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The Lurking Fear · Short Ghost and Horror Stories Collection

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Speaker 1: The Lurking Fear by H. P. Lovecraft, Part One, The
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Speaker 1: Shadow on the Chimney. There was thunder in the air
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Speaker 1: on the night I went to the deserted mansion atop
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Speaker 1: Tempest Mountain to find the Lurking Fear. I was not alone,
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Speaker 1: for foolhardiness was not then mixed with that love of
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Speaker 1: the grotesque and the terrible, which has made my career
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Speaker 1: a series of quests for strange horrors in literature and
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Speaker 1: in life. With me were two faithful and muscular men
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Speaker 1: for whom I had sent when the time came, men
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Speaker 1: long associated with me in my ghastly explorations because of
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Speaker 1: their peculiar fitness. We had started quietly from the village,
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Speaker 1: because of the reporters who still lingered about after the
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Speaker 1: Eldridge panic of a month before the nightmare Creeping Death. Later,
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Speaker 1: I thought they might aid me, but I did not
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Speaker 1: want them. Then would to God I had let them
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Speaker 1: share the search, that I might not have had to
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Speaker 1: bear the secret alone so long to bear it alone,
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Speaker 1: for fear the world would call me mad or go
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Speaker 1: mad itself at the demonic implications of the thing, now
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Speaker 1: that I am telling it anyway, Lest the brooding make
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Speaker 1: me a maniac. I wish I had never concealed it,
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Speaker 1: for I and I only know what manner of fear
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Speaker 1: lurked on that spectral and desolate mountain. In a small
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Speaker 1: motor car, we covered the miles of primeval forest and
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Speaker 1: hill until the wooded ascent checked it. The country bore
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Speaker 1: an aspect more than usually sinister as we viewed it
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Speaker 1: by night, and without the accustomed crowds of investigators, so
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Speaker 1: that we were often tempted to use the ascetylene headlights.
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Speaker 1: Despite the attention it might attract. It was not a
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Speaker 1: wholesome landscape after dark, and I believe I would have
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Speaker 1: noticed its morbidity even had I been ignorant of the
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Speaker 1: terror that stalked there. Of wild creatures, there were none.
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Speaker 1: They are wise when deathly is close. The ancient lightning
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Speaker 1: scarred trees seemed unnaturally large and twisted, and the other
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Speaker 1: vegetation unnaturally thick and feverish, while curious mounds and hummocks
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Speaker 1: in the weedy folgurite petted earth reminded me of snakes,
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Speaker 1: and dead men's skulls swelled to gigantic proportions. Fear had
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Speaker 1: lurked on tenpest Mountain for more than a century thirs
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Speaker 1: I learned at once from newspaper accounts of the catastrophe
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Speaker 1: which first brought the region to the world's notice. The
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Speaker 1: place is a remote, lonely elevation in that part of
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Speaker 1: the cats Girls where Dutch civilization once feebly and transiently penetrated,
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Speaker 1: leaving behind as it receded only a few ruined mansions
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Speaker 1: and a degenerate squat of population inhabiting pitiful hamlets on
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Speaker 1: isolated slopes. Normal beings seldom visited the locality till the
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Speaker 1: state police were formed, and even now only infrequent troopers
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Speaker 1: patrol it. The fear, however, is an old tradition throughout
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Speaker 1: the neighboring villages, since it is a prime topic in
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Speaker 1: the simple discourse of the poor mongrels, who sometimes leave
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Speaker 1: their valleys to trade hand woven baskets for such primitive
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Speaker 1: necessities as they cannot shoot, raise, or make. The lurking
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Speaker 1: fear dwelt in the shunned and deserted Martense mansion, which
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Speaker 1: crowned the high but gradual eminence, whose liability to frequent
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Speaker 1: thunderstorms gave it the name of Tempest Mountain. For over
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Speaker 1: one hundred years, the antique grove circled stone house had
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Speaker 1: been the subject of stories incredibly wild and monstrously hideous,
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Speaker 1: stories of a silent, colossal, creeping death which stalked in
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Speaker 1: summer with whimpering insistence. The squatters told tales of a
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Speaker 1: demon which seized lone wayfarers after dark, either carrying them
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Speaker 1: off or leaving them in a frightful state of nor dismemberment,
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Speaker 1: while sometimes they whispered of blood trails toward the distant mansion.
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Speaker 1: Some said the thunder called the lurking fear out of
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Speaker 1: its habitation, while others said the thunder was its voice.
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Speaker 1: No one outside the backwards had believed these varying and
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Speaker 1: conflicting stories, with their incoherent, extravagant descriptions of the half
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Speaker 1: glimpsed fiend. Yet not a farmer or villager doubted that
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Speaker 1: the Martens Mansion was ghrulishly haunted. Local history forbade such
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Speaker 1: a doubt, although no ghostly evidence was ever found by
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Speaker 1: such investigators as had visited the building after some especially
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Speaker 1: vivid tales of the squatters. Grandmothers told strange myths of
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Speaker 1: them martentse specter myths concerning the martense family itself, its queer,
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Speaker 1: hereditary dissimilarity of eyes, its long unnatural annals, and the
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Speaker 1: murder which had cursed it. The terror which brought me
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Speaker 1: to the scene was a sudden and portentous confirmation of
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Speaker 1: the mountaineer's wildest legends. One summer night, after a thunderstorm
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Speaker 1: of unprecedented violence, the countryside was aroused by a squatter
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Speaker 1: stampede which no mere delusion could create. The pitiful throngs
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Speaker 1: of natives shrieked and wind of the unnameable horror which
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Speaker 1: had descended upon them, And they were not doubted they
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Speaker 1: had not seen it, but had heard such cries from
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Speaker 1: one of their hamlets that they knew a creeping death
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Speaker 1: had come. In the morning, citizens and state troopers followed
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Speaker 1: the shuddering mountaineers to the place where they said the
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Speaker 1: death had come. Death was indeed there. The ground under
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Speaker 1: one of the squatter's villages had caved in after a
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Speaker 1: lightning strike, destroying several of the melodorous shanties. But upon
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Speaker 1: this property damage was superimposed an organic devastation which paled
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Speaker 1: it to insignificance. Of a possible seventy five natives who
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Speaker 1: had inhabited the spot. Not one living specimen was visible.
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Speaker 1: The disordered earth was covered with blood and human debris,
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Speaker 1: to speaking too vividly the ravages of demon teeth and talons,
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Speaker 1: yet no visible trail led away from the carnage. That
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Speaker 1: some hideous animal must be the cause, everyone quickly agreed.
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Speaker 1: Nor did any tongue now revive the charge that such
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Speaker 1: cryptic deaths formed merely the sordid murders common in decadent communities.
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Speaker 1: That charge was revived only when about twenty five of
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Speaker 1: the estimated popular relation were found missing from the dead,
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Speaker 1: and even then it was hard to explain the murder
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Speaker 1: of fifty by half that number. But the fact remained
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Speaker 1: that on a summer night, a bolt had come out
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Speaker 1: of the heavens and left a dead village whose corpses
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Speaker 1: were horribly mangled, chewed, and clawed. The excited countryside immediately
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Speaker 1: connected the horror with the haunted Martense mention, though the
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Speaker 1: localities were over three miles apart. The troopers were more skeptical,
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Speaker 1: including the mansion only casually in their investigations and dropping
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Speaker 1: it all together when they found it thoroughly deserted. Country
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Speaker 1: and village people however, canvassed the place with infinite care,
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Speaker 1: overturning everything in the house, sounding ponds and brooks, beating
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Speaker 1: down bushes, and ransacking the nearby forests. All was in vain.
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Speaker 1: The death that had come had left no trace, saved
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Speaker 1: destruction itself. By the second day of the search. The
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Speaker 1: affair was fully treated by the newspapers, whose reporters overran
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Speaker 1: Tempest Mountain. They described it in much detail and with
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Speaker 1: many interviews to elucidate the horror's history as told by
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Speaker 1: local grandams. I followed the accounts languidly at first, for
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Speaker 1: I am a connoisseur in horrors. But after a week
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Speaker 1: I detected an atmosphere which stirred me oddly, so that
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Speaker 1: on August fifth, nineteen twenty one, I registered among the
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Speaker 1: reporters who crowded the hotel at Lafert's Corners, nearest village
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Speaker 1: to Tempest Mountain, and acknowledged headquarters of the searches. Three
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Speaker 1: weeks more and the dispersal of the reporters left me
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Speaker 1: free to begin a terrible exploration based on the minute
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Speaker 1: inquiries and surveying with which I had meanwhile busied myself.
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Speaker 1: So on this summer night, while distant thunder rumbled, I
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Speaker 1: left the silent motor car and tramped with two armed
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Speaker 1: companions up the mound covered reaches of Tempest Mountain. Casting
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Speaker 1: the beams of an electric torch on the spectral gray walls,
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Speaker 1: I began to appear through the giant oaks ahead. In
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Speaker 1: this morbid night solitude and feeble shifting illumination, the vast
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Speaker 1: box like pile displayed obscure hints of terror which day
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Speaker 1: could not uncover. Yet I did not hesitate, since I
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Speaker 1: had come with fierce resolution to test an idea. I
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Speaker 1: believed that the thunder cooled the death demon out of
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Speaker 1: some fearsome secret place, and be that demon's solid entity
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Speaker 1: or vaporous pestilence, I meant to see it. I had
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Speaker 1: thoroughly searched the ruin before, hence knew my plan well.
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Speaker 1: Choosing as the seat of my vigil the old room
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Speaker 1: of Jar Martens, whose murder loomed so great in the
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Speaker 1: rural legends, I felt subtle that the apartment of this
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Speaker 1: ancient victim was best for my purposes. The chamber, measuring
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Speaker 1: about twenty feet square, contained, like the other rooms, some
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Speaker 1: rubbish which had once been furniture. It lay on the
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Speaker 1: second story, on the southeast corner of the house, and
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Speaker 1: had an immense east window and narrow south window, both
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Speaker 1: devoid of panes or shutters. Opposite the large window was
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Speaker 1: an enormous Dutch fireplace with scriptural tiles representing the prodigal sun.
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Speaker 1: At opposite the narrow window was a spacious bed built
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Speaker 1: into the wall. As the tree muffled, thunder grew louder,
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Speaker 1: I arranged my plan's details. First, I fastened, side by
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Speaker 1: side on the ledge of the large window three rope ladders,
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Speaker 1: which I had brought with me. I knew they reached
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Speaker 1: a suitable spot on the grass outside, for I had
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Speaker 1: tested them. Then the three of us dragged from another
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Speaker 1: room a wide four pa the bedstead, crowding it laterally
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Speaker 1: against the window, having strewn it with fur boughs. All
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Speaker 1: now rested on it with drawn automatics, too relaxing, while
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Speaker 1: the third watched from whatever direction the demon might come.
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Speaker 1: Our potential escape was provided. If it came from within
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Speaker 1: the house, we had the window ladders. If from outside
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Speaker 1: the door and the stairs, we did not think, judging
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Speaker 1: from precedent, that it would pursue us far even at worst.
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Speaker 1: I watched from midnight to one o'clock, when, in spite
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Speaker 1: of the sinister house, the unprotected window, and the approaching
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Speaker 1: thunder and lightning, I felt singularly drowsy. I was between
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Speaker 1: my two companions, George Bennett being toward the window and
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Speaker 1: William Toby toward the fireplace. Bennett was asleep, having apparently
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Speaker 1: felt the same anomalous drowsiness which affected me, so I
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Speaker 1: designated Toby for the next watch, although even he was nodding.
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Speaker 1: It is curious how intently I had been watching that fireplace.
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Speaker 1: The increasing thunder must have affected my dreams, for in
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Speaker 1: the brief time I slept, there came to me apocalyptic visions.
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Speaker 1: Once I partly awaked, probably because the sleeper toward the
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Speaker 1: window had restlessly flung an arm across my chest. I
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Speaker 1: was not sufficiently awake to see whether Toby was attending
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Speaker 1: to his duties as sentinel, but felt a distinct anxiety
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Speaker 1: on that score. Never before had the presence of evil
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Speaker 1: so poignantly oppressed me. Later, I must have dropped to
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Speaker 1: sleep again, for it was out of a phantasmal chaos
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Speaker 1: that my mind leaped when the night grew hideous with
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Speaker 1: shrieks beyond anything in my former experience or imagination. In
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Speaker 1: that shrieking, the inmost sole of human fear and agony
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Speaker 1: clawed hopelessly and insanely at the ebony gates of oblivion.
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Speaker 1: I awoke to red madness and the mockery of diabolism.
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Speaker 1: As farther and farther down inconceivable vistas that phobic and
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Speaker 1: crystalline anguish retreated and reverperated. There was no light, But
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Speaker 1: aknew from the empty space at my right that Toby
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Speaker 1: was gone, God alone, you whither across my chest still
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Speaker 1: lay the heavy arm of the sleeper at my left.
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Speaker 1: Then came the devastating stroke of lightning, which shook the
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Speaker 1: whole mountain, lit the darkest cripts of the hoary grove,
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Speaker 1: and splintered the patriarch of the twisted trees in the
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Speaker 1: demon flash of a monstrous fireble. The Sleeper started up suddenly,
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Speaker 1: while the glare from beyond the window threw his shadow
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Speaker 1: vividly upon the chimney above the fireplace from which my
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Speaker 1: eyes had never strayed. That I am still alive and
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Speaker 1: sane is a marvel I cannot fathom. I cannot fathom it,
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Speaker 1: For the shadow on that chimney was not that of
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Speaker 1: George Bennett or of any other human creature, but a
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Speaker 1: blasphemous abnormality from Hell's near the most craters, a nameless,
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Speaker 1: shapeless abomination which no mind could fully grasp and no
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Speaker 1: pen even partly describe. In another second, I was alone
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Speaker 1: in the accursed mention, shivering and gibbering. George Bennett and
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Speaker 1: William Toby had left no trace, not even of a struggle.
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Speaker 1: They were never heard of again. Part two. A passer
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Speaker 1: in the storm. For days after that hideous experience in
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Speaker 1: the forest swathed mansion, I lay nervously exhausted in my
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Speaker 1: hotel room at Firts Corners. I do not remember exactly
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Speaker 1: how I managed to reach the motor car started as
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Speaker 1: slip unobserved back to the village, for I retained no
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Speaker 1: distinct impression save of wild armed titaned trees, demoniac mutterings
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Speaker 1: of thunder, and chirrhonian shadows athwart the low mounds that
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Speaker 1: dotted and streaked the region. As I shivered and brooded
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Speaker 1: on the casting of that brain blasting shadow, I knew
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Speaker 1: that I had at last pried out one of Earth's
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Speaker 1: supreme horrors, one of those nameless blights of out of voids,
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Speaker 1: whose faint demon scratchings we sometimes hear on the farthest
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Speaker 1: rim of space, yet from which our own finite vision
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Speaker 1: has given us a merciful immunity. The shadow I had
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Speaker 1: seen I hardly dared to analyze or identify. Something had
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Speaker 1: lain between me and the window that night, but I
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Speaker 1: shuddered whenever I could not cast off the instinct to
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Speaker 1: classify it. If it had only snarled, orbeyed, or laughed titteringly,
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Speaker 1: even that would have relieved the abysmal hideousness. But it
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Speaker 1: was so silent. It had rested a heavy arm or
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Speaker 1: foreleg on my chest. Obviously it was organic, or had
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Speaker 1: once been organic. Jan Martantz, whose room I had invaded,
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Speaker 1: was buried in the graveyard near the mansion. I must
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Speaker 1: find Bennett and Toby, if they lived. Why had it
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Speaker 1: picked them and left me for the last Drowsiness is
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Speaker 1: so stifling, and dreams are so horrible. In a short time,
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Speaker 1: I realized that I must tell my story to someone
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Speaker 1: or break down completely. I had already decided not to
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Speaker 1: abandon the quest for the lurking fear, for in my
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Speaker 1: rash ignorance. It seemed to me that uncertainty was worse
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Speaker 1: than enlightenment, however terrible the latter might prove to be. Accordingly,
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Speaker 1: I resolved in my mind the best course to pursue,
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Speaker 1: whom to select for my confidences, and how to track
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Speaker 1: down the thing which had obliterated two men and cast
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Speaker 1: a nightmare shadow. My chief acquaintances at Lafert's corners had
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Speaker 1: been the affable reporters, of whom several still remained to
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Speaker 1: collect final echoes of the tragedy. It was from these
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Speaker 1: that I determined to choose a colleague, And the more
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Speaker 1: I reflected, the more my preference inclined toward one Arthur Monroe,
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Speaker 1: a dark, lean man of about thirty five, whose education, taste, intelligence,
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Speaker 1: and temperament all seemed to mark him as one not
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Speaker 1: bound to conventional ideas and experiences. On an afternoon in
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Speaker 1: early September, Arthur Monroe listened to my story. I saw
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Speaker 1: from the beginning that he was both interested and sympathetic,
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Speaker 1: and when I had finished, he analyzed and discussed the
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Speaker 1: thing with the greatest shrewdness and judgment. His advice, moreover,
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Speaker 1: was eminently practical, for he recommended a postponement of operations
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Speaker 1: at the Martense Mansion until we might become fortified with
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Speaker 1: more detailed historical and geographical data. On his initiative, we
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Speaker 1: comed the countryside for information regarding the terrible Martense family,
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Speaker 1: and discovered a man who possessed a marvelously illuminating ancestral diary.
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Speaker 1: We also talked at length with such of the mountain
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Speaker 1: mongrels as had not fled from the terror and confusion
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Speaker 1: to remoter slopes, and arranged to precede our culminating task,
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Speaker 1: the exhaustive and definitive examination of the mansion in the
18:45
Speaker 1: light of its detailed history, with an equally exhaustive and
18:48
Speaker 1: definitive examination of spots associated with the various tragedies of
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Speaker 1: Squatter legend. The results of this examination were not at
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Speaker 1: first very lightning, though our tabulation of them seemed to
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Speaker 1: reveal a fairly significant trend, namely that the number of
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Speaker 1: reported horrors was by far the greatest in areas either
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Speaker 1: comparatively near the avoided house or connected with it by
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Speaker 1: stretches of the morbidly overnourished forest. There were, it is true, exceptions. Indeed,
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Speaker 1: the horror which had caught the world's ear had happened
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Speaker 1: in a treeless space, remote alike from the mansion and
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Speaker 1: from any connecting woods. As to the nature and appearance
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Speaker 1: of the lurking Fear, nothing could be gained from the
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Speaker 1: scared and witless shanty dwellers. In the same breath, they
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Speaker 1: called it a snake and a giant, a thunder devil
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Speaker 1: and a bat, a vulture and a walking tree. We did, however,
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Speaker 1: deem ourselves justified in assuming that it was a living
19:53
Speaker 1: organism highly susceptible to electrical storms, and although certain of
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Speaker 1: the stories suggested wings, we believed that its aversion for
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Speaker 1: open spaces made land locomotion a more probable theory. The
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Speaker 1: only thing really incompatible with the latter view was the
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Speaker 1: rapidity with which the creature must have traveled in order
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Speaker 1: to perform all the deeds attributed to it. When we
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Speaker 1: came to know the squatters better, we found them curiously
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Speaker 1: likable in many ways. Simple animals, they were gently descending
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Speaker 1: the evolutionary scale. Because of their unfortunate ancestry and stullifying isolation.
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Speaker 1: They feared outsiders, but slowly grew accustomed to us, finally
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Speaker 1: helping vastly when we beat down all the thickets and
20:42
Speaker 1: tore out all the partitions of the mansion in our
20:45
Speaker 1: search for the Lurking Fear. When we asked them to
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Speaker 1: help us find Bennett and Toby, they were truly distressed,
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Speaker 1: for they wanted to help us, yet knew that these
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Speaker 1: victims had gone as wholly out of the world as
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Speaker 1: their own missing people, that great numbers of them had
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Speaker 1: actually been killed and removed, just as the wild animals
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Speaker 1: had long been exterminated. We were, of course, thoroughly convinced,
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Speaker 1: and we waited apprehensively for further tragedies to occur. By
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Speaker 1: the middle of October, we were puzzled by our lack
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Speaker 1: of progress. Owing to the clear nights, no demoniac aggressions
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Speaker 1: had taken place, and the completeness of our vain searches
21:31
Speaker 1: of house and country almost drove us to regard the
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Speaker 1: Lurking Fear as a non material agency. We feared that
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Speaker 1: the cold weather would come on and halt our explorations,
21:43
Speaker 1: for all agreed that the demon was generally quiet and winter.
21:48
Speaker 1: Thus there was a kind of haste and desperation in
21:51
Speaker 1: our last daylight. Canvas of the horror visited Hamlet a hamlet,
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Speaker 1: now deserted because of the squatter's fears. The ill fated
22:00
Speaker 1: what a hamlet had borne no name, but had long
22:03
Speaker 1: stood in a sheltered though treeless cleft between two elevations
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Speaker 1: called respectively Cone Mountain and Maple Hill. It was closer
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Speaker 1: to Maple Hill than to Cone Mountain, some of the
22:15
Speaker 1: crude abodes indeed being dugouts on the side of the
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Speaker 1: former eminence. Geographically, it lay about two miles northwest of
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Speaker 1: the base of Tempest Mountain and three miles from the
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Speaker 1: Oak Girt Mansion. Of the distance between the hamlet and
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Speaker 1: the mansion, fully two miles and a quarter. On the
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Speaker 1: hamlet's side was entirely open country, the plain being a
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Speaker 1: fairly level character save for some of the low snakelike mounds,
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Speaker 1: and having as vegetation only grass and scattered weeds. Considering
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Speaker 1: this topography, we had finally concluded that the demon must
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Speaker 1: have come by way of Cone Mountain, a wooded southern
22:56
Speaker 1: prolongation of which ran to within a short distance of
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Speaker 1: the westernmost spur of Tempest Mountain. The upheaval of ground
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Speaker 1: we traced conclusively to a landslide from Maple Hill, a
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Speaker 1: tall lone splintered tree, on whose side had been the
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Speaker 1: striking point of the thunderbolt which summoned the fiend. As
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Speaker 1: for the twentieth time or more, Arthur Monroe and I
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Speaker 1: went quite nutely over every inch of the violated village.
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Speaker 1: We were filled with a certain discouragement, coupled with vague
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Speaker 1: and novel fears. It was acutely uncanny, even when frightful
23:35
Speaker 1: and uncanny things were common, to encounter so blankly clueless
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Speaker 1: a scene after such overwhelming occurrences, and we moved about
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Speaker 1: beneath the leaden, darkening sky with that tragic directionless zeal
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Speaker 1: which results from a combined sense of futility and necessity
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Speaker 1: of action. Our care was gravely minute. Every cottage was
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Speaker 1: again entered, every hillside dugout, again, searched for bodies, every
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Speaker 1: thorny foot of adjacent slope, again scanned for dens and caves,
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Speaker 1: but all without result. And yet, as I have said,
24:15
Speaker 1: vague new fears hovered menacingly over us, as if giant
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Speaker 1: back winged griffins squatted invisibly on the mountaintops and leered
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Speaker 1: with the baddened eyes that had looked on trans cosmic
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Speaker 1: gulfs As the afternoon advanced, it became increasingly difficult to see,
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Speaker 1: and we heard the rumble of a thunderstorm gathering over
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Speaker 1: Tempest Mountain. This sound and such a locality naturally stirred us,
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Speaker 1: though less than it would have done at night. As
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Speaker 1: it was, we hoped desperately that the storm would last
24:48
Speaker 1: until well after dark, and with that hope turned from
24:52
Speaker 1: our aimless hellside searching toward the nearest inhabited hamlet to
24:57
Speaker 1: gather a body of squatters as helpers in the investigation.
25:01
Speaker 1: Termid as they were, a few of the younger men
25:04
Speaker 1: were sufficiently inspired by our protective leadership to promise such help.
25:09
Speaker 1: We had hardly more than turned. However, when there descended
25:13
Speaker 1: such a blinding sheet of torrential rain that shelter became imperative.
25:18
Speaker 1: The extreme almost nocturnal darkness of the sky caused us
25:23
Speaker 1: to stumble sadly, but guided by the frequent flashes of
25:26
Speaker 1: lightning and by our minute knowledge of the hamlet, we
25:29
Speaker 1: soon reached the least porous cabin of the lot, and
25:33
Speaker 1: heterogeneous combination of logs and boards, who still existing floor
25:38
Speaker 1: and single tiny window both faced maple hill barring the door.
25:43
Speaker 1: After us against the fury of the wind and rain.
25:47
Speaker 1: We put in place the crude window shutter which our
25:50
Speaker 1: frequent searches had taught us where to find. It was
25:54
Speaker 1: dismal sitting there on rickety boxes in the petchy darkness,
25:58
Speaker 1: but we smoked pipes, and the capeally flashed our pocket lamps.
26:01
Speaker 1: About now and then we could see the lightning through
26:04
Speaker 1: cracks in the wall. The afternoon was so incredibly dark
26:09
Speaker 1: that each flash was extremely vivid. The stormy vigil reminded
26:14
Speaker 1: me shudderingly of my ghastly night on Tempest Mountain. My
26:19
Speaker 1: mind turned to that odd question which had kept recurring
26:23
Speaker 1: ever since the nightmare thing had happened, And again I
26:27
Speaker 1: wondered why the demon, approaching the three watchers, either from
26:31
Speaker 1: the window or the interior, had begun with the men
26:35
Speaker 1: on each side and left the middleman till the last
26:39
Speaker 1: when the titan fireball had scared it away. Why had
26:43
Speaker 1: it not taken its victims in natural order, with myself second?
26:47
Speaker 1: From whichever direction it had approached, with what manner of
26:52
Speaker 1: far reaching tentacles did it pray? Or did it know
26:56
Speaker 1: that I was the leader and saved me for a
26:58
Speaker 1: fate worse than that? Of my companions. In the midst
27:03
Speaker 1: of these reflections, as if dramatically arranged to intensify them,
27:08
Speaker 1: there fell nearby a terrific bolt of lightning, followed by
27:12
Speaker 1: the sound of sliding earth. At the same time, the
27:16
Speaker 1: wolfish wind rose to demoniac crescendo's of oolulation. We were
27:21
Speaker 1: sure that the lone tree on Maple Hill had been
27:24
Speaker 1: struck again, and Monroe rose from his box and went
27:28
Speaker 1: to the tiny window to ascertain the damage. When he
27:32
Speaker 1: took down the shutter, the wind and rain howled deafeningly in,
27:36
Speaker 1: so that I could not hear what he said. But
27:39
Speaker 1: I waited while he leaned out and tried to fathom
27:41
Speaker 1: nature's pandemonium. Gradually, a calming of the wind and dispersal
27:48
Speaker 1: of the unusual darkness told of the storm's passing. I
27:52
Speaker 1: had hoped it would last into the night to help
27:54
Speaker 1: our quest, but a furtive sunbeam from a knothole behind
27:58
Speaker 1: me removed the likelihood of such a thing. Suggesting to
28:03
Speaker 1: Monroe that we had better get some light, even if
28:05
Speaker 1: more showers came, I umbarred and opened the crude door.
28:10
Speaker 1: The ground outside was a singular mass of mud and
28:13
Speaker 1: pools with fresh heaps of earth from the slight landslide.
28:18
Speaker 1: But I saw nothing to justify the interest which kept
28:21
Speaker 1: my companion silently leaning out of the window. Crossing to
28:26
Speaker 1: where he leaned, I touched his shoulder, but he did
28:30
Speaker 1: not move. Then, as I playfully shook him and turned
28:33
Speaker 1: him around, I felt the strangling tendrils of a cancerous horror,
28:38
Speaker 1: whose roots reached into illimitable pasts and fathomless abysms of
28:44
Speaker 1: the night that broods beyond time. For Arthur Moore was dead,
28:50
Speaker 1: and on what remained of his chewed and gouged head
28:54
Speaker 1: there was no longer a face. Part three What the
29:00
Speaker 1: Red Glare meant. On the tempest rack night of November eighth,
29:06
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty one, with a lantern which cast Charnel shadows,
29:11
Speaker 1: I stood digging alone and idiotically in the grave of
29:14
Speaker 1: Jan Martents. I had begun to dig in the afternoon
29:18
Speaker 1: because a thunderstorm was brewing, And now that it was
29:22
Speaker 1: dark and the storm had burst above the maniacally thick foliage,
29:27
Speaker 1: I was glad. I believed that my mind was partly
29:31
Speaker 1: unhinged by events since August fifth, the demon shadow in
29:36
Speaker 1: the mansion, the general strain, and disappointment, and the thing
29:39
Speaker 1: that occurred at the hamlet in an October storm. After
29:44
Speaker 1: that thing, I had dug a grave for one whose
29:46
Speaker 1: death I could not understand. I knew that others could
29:50
Speaker 1: not understand either, So let them think Arthur Monroe had
29:54
Speaker 1: wandered away. They searched, but found nothing. The squatters might
29:59
Speaker 1: have under stood, but I dared not frighten them more.
30:03
Speaker 1: I myself seemed strangely callous. That shock at the mansion
30:08
Speaker 1: had done something to my brain, and I could think
30:11
Speaker 1: only of the quest for a horror now grown to
30:14
Speaker 1: cataclysmic stature in my imagination, a quest which the fate
30:19
Speaker 1: of Arthur Monroe made me vow to keep silent and solitary.
30:25
Speaker 1: The scene of my excavations would alone have been enough
30:28
Speaker 1: to unnerve any ordinary man. Baleful, primal trees of unholy size,
30:34
Speaker 1: age and grotesqueness leered above me like the pillars of
30:38
Speaker 1: some hellish druidic temple, muffling the thunder, hushing the clawing wind,
30:44
Speaker 1: and admitting but little rain. Beyond the scarred trunks. In
30:48
Speaker 1: the background, illumined by faintless flashes of filtered lightning, rose
30:53
Speaker 1: the damped, ivied stones of the deserted mansion, while somewhat
30:58
Speaker 1: nearer was the abandoned Dutch garden, whose walks and beds
31:01
Speaker 1: were polluted by a white fungus fettied overn nourished vegetation
31:07
Speaker 1: that never saw full daylight. And nearest of all was
31:11
Speaker 1: the graveyard, where deformed trees tossed insane branches as their
31:16
Speaker 1: roots displaced unhallowed slabs, and sucked venom from what lay
31:20
Speaker 1: below now and then beneath the brown pole of leaves
31:26
Speaker 1: that rotted and fested in the antediluvian forest darkness. I
31:30
Speaker 1: could trace the sinister outlines of some of these low
31:34
Speaker 1: mounds which characterized the lightning pierced region. History had led
31:40
Speaker 1: me to this archaic grave. History, indeed, was all I
31:44
Speaker 1: had after everything else ended In mocking Satanism. I now
31:49
Speaker 1: believed that the lurking Fear was no material thing, but
31:53
Speaker 1: a wolf fanged ghost that rode the midnight lightning. And
31:56
Speaker 1: I believed, because of the masses of local tradition I
32:00
Speaker 1: had unearthed in my search with Arthur Monroe, that the
32:03
Speaker 1: ghost was that of Jan Martense, who died in seventeen
32:06
Speaker 1: sixty two. That is why I was digging idiotically and
32:11
Speaker 1: his grave. The Martense Mansion was built in sixteen seventy
32:16
Speaker 1: by Gerret Martense, a wealthy New Amsterdam merchant who disliked
32:21
Speaker 1: the changing order under British rule, and had constructed this
32:25
Speaker 1: magnificent domicile on a remote woodland summit whose untrodden solitude
32:30
Speaker 1: and unusual scenery pleased him. The only substantial disappointment encountered
32:36
Speaker 1: in this sight was that which concerned the prevalence of
32:40
Speaker 1: violent thunderstorms in summer. When selecting the hill and building
32:44
Speaker 1: his mansion, my near Martense had laid these frequent natural
32:49
Speaker 1: outbursts to some peculiarity of the year, but in time
32:54
Speaker 1: he perceived that the locality was especially liable to such phenomena.
33:00
Speaker 1: At length, having found these storms injurious to his head,
33:04
Speaker 1: he fitted up a cellar into which he could retreat
33:06
Speaker 1: from their wildest pandemonium. Of Gerrett Martense's descendants less is
33:12
Speaker 1: known than of himself, since they were all reared and
33:16
Speaker 1: hatred of the English civilization, and trained to shun such
33:20
Speaker 1: of the colonists as accepted it. Their life was exceedingly secluded,
33:26
Speaker 1: and people declared that their isolation had made them heavy
33:29
Speaker 1: of speech and comprehension in appearance. All were marked by
33:34
Speaker 1: a peculiar inherited dissimilarity of eyes, one generally being blue
33:40
Speaker 1: and the other brown. Their social contacts grew fewer and fewer,
33:45
Speaker 1: till at last they took to intermarrying with the numerous
33:48
Speaker 1: menial class about the estate. Many of the crowded family degenerated,
33:55
Speaker 1: moved across the valley emerged with the mongrel population, which
33:58
Speaker 1: was later to produce the pitiful Squatters. The rest had
34:03
Speaker 1: stuck sullenly to their ancestral mansion, becoming more and more
34:07
Speaker 1: clannish and taciturn, yet developing a nervous responsiveness to the
34:12
Speaker 1: frequent thunderstorms. Most of this information reached the outside world
34:17
Speaker 1: through young jar Martense, who, from some kind of restlessness,
34:21
Speaker 1: joined the colonial army when news of the Albany Convention
34:25
Speaker 1: reached Tempest Mountain. He was the first of Gerrett's descendants
34:29
Speaker 1: to see much of the world, and when he returned
34:32
Speaker 1: in seventeen sixty after six years of campaigning, he was
34:36
Speaker 1: hated as an outsider by his father, uncles, and brothers.
34:40
Speaker 1: In spite of his dissimilar Martense eyes, no longer could
34:45
Speaker 1: he share the peculiarities and prejudices of the Martenses, while
34:50
Speaker 1: the very mountain thunderstorms failed to intoxicate him as they
34:54
Speaker 1: had before. Instead, his surroundings depressed him, and he frequent
35:00
Speaker 1: He wrote to a friend in Albany of plans to
35:02
Speaker 1: leave the paternal roof. In the spring of seventeen sixty three,
35:08
Speaker 1: Jonathan Gifford, the Albany friend of Jan Martense, became worried
35:12
Speaker 1: by his correspondent's silence, especially in view of the conditions
35:16
Speaker 1: and quarrels at the Martense mansion. Determined to visit Yarn
35:21
Speaker 1: in person, he went into the mountains on horseback. His
35:25
Speaker 1: diary states that he reached Tempest Mountain on September twentieth,
35:29
Speaker 1: finding the mansion in great decrepitude. The sullen, odd eyed Martenses,
35:34
Speaker 1: whose unclean animal aspects shocked him, told him in broken
35:39
Speaker 1: gutturals that Yarn was dead. He had, they insisted, been
35:43
Speaker 1: struck by lightning the autumn before, and now lay buried
35:46
Speaker 1: behind the neglected sunken gardens. They showed the visitor the grave,
35:51
Speaker 1: barren and devoid of markers. Something in the Martense's manner
35:56
Speaker 1: gave Gifford a feeling of repulsion and suspicion, and a
36:00
Speaker 1: week later he returned with Spade and Mattock to explore
36:03
Speaker 1: the sepocral spot. He found what he expected, a skull,
36:09
Speaker 1: crushed cruelly, as if by savage blows. So returning to Albany,
36:14
Speaker 1: he openly charged the Martenses with the murder of their kinsmen.
36:19
Speaker 1: Legal evidence was lacking, but the story spread rapidly around
36:23
Speaker 1: the countryside, and from that time the Martenses were ostracized
36:28
Speaker 1: by the world. No one would deal with them, and
36:31
Speaker 1: their distant manner was shunned as an accursed place. Somehow,
36:35
Speaker 1: they managed to live on independently by the products of
36:38
Speaker 1: their estate. For occasional lights glimpsed from far away hills
36:43
Speaker 1: attested their continued presence. These lights were seen as late
36:47
Speaker 1: as eighteen ten, but toward the last they became very infrequent. Meanwhile,
36:54
Speaker 1: there grew up about the mansion and the mountain a
36:56
Speaker 1: body of diabolic legendary. The place avoided with doubled assiduousness,
37:02
Speaker 1: and invested with every whispered myth tradition could supply. It
37:08
Speaker 1: remained unvisited till eighteen sixteen, when the continued absence of
37:12
Speaker 1: lights was noticed by the squatters. At that time, a
37:16
Speaker 1: party made investigations, finding the house deserted and partly in ruins.
37:22
Speaker 1: There were no skeletons about, so that departure, rather than death,
37:27
Speaker 1: was inferred. The clan seemed to have left several years before,
37:32
Speaker 1: and improvised penthouses showed how numerous it had grown. Prior
37:36
Speaker 1: to its migration. Its cultural level had fallen very low,
37:41
Speaker 1: as proved by decaying furniture and scattered silverware, which must
37:46
Speaker 1: have been long abandoned when its owners left. But though
37:50
Speaker 1: the dreaded Martenses were gone, the fear of the haunted
37:54
Speaker 1: house continued and grew very acute when new and strange
37:58
Speaker 1: stories arose among the mountain decadence. There it stood, deserted, feared,
38:05
Speaker 1: and linked with the vengeful ghosts of yar Mar Tents.
38:09
Speaker 1: There it still stood on the night I dug and
38:12
Speaker 1: Yan Martense's grave. I have described my protracted digging as idiotic,
38:20
Speaker 1: and such it indeed was an object and method. The
38:24
Speaker 1: coffin of yar Mar Tents had been soon unearthed. It
38:28
Speaker 1: now held only dust and nier. But in my fury
38:32
Speaker 1: to exhume his ghost, I delved irrationally and clumsily down
38:37
Speaker 1: beneath where he had lain. God knows what I expected
38:40
Speaker 1: to find. I only felt that I was digging in
38:44
Speaker 1: the grave of a man whose ghost stalked by night.
38:48
Speaker 1: It is impossible to say what monstrous depth I had
38:51
Speaker 1: attained when my spade and soon my feet broke through
38:55
Speaker 1: the ground beneath. The event under the circumstances was tremendous,
39:00
Speaker 1: for in the existence of a subterranean space here my
39:04
Speaker 1: mad theories had terrible confirmation. My slight fall had extinguished
39:09
Speaker 1: a lantern. But I produced an electric pocket lamp and
39:13
Speaker 1: viewed the small horizontal tunnel, which led away indefinitely in
39:16
Speaker 1: both directions. It was amply large for a man to
39:21
Speaker 1: wriggle through, and though no sane person would have tried
39:24
Speaker 1: it at that time, I forgot danger, reason and cleanliness
39:29
Speaker 1: in my single minded fever to unearth the lurking fear
39:33
Speaker 1: choosing the direction toward the house, I scrambled recklessly into
39:38
Speaker 1: the narrow burrow, squirming ahead blindly and rapidly, and flashing,
39:42
Speaker 1: but seldom the lamp I kept before me. What language
39:47
Speaker 1: can describe the spectacle of a man lost in infinitely
39:51
Speaker 1: abysmal earth pouring twisting, wheezing, scrambling madly through sunken convolutions
39:59
Speaker 1: of IMMI memorial blackness, without an idea of time, safety, direction,
40:05
Speaker 1: or definite object. There is something hideous in it, but
40:11
Speaker 1: that is what I did. I did it for so
40:14
Speaker 1: long that life faded to a farm memory, and I
40:17
Speaker 1: became one with the moles and grubs of nighted depths. Indeed,
40:22
Speaker 1: it was only by accident that, after interminable writhings, I
40:26
Speaker 1: jarred my forgotten electric lamp alight, so that it shone
40:30
Speaker 1: eerily along the burrow of caked loam that stretched and
40:34
Speaker 1: curved ahead. I had been scrambling in this way for
40:38
Speaker 1: some time, so that my battery had burned very low,
40:42
Speaker 1: when the passage suddenly inclined sharply upward, altering my mode
40:46
Speaker 1: of progress. And as I raised my glance, it was
40:51
Speaker 1: without preparation that I saw glistening in the distance two
40:56
Speaker 1: demoniac reflections of my expiring lamp. Two reflections glowing with
41:02
Speaker 1: a baneful and unmistakable effulgence and provoking maddeningly nebulous memories.
41:10
Speaker 1: I stopped automatically, though lacking the brain to retreat, The
41:15
Speaker 1: eyes approached yet of the thing that bore them. I
41:19
Speaker 1: could not distinguish only a claw, but what a claw?
41:24
Speaker 1: Then far overhead I heard a faint crashing, which I recognized.
41:29
Speaker 1: It was the wild thunder of the mountain. Raised to
41:32
Speaker 1: hysteric fury. I must have been crawling upward for some time,
41:37
Speaker 1: so that the surface was now quite near, And as
41:41
Speaker 1: the muffled thunder clattered, those eyes stared with vacuous viciousness.
41:47
Speaker 1: Thank God I did not then know what it was,
41:50
Speaker 1: else I should have died. But I was saved by
41:53
Speaker 1: the very thunder that had summoned it. For after a
41:56
Speaker 1: hideous weight, there burst from the unseen outside sky, one
42:00
Speaker 1: of those frequent mountain with bolts, whose aftermath I had
42:04
Speaker 1: noticed here and there as gashes of disturbed earth and
42:08
Speaker 1: fog urites of various sizes. With cyclopaean rage, it tore
42:13
Speaker 1: through the soil above that damitable pit, blinding and deafening me,
42:17
Speaker 1: yet not wholly reducing me to a coma. In the
42:22
Speaker 1: chaos of sliding, shifting earth, I clawed and floundered helplessly
42:27
Speaker 1: till the rain on my head steadied me, and I
42:29
Speaker 1: saw that I had come to the surface in a
42:32
Speaker 1: familiar spot, a steep unforested place on the southwest slope
42:37
Speaker 1: of the mountain. Recurrent sheet lightnings illomed the tumbled ground
42:42
Speaker 1: and the remains of the curious low hummock, which had
42:45
Speaker 1: stretched down from the wooded higher slope. But there was
42:49
Speaker 1: nothing in the chaos to show my place of egress
42:52
Speaker 1: from the lethal catacomb. My brain was as great a
42:56
Speaker 1: chaos as the earth, and as a distant red glare
42:59
Speaker 1: boasted on the landscape from the south, I hardly realized
43:03
Speaker 1: the horror I had been through. But when two days
43:07
Speaker 1: later the squatters told me what the red glare meant,
43:11
Speaker 1: I felt more horror than that which the mold burrow
43:14
Speaker 1: and the claw and Eyes had given, more horror because
43:17
Speaker 1: of the overwhelming implications. In a hamlet twenty miles away,
43:23
Speaker 1: an orgy of fear had followed the bolt which brought
43:26
Speaker 1: me above ground, and a nameless thing had dropped from
43:30
Speaker 1: an overhanging tree into a weak roofed cabin. It had
43:34
Speaker 1: done a deed, but the squatters had fired the cabin
43:37
Speaker 1: and frenzy before it could escape. It had been doing
43:40
Speaker 1: that deed at the very moment the earth caved in
43:43
Speaker 1: on the thing with the claw and eyes. Part four
43:49
Speaker 1: the horror in the eyes. There can be nothing normal
43:55
Speaker 1: in the mind of one who, knowing what I knew
43:58
Speaker 1: of the horrors of Tempest Mountain, would seek alone for
44:01
Speaker 1: the fear that lurked there. That at least two of
44:04
Speaker 1: the fear's embodiments were destroyed formed but a slight guarantee
44:09
Speaker 1: of mental and physical safety in this acron of multiform diabolism.
44:15
Speaker 1: Yet I continued my quest with even greater zeal as
44:18
Speaker 1: events and revelations became more monstrous. When two days after
44:25
Speaker 1: my frightful crawl through that crypt of the Eyes and Claw,
44:29
Speaker 1: I learned that a thing had malignly hovered twenty miles
44:32
Speaker 1: away at the same instant the eyes were glaring at me,
44:37
Speaker 1: I experienced virtual convulsions of fright. But that fright was
44:42
Speaker 1: so mixed with wonder and alluring grotesqueness that it was
44:47
Speaker 1: almost a pleasant sensation. Sometimes in the throes of a nightmare,
44:52
Speaker 1: when unseen powers whirl over the roofs of strange dead
44:56
Speaker 1: cities toward the grinning chasm of knees, it as a
45:00
Speaker 1: relief and even a delight to shriek wildly and throw
45:03
Speaker 1: oneself voluntarily along with the hideous vortex of dream doom
45:08
Speaker 1: down into whatever bottomless gulf may yawn. And so it
45:13
Speaker 1: was with the wakening nightmare of Tempest Mountain. The discovery
45:17
Speaker 1: that two monsters had haunted the spot gave me ultimately
45:21
Speaker 1: a mad craving to plunge into the very earth of
45:24
Speaker 1: the accursed region and with bare hands dig out the
45:28
Speaker 1: death that leered from every inch of the poisonous soil.
45:33
Speaker 1: As soon as possible, I visited the grave of yarn
45:36
Speaker 1: Martense and dug vainly where I had dug before. Some
45:41
Speaker 1: extensive caven had obliterated all trace of the underground passage,
45:45
Speaker 1: while the rain had washed so much earth back into
45:49
Speaker 1: the excavation that I could not tell how deeply I
45:52
Speaker 1: had dug. That other day, I likewise made a difficult
45:56
Speaker 1: trip to the distant hamlet, where the death creature had
45:59
Speaker 1: been burnt, and was little repaid for my trouble. In
46:03
Speaker 1: the ashes of the fateful cabin, I found several bones,
46:07
Speaker 1: but apparently none of the monsters. The squatters said the
46:11
Speaker 1: thing had only one victim, but in this I judged
46:14
Speaker 1: them inaccurate, since besides the complete skull of a human being,
46:19
Speaker 1: there was another bony fragment, which seemed certainly to have
46:23
Speaker 1: belonged to a human skull at some time. Though the
46:27
Speaker 1: rapid drop of the monster had been seen, no one
46:30
Speaker 1: could say just what the creature was like. Those who
46:34
Speaker 1: had glimpsed it called it simply a devil. Examining the
46:38
Speaker 1: great tree where it had lurked, I could discern no
46:41
Speaker 1: distinctive marks. I tried to find some trail into the
46:45
Speaker 1: black forest, but on this occasion could not stand the
46:48
Speaker 1: sight of those morbidly large bowls, or of those vast,
46:53
Speaker 1: serpent like roots that twisted so malevolently before they sank
46:57
Speaker 1: into the earth. My next step was to re examine
47:01
Speaker 1: with microscopic care the deserted hamlet where death had come
47:05
Speaker 1: most abundantly, and where Arthur Monroe had seen something he
47:09
Speaker 1: never lived to describe. Though my vain previous searches had
47:14
Speaker 1: been exceedingly minute, I now had new data to test
47:19
Speaker 1: for my horrible grave crawl convinced me that at least
47:22
Speaker 1: one of the phases of the monstrosity had been an
47:26
Speaker 1: underground creature. This time on the fourteenth of November. My
47:31
Speaker 1: quest concerned itself mostly with the slopes of Cone Mountain
47:34
Speaker 1: and Maple Hill, where they overlooked the unfortunate hamlet, and
47:39
Speaker 1: I gave particular attention to the loose earth of the
47:42
Speaker 1: Landslide region. On the latter eminence. The afternoon on my
47:48
Speaker 1: search brought nothing to light, and dusk came. As I
47:51
Speaker 1: stood on Maple Hill, looking down at the hamlet and
47:54
Speaker 1: across the valley to Tempest Mountain. There had been a
47:58
Speaker 1: gorgeous sunset, and now the moon came up, nearly full
48:02
Speaker 1: and shedding a silver flood over the plain, the distant
48:06
Speaker 1: mountain side, and the curious low mounds that rose here
48:09
Speaker 1: and there. It was a peaceful Arcadian scene, but knowing
48:15
Speaker 1: what it hid, I hated it. I hated the mocking moon,
48:19
Speaker 1: the hypocritical plane, the festering mountain, and those sinister mounds.
48:25
Speaker 1: Everything seemed to me tainted with a loathsome contagion, and
48:30
Speaker 1: inspired by a noxious alliance with distorted hidden powers. Presently,
48:37
Speaker 1: as I gazed abstractly at the moonlit panorama, my eye
48:41
Speaker 1: became attracted to something singular in the nature and arrangement
48:45
Speaker 1: of a certain topographical element. Without having any exact knowledge
48:50
Speaker 1: of geology, I had from the first been interested in
48:54
Speaker 1: the odd mounds and hummocks of the region. I had
48:57
Speaker 1: noticed that they were pretty widely distributed around Tempest Mountain,
49:02
Speaker 1: though less numerous on the plain than near the hilltop itself,
49:06
Speaker 1: where prehistoric glaciation had doubtless found feebler opposition to its
49:11
Speaker 1: striking and fantastic caprices. Now, in the light of that
49:15
Speaker 1: low moon, which cast long, weird shadows, it struck me
49:20
Speaker 1: forcibly that the various points and lines of the mound
49:23
Speaker 1: system had a peculiar relation to the summit of Tempest Mountain.
49:28
Speaker 1: That summit was undeniably a center from which the lines
49:32
Speaker 1: or rows of points radiated indefinitely and irregularly, as if
49:38
Speaker 1: the unwholesome Martense mansion had thrown out visible tentacles of terror.
49:44
Speaker 1: The idea of such tentacles gave me an unexplained thrill,
49:49
Speaker 1: and I stopped to analyze my reason for believing these
49:52
Speaker 1: mounds glacial phenomena. The more I analyzed, the less I believed,
49:58
Speaker 1: and against my new the open mind there began to
50:01
Speaker 1: beat grotesque and horrible analogies based on superficial aspects and
50:07
Speaker 1: upon my experience beneath the earth. Before I knew it,
50:12
Speaker 1: I was uttering, frenzied and disjointed words to myself, My God, Molehills,
50:19
Speaker 1: the damned place must be honeycombed. How many that night
50:23
Speaker 1: at the mansion they took Bennett and Toby first on
50:26
Speaker 1: each side of us. Then I was digging frantically into
50:31
Speaker 1: the mound which had stretched nearest me, digging desperately, shiveringly,
50:36
Speaker 1: but almost jubilantly, digging, and at last shrieking aloud with
50:40
Speaker 1: some unplaced emotion, as they came upon a tunnel or
50:44
Speaker 1: burrow just like the one through which I had crawled
50:47
Speaker 1: on that other demoniac night. After that, I recall running
50:53
Speaker 1: spade in hand are hideous run across moonliten mound marked
50:58
Speaker 1: meadows and through disease eased, precipitous abysses of haunted hillside forest, leaping, screaming, panting,
51:06
Speaker 1: bounding toward the terrible martense mansion. I recalled digging unreasoningly
51:12
Speaker 1: in all parts of the brier choked cellar, digging to
51:15
Speaker 1: find the core and center of that malignant universe of mounds.
51:20
Speaker 1: And then I recall how I laughed when I stumbled
51:24
Speaker 1: on the passageway, the hole at the base of the
51:26
Speaker 1: old chimney, where the thick weeds grew and cast queer
51:30
Speaker 1: shadows in the light of the lone candle I had
51:33
Speaker 1: happened to have with me. What still remained down in
51:37
Speaker 1: that hell hive, lurking and waiting for the thunder to
51:41
Speaker 1: arouse it. I did not know two had been killed,
51:45
Speaker 1: perhaps that had finished it. But still there remained that
51:48
Speaker 1: burning determination to reach the innermost secret of the fear,
51:53
Speaker 1: which I had once more come to deem definite, material
51:57
Speaker 1: and organic. My indecisive speculation whether to explore the passage
52:03
Speaker 1: alone and immediately with my pocket light, or to try
52:07
Speaker 1: to assemble a band of squatters for the quest, was
52:10
Speaker 1: interrupted after a time by a sudden rush of wind
52:13
Speaker 1: from the outside, which blew out the candle and left
52:17
Speaker 1: me in stark blackness. The moon no longer shone through
52:21
Speaker 1: the chinks and arpatures above me, and where the scents
52:24
Speaker 1: of faithful alarm, I heard the sinister and significant rumble
52:29
Speaker 1: of approaching thunder. A confusion of associated ideas possessed my brain,
52:36
Speaker 1: leading me to grope back toward the farthest corner of
52:39
Speaker 1: the cellar. My eyes, however, never turned away from the
52:43
Speaker 1: horrible opening at the base of the chimney, and I
52:47
Speaker 1: began to get glimpses of the crumbling bricks and unhealthy weeds,
52:51
Speaker 1: as faint glows of lightning penetrated the woods outside and
52:56
Speaker 1: illumined the chinks in the upper wall. Every second I
53:01
Speaker 1: was consumed with a mixture of fear and curiosity. What
53:06
Speaker 1: would the storm call forth? Or was there anything left
53:10
Speaker 1: for it to call? Guided by a lightning flash, I
53:14
Speaker 1: settled myself down behind a dense clump of vegetation, through
53:18
Speaker 1: which I could see the opening without being seen. If
53:23
Speaker 1: Heaven is merciful, it will someday efface from my consciousness
53:27
Speaker 1: the sight that I saw, and let me live my
53:30
Speaker 1: last years in peace. I cannot sleep at night now
53:34
Speaker 1: and have to take opiates when it thunders. The thing
53:37
Speaker 1: that came abruptly and unannounced, a demon rat like scurrying
53:43
Speaker 1: from pits, remote and unimaginable, a hellish panting and stifled grunting,
53:49
Speaker 1: And then from that opening beneath the chimney, a burst
53:52
Speaker 1: of moltitudinous and leprous life, a loathsome night spawned flood
53:57
Speaker 1: of organic corruption, more devastating, hideous than the blackest conjurations
54:02
Speaker 1: of mortal madness and morbidity, seething stewing, surging, bubbling like
54:08
Speaker 1: serpent slime. It rolled up and out of that yawning hole,
54:12
Speaker 1: spreading like a septic contagion, and streaming from the cellar
54:17
Speaker 1: at every point of egress, streaming out to scatter through
54:21
Speaker 1: the accursed midnight forests, and strew fear, madness, and death.
54:27
Speaker 1: God knows how many there were, there must have been thousands.
54:31
Speaker 1: To see the stream of them in faint intermittent lightning
54:34
Speaker 1: was shocking. When they had thinned out enough to be
54:37
Speaker 1: glimpsed as separate organisms, I saw that they were dwarfed, deformed,
54:42
Speaker 1: hairy devils or apes, monstrous and diabolic caricatures of the
54:47
Speaker 1: monkey tribe. They were so hideously silent there was hardly
54:52
Speaker 1: a squeal. When one of the last stragglers turned, with
54:55
Speaker 1: the skill of long practice to make a meal in
54:57
Speaker 1: accustomed fashion on a weaker comp panion. Others snapped up
55:02
Speaker 1: what it left and ate with slavering relish. Then, in
55:06
Speaker 1: spite of my days of fright and disgust, my morbid
55:10
Speaker 1: curiosity triumphed, And as the last of the monstrosities oozed
55:14
Speaker 1: up alone from that nether world of unknown nightmare, I
55:18
Speaker 1: drew my automatic pistol and shot it under cover of
55:22
Speaker 1: the thunder, shrieking, slithering, torrential shadows of red, viscous madness,
55:28
Speaker 1: chasing one another through endless in sanguine corridors of purple
55:32
Speaker 1: fulgurous sky, formless phanfasms, and kaleidoscopic mutations of a gaulish
55:39
Speaker 1: remembered scene. Forests of montrous overnourished oaks with serpent roots
55:44
Speaker 1: twisting and sucking unnamable juices from an earth verminous with
55:49
Speaker 1: millions of cannibal devils, mound like tentacles groping from underground
55:54
Speaker 1: nuclei of polybus perversion, insane lightning over malignant eye ivied walls,
56:00
Speaker 1: and demon arcades choked with fungus vegetation. Heaven be thanked
56:06
Speaker 1: for the instinct which led me unconscious to places where
56:09
Speaker 1: men dwell, to the peaceful village that slept under the
56:13
Speaker 1: calm stars of clearing skies. I had recovered enough in
56:19
Speaker 1: a week to send to Albany for a gang of
56:21
Speaker 1: men to blow up the Marten's mansion and the entire
56:25
Speaker 1: top of Tenpest Mountain with dynamite, stop up all the
56:28
Speaker 1: discoverable mound burrows, and destroy certain overnourished trees whose very
56:34
Speaker 1: existence seemed an insult to sanity. I could sleep a
56:39
Speaker 1: little after they had done this, but true rest will
56:42
Speaker 1: never come as long as I remember that nameless secret
56:45
Speaker 1: of the lurking fear. The thing will haunt me. For
56:50
Speaker 1: who can say the extermination is complete and that analogous
56:54
Speaker 1: phenomena do not exist all over the world. Who can,
56:59
Speaker 1: with my knowledge think of the Earth's unknown caverns without
57:02
Speaker 1: a nightmare dread of future possibilities. I cannot see a
57:07
Speaker 1: well or a subway entrance without shuddering. Why cannot the
57:11
Speaker 1: doctors give me something to make me sleep or truly
57:14
Speaker 1: calm my brain when it thunders? What I saw in
57:19
Speaker 1: the glow of my flashlight after I shot the unspeakable
57:22
Speaker 1: straggling object was so symble that almost a minute elapsed
57:26
Speaker 1: before I understood and went delirious. The object was nauseous,
57:32
Speaker 1: a felthy, whitish guerrilla thing with sharp yellow fangs and
57:36
Speaker 1: matted fur. It was the ultimate product of mammalian degeneration,
57:41
Speaker 1: the frightful outcome of isolated spawning, multiplication and cannibal nutrition
57:47
Speaker 1: above and below the ground, the embodiment of all the
57:50
Speaker 1: snarling chaos and grinning fear that lurk behind life. It
57:55
Speaker 1: had looked at me as it died, and its eyes
57:58
Speaker 1: had the same oddity that marked those other eyes which
58:02
Speaker 1: had stared at me underground and excited cloudy recollections when
58:07
Speaker 1: eye was blue, the other brown. They were the dissimilar
58:12
Speaker 1: Martense eyes of the old legends. And I knew, in
58:16
Speaker 1: one unindating cataclysm of voiceless horror, what had become of
58:22
Speaker 1: that vanished family, The terrible and thundercrazed house of Martense,
58:31
Speaker 1: end of the lurking fear,