightened and threw the
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: thing away at once, so that only their grotesque tales
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: of it ever reached the people of the countryside. But
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: the shying of horses near Nahum's house had now become
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: an acknowledged thing, and all the basis for a cycle
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: of whispered legend was fast taking form. People vowed that
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: the snow melted faster around Nahooms than it did anywhere else,
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: And early in March there was an odd discussion in
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: Potter's General Store at Clark's Corners. Stephen Rice had driven
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: past Gardener's in the morning and had noticed these skunk
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: cabbages coming up through the mud by the woods across
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: the road. Never were things of such size seen before,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: and they held strange colors that could not be put
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: into any words. Their shape were monstrous, and the horse
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: had snorted at an odor, which struck Stephen as wholly unprecedented.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: That afternoon, several persons drove past to see the abnormal growth,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: and all agreed that plants of that kind are never
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: to sprout in a healthy world. The bad fruit of
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: the fall before was freely mentioned, and it went from
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: mouth to mouth that there was poison in Nahome's ground.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: Of course, it was the meteorite, and remembering how strange
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: the men from the college had found that stone to be,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: several farmers spoke about the matter to them. One day,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: they paid Nahom a visit, and, having no love of
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: wild tales in folklore, were very conservative in what they inferred.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: The plants were certainly odd, but all skunk cabbages are
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: more or less odd. In shape and hue. Perhaps some
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: mineral element from the stone had entered the soil, but
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: it would soon be washed away. And as for the
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: footprints and frightened horses, of course, that this was mere
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: country talk, which such a phenomenon as the aerolite would
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: be certain to start. There was really nothing for serious
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: men to do in cases of wild gossip, for superstitious
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: rustics will say and believe anything, and so all through
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: the strange days the professor stayed away in contempt. Only
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: one of them, when given two files of dust for
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: analysis in a police job over a year and a
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: half later, recalled that the queer color of that skunk
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: cabbage had been very like one of the anomalous bands
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: of light shown by the meteor fragment in the College spectroscope,
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: and like the brittle globule found embedded in the stone
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: from the Abyss. The samples in this analysis case gave
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: the same odd bands at first, though later they lost
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: the property. The trees budded prematurely around Nahomes, and at
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: night they swayed ominously in the wind. Nahoum's second son,
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: Thaddeus A. Lamb fifteen, swore that they swayed also when
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: there was no wind, but even the gossips would not
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: credit this. Certainly, however, restlessness was in the air. The
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: entire Gardiner family developed the habit of stealthy listening, though
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: not for any sound which they could consciously name. The
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: listening was, indeed, rather a product of moments when consciousness
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: seemed half to slip away. Unfortunately, such moments increased week
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: by week till it became common speech that something was
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: wrong with all Nahoum folks. When the early saxafrage came out,
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: it had another strange color, not quite like that of
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: the skunk cabbage, but plainly related and equally unknown to
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: anyone who saw it. Nahum took some blossoms to Arkham
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: and showed them to the editor of the Gazette, but
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: that dignitary did no more than write a humorous article
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: about them, in which the dark fears of rustics were
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: held up to polite ridicule. It was a mistake of
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: Nahums to tell a stolid city man about the way
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: the great overgrown morning cloak butterflies behaved in connection with
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: the sex siffrages. April brought a kind of madness to
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: the country folk, and began that disuse of the road
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: past Nahums, which led to its ultimate abandonment. It was
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: next the vegetation. All the archer trees blossomed forth in
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: strange colors, and through the stony soil of the yard
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: and adjacent pasturage there sprang up a bizarre growth which
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: only a botanist could connect with the proper flora of
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: the region. No sane, wholesome colors were anywhere to be seen,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: except in the green grass and leafage, But everywhere were
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: those hectic and prismatic variants of some diseased underlying primary tone,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: without a place among the known tints of earth. The
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: dutchmen's breeches became a thing of sinister menace, and the
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: blood roots grew insolent in their chromatic perversion. Ami and
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: the gardeners thought that most of the colors had a
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: sort of haunting familiarity, and decided that they were minded
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: one of the brittle globule in the meteor. Nahum plowed
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: and sewed the ten acre pasture and the upland lot,
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: but did nothing with the land around the house. He
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: knew it would be of no use, and hoped that
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: the summer strange growth would draw all the poison from
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: the soil. He was prepared for almost anything now and
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: had grown used to the sense of something near him
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: waiting to be heard. The shunning of his house by
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: neighbors told on him, of course, but it told on
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: his wife more. The boys were better off being at
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: school each day, but they could not help being frightened
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: by the gossip. Thaddeus, and especially sensitive youth, suffered the most.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: In May, the insects came, and Nahum's place became a
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: nightmare of buzzying and crawling. Most of the creatures seemed
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: not quite usual in their aspects and motions, and their
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: nocturnal habits contradicted all former experience. The gardeners took to
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: watching at night, watching in all directions at random, for
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: something they could not tell what. It was then that
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: they all owned that Thaddeus had been right about the trees.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: Missrus Gardener was the next to see it from the
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: window as she watched the swollen boughs of a maple
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: against a moonlit sky. The bows surely moved, and there
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: was no wind. It must be the sap strangeness had
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: come into everything growing now. Yet it was none of
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: Nahum's family at all who made the next discovery. Familiarity
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: had dull them, and what they could not see was
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: glimpsed by a timid windmill salesman from Bolton who drove
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: by one night in ignorance of the country legends. What
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: he told in Arkham was given a short paragraph in
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: the gazette, and it was there that all the farmers,
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: Nahum included saw it first. The night had been dark
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: and the buggy lamps faint, but around a farm in
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: the valley, which everyone knew from the account must be Nahums,
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: the darkness had been less thick. A dim, though distinct
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: luminosity seemed to inhere in all the vegetation, grass, leaves,
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: and blossoms alike, while at one moment a detached piece
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: of the phosphorescence appeared to stir furtively in the yard
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: near the barn. The grass had so far seemed untouched,
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: and the cows were freely pastured in the lot near
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: the house, but toward the end of May the milk
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: began to be bad. Then Nahum had the cows driven
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: to the uplands, after which this trouble ceased. Not long
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: after this, the changing grass and leaves became apparent to
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: the eye. All the verdure was going gray and was
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: developing a highly singular quality of brittleness. Amy was now
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: the only person who ever visited the place, and his
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: visits were becoming fewer and fewer. When school closed, the
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: gardeners were virtually cut off from the world, and sometimes
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: let Amy do their errands in town. They were failing curiously,
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: both physically and mentally, and no one was surprised when
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: the news of missus Gardner's madness stole around. It happened
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: in June, about the anniversary of the meteor's fall, and
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: the poor woman screamed about things in the air which
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: she could not describe. In her ravings. There was not
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: a single specific noun, but only verbs and pronouns. Things
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: moved and changed and fluttered, and ears tangled to impulses
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: which were not wholly sounds. Something was taken away. She
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: was being drained of something. Something was fastening itself on
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: her that ought not to be some one must make
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: it keep off. Nothing was ever still in the night.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: The walls and the windows shifted. Naum did not send
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: her to the country asylum, but let her wonder about
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: the house as long as she was harmless to herself
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: and others. Even when her expression changed, he did nothing.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: But when the boys grew afraid of her, and Thaddeus
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: nearly fainted at the way she made faces at him,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: he decided to keep her locked in the attic. By
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: July she had ceased to speak and crawled on all fours,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: and before that month was over, Nahum got the mad
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: notion that she was slightly luminous in the dark, as
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: he now clearly saw was the case with the nearby vegetation.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: It was a little before this that the horses had stampeded.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: Something had aroused them in the night, and the neighing
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: and kicking in their stalls had been terrible. There seemed
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: virtually nothing to do to calm them, and when Nahum
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: opened the stable door, they all bolted out like frightened
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: woodland deer. It took a week to track all four,
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: and when found they were seen to be quite useless
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: and unmanageable. Something had snapped in their brains, and each
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: one had to be shot for its own good. Nahum
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: borrowed a horse from Amy for his haying, but found
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: it would not approach the barn. It shied, balked, and whinnied,
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: and in the end he could do nothing but drive
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: it into the yard, while the men used their own
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: strength to get the heavy wagon near enough the hayloft
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: for convenient pitching. And all the while the vegetation was
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: turning gray and brittle. Even the flowers whose hues had
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: been so strange were graying now, and the fruit was
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: coming out gray and dwarfed and tasteless. The asters and
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: golden rod bloomed gray and distorted, and the roses and
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: zenias and hollyhocks in the front yard were such blasphemous
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: looking things that Naem's oldest boy, Zenus, cut them down.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: The strangely puffed insects died about that time, even the
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: bees that had left their hives and taken to the woods.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: By September, all the vegetation was fast crumbling to a
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: grayish powder, and Nahum feared that the trees would die
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: before the poison was out of the soil. His wife
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: now had spells of terrific screaming, and he and the
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: boys were in a constant state of nervous tension. They
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: shunned people now, and when school opened, the boys did
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: not go. But it was Ami on one of his
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: rare visits, who first realized that the well water was
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: no longer good. He had an evil taste that was
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: not exactly fetid nor exactly salty, and amid advised his
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: friend to dig another well on higher ground to use
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: till the soil was good again. Nahum, however, ignored the warning,
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: for he had by that time become callous to strange
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: and unpleasant things. He and the boys continued to use
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: the tainted supply, drinking it as listlessly and mechanically as
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: they ate the meager and ill cooked meals and did
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: their thankless and monotonous chores through the aimless days. There
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: was something of stolid resignation about them all, as if
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: they walked half in another world, between lines of nameless guards,
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: to a certain and familiar doom. Thaddeus went mad in
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: September after a visit to the well. He had gone
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: with the pail and had come back empty handed, shrieking
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: and waving his arms and sometimes lapsing into an inane
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: titter or a whisper about the moving colors down there.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: Two in one family was pretty bad, was very brave
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: about it. He let the boy run about for a
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: week until he began stumbling and hurting himself, and then
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: he shut him in an attic room across the hall
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: from his mother's. The way they screamed at each other
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: from behind their locked doors was very terrible, especially to
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: little Merwin, who fancied they talked in some terrible language
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: that was not of earth. Merwin was getting frightfully imaginative,
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: and his restlessness was worse after the shutting away of
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: the brother who had been his greatest playmate. Almost at
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: the same time, the mortality among the livestock commenced. Poultry
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: turned grayish and died very quickly, their meat being found
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: dry and noisome upon cutting. Hoggs grew inordinately fat, then
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: suddenly began to undergo loathsome changes which no one could explain.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: Their meat was, of course useless, and Nahem was at
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: his wits, and no rural veterinary would approach his place,
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: and the city veterinary from Arkhan was openly baffled. The
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: swine began growing gray and brittle and falling to pieces
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: before they died, and their eyes and muzzles developed singular alterations.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: It was very inexplicable, for they had never been fed
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: from the tainted vegetation. Then something struck the cows. Certain areas,
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: or sometimes the whole body would be uncannily shriveled or compressed,
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: and atrocious collapses or disintegrations were common in the last stages,
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: and death was always the result. There would be a
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: graying and turning brittle, like that which beset the hogs.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: There could be no question of poison, for all the
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: cases occurred in a locked and undisturbed born. No bites
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: of prowling things could have brought the virus. For what
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: live beasts of earth can pass through solid obstacles, it
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: must be only natural disease. Yet what disease could wreck
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: such results was beyond any minds guessing. When the harvest came,
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: there was not an animal surviving on the place, for
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: the stock and poultry were dead, and the dogs had
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: run away. These dogs, three in number, had all vanished
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: one night and were never heard of again. The five
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: cats had left some time before, but their going was
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: scarcely noticed since there now seemed to be no mice,
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: and only Missus Gardner had made pets of the graceful felines.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: On the nineteenth of October, Nahum staggered into Amy's house
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: with hideous news. The death had come to poor Thaddeus
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: in his attic room, and it had come in a
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: way which could not be told. Nahum had dug a
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: grave in the railed family plot behind the form, and
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: had put therein What he found there could have been
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: nothing from outside, for the small barred window and locked
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: door were intact, but it was much as it had
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: been in the barn. Ami and his wife consoled the
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: stricken man as best they could, but shuddered as they
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: did so. Stark terror seemed to cling round the gardeners
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: and all they touched, and the very presence of one
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: in the house was a breath from regions unnamed and unnameable.
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: Amy accompanied Nahum home with the greatest reluctance, and did
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: what he might to calm the hysterical sobbing of little Merwin.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: Zenis needed no calming. He had come of late to
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: do nothing but stare into space and obey what his
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: father told him, And Amy thought that his fate was
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: very merciful now. And then Merwyn's screams were answered faintly
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: from the attic, and in response to an inquiring look,
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: Nahum said that his wife was getting very feeble. When
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: night approached, Amy managed to get away, for not even
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: friendship could make him stay in that spot. When the
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: faint glow of the vegetation began, and the trees may
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: or may not have swayed without wind. It was really
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: lucky for Amy that he was not more imaginative. Even
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: as things were. His mind was bent ever so slightly.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: But had he been able to connect and reflect upon
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: all the portents around him, he must inevitably have turned
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: a total maniac. In the twilight, he hastened home, the
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: screams of a madwoman and the nervous child ringing horrible
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: in his ears. Three days later, Nahum burst into Amy's
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: kitchen in the early morning, and, in the absence of
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: his host, stammered out a desperate tale once more, while
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: missus Pearce listened in a clutching fright. It was little Merwin.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: This time he was gone. He had gone out late
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: at night with a lantern and pale for water and
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: had never come back. He'd been going to pieces for
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: days and hardly knew what he was about. Screamed at everything.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: There had been a frantic street from the yard then,
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: but before the father could get to the door, the
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: boy was gone. There was no glow from the lantern
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: he had taken, and of the child himself no trace.
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: At the time, Nahum thought the lantern and Pale were
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: gone too, But when dawn came and the man had
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: plodded back from his all night search of the woods
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: and fields, he had found some very curious things. Near
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: the well. There was a crushed and apparently somewhat melted
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: mass of iron which had certainly been the lantern. While
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: I bent Pale and twisted iron hoops beside it, both
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: half fused, seemed to hint at the remnants of the pail.
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: That was all. Nahoum was past imagining. Missus Pearce was blank,
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: and Amy, when he had reached home and heard the tale,
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: could give no guests. Merwin was gone, and there would
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: be no use in telling the people around who shunned
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: all gardeners. Now no use either in telling the city
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: people at Arkham, who laughed at everything. Fad was gone,
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: and now Merwyn was gone. Something was creeping and creeping
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: and waiting to be seen and heard. Nahum would go soon,
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: and he wanted Amy to look after his wife and
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: Zenus if they survived him. It must all be a
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: judgment of some sort, though he could not fancy what for,
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: since he had always walked uprightly in the large ways,
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: so far as he knew. For over two weeks, Sammy
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: saw nothing of Nahum, and then worried about what might
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: have happened. He overcame his fears and paid the gardener
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: place a visit. There was no smoke from the great chimney,
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: and for a moment the visitor was apprehensive of the worst.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: The aspect of the whole form was shocking, grayish, withered
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: grass and leaves on the ground, vines falling in brittle
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: wreckage from archaic walls and gables, and great bare trees
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: clawing up at the gray November sky with studied malevolence,
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: which Omni could not but feel had come from some
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: subtle change in the tilt of the branches. But Nahum
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: was alive, after all. He was weak and lying in
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: a couch in the low sealed kitchen, but perfectly conscious
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: and able to give simple orders to Zenus. The room
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: was deadly cold, and as Amy visibly shivered, the host
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: shouted uscily to Zenus from a wood wood. Indeed was
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: sorely needed, since the cavernous fireplace was unlit and empty,
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: with a cloud of soot blowing about in the chill
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: wind that came down the chimney. Presently, Nahum asked him
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: if the extra wood had made him any more comfortable,
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: And then Amy saw what had happened. The stoutest cord
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: had broken at last, and the hapless farmer's mind was
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: proof against more sorrow. Questioning tactfully, Amy could get no
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: clear data at all about the missing Zenus in the well.
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: He lives in the well, was all that the clouded
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: father would say. Then there flashed across the visitor's mind
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: a sudden thought of the madwife, and he changed his
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: line of inquiry. Nabbi, why here she is? Was the
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: surprised response of poor Nahum, and Amy soon saw that
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: he must search for himself. Leaving the harmless babbler on
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: the couch, he took the keys from their nail beside
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: the door and climbed the creaking stairs to the attic.
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: It was very close and noisome up there, and no
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: sound could be heard from any direction. Of the four
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: doors in sight, only one was locked, and on this
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: he tried various keys on the ring he had taken.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: The third key proved the right one, and after some fumbling,
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: Amy threw open the low white door. It was quite
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: dark inside, for the window was small and half obscured
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: by the crude wooden bars, and Amy could see nothing
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: at all on the wide planked floor. The stench was
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: beyond enduring, and before proceeding further he had to retreat
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: to another room and return with his lungs filled with
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: breathable air. When he did enter, he saw something dark
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: in the corner, and upon seeing it more clearly, he
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: screamed outright. While he screamed, he thought a momentary cloud
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: eclipsed the window, and a second later he felt to
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: himself brushed, as if by some hateful current of vapor.
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: Strange colors danced before his eyes, and had not a
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: present horror numbed him, he would have thought of the
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: globule in the meteor that the geologists hammer had shattered,
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: and of the morbid vegetation that had sprouted in the spring.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: As it was, he thought only of the blasphemous monstrosity
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: which confronted him, and which all too clearly had shared
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: the nameless fate of young Thaddeus and the livestock. But
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: the terrible thing about the horror was that it very
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: slowly and perceptibly moved as it continued to crumble. End
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: Part one, Part two of The Color Out of Space
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: by H. P. Lovecraft. This LibriVox recording is in the
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: public domain. Part two. Amy would give me no added
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: particulars of this scene. But the shape in the corners
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: does not reappear in his tail as a moving object.
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: There are things which cannot be mentioned, and what is
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: done in common humanity is sometimes cruelly judged by the law.
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: I gather that no moving thing was left in that
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: attic room, and that to leave anything capable of motion
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: there would have been indeed so monstrous as to damn
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: any accountable being to eternal torment. Any One but a
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: stolid farmer would have fainted or gone mad. But Ami
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: walked canstious through that low doorway and locked the accursed
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: secret behind him. There would be nahoum to deal with.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: Now he must be fed, intended, and removed to some
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: place where he could be cared for. Commencing his descent
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: of the dark stairs, Amy heard a thud below him.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: He even thought a scream had been suddenly choked off,
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: and recalled nervously the clammy vapor which had brushed by
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: him in that frightful room above what presence had His
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: cry and entry started up, halted by some vague fear,
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: He heard still further sounds below. Indubitably there was a
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: sort of heavy dragging and the most detestably sticky noise,
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: as of some fiendish and unclean species of suction. With
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: an associative sense goaded to feverish heights. He thought, unaccountably
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: of what he had seen upstairs. Good God, what Eldritch's
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: dream werel Was this sin to which he had blundered?
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: He dared move neither backward nor forward, but stood there,
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: trembling at the black curve of the boxed in staircase.
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: Every trifle of the scene burned itself into his brain.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: The sounds, the sense of dread, expectancy, the darkness, the
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: steepness of the narrow stairs and merciful heaven. The faint
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: but unmistakable luminosity of all the wood work in sight, steps, sides,
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: exposed laths and beams alike. Then there burst force a
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: frantic whinny from Ammy's horse outside. Followed it once by
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: a clatter, which told of a frenzied runaway. In another moment,
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: horse and buggy had gone beyond earshot, leaving the frightened
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: man on the dark stairs to guess what had sent them.
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: But that was not all. There had been another sound
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: out there, a sort of liquid splash water. It must
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: have been the well he had left, he wrote, untied
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: near it, And the buggy wheel must have brushed by
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: the coping and knocked in a stone, and the still
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: pale phosphorescence glowed in that detestably ancient woodwork. God, how
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: old the house was, most of it built before seventeen hundred.
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: A feeble scratching on the door downstairs now sounded distinctly,
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: and Amy's grip tightened on a heavy stick he had
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: picked up in the attic for some purpose. Slowly nerving himself,
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: he finished his descent and walked boldly toward the kitchen.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: But he did not complete the walk because what he
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: sought was no longer there. It had come to meet him,
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: and it was still alive after a fashion. Whether it
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: had crawled or whether it had been dragged by any
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: external forces, Amy could not say, but the death had
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: been at it everything had happened in the last half hour,
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: but collapse, graying, and the disintegration were already far advanced.
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: There was a horrible brittleness, and dry fragments were scaling off.
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: Army could not touch it, but looked horrifiedly into the
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: distorted parody that had been a face. What was it? Nahum,
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: what was it? He whispered, and the cleft, bulging lips
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: were just able to crackle out a final answer. Nothing, nothing, color.
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: It burns, cold and wet, but it burns. It lived
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: in the well. I seen it, a kind of smoke,
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: just like the flowers last spring. The well shone at night,
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: fat and Merwin and Zenus, everything alive, sucking the life
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: out of everything in that stone. It must have come
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: in that stone, pison the whole place. Don't know what
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: it wants, that round thing. Them men from the college
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: dug out in the stone. He smashed it. It was
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: that same color, just the same like the flowers and plants.
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: Must have been more of them, seeds, seeds, they growed.
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: I seen it the first time this week. I must
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: have got strong and zenus. It was a big boy,
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: full of life. It beats down your mind and then
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: get you, burns you up in the well water. You
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: was right about that evil water. Zena's never come back
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: from the well. Can't get away, draws. You know something's coming,
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: but ain't no use. I seen it time and again.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: Zenus was took. Where's nabi Ami? My head's no good?
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: Don't know how long since I fed her. It'll get
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: her if we ain't careful. Just the color her face
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: is getting to have that color sometimes toward night, and
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: it burns and sucks. It come from someplace where things
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: ain't as they is here, one of them professors said.
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: So he was right. Look out, army, it'll do something more.
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: Sucks the life out. But that was all that which
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: spoke could speak no more because it had completely caved in.
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: Ommy laid a red checked tablecloth over what was left
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: and reeled out the back door into the fields. He
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: climbed the slope to the tin acre pasture and stumbled
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: home by the north road in the woods. He could
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: not pass that well from which his horses had run away.
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: He had looked at it through the window and had
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: seen that no stone was missing from the rim. Then
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: the lurching buggy had not dislodged anything, after all, the
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: splash had been something else, something which went into the
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: well after it had done with poor Nahem. When Omny
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: reached his house, the horses and Bucky had arrived before him,
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: and thrown his wife into fits of anxiety. Reassuring her
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: without explanations, he set out at once for Arkham and
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: notified the authorities that the Gardiner family was no more.
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: He indulged in no details, but merely told of the
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: deaths of Nahum and Nabbe, that of Thaddeus being already known,
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: and mentioned that the cause seemed to be the same
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: strange ailment which had killed the livestock. He also stated
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: that Merwin and Zenus had disappeared. There was considerable questioning
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: at the police station, and in the end Ami was
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: compelled to take three officers to the Gardener Forum, together
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: with the coroner, the medical examiner, and the veterinary who
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: had treated the deceased animals. He went much against his will,
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: for the afternoon was advancing and he feared the fall
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: of night over that cursed place, but it was some
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: comfort to have so many people with him. The six
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: men drove out in a Democrat wagon following Amy's Bucky
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: and arrived at the pest ridden farmhouse about four o'clock. Used,
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: as the officers were too gruesome experiences, not one remained
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: unmoved at what was found in the attic and under
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: the red checked tablecloth on the floor below. The whole
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: aspect of the form, with its gray desolation, was terrible enough,
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: but those two crumbling objects were beyond all bounds. No
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: one could long look at them, and even the medical
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: examiner admitted that there was very little to examine. Specimens
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: could be analyzed, of course, so he busied himself in
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: obtaining them. And here it develops that a very puzzling
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: aftermath occurred at the college laboratory, where the two files
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: of dust were finally taken under the spectroscope. Both samples
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: gave off an unknown spectrum in which many of the
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: baffling bands were precisely like those which the strange meteor
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: had yielded in the previous year. The property of emitting
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: this spectrum vanished in a month, and the dust thereafter
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: consisted mainly of alkaline, phosphates and carbonates. Amy would not
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: have told the men about the well if he had
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: thought they meant to do anything then and there It
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: was getting towards sunset, and he was anxious to be away,
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: but he could not help glancing nervously at the stony
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: curb by the great sweep, and when a detective questioned him,
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: he admitted that Nahum had feared something down there, so
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: much so that he had never even thought of searching
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: it for Merwin or Zenis. After that, nothing would do
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: but that they empty and explore the well immediately. So
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: Amy had to wait trembling while pale after pale of
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: rank water was hauled up and splashed on the soaking
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: ground outside. The men sniffed in disgust at the fluid,
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: and toward the last held their noses against a fetter
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: they were uncovering. It was not so long a job
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: as they had feared it would be, since the water
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: was phenomenally low, there was no need to speak too
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: exactly of what they found. Merwin and Zenis were both
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: there in part. Though the vestiges were mainly skeletal, there
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: were also a small deer and a large dog in
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: about the same state, and the number of bones of
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: smaller animals. The ooze and slime at the bottom seemed
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: inexplicably porous and bubbling, and a man who descended on
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: hand holes with a long pole found that he could
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: sink the wooden shaft to any depth in the mud
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: of the floor without meeting any solid obstruction. Twilight had
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: now fallen, and lanterns were brought from the house. Then,
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: when it was seen that nothing further could be gained
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: from the well, everyone went indoors and conferred in the
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: ancient sitting room, where the intermittent light of a spectral
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: half moon played wanly on the gray desolation outside. The
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: men were frankly none plussed by the entire case, and
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: could find no convincing common element to link the strange
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: vegetable conditions, the unknown disease of livestock and humans, and
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: the unaccountable death of Mermin and Zenus in the tainted well.
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: They have heard the common country talk, it is true,
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: but could not believe that anything contrary to natural law
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: had occurred. No doubt the meteor had poisoned the soil,
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: But the illness of person and animals who had eaten
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: nothing grown in that soil was another matter. Was it
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: the well water? Very possibly, It might be a good
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: idea to analyze it, But what peculiar madness could have
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: made both boys jump into the well. Their deeds were
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: so similar, and the fragments showed that they had both
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: suffered from the gray, brittle death. Why was everything so
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: gray and brittle? It was the coroner, seated near a
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: window overlooking the yard who first noticed the glow about
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: the well. Night had fully set in, and all the
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: abhorrent grounds seemed faintly luminous with more than the fitful moonbeams.
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: But this new glow was something definite and distinct, and
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: appeared to shoot up from the black pit, like a
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: softened ray from a searchlight, giving dull reflections in the
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: little ground pools where the water had been emptied. It
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: was a very queer color, and as all the men
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: clustered around the window onmy gave a violent start, for
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: this strange beam of ghastly miasma was to him of
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: no unfamiliar hue. He had seen that color before, and
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: feared to think what it might mean. He had seen
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: it in the nasty, brittle globule in that aerlight two
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: summers ago, and had seen it in the crazy vegetation
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: of the springtime, and had thought he had seen it
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: for an instant that very morning against the small barred
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: window of that terrible attic room where nameless things had happened.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: It had flashed there a second, and a clammy and
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: hateful current of vapor had brushed past him, And then
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: poor Naum had been taken by something of that color.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: He had said so at the last, said it was
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: like the globule and the plants. After that had come
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: the runaway in the yard, and the splash in the well,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: And now that well was belching forth to the night,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: a pale, insidious beam of the same demoniac tent. It
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: does credit to the alertness of AMI's mind mind that
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: he puzzled, even at that tense moment over a point
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: which was essentially scientific. He could not but wonder at
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: his gleaning of the same impression from a vapor glimpse
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: in the daytime against a window opening in the morning sky,
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: and from a nocturnal exultation seen as a phosphorescent mist
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: against the black and blasted landscape. It wasn't right. It
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: was against nature. And he thought of those terrible last
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: words of his stricken friend. It came from some place
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: where things ain't as they is here. One of them
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: professors said so All three horses outside, tied to a
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: pair of shriveled saplings by the road, were now neighing
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: and pawing frantically. The wagon driver started for the door
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: to do something, but Omy laid a shaky hand on
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: his shoulder. Don't go out there, he whispered. There's more
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: to this, nor what we know. Nay him said, somethin
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: lived in the well that sucks your life out, He said.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: It must be somethin that growed from a round ball
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: like one we all seen in the meteor stone that
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: fell a year ago June. Sucks and burns, he said.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: And it's just a cloud of color like that light
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: out there now that ye can hardly see. An can't
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: tell what it is. Nahoum thought it feeds on everything
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: livin an gets stronger all the time, he said, he's
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: seen it this last week. It must be somethin from
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: far off in the sky, like the men from the
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: college last year, says the meteor stone was. The way
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: it's made and the way it works ain't light no
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: way of God's world. It's come at from beyond. So
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: the men paused indecisively as the light from the well
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: grew stronger and the hitched horses pawed and whinnied an
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: increasing frenzy. It was truly an awful moment, with terror
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: in that ancient and accursed house itself. Four monstrous sets
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: of fragments, two from the house and two from the
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: well in the wood she had behind, and that shaft
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: of unknown and unholy iridescence from the slimy depths in front.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: Ami had restrained the driver on impulse forgetting how uninjured
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: he himself was after the clammy brushing of that colored
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: vapor in the attic room. But perhaps it is just
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: as well that he acted as he did. No one
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: will ever know what was abroad that night, And though
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: the blasphemy from beyond had not so far hurt any
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: human of unweakened mind, there is no telling what it
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: might not have done at that last moment, And with
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: its seemingly increased strength and the special signs of purpose,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: it was soon to display beneath the half clouded moonlit sky.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: All at once, one of the detectives at the window
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: gave a short, sharp gasp. The others looked at him,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: and then quickly followed his own gaze upward to the
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: point at which its idle straying had been suddenly arrested.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: There was no need for words. What had been disputed
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: in country gossip was disputable no longer. And it is
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: because of the thing which every man of that party
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: agreed in whispering later on, that strange days are never
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: talked about in Arkham. It is necessary to premise that
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: there was no wind at that hour of the evening.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: One did arise not long afterward, but there was absolutely none. Then.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: Even the dry tips of the lingering hedge mustard gray
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: and blighted, and the fringe on the roof of the
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: standing Democrat wagon were unstirred. And yet amid that tense,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: godless calm, the high bare boughs of all the trees
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: in the yard were moving. They were twitching morbidly and pasmodically,
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: cloying in convulsive and epileptic madness at the moonlit clouds,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: scratching impotently in the noxious air, as if jerked by
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: some allied and bloodless line of linkage with subterrane horrors,
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: writhing and struggling below the black roots. Not a man
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: breathed for several seconds. Then a cloud of darker depth
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: passed over the moon, and the silhouette of clutching branches
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: faded out momentarily. At this there was a general cry,
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: muffled with awe, but husky and almost identical from every throat,
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: for the terror had not faded with the silhouette, and
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: in a fearsome infant of deeper darkness, the watchers saw
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: wriggling at the tree top height, a thousand tiny points
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: of faint, unhallowed radiance, tipping each bow, like the fire
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: of Saint Elmo's or the flames that come down on
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: the apostles heads at Pentecost. It was a monstrous constellation
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: of unnatural light, like a gutted swarm of corpse fed
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: fireflies dancing hellish sarabands over the accursed marsh, and its
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: color was that same nameless intrusion which Amy had come
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: to recognize and dread. All the while, the shaft of
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: phosphorescence from the well was getting brighter and brighter, bringing
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: to the minds of the huddled men a sense of
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: doom and abnormality which far outraced any image their conscious
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: minds could form. It was no longer shining out, it
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: was pouring out, and as the shapeless stream of unplaceable
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: color left the well. It seemed to flow directly into
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: the sky. The veterinaries shivered and walked to the front
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: door to drop the heavy extra bar across it. Ami
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: shook no less and had to tog and point for
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: lack of a controllable voice when he wished to draw
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: notice to the growing luminosity of the trees. The neighing
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: and stamping of the horses had become utterly frightful, but
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: not a soul of that group in the old house
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: would have ventured forth for any earthly reward. With the moments,
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: the shining of the trees increased, while their restless branches
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: seemed to strain more and more toward verticality. The wood
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: of the well sweep was shining now, and presently a
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: policeman dumbly pointed to some wooden sheds and beehives near
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: the stone wall on the west. They were commencing to shine, too,
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: though the tethered vehicles of the visitors seemed so far unaffected.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: Then there was a wild commotion and clopping in the road,
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: and as Amy quenched the lamp for better seeing, they
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: realized that the span of frantic grays had broken their
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: sapling and run off with the Democrat wagon. The shock
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: served to loosen several tongues, and embarrassed whispers were exchanged.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: It spreads on everything organic that's been around here, muttered
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: the medical examiner. No one replied, but the man who
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: had been in the well gave a hint that his
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: long pole must have stirred up something intangible. It was awful,
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: he added. There was no bottom at all, just ooves
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: and bubbles and the feeling of something lurking under there.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: Amy's horse still pawed and screamed deafeningly in the road outside,
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: and nearly drowned his owner's faint quaver as he mumbled
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: his formless reflections. It came from that stone. It growed
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: down there, It got everything living. It fed itself on him,
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: mind and body. Fad and murmurin Zenus and Nabby Nabum
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: was the last. They all drunk the water. It got
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: so strong on em. It come from beyond where things
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: ain't like they be here. Now it's going home. At
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: this point, as the column of unknown color flared suddenly
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: stronger and began to weave itself into fantastic suggestions of shape,
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: which each spectator later described differently. There came from the
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: poor tethered Hero such a sound as no man before
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: our sense ever heard from a horse. Every person in
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: that low pitched sitting room stopped his ears, and Amy
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: turned away from the window in horror and nausea. Words
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: could not convey it. When Amy looked out again, the
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: hapless beasts lay huddled inert on the moonlit ground between
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: the splintered chaffs of the buggy. That was the last
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: of Hero till they buried him next day. But the
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: present was no time to mourn, for almost at this
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: instant a detective silently called attention to something terrible in
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: the very room with them. In the absence of the
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: lamp light, it was clear that a faint phosphorescence had
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: begun to pervade the entire apartment. It glowed on the
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: broad planked floor, where the rag carpet left it bare,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: and shimmered over the sashes of the small paned windows.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: It ran up and down the exposed corner posts, coruscaded
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: about the shelf and mantle, and infected the very doors
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: in furniture. Every minute saw it strengthen, and at last
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: it was very plain that healthy living things must leave
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: that house. Army showed them the back door and the
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: path up through the fields to the tent acret pasture.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: They walked and stumbled as in a dream, and dare
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: not look back till they were far away on the
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: high ground. They were glad of the path, for they
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: could not have gone the front way by that well.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: It was bad enough passing the glowing barn and sheds
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: and those shining orchard trees with their gnarled fiendish contours.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: But thank Heavens, the branches did their worst, twisting high up.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: The moon went under some very black clouds as they
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: crossed the rustic bridge over Chapman's Brook, and it was
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: blind groping from there to the open meadows. When they
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: looked back toward the valley and the distant gardener placed
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: at the bottom, they saw a fearsome sight. All the
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: form was shining with the hideous unknown blend of color, trees, spilding,
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: and even grass and herbage as had not been wholly
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: changed to lethal gray brittleness. The boughs were all straining skyward,
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: tipped with tongues of foul flame, and lambent tricklings of
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: the same monstrous fire were creeping about the ridge poles
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: of the house, barn and sheds. It was a scene
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: from a vision of Fuselli. And over all the rest reigned,
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: that riot of luminous amorphousness, that alien and undimensioned rainbow
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: of cryptic poison from the well, seething, feeling, lapping, reaching, scintillating, straining,
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: and malignly bubbling in its cosmic and unrecognizable chromaticism. Then,
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: without warning, the hideous thing shot vertically up toward the
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: sky like a rocket or meteor, leaving behind no trail
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: and disappearing through a round and curiously regular hole in
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: the clouds before any man could gasp or cry out.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: No watcher can ever forget that sight, and Amy stared
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: blankly at the stars of Signus daneb, twinkling above the others,
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: where the unknown color had melted into the milky way.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: But his gaze was the next moment called swiftly to
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: earth by the crackling in the valley. It was just that,
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: only a wooden ripping and crackling, and not an explosion,
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: as so many others of the party vowed. The outcome
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: was the same, for in one feverish kaleidoscopic instant there
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: burst up from that doomed in accursed form, a gleamingly
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: eruptive cataclysm of unnatural sparks and substance, blurring the glance
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: of the few who saw it, and sending forth to
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: the zenith, a bombarding cloud burst of such colored and
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: fantastic fragments as our universe must needs its own. Through
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: quickly reclosing vapors, they followed the great morbidity that had vanished,
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: and in another second they had vanished. Two behind and
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: below was only a darkness to which the men dared
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: not return at all. About was a mounting wind which
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: seemed to sweep down in black foray gusts from interstellar space.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: It shrieked and howled, and lashed the fields and distorted
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: woods in a mad cosmic frenzy, till soon the trembling
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: party realized it would be no use waiting for the
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: moon to show what was left down there. In Mayhom's
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: too awed even to hint theories, the seven shaken men
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: trudged back toward Arkham by the North Road. Amy was
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: worse than his fellows and begged them to see him
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: inside his own kitchen. Instead of keeping straight on to
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: the town. He did not wish to cross the blighted,
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: wind whipped woods alone to his home on the main road,
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: for he had had an added shuck that the others
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: were spared, and was crushed forever with a brooding fear
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: he dared not even mention for many years to come.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: As the rest of the watchers on that tempestuous hill
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: had stolidly set their faces toward the road, Amy had
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: looked back an instant at the shadowed valley of Desolation,
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: so lately sheltering his ill starred friend, And from that stricken,
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: faraway spot he had seen something feebly rise, only to
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: sink down again upon the place from which the great,
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: shapeless horror had shot into the sky. It was just
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: a color, but not any color of our Earth or heavens.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: And because Omni recognized that color and knew that this
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: last faint remnant must still lurk down there in the well,
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: he has never been quite right. Since Amy would never
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: go near the place again. It is forty four years
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: now since the horror happened, but he has never been there,
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: and will be glad when the new reservoir blots it out.
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: I shall be glad too, for I do not like
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: the way the sunlight changed color around the mouth of
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: that abandoned well I passed. I hope the water will
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: always be very deep, but even so I shall never
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: drink it. I do not think I shall visit the
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: Arkham country hereafter. Three of the men who had been
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: with Ami returned the next morning to see the ruins
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: by daylight. But there were not any real ruins, only
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: the bricks of the chimney, the stones of the cellar,
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: some mineral and metallic litter here and there, and the
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: rim of that nefind as well. Save for Omni's dead horse,
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: which they towed away and buried, and the buggy, which
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: they shortly returned to him, everything that had ever been
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: living had gone. Five ell rich acres of dusty gray
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: desert remained, nor has anything ever grown there since to
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: this day. It sprawls open to the sky like a
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: great spot eaten by acid in the woods and fields,
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: and the few who have ever dared glimpse it, in
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: spite of the rural tails, have named it the blasted Heath.
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: The rural tails are queer. They might be even queerer
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: if city men and college chemists could be interested enough
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: to analyze the water from that disused well, or the
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: gray dust that no wind seems ever to disperse. Botanists
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: too ought to study the stunted flora on the borders
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: of that spot, for they might shed light on the
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: country notion that the blight is spreading little by little,
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: perhaps an inch a year. People say the color of
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: the neighboring herbage is not quite right in the spring,
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: and that while things leave queer prints in the light
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: winter snow, snow never seems quite so heavy on the
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: blasted heat as it is elsewhere. Horses, the few that
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: are left in this motor age, grow skittish in the
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: silent valley, and hunters cannot depend on their dogs too
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: near the splotch of grayish dust. They say the mental
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: influences are very bad too. Numbers went queer in the
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: years after Nahem's taking, and always they lack the power
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: to get away. Then the stronger minded folks all left
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: the region, and only the foreigners tried to live in
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: the crumbling old homesteads. They could not stay, though, and
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: one sometimes wonders what in sight beyond ours their wild
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: weird stories of whispered magic have given them their dreams
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: at night, they protest, are very horrible in that grotesque country,
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: and surely the very look of the dark realm is
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: enough to stir a morbid fancy. No traveler has ever
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: escaped a sense of strangeness in those deep ravines, and
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: artists shiver as they paint thick woods whose mystery is
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: as much of the spirits as of the eye. I
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: myself am curious about the sensation I derived from my
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: one long walk before Amy told me his tale. When
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: twilight came, I had vaguely wished some clouds would gather
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: for odd timidity about the deep skyy voids above had
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: crept into my soul. Do not ask me from my opinion,
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: I do not know. That is all. There was no
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: one but Amy to question. For Arkham. People will not
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: talk about the strange days, and all three professors who
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: saw the aerolit and its colored globule are dead. There
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: were other globules depend upon that. One must have fed
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: itself and escaped, and probably there was another which was
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: too late. No doubt it is still down the well.
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: I know there was something wrong with the sunlight I
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: saw above that miasmal brink. The Rustics say the blight
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: creeps an inch a year. So perhaps there is a
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: kind of growth or nourishment even now. But whatever demon
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: hatchling is there, it must be tethered to something, or
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: else it would quickly spread. Is it fastened to the
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: roots of those trees that claw the air? One of
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: the current arkham tails is about fat oaks that shine
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: and move as they ought not to at night. What
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: it is only God knows. In terms of matter, I
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: suppose the thing im be described would be called a gas.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: But this gas obeyed laws that were not of cosmos.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: This was no fruit of such whirls and suns as
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: shine on the telescopes and photographic plates of our observatories.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: There was no breath from the skies, whose motions and
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: dimensions are astronomer's measure or deemed too vast measure. It
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: was just a collar out of space, a frightful messenger
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: from unformed realms of infinity, beyond all nature as we
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: know it, from realms whose mere existence stuns the brain
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: and numbs us with the black extra cosmic gulfs it
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: throws open before our frenzied eyes. I doubt very much
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: if Amy consciously lied to me and I do not
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: think his tail was all a freak of madness. As
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: the town folk had forewarned, something terrible came to the
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: hills and valleys on that meteor, And something terrible, though
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: I know not in what proportion still remains, I shall
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: be glad to say, see the water come meanwhile. I
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: hope nothing will happen to Ami. He saw so much
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: of the thing, and its influences were so insidious. Why
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: has he never been able to move away? How clearly
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: he recalled those dying words of Nahum's can't get away? Drajiah,
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: you know sum is that comin', But tain't no use.
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: Amy is such a good old man. When the reservoir
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: gang get to work, I must write the chief Engineer
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: to keep a sharp watch on him. I would hate
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: to think of him as the gray, twisted virtual monstrosity
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: which persists more and more in troubling my sleep. End
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: of Part two end of The Color Out of Space
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: by H. P. Lovecraft. This story read by Phil Shinevera
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: June twenty twenty two.