 This is a LibriVox recording while LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to find out how you can volunteer Please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Paul Siegel of Maynard, Massachusetts Skulls and the Stars by Robert E. Howard He told how murderers walk the earth beneath the curse of Cain with crimson clouds before their eyes and flames about their brain For blood has left upon their souls its everlasting stain Hood Part 1 There are two roads to Torquatown One the shorter and more direct route leads across a barren upland moor and the other which is much longer Wines its torturous way in and out among the hummocks and quagmires of the swamps Skirting the low hills to the east it was a dangerous and tedious trail So Solomon Cain halted an amazement when a breathless youth from the village He had just left overtook him and implored him for God's sake to take the swamp road The swamp road Cain stared at the boy He was a tall gaunt man was Solomon Cain his darkly pallid face and deep brooding eyes made more somber by the drab Puritanical garb he affected Yes, sir. Tis far safer the youngster answered his surprised exclamation Then the moor road must be haunted by Satan himself for your townsmen warned me against traversing the other Because of the quagmires sir that you might not see in the dark You had better return to the village and continue your journey in the morning, sir Taking the swamp road. Yes, sir Cain shrugged his shoulders and shook his head The moon rises almost as soon as twilight dies by its light I can reach Torquatown in a few hours across the moor Sir you had better not No one ever goes that way There are no houses at all upon the moor while in the swamp There is the house of old Ezra who lives there all alone since his maniac cousin Gideon Wandered off and died in the swamp and was never found and old Ezra though a miser would not refuse you lodging Should you decide to stop until morning since you must go you had better go the swamp road Cain eyed the boy piercingly the lad squirmed and shuffled his feet Since this moor road is so dour to wayfarers said the Puritan Why did not the villagers tell me the whole tale instead of vague mouthings? Men like not to talk of it, sir We hope that you would take the swamp road after the men advised you to but when we watched and saw that you turned Not at the forks they sent me to run after you and beg you to reconsider Name of the devil exclaimed Cain sharply the unaccustomed oath showing his irritation the swamp road and the moor road What is it that threatens me and why should I go miles out of my way and risk the bogs and Myers? Sir said the boy dropping his voice and drawing closer We be simple villagers who like not to talk of such things lest foul fortune befall us But the moor road is a way accursed and have not been traversed by any of the countryside for a year or more It is death to walk those moors by night as have been found by some score of unfortunate Some foul horror haunts the way and claims men for his victims So and what is this thing like? No man knows None has ever seen it and lived But late fairs have heard terrible laughter far out on the fen and men have heard the horrid shrieks of its victims Sir in God's name return to the village there past the night and tomorrow take the swamp trail to Torquertown Far back in Cain's gloomy eyes a Sintland light had begun to glimmer like a witch's torch glinting under the fathoms of cold gray ice His blood quickened adventure the lore of lifers can drama not that Cain recognized his sensations as such He sincerely considered that he voiced his real feelings when he said these things be deeds of some power of evil The Lords of Darkness have laid a curse upon the country a strong man is needed to combat Satan and his might Therefore I go who have defied him many a time Sir the boy began then closed his mouth as he saw the futility of argument He only added the corpses of the victims are bruised and torn sir He stood there at the crossroads sighing regretfully as he watched the tall Rangy figure swinging up the road that led toward the moors The Sun was setting as Cain came over the brow of the low hill which debauched into the upland Fen Huge and bloodbred it sank down behind the sullen horizon of the moors seeming to touch the ranked grass with fire So for a moment the watcher seemed to be gazing out across a sea of blood Then the dark shadows came gliding from the east the western blaze faded and Solomon Cain struck out boldly in the gathering darkness The road was dim from disuse, but was clearly defined Cain went swiftly, but warily sword and pistols at hand Stars blinked out and night winds whispered among the grass like weeping specters The moon began to rise lean and haggard like a skull among the stars Then suddenly Cain stopped short From somewhere in front of him sounded a strange and eerie echo or something like an echo Again this time louder Cain started forward again were his senses deceiving him. No Far out there peeled a whisper of frightful laughter and again closer this time no human being ever laughed like that There was no mirth in it only hatred and horror and soul-destroying terror Cain halted he was not afraid, but for the second he was almost unnerved Then stabbing through that awesome laughter came the sound of a scream that was undoubtedly human Cain started forward increasing his gate He cursed the elusive lights and flickering shadows which failed the moor in the rising moon and made accurate sight impossible The laughter continued growing louder as did the screams Then sounded faintly the drum of frantic human feet Cain broke into a run Some human was being hunted to his death out there on the fenn and by what manner of horror God alone knew The sound of the flying feet halted abruptly and the screaming rose unbearably mingled with other sounds unnameable and hideous Evidently the man had been overtaken and Cain his flesh crawling Visualized some ghastly fiend of the darkness crouching on the back of its victim crouching and tearing Then the noise of a terrible and short struggle came clearly through the abysmal silence of the fenn and the footfalls began again But stumbling on uneven The screaming continued but with a gasping gurgle the sweat stood cold on Cain's forehead and body This was heaping horror on horror in an intolerable manner God for a moment's clear light The frightful drama was being enacted within a very short distance of him to judge by the ease with which the sound reached him But this hellish half-light veiled all and shifting shadows so that the moors appeared a haze of blurred illusions and Stunted trees and bushes seemed like giants Cain shouted striving to increase the speed of his advance the shrieks of the unknown broke into a hideous shrill squealing Again there was the sound of a struggle and then from the shadows of the tall grass a thing came reeling a Thing that had once been a man a gore covered frightful thing that fell at Cain's feet and Rived and groveled and raised its terrible face to the rising moon and jibbered and yammered and fell down again and died in its own blood The moon was up now and the light was better Cain bent above the body which lays stark in its unnameable mutilation and he shuddered a rare thing for him Who had seen the deeds of the Spanish Inquisition and the witchfinders? Some wayfarer he supposed Then like a hand of ice on his spine. He was aware that he was not alone He looked up his cold eyes piercing the shadows once the dead man had staggered He saw nothing but he knew he felt that other eyes gave back his stare terrible eyes not of this earth He straightened and drew a pistol waiting the moonlight spread like a lake of pale blood over the moor and Trees and grasses took on their proper sizes The shadows melted and Cain saw at first he thought it only a shadow of mist a Wisp of morphog that swayed in the tall grass before him. He gazed more illusion He thought then the thing began to take on shape vague and indistinct Two hideous eyes flamed at him eyes which held all the stark horror Which has been the heritage of man since the fearful dawn ages eyes frightful and insane with an insanity transcending earthly insanity The form of the thing was misty and vague a brain-jattering Travesty on the human form like yet horribly unlike the grass and bushes beyond showed clearly through it Cain felt the blood pound in his temples yet. He was cold as ice How such an unstable being as that which wavered before him could harm a man in a physical way was more than he could Understand yet the red horror at his feet gave mute testimony that the fiend could act with terrible material effect Of one thing Cain was sure there would be no hunting of him across the dreary moors No screaming and fleeing to be dragged down again and again if he must die He would die in his tracks his wounds in front Now a vague and grisly mouth gaped wide and the demonic laughter again shrieked out soul-shaking in its nearness and In the midst of that threat of doom Cain deliberately leveled his long pistol and fired Moniacal yell of rage and mockery answered the report and the thing came at him like a flying sheet of smoke long shadowy arms stretched to drag him down Cain moving with the dynamic speed of a famished wolf fired the second pistol with as little effect Snatched his long rapier from its sheath and thrust into the center of the misty attacker The blades sang as it passed clear through Encountering no solid resistance and Cain felt icy fingers grip his limbs Beastial talents tear his garments and the skin beneath He dropped the useless sword and sought to grapple with his foe It was like fighting a floating mist a flying shadow armed with dagger-like claws his savage blows met empty air His leanly mighty arms in whose grasp strong men had died swept nothingness and clutched emptiness Not was solid or real saved the flaying ape-like fingers with their crooked talents and the crazy eyes which burned into the shuttering depths of his soul Cain realized that he was in a desperate plight indeed Already his garments hung in tatters and he bled from a score of deep wounds But he never flinched and the thought of flight never entered his mind He had never fled from a single foe and had the thought occurred to him. He would have flushed with shame He saw no help for it now But that his form should lie there beside the fragments of the other victim But the thought held no tears for him His only wish was to give as good an account of himself as possible before the end came and if he could to inflict some damage on his unearthly foe There above the dead man's torn body man fought with demon under the pale light of the rising moon with all the advantages with the demon save one and that one was enough to overcome all the others For if abstract hate may bring into material substance a ghostly thing may not courage equally abstract form a concrete weapon to combat that ghost Cain fought with his arms and his feet and his hands and he was aware at last that the ghost began to give back before him That the fearful laughter changed to screams of baffled fury for man's only weapon is courage that flinches not from the gates of hell itself and Against such not even the legions of hell can stand Of this Cain knew nothing He only knew that the talons which tore and rendered him seemed to grow weaker and wavering that a wild light grew and grew in the horrible eyes and Reeling and gasping he rushed in grappled the thing at last and through it and as they tumbled about on the moor and it Rived and lapped his limbs like a serpent of smoke his flesh crawled and his hair stood on end for he began to understand its jibbering He did not hear and comprehend as a man hears and comprehends the speech of a man But the frightful secrets it imparted in whisperings and yammerings and screaming silences sank fingers of ice and flame into his soul and he knew part 2 The hut of old Ezra the miser stood by the road in the midst of the swamp half screened by the sullen trees which grew about it The walls were rotting the roof crumbling and great pallet and green fungus monsters clung to it and writhed about the doors And windows as of seeking to peer within The trees leaned above it and their gray branches intertwined so that it crouched in the semi darkness like a monstrous dwarf over whose shoulder ogre's leer The road which wound down into the swamp among rotting stumps and rank hummocks and scummy snake haunted pools and bogs crawled past the hut Many people passed that way these days But few saw old Ezra save a glimpse of a yellow face peering through the fungus screen windows itself like an ugly fungus Old Ezra the miser part took much of the quality of the swamp for he was gnarled and bent and sullen His fingers were like clutching parasitic plants and his locks hung like drab moss above eyes trained to the murk of the swamp lands His eyes were like a dead man's yet hinted of depths abysmal and loathsome as the dead lakes of the swamp lands These eyes gleam now at the man who stood in front of his hut This man was tall and gaunt and dark his face was haggard and claw marked and he was bandaged of arm and leg Somewhat behind this man stood a number of villagers You are Ezra of the swamp road. I and what want ye of me? Where's your cousin Gideon the maniac youth who abode with you? Gideon I He wandered away into the swamp and never came back No doubt he lost his way and was set upon by wolves or died in a quagmire or was struck by an adder How long ago? over a year I Hark ye Ezra the miser soon after your cousin's disappearance a countryman coming home across the moors was set upon by some unknown Fiend and torn to pieces and thereafter it became death to cross those moors First men of the countryside then strangers who wandered over the fen felt to the clutches of the thing Many men have died since the first one Last night I crossed the moors and heard the flight and pursuing of another victim a stranger who knew not the evil of the moors Ezra the miser it was a fearful thing for the wretch twice broke from the fiend Terribly wounded and each time the demon caught and dragged him down again And at last he fell dead at my very feet done to death in a manner that would freeze the statue of a saint The villagers moved restlessly and murmured fearfully to each other and old Ezra's eyes shifted furtively Yet the somber expression of Solomon Cain never altered and his condor-like stare seemed to transfix the miser I I muttered old Ezra hurriedly a bad thing a bad thing Yet, why do you tell this thing to me? I a sad thing Harken further Ezra the fiend came out over the shadows and I fought with it over the body of its victim I how I overcame it. I know not for the battle was hard and long But the powers of good and light were on my side which are mighter than the powers of hell At the last I was stronger and it broke for me and fled and I followed to no avail Yet before it fled it whispered to me a monstrous truth Old Ezra started stared wildly seeming to shrink into himself Nay, why tell me this he muttered I Returned to the village and told my tale said Cain for I knew that now I had the power to rid the moors of its curse forever Ezra come with us. Well, guess the miser to the rotting oak on the moors as Were reeled as though struck he screamed incoherently and turned to flee on the instant at Cain's sharp order Two brawny villagers sprang forward and seized the miser They twisted the dagger from his withered hand and pinioned his arms Shuddering as their fingers encountered his clammy flesh Cain motioned them to follow and turning strode up the trail followed by the villagers who found their strength taxed to the utmost In their task of bearing their prisoner along Through the swamp they went and out taking a little used trail which led up over the low hills and out on the moors The Sun was sliding down the horizon and old Ezra stared at it with bulging eyes Stared as if he could not gaze enough Far out on the moors reared up the great oak tree like a jibbit now only a decaying shell there Solomon Cain halted Old Ezra writhed in his captors grasp and made inarticulate noises Over a year ago said Solomon Cain you fearing that your insane cousin Gideon would tell men of your cruelties to him Brought him away from the swamp by the very trail by which we came and murdered him here in the night Ezra cringed and snarled. You cannot prove this lie Cain spoke a few words to an agile villager The youth clamored up the rotting bowl of the tree and from a crevice high up Dragged something that fell with a clatter at the feet of the miser Ezra went limp with a terrible shriek The object was a man's skeleton the skull cleft You how knew you this you are Satan jibbered old Ezra The thing I fought last night told me this thing as we reeled in battle And I followed it to this tree for the fiend is Gideon's ghost Ezra shrieked again and fought savagely You knew said Cain somberly You knew what thing did these deeds you feared the ghost of the maniac and that is why you chose to leave his body on the Fen instead of concealing it in the swamp for you knew the ghost would haunt the place of his death He was insane in life and in death. He did not know where to find his slayer else. He had come to you in your hut He hates no man, but you but his mazed spirit cannot tell one man from another and he slays all lest He let his killer escape Yet he will know you and rest in peace forever after Hate hath made of his ghost a solid thing that can rend and slay and though he feared you terribly in life in death He fears you not Cain halted he glanced at the Sun All this I had from Gideon's ghost and his yammerings and his whisperings and his shrieking silences Not but your death will lay that ghost Ezra listened in breathless silence and Cain pronounced the words of his doom a Hard thing it is said Cain somberly to sentence a man to death in cold blood and in such a manner as I have in Mind, but you must die that others may live and God know if you deserve death You shall not die by noose bullet or sword, but at the talons of him you slew for not else will satiate him At these words Ezra's brain shattered his knees gave way and he fell groveling and screaming for death Begging them to burn him at the stake to flay him alive Cain's face was set like death and the villagers the fear rousing their cruelty Bound the screaming wretch to the oak tree and one of them made him make his peace with God But Ezra made no answer shrieking in a high shrill voice with unbearable monotony Then the villager would have struck the miser across the face, but Cain stayed him Let him make his peace with Satan whom he is more like to meet said the Puritan grimly The Sun is about to set lose his cord so that he may work loose by dark Since it is better to meet death free and unshackled than bound like a sacrifice As they turned to leave him old Ezra yammered and jibbered to unhuman sounds and then fell silent Staring at the Sun with terrible intensity They walked across the fen and Cain flung a last look at the grotesque form bound to the tree Seeming in the uncertain light like a great fungus growing to the bowl and Suddenly the miser screamed hideously death death there are skulls in the stars Life was good to him though. He was gnarled and churlish and evil Cain sighed May have God has a place for such souls where fire and sacrifice may cleanse them of their dross as fire cleanses the forest of fungus things Yet my heart is heavy within me Hey sir one of the villagers spoke you have done but the will of God and good alone shall come of this night's deed Nay answered Cain heavily. I know not I know not The Sun had gone down and night spread with amazing swiftness as if great shadows came rushing down from unknown voids to cloak the world with hurrying darkness Through the thick night came a weird echo and the men halted and looked back the way they had come Nothing could be seen the moor was an ocean of shadows and the tall grass about them bent in long waves before the faint wind Breaking the deathly stillness with breathless murmurings Then far away the red disc of the moon rose over the fenn and for an instant a grim silhouette was etched blackly against it a Shape came flying across the face of the moon a bent grotesque thing whose feet seemed scarcely to touch the earth and Close behind came a thing like a flying shadow a nameless shapeless horror a Moment the racing twain stood out boldly against the moon Then they merged into one unnameable formless mass and vanished in the shadows Far across the fence out at a single shriek of terrible laughter End of skulls in the stars by Robert E. Howard The spook house by Ambrose beers This is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information and to find out how you can volunteer. Please visit LibriVox.org The spook house by Ambrose beers Read by Scott Bush on the road leading north from Manchester in eastern Kentucky to Booneville 20 miles away stood in 1862 a wooden plantation house of a somewhat better quality than most of the dwellings in that region The house was destroyed by a fire in the year following Probably by some stragglers from the retreating column of General George W. Morgan when he was driven from Cumberland Gap to the Ohio River by General Kirby Smith At the time of its destruction it had for four or five years been vacant The fields about it were overgrown with brambles the fences gone Even the few Negro quarters and outhouses generally fallen partly into ruin by neglect and pillage For the Negroes and poor whites of the vicinity found in the building and fences an abundant supply of fuel of which They availed themselves without hesitation openly and by daylight By daylight alone after nightfall no human being accepts passing strangers ever went near the place It was known as the spook house That it was tenanted by evil spirits visible audible and active No one in all that region doubted it any more than he doubted what was what he was told of Sundays by the traveling preacher Its owner's opinion of the matter was unknown He and his family had disappeared one night and no trace of them had ever been found They left everything household goods clothing Provisions the horses in the stable the cows in the field the Negroes in the quarters as it all stood Nothing was missing except a man a woman three girls a boy and a babe It was not altogether surprising that a plantation where seven human beings could simultaneously be a faced and nobody the wiser Should be under some suspicion One night in June 1859 two citizens of Frankfurt Colonel J. C. McArdle a lawyer and judge Myron vay of the state militia were driving from Booneville to Manchester Their business was so important that they decided to push on despite the darkness and mutterings of an approaching storm Which eventually broke upon them just as they arrived opposite the spook house The lightning was so incessant that they easily found their way through the gateway into a shed Where they hitched and unharnessed their team They then went to the house through the rain and knocked at all the doors without getting any response Attributing this to the continuous uproar the thunder they pushed at one of the doors which yielded They entered without further ceremony and closed the door That instant they were in darkness and silence Not a gleam of the lightning's unceasing blaze penetrated the windows or crevices Not a whisper the awful tumult without reached them there It was as if they had suddenly been stricken blind and deaf and McArdle afterwards said that for a moment He believed himself to have been killed by a stroke of lightning as he crossed the threshold The rest of this adventure can as well be related in his own words from the Frankfurt advocate of August 6th 1876 When I had somewhat recovered from the dazzling effect of the transition from upward silence My first impulse was to reopen the door which I closed and from the knob of which I was not conscious of having removed my hand I felt it distinctly still in the clasp of my fingers My notion was to ascertain by stepping again into the storm whether I had been deprived of sight and hearing I Turned the door knob and pulled open the door. It led into another room This apartment was suffused with a faint greenish light the source of which I could not determine Making everything distinctly visible though. Nothing was sharply defined Everything I say but in truth the only objects within the blank stone walls of that room were human corpses In number they were perhaps eight or ten. It may well be understood that I did not truly count them They were of different ages or rather sizes from infancy up and of both sexes All were prostrate on the floor except one apparently a young woman who sat up her back supported by an angle of the wall a Babe was clasping in the arms of the older woman a Half-grown lad lay face downward across the legs of a full bearded man One of the two was nearly naked and the hand of a young girl held the fragment of a gown Which she torn open at the breast The bodies were in various stages of decay all greatly shrunken in face and figure Some of them were little more than skeletons While I stood stupefied with horror by this ghastly spectacle and still holding open the door by some Unaccountable pervasity in my attention was diverted from a shocking scene and concerned itself with trifles and details Perhaps my mind with an instinct of self-preservation sought relief in matters which would relax its dangerous tension Among other things I observed that the door that I was holding open was of heavy iron plates riveted Equidistant from one another and from top and bottom three strong bolts protruded from the beveled edge I turned the knob and they were retracted flush with the edge Released it and they shot out. It was a spring lock on The inside there was no knob nor any kind of projection a smooth surface of iron While noting these things with an interest in attention, which it now astonishes me to recall that I felt myself Thrust aside and judge vay whom in the intensity and vicissitudes of my feelings. I had altogether forgotten Pushed by me into the room For God's sakes. I cried do not go in there. Let us get out of this dreadful place He gave no heed to my entreaties But as fearless a gentleman has lived in all the south walk quickly to the center of the room Nelt beside one of the bodies for a closer examination and tenderly raised its blackened and trivial head in his hands a Strong disagreeable odor came through the doorway completely overpowering me My senses reeled. I felt myself falling and in clutching at the edge of the door for support Pushed it shut with a sharp click. I Remember no more Six weeks later. I recovered my reason in a hotel at Manchester with her. I've been taken by strangers the next day For all these weeks. I had suffered from a nervous fever attendant with a constant delirium I Had been found lying in the road several miles away from the house But how I escaped from it to get there. I never knew on Recovery or as soon as my physicians permitted me to talk I inquired the fate of judge vay whom To quiet me as I now know they represented me as well and at home No one believed a word of my story and who can wonder and who can imagine my grief when Arriving at my home in Frankfurt two months later. I learned that judge vay had never been heard of since that night. I Then regretted bitterly the pride which since the first few days after the recovery of my reason had forbidden me to repeat my discredited story and insist upon its truth With all that afterward occurred the examination of the house the failure to find any room Corresponding to that which I have described The attempt to have me a judged insane and my triumph over my accusers the readers of the advocate are familiar After all these years I am still confident that the excavations which I have neither the legal right to undertake nor the wealth to make would disclose the secret of the disappearance of my unhappy friend and Possibly of the former occupants and owners of the deserted and now destroyed house. I Do not despair of yet bringing about such a search and it is a source of deep grief to me that it has been delayed by the undeserved hostility and unwise incredulity of the family and friends of the late judge vay Colonel McArdle died in Frankfurt on the thirteenth day of December in the year 1879 And of the spook house by Ambrose beers read by Scott Bush This is a library vox recording all library vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer Please visit library vox.org. That's librivox.org Recorded by me Glenn Halstram also known as smokestack jones smokestack jones at gmail.com You'll also find my blog at too much Johnson blog spot.com The statement of Randolph Carter by HP Lovecraft Again, I say I do not know what has become of Harley Warren though I think almost hope that he is in peaceful oblivion if there be anywhere so blessed a thing It is true that I have for five years been his closest friend and a partial share of his terrible research is into the unknown. I Will not deny though my memory is uncertain and in distinct That this witness of yours may have seen us together as he says on the Gainesville Pike walking towards Big Cypress Swamp past 11 on that awful night That we bore electric lantern spades in a curious coil of wire with attached instruments I will even affirm for these things all played a pot in the single hideous scene Which remains burned into my shaken recollection, but of what followed and of the reason I was found alone and dazed on the edge of the swamp next morning. I must insist that I know nothing save what I have told You over and over again You say to me that there is nothing in the swamp or near it which could form the setting of that frightful episode I reply I knew nothing beyond what I saw vision or nightmare. It may have been vision or nightmare I permanently hope it was yet. It is all that my mind retains of what took place on these shocking hours After we left the sight of men And why Holly Warren did not return he or a shade or some nameless thing I cannot describe alone can tell As I've said before the weird studies of Holly Warren were well known to me and to some extent shared by me Of the vast collection of strange rare books on forbidden subjects I ever at all that there are written in the languages of which I am master But these are few as compared with those languages. I cannot understand Most I believe are in Arabic and the fiend inspired book which brought on the end the book Which he carried in his pocket out of the world was written in characters who's like I never saw elsewhere Warren would never tell me Just what was in that book as to the nature of our studies. Must I say again that I no longer retain full comprehension? It seems to me rather merciful that I do not for they were terrible studies Which I pursued more through reluctant fascination than through actual inclination Warren always dominated me and sometimes I feared him I remember how I shuddered at his facial expression on the night before the awful happening when he talked so Incessantly on his theory I certain corpses never decayed but rest firm and fat in their tombs for a thousand years But I do not fear him now for I suspect that he has known horrors beyond my kin Now I fear for him Once more I say I have no clear idea of our object on that night Certainly it had much to do with something in the book which Warren carried with him that ancient book in Undecipherable characters which had come to him from India a month before But I swear I do not know what it was that we expected to find Your witness says he saw us at half past eleven on the Gainesville Pike headed for Big Cypress Swamp This is probably true, but I have no distinct memory of it The picture seared into my soul is of one scene only and the hour must have been long after midnight For a waning crescent moon was high in the vaporous heavens The place was an ancient cemetery so ancient that I trembled at the manifold signs of immemorial years It was in a deep damp hollow overgrown with ranked grass moss and curious creeping weeds and filled with a vague stench Which my idol fancy associated absurdly with rotting stone On every hand were the signs of neglect and decrepitude And I seemed haunted by the notion that Warren and I were the first living creatures to invade a lethal silence of centuries Over the valley's rim a one waning crescent moon peered through the noisome vapors that seemed to emanate from unheard of Catacombs and by its feeble wavering beams I could distinguish a repellent array of antique slabs urns Centipaths and mausoleum facades all crumbling moss grown in moisture stains and Partially concealed by the gross luxurance of the unhealthy vegetation my first vivid impression of my own presence in this terrible Necropolis concerned the act of pausing with Warren before a certain half obliterated sepulcher and of throwing down some burdens Which we seem to have been carrying I now observed I had with me an electric lantern and two spades whilst my Companion was supplied with a similar lantern and a portable telephone outfit No word was uttered for the spot and the tasks seemed known to us and without delay We seized our spades and commenced to clear away the grass weeds and drifted earth from the flat archaic mortuary After uncovering the entire surface which consisted of three immense granite slabs We stepped back some distance to surveyed the charnel scene and wore it appeared to make some mental calculations Then he returned to the sepulcher and using his spade as a lever sought to pry up the slab Lying nearest to a stony ruin which may have been a monument in its day He did not succeed in motion me to come to his assistance Finally our combined strength loosened the stone which we raised and tipped to one side the removal of the slab Revealed a black aperture for which Russian affluence of maize will gas is so nauseous that we started back in horror after an interval However, we approached the pit again and found the exhilarations less unbearable Our lanterns disclosed the top of a flight of stone steps dripping with some detestable Ica of the inner earth and bordered by moist walls encrusted with nighter and now for the first time my memory records verbal discourse Warren addressing me at length in his mellow tenor voice a voice singularly unperturbed by our awesome surroundings I'm sorry to have to ask you to stay on the surface. He said but it would be a crime to let anyone with your frail nerves go down there You can't imagine even from what you have read and what I've told you the things that I shall see and do It's fiendish work cutter and I doubt if any man without ironclad sensibilities could ever see it through and come up alive Insane I don't wish to offend you and heaven knows I'd be glad enough to have you with me But the responsibility is in a certain sense mine and I couldn't drag a bundle of nerves like you down to probable death of madness I tell you I can't imagine what the thing is really like But I promise to keep you informed over the telephone of every move You see I have enough wire to reach to the center of the earth and back I Can still hear in my memory those coolly spoken words and I can still remember my remonstruses I Seem desperately anxious to accompany my friend into those separable depths yet He proved inflexibly obdurate at one time he threatened to abandon the expedition if I remained insistent a threat Which proved effective since he alone held the key to the thing all this I can still remember though I no longer know what manner of thing we saw it After he had obtained my reluctant acquiescence in his design war and picked up the reel of wire and adjusted the instruments at his nod I took one of the ladder and Seated myself upon an aged discolored gravestone close by the newly uncovered aperture Then he shook my hand shoulder the coil of wire and disappeared within that indescribable osuary For a minute I kept sight of the glow of the lantern and heard the rustle of the wires He laid it down after him But the glow soon disappeared abruptly as if a turn in the stone staircase had been encountered and the sound died away almost as quickly I was alone Yet bound to the unknown depths by those magic strands whose insulated surface lay green beneath the struggling beams of that waning crescent moon I constantly consulted my watch by the light of the electric lantern and listed with feverish anxiety at the receiver of the telephone But for more than a quarter of an hour. I heard nothing Then a faint clicking came from the instrument and I called down to my friend in a tense voice apprehensive as I was I was nevertheless unprepared for the words which came up from that uncanny bolt in accents more All armed and quivering than any I had heard before from Harley Warren He who had so calmly left me a little while previously now called from below in a shaky whisper more portentious than the loudest shriek I could not answer Speechless I can only wait Then came the frenzied tones again this time my voice did not fail me and I poured into the transmitter a flood of excited questions Terrified I continued to repeat war and what is it? What is it? Once more came the voice of my friend still hoarse with fear and now apparently tinged with despair Stillness again say for my now incoherent torrent of shuttering inquiry then the voice of war and in a pitch of wilder consternation I heard It was able only to repeat my frantic questions around me were the tombs and the darkness and the shadows below me some Peril beyond the radius of the human imagination But my friend was in greater danger than I and through my fear I felt a vague resentment that he should be me capable of deserting him under such circumstances More clicking and after a pause a piteous cry from Warren Something in the boy's slang of my evidently stricken companion unleashed my faculties I formed and shouted a resolution war and brace up. I'm coming down But at this off I'm the tone of my order to change to a scream of utter despair Don't the tone changed again This time acquiring a softer quality as of hopeless resignation Yet it remained tense through anxiety for me I tried not to heed him tried to break through the paralysis Which held me in to fulfill my vow to rush down to his aid But his next whisper found me still held in there in the change of stock horror a pause More clicking than the faint voice of Warren Here Warren's whisper swelled into a cry a cry that gradually rose to a shriek fraught with all the horror of the ages To that was silence. I don't know how many interminable eons I sat stupefied whispering muttering calling screaming over that telephone over and over again those eons I whispered and muttered called shouted and screamed Warren Warren answer me. Are you there? And then they came to me the crowning horror of all The unbelievable Unthinkable almost unmentionable thing I have said that eons seemed to elapse after Warren shrieked forth his last despairing warning and that my own cries now broke the hideous silence But after a while there was a further clicking in the receiver and I strained my ears to listen Again, I called that Warren. Are you there? And in answer Heard the thing which has brought this cloud over my mind. I did not try gentlemen to account for that thing that voice No, can I venture to describe it in detail since the first words took away my consciousness and created a mental blank Which reaches into the time of my awakening in the hospital Shall I say the voice was deep hollow gelatinous remote unearthly inhuman disembodied? What shall I say? It was the end of my experience. It is the end of my story. I Heard it and knew no more. I heard it as I set petrified in that unknown cemetery in the hollow amidst the crumbling stones And the falling tombs the right vegetation and the mace will vape us Heard it well up from the innermost depths of that damnable open sepulchre as I watched Amoris Necrophages shadows dance beneath an accursed waiting moon And this is what it said the end of the statement of Randolph Carter by HP Lovecraft This is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Strange Orchid by HG Wells The buying of orchids always has in it a certain speculative flavor You have before you the brown shriveled lump of tissue and for the rest you must trust your judgment or the auctioneer Or your good luck as your taste may incline The plant may be more abundant or dead or it may be just a respectable purchase fair value for your money or perhaps For the thing has happened again and again There slowly unfolds before the delighted eyes of the happy purchaser day after day Some new variety some novel richness a strange twist of the libellum or some subtler coloration or unexpected mimicry Pride, beauty and profit blossom together on one delicate green spike and it may be even immortality For the new miracle of nature may stand in need of a new specific name and what's so convenient as that of its discoverer John Smithia there have been worse names It was perhaps the hope of some such happy discovery that made Winter Wetterburn Such a frequent attendant at these sales that hope and also maybe the fact that he had nothing else of the slightest interest to do in the world He was a shy lonely rather ineffectual man Provided with just enough income to keep off the spur of necessity and not enough nervous energy to make him seek any exacting employments He might have collected stamps or coins or translated Horus or bound books or invented new species of diatoms But as it happened he grew orchids and had one ambitious little hot house I have a fancy he said over his coffee that something is going to happen to me today He spoke as he moved and thought Slowly Oh don't say that said his housekeeper who was also his remote cousin for something happening was a euphemism that meant only one thing to her You misunderstand me I mean nothing unpleasant though what I do mean I scarcely know Today he continued after a pause Peters is going to sell a bunch of plants from the Andamans and the Indies I shall go up and see what they have It may be I shall buy something good unawares That may be it He passed his cup for his second cup full of coffee Are these the things collected by that poor young fellow you told me of the other day asked his cousin as she filled his cup Yes he said and became meditative over a piece of toast Nothing ever does happen to me he remarked presently beginning to think aloud I wonder why Things enough happened to other people there is Harvey only the other week on Monday he picked up six pence On Wednesday his chicks all had the staggers On Friday his cousin came home from Australia and on Saturday he broke his ankle What a whirl of excitement compared to me I think I would rather be without so much excitement said his housekeeper it can't be good for you I suppose it's troublesome still you see nothing ever happens to me When I was a little boy I never had accidents I never fell in love as I grew up Never married I wonder how it feels to have something happened to you Something really remarkable That orchid collector was only 36, 20 years younger than myself when he died And he had been married twice and divorced once He had had malaria fever four times and once he broke his thigh He killed a melee once and once he was wounded by a poisoned dart And in the end he was killed by jungle leeches It must have all been very troublesome but then it must have been very interesting you know Except perhaps the leeches I am sure it was not good for him said the lady with conviction Perhaps not And then Wetterburn looked at his watch Twenty-three minutes past eight I am going up by the quarter to twelve train so that there is plenty of time I think I shall wear my alpaca jacket It is quite warm enough and my gray felt hat and brown shoes I suppose he glanced out of the window at the serene sky and sunlit garden Nervously at his cousin's face I think you had better take an umbrella if you're going to London She said in a voice that admitted of no denial There's all between here and the station coming back When he returned he was in a state of mild excitement He had made a purchase It was rare that he could make up his mind quickly enough to buy But this time he had done so There are vandals he said And a dendrobe and some paleonoffice He surveyed his purchases lovingly as he consumed his soup They were laid out on the spotless tablecloth before him And he was telling his cousin all about them as he slowly meandered through his dinner It was his custom to live all his visits to London over again in the evening For her and his own entertainment I knew something would happen today I have bought all these Some of them I feel sure, do you know Some of them will be remarkable I don't know how it is But I feel just as sure as if someone had told me That some of these will turn out remarkable That one, he pointed to a shriveled rhizome Was not identified It may be a paleonoffice Or it may not It may be a new species or even a new genus And it was the last that poor baton ever collected I don't like the look of it, said his housekeeper It's such an ugly shape To me it scarcely seems to have a shape I don't like those things that stick out, said his housekeeper It shall be put away in a pot tomorrow It looks, said the housekeeper, like a spider shaming dead Wetterburn smiled and surveyed the root with his head on one side It is certainly not a pretty lump of stuff But you can never judge of these things from their dry appearance It may turn out to be a very beautiful orchid indeed How busy I shall be tomorrow I must see tonight just exactly what to do with these things And tomorrow I shall set to work They found poor baton lying dead or dying in a mangrove swamp I forget which, he began again presently With one of these very orchids crushed up under his body He had been unwell for some days with some kind of native fever And I suppose he fainted These mangrove swamps are very unwholesome Every drop of blood, they say, was taken out of him by the jungle leeches It may be that very plant that cost his life to obtain I think none the better of it for that Men must work, though women may weep, said Wetterburn, with profound gravity Fancy dying away from every comfort in a nasty swamp Fancy being ill of fever with nothing to take but chlorideine and quinine If men were left to themselves, they would live on chlorideine and quinine No one around you but horrible natives They say the Andaman Islanders are most disgusting wretches And anyway, they can scarcely make good nurses Having the necessary training and just for people in England to have orchids I don't suppose it was comfortable, but some men seem to enjoy that kind of thing, said Wetterburn Anyhow, the natives of his party were sufficiently civilized To take care of all his collection until his colleague, who was an ornithologist Came back again from the interior Though they could not tell the species of the orchid and had let it wither And it makes these things more interesting It makes them disgusting I should be afraid of some of the malaria clinging to them and just think There's been a dead body lying across that ugly thing I never thought of that before There I declare I cannot eat another mouthful of dinner I will take them off the table if you like And put them in the window seat I can see them just as well there In the last few days he was indeed singularly busy in the steamy little hot house Fussing about with charcoal, lumps of teak, moss, and all the other mysteries of the orchid cultivator He considered he was having a wonderfully eventful time In the evening he would talk about these new orchids to his friends And over and over again he reverted to his expectation of something strange Several of the vandas in the dendrobium died under his care Presently the strange orchid began to show signs of life He was delighted and took his housekeeper right away from jam-making to see it at once Directly he made the discovery That is a bud, he said And presently there will be a lot of leaves there And those little things coming out here are aerial rootlets They look to me like little white fingers poking out of the brown I don't like them, said his housekeeper Why not? I don't know They look like fingers trying to get at you I can't help my likes and dislikes I don't know for certain, but I don't think there are any orchids I know That have aerial rootlets quite like that It may be my fancy, of course You see they are a little flattened at the ends I don't like them, said his housekeeper Suddenly shivering and turning away I know it's very silly of me and I'm very sorry Particularly as you like the thing so much But I can't help thinking of that corpse But it may not be that particular plant That was merely a guess of mine His housekeeper shrugged her shoulders Anyhow I don't like it, she said Wetterburn felt a little hurt at her dislike to the plant But that did not prevent his talking to her about orchids generally And this orchid in particular whenever he felt inclined There are such queer things about orchids, he said one day Such possibilities of surprise You know Darwin studied their fertilization And showed that the whole structure of an ordinary orchid flower Was contrived in order that moths might carry the pollen From plant to plant Well, it seems that there are lots of orchids Known the flower of which cannot possibly be used For fertilization in that way Some of the sypropediums, for instance There are no insects known that can possibly fertilize them And some of them have never been found with seed But how do they form new plants? By runners and tubes and that kind of outgrowth That is easily explained The puzzle is, what are the flowers for? Very likely, he added, my orchid may be something extraordinary in that way If so, I shall study it I have often thought of making researches, as Darwin did But hitherto I have not found the time Or something else has happened to prevent it The leaves are beginning to unfold now I do wish you would come and see them But she said that the orchid house was so hot it gave her the headache She had seen the plant once again and the aerial rootlets Which were now some of them more than a foot long Had unfortunately reminded her of tentacles reaching out after something And they got into her dreams, growing after her with incredible rapidity So that she had settled to her entire satisfaction That she would not see that plant again And Wetterburn had to admire its leaves alone They were of the ordinary broad form and a deep glossy green With splashes and dots of deep red toward the base He knew of no other leaves quite like them The plant was placed on a low bench near the thermometer And close by was a simple arrangement by which a tap Dripped on the hot water pipes and kept the air steamy And he spent his afternoons now with some regularity Meditating on the approaching flowering of this strange plant And at last the great thing happened Directly he entered the little glass house He knew that the spike had burst out Although his great paleon-office Lowy Had the corner where his new darling stood There was a new odor in the air A rich, intensely sweet scent That overpowered every other in that crowded, steaming little greenhouse Directly he noticed this He hurried down to the strange orchid And behold, the trailing green spikes bore Now three great splashes of blossom From which this overpowering sweetness proceeded He stopped before them in an ecstasy of admiration The flowers were white With streaks of golden orange upon the petals The heavy libellum was coiled into an intricate projection And a wonderful bluish purple mingled there with the gold He could see at once that the genus was altogether a new one And the insufferable scent How hot the place was The blossoms swam before his eyes He would see if the temperature was right He made a step toward the thermometer Suddenly everything appeared unsteady The bricks on the floor were dancing up and down Then the white blossoms, the green leaves behind them The whole greenhouse seemed to sweep sideways And then in a curve upward At half past four his cousin made the tea According to their invariable custom But Wetterburn did not come in for his tea He is worshipping that horrid orchid she told herself And waited ten minutes His watch must have stopped I will go and call him She went straight to the hot house And opening the door called his name There was no reply She noticed that the air was very close And loaded with an intense perfume Then she saw something lying on the bricks Between the hot water pipes For a minute perhaps She stood motionless He was lying face upward at the foot of the strange orchid The tentacle-like aerial rootlets No longer swayed freely in the air But were crowded together A tangle of gray ropes And stretched tight with their ends Closely applied to his chin and neck and hands She did not understand Then she saw From under one of the exultant tentacles Upon his cheek There trickled a little thread of blood With an inarticulate cry She ran towards him And tried to pull him away from the leech-like suckers She snapped two of these tentacles And their sap dripped red Then the overpowering scent of the blossom Began to make her head real How they clung to him She tore at the tough ropes And he and the white inflorescence Swam around her She felt she was fainting Knew she must not Left him and hastily opened the nearest door And after she had panted For a moment in the fresh air She had a brilliant inspiration She caught up a flower pot And smashed in the windows At the end of the greenhouse Then she re-entered She tugged now with renewed strength At Wetterburn's motionless body And brought the strange orchid crashing to the floor It still clung with the grimace To tenacity to its victim In a frenzy she lugged it And him into the open air Then she thought of tearing through The sucker-rootlets one by one And in another minute she had released him And was dragging him away from the horror He was white and bleeding From a dozen circular patches The odd job man was coming up the garden Amazed at the smashing of glass And saw her emerge Hauling the inanimate body With red-stained hands For a moment he thought impossible things Bring some water, she cried And her voice dispelled his fancies When, with unnatural alacrity He returned with the water He found her weeping with excitement And with Wetterburn's head upon her knee Wiping the blood from his face What's the matter? said Wetterburn Opening his eyes feebly And closing them again at once Go and tell Annie to come out here to me And then go for Dr. Haddon at once She said to the odd job man So soon as he had brought the water And added, seeing he hesitated I will tell you all about it when you come back Presently Wetterburn opened his eyes again And seeing that he was troubled By the puzzle of his position She explained to him You fainted in the hot house And the orchid? I will see to that, she said Wetterburn had lost a good deal of blood But beyond that he had suffered no very great injury They gave him brandy Mixed with some pink extract of meat And carried him upstairs to bed His housekeeper told her incredible story In fragments to Dr. Haddon Come to the orchid house and see, she said The cold outer air was blowing in through the open door And the sickly perfume was almost dispelled Most of the torn aerial rootlets lay already withered Amidst a number of dark stains upon the bricks The stem of the inflorescence was broken By the fall of the plant And the flowers were growing limp and brown At the edges of the petals The doctor stooped towards it Then saw that one of the aerial rootlets Still stirred, feebly, and hesitated The next morning the strange orchid Still lay there, black now and putrescent The door banged intermittingly in the morning breeze And all the array of Wetterburn's orchids Was shriveled and prostrate But Wetterburn himself Was bright and garrulous upstairs In the story of his strange adventure End of The Strange Orchid by H.G. Wells The Tomb by H.P. Lovecraft This is the LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information and to find out how to volunteer Please visit LibriVox.org The Tomb by H.P. Lovecraft Sedebus utsaltem plakidis in mortequiscum Virgil In relating the circumstances which have led to my confinement Within this refuge for the demented I am aware that my present position will create A natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative It is an unfortunate fact That the bulk of humanity is too limited in its mental vision To weigh with patience and intelligence Those isolated phenomena Seen and felt only by a psychologically sensitive few Which lie outside its common experience Men of broader intellect Know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt The real and the unreal That all things appear as they do only by virtue of The delicate individual physical and mental media Through which we are made conscious of them But the prosaic materialism of the majority Condems as madness the flashes of supersight Which penetrate the common veil of obvious empiricism My name is Jervis Dudley And from earliest childhood I have been a dreamer and a visionary Wealthy beyond the necessity of a commercial life And temperamentally unfitted for the formal studies And social recreations of my acquaintances I have dwelt ever in realms apart from the visible world Spending my youth and adolescence in ancient and little-known books And enroaming the fields and groves of the region near my ancestral home I do not think that what I read in these books or saw In these fields and groves was exactly what other boys read and saw there But of this I must say little Since detailed speech would but confirm those cruel slanders Upon my intellect which I sometimes overhear From the whispers of the stealthy attendance around me It is sufficient for me to relate events without analyzing causes I have said that I dwelt apart from the visible world But I have not said that I dwelt alone This no human creature may do For lacking the fellowship of the living He inevitably draws upon the companionship of things That are not or are no longer living Close to my home there lies a singular wooded hollow In whose twilight deeps I spent most of my time Reading, thinking, and dreaming Down at its moss-covered slopes My first steps of infancy were taken And around its grotesquely gnarled oak trees My first fancies of boyhood were woven Well did I come to know the presiding dryads of those trees And often have I watched their wild dances In the struggling beams of waning moon But of these things I must not now speak I will tell only of the lone tomb In the darkest of the hillside thickets The deserted tomb of the hides An old and exalted family The last direct descendant had been laid Within its black recesses many decades before my birth The vault to which I refer is an ancient granite Weathered and discoloured by the mists And dampness of generations Excavated back into the hillside The structure is visible only at the entrance The door, a ponderous and forbidding slab of stone Hangs upon rusted iron hinges And fastened a jar In a queerly sinister way by means of heavy iron chains And padlocks, according to a gruesome fashion Of half a century ago The abode of the race, whose scions are in-earned Had once crowned the declivity which holds the tomb But had long since fallen victim to the flames Which sprang up from a disastrous stroke of lightning Of the midnight storm which destroyed this gloomy mansion The older inhabitants of the region sometimes speak in hushed And uneasy voices alluding to what they call divine wrath In a manner that in later years vaguely increased The always strong fascination which I felt For the forest dark and sepulcher One man only had perished in the fire When the last of the hides was buried In this place of shade and stillness The sad urnful of ashes had come from a distant land To which the family had repaired When the mansion burned down No one remained to lay flowers before the granite portal And few cared to brave the depressing shadows Which seemed to linger strangely about the water-worn stones I shall never forget the afternoon when first I stumbled upon The half-hidden house of the dead It was in mid-summer when the alchemy of nature Transmutes the silver landscape to one vivid And almost homogenous mass of green When the senses are well nigh intoxicated With the surging seas of moist verdure And the subtly indefinable odours of the soil And the vegetation in such surroundings The mind loses its perspective Time and space become trivial and unreal And echoes of a forgotten prehistoric past Beat insistently upon the enthralled consciousness All day I had been wandering through the mystic groves of the hollow Ticking thoughts I need not discuss And conversing with things I need not name In years at Child of Ten I had seen and heard many wonders unknown to the throng And was oddly aged in certain respects When, upon forcing my way between two savage clumps of briars I suddenly encountered the entrance of the vault I had no knowledge of what I had discovered The dark blocks of granite, the door so curiously ajar And the funerial carvings above the arch aroused In me no associations of mournful or terrible character Of graves and tombs I knew and imagined much But had on account of my peculiar temperament Been kept from all personal contact with churchyards and cemeteries A strange stone house on the woodland slope was to me Only a source of interest and speculation And its cold damp interior Into which I vainly peered through the aperture so tantalizingly left Contained for me no hint of death or decay But in that instant of curiosity was born the madly unreasoning desire Which has brought me to this hell of confinement Spurred on by a voice which must have come from the hideous soul of the forest I resolved to enter the beckoning gloom in spite of the ponderous chains Which barred my passage In the waning light of day I alternately rattled the rusty impediments With a view to throwing wide the stone door And essayed to squeeze my slight form through the space already provided But neither plan met with success As first curious I was not frantic And when in the thickening twilight I returned to my home I had sworn to the hundred gods of the grove That at any cost I would someday force an entrance to the black chilly depths That seemed calling out to me The physician with the iron grey beard who comes each day to my room Once told a visitor that this decision marked the beginnings of a pitiful monomania But I will leave final judgement to my readers when they shall have learnt all The months following my discovery were spent in futile attempts to force the complicated padlock of the slightly open vault And in carefully guarded inquiries regarding the nature and history of the structure With the traditionally receptive ears of the small boy I learned much Though an habitual secretiveness caused me to tell no one of my information Or my resolve It is perhaps worth mentioning that I was not at all surprised or terrified on learning of the nature of the vault My rather original ideas regarding life and death had caused me to associate the cold clay with the breathing body in a vague fashion And I felt that the great sinister family of the burned down mansion was in some way represented within the stone space I sought to explore Mumbled tales of the weird rites and godless revels of bygone years in the ancient hall gave to me a new and potent interest in the tomb Before whose door I would sit for hours at a time each day Once I thrust a candle within the nearly closed entrance But could see nothing save a flight of damp stone steps leading downward The odor of the place repelled yet bewitched me I felt I had known it before in a past remote beyond all recollection Beyond even my tenancy of the body I now possess The year after I first beheld the tomb I stumbled upon a worm-eaten translation of Plutarch's Lives In the book-filled attic of my home During the life of Theseus I was much impressed by that passage telling of the great stone beneath which the boyish hero was to find his tokens of destiny Whenever he should become old enough to lift its enormous weight This legend had the effect of dispelling my keenest impatience to enter the vault For it made me feel that the time was not yet ripe Later I told myself I should grow to a strength and ingenuity which might enable me to unfasten the heavily chained door with ease But until then I would do better by conforming to what seemed the will of fate Accordingly my watches by the dank portal became less persistent And much of my time was spent in other, though equally strange, pursuits I would sometimes rise very quietly in the night, stealing out to walk in those churchyards and places of burial from which I had been kept by my parents What I did there I may not say for I am not now sure of the reality of certain things But I know that on the day after such a nocturnal ramble I would often astonish those about me with my knowledge of topics almost forgotten for many generations It was after a night like this that I shocked the community with a queer conceit about the burial of the rich and celebrated squire Brewster A maker of local history who was interred in 1711 and whose slate headstone, bearing a graven skull and crossbones, was slowly crumbling to powder In a moment of childish imagination I vowed not only that the undertaker, Goodman Simpson, had stolen the silver buckled shoes, silken hose and satin small clothes of the deceased before burial But that the squire himself, not fully inanimate, had turned twice in his mound covered coffin on the day of interment But the idea of entering the tomb never left my thoughts Being indeed stimulated by the unexpected genealogical discovery that my own maternal ancestry possessed at least a slight link with the supposedly extinct family of the hides Last of my paternal race I was likewise the last of this older and more mysterious line I began to feel that the tomb was mine and to look forward with hot eagerness to the time when I might pass within that stone door and down those slimy stone steps in the dark I now formed the habit of listening very intently at the slightly open portal, choosing my favorite hours of midnight stillness for the odd vigil By the time I came of age I had made a small clearing in the thicket before the mould-stained facade of the hillside Allowing the surrounding vegetation to encircle and overhang the space like the walls and roof of a silvan bower This bower was my temple, the fastened door in my shrine, and here I would lie outstretched on the mossy ground thinking strange thoughts and dreaming of strange dreams The night of the first revelation was a sultry one. I must have fallen asleep from fatigue for it was with a distinct sense of awakening that I heard the voices Of those tones and accents I hesitate to speak of their quality I will not speak, but I may say that they presented certain uncanny differences in vocabulary, pronunciation and mode of utterance Every shade of New England dialect from the uncouth syllables of the Puritan colonists to the precise rhetoric 50 years ago seemed represented in that shadowy colloquy Though it was only later that I noticed the fact. At the time, indeed, my attention was distracted from this matter by another phenomenon, a phenomenon so fleeting that I could not take oath upon its reality I barely fancied that, as I awoke, a light had been hurriedly extinguished within the sunken sepulcher I do not think I was either astounded or panic-stricken, but I know that I was greatly and permanently changed that night Upon returning home I went with much directness to a rotting chest in the attic Wherein I found the key which, next day, unlocked with ease the barrier I had so long stormed in vain It was in the soft glow of late afternoon that I first entered the vault on the abandoned slope A spell was upon me and my heart leapt with an exultation I can but ill describe As I closed the door behind me and descended the dripping steps by the light of my lone candle I seemed to know the way And though the candle sputtered with a stifling reek of the place I felt singularly at home in the musty, charnel house air Looking about me I beheld many marble slabs bearing coffins, or the remains of coffins Some of these were sealed and intact, but others had nearly vanished, leaving the silver handles and plates isolated amidst certain curious heaps of whitish dust Upon one plate I read the name of Sir Jeffrey Hyde, who had come from Sussex in 1640 and died here a few years later In a conspicuous alcove was one fairly well preserved and untenanted casket, adorned with a single name which brought me both a smile and a shudder An odd impulse caused me to climb upon the broad slab, extinguish my candle, and lie down within the vacant box In the gray light of dawn I staggered from the vault and locked the chain of the door behind me I was no longer a young man, though but twenty-one winters had chilled my bodily frame Early rising villagers who observed my homeward progress looked at me strangely and marveled at the signs of ribbled revelry which they saw in one whose life was known to be sober and solitary I did not appear before my parents till after a long and refreshing sleep Henceforth I haunted the tomb each night, seeing, hearing, and doing things I must never reveal My speech always susceptible to environmental influences was the first thing to succumb to the change and my suddenly acquired archaism of diction was soon remarked upon Later a queer boldness and recklessness came into my demeanor till I unconsciously grew to possess the bearing of a man of the world Despite my lifelong seclusion, my formerly silent tongue waxed voluble with the easy grace of a Chesterfield or the godless cynicism of a Rochester I displayed a peculiar erudition utterly unlike the fantastic monkish lore over which I had poured in youth and covered the fly leaves of my books with facile impromptu epigrams which brought up suggestions of gay, prior and the sprightliest of Augustan wits and rhymesters One morning at breakfast I came close to disaster by declaiming in palpably licorice accents an effusion of 18th century Bacchanalian mirth a bit of Georgian playfulness never recorded in a book which read something like this Come hither my lads with your tankards of ale and drink to the present before it shall fail Pile each on your platter a mountain of beef for tis eating and drinking that bring us relief So fill up your glass so life will soon pass When you're dead you'll now drink to your king or your lass Anakrion had a red nose so they say, but what's a red nose if you're happy and gay? Gad split me, I'd rather be red whilst I'm here than white as a lily and dead half a year So betty my miss, come give me a kiss, in hell there's no innkeeper's daughter like this Young Harry propped up just as straight as he's able He'll soon lose his wig and slip under the table, but fill up your goblets and pass him around Better under the table than under the ground So revel in chaff as ye thirstily quaff Under six feet of dirt is less easy to laugh The fiend strike me blue, I'm scarce able to walk And damn me if I can stand upright or talk Here, landlord, bid betty to summon a chair I'll try home for a while, for my wife is not there So lend me a hand, I'm not able to stand But I'm gay whilst I linger on top of the land About this time I conceived my present fear of fire and thunderstorms Previously indifferent to such things I had now an unspeakable horror of them And would retire to the innermost recesses of the house Whenever the heavens threatened an electrical display A favorite haunt of mine during the day was the ruined cellar of the mansion that had burned down And in fancy I would picture the structure as it had been in its prime On one occasion I startled a villager by leading him confidently to a shallow sub-cellar Of whose existence I seemed to know In spite of the fact that it had been unseen and forgotten for many generations At last came that which I had long feared My parents, alarmed at the altered manner and appearance of their only son Commenced to exert over my movements a kindly espionage Which threatened to result in disaster I had told no one of my visits to the tomb Having guarded my secret purpose with religious zeal since childhood But now I was forced to exercise care in threading the mazes of the wooded hollow That I might throw off a possible pursuer My key to the vault I kept suspended from a cord around my neck Its presence known only to me I never carried out of the sub-hulker any of the things I came upon whilst within its walls One morning as I emerged from the damp tomb and fastened the chain of the portal with none too steady hand I beheld in an adjacent thicket the dreaded face of a watcher Surely the end was near for my bower was discovered And the objective of my nocturnal journeys revealed The man did not accost me so I hastened home in an effort to overhear what he might report to my care-worn father Were my sojourns beyond the chained door about to be proclaimed to the world Imagine my delighted astonishment on hearing the spy inform my parent in cautious whisper That I had spent the night in the power outside the tomb My sleep-filmed eyes fixed upon the crevice where the padlock portal stood ajar By what miracle had the watcher been thus deluded? I was now convinced that a supernatural agency protected me Made bold by this heaven-sent circumstance I began to resume perfect openness in going to the vault Confident that no one could witness my entrance For a week I tasted to the full the joys of that churnal conviviality which I must not describe When the thing happened and I was born away to the secursive abode of sorrow and monotony I should not have ventured out that night for the taint of thunder was in the clouds And hellish phosphorescence rose from the rank swamp at the bottom of the hollow The call of the dead, too, was different Instead of the hillside tomb it was the charred cellar on the crest of the slope whose presiding demon beckoned to me with unseen fingers As I emerged from an intervening grove upon the plain before the ruin I beheld in the misty moonlight a thing I had always vaguely expected The mansion, gone for a century, once more reared its stately height to the raptured vision Every window ablaze with the splendor of many candles Up the long drive rolled the coaches of the Boston gentry Whilst on foot came a numerous assemblage of powdered exquisite from the neighbouring mansions With this throng I mingled, though I knew I belonged with the hosts rather than the guests Inside the hall were music, laughter, and wine on every hand Several faces I recognised, though I should have known them better had they been tripled or eaten away by death and decomposition Amidst a wild and reckless throng I was the wildest and most abandoned Gay blasphemy poured in torrents from my lips And in my shocking sallies I heeded no law of God, man, or nature Suddenly a peel of thunder resonant even above the din of the swinish revelry Claved the very roof and laid a hush of fear upon the boisterous company Red tongues of flame and searing gusts of heat engulfed the house And the roisterers, struck with terror at the descent of a calamity which seemed to transcend the bounds of unguided nature, fled shrieking into the night I alone remained riveted to my seat by a groveling fear which I had never felt before And then a second horror took possession of my soul Burnt alive to ashes, my body dispersed by the four winds, I might never lie in the tomb of Hyde's Was not my coffin prepared for me? Had I not a right to rest till eternity amongst the descendants of Sir Geoffrey Hyde? I would claim my heritage of death even though my soul goes seeking through the ages for another corporeal tenement to represent it on that vacant slab in the alcove of the vault Jervis Hyde should never share the sad fate of Palinurus As the phantom of the burning house faded I found myself screaming and struggling madly in the arms of two men, one of whom was the spy who had followed me to the tomb Rain was pouring down in torrents and upon the southern horizon were flashes of the lightning that had so lately passed over our heads My father, his face lined with sorrow, stood by as I shouted my demands to be laid within the tomb Frequently admonishing my captors to treat me gently as they could A blackened circle on the floor of the ruined cellar told of a violent stroke from the heavens And from this spot a group of curious villagers with lanterns were prying a small box of antique workmanship which the thunderbolt had brought to light Ceasing my futile and now objectless writhing, I watched the spectators as they viewed the treasure trove and was permitted to share in their discoveries The box, whose fastenings were broken by the stroke which had unearthed it, contained many papers and objects of value But I had eyes for one thing alone It was the porcelain miniature of a young man in a smartly curled bag wig and bore the initials J.H. The face was such that as I gazed I might as well have been studying my mirror On the following day I was brought to this room with the barred windows But I have been kept informed of certain things through an aged and simple-minded servitor for whom I bore a fondness in infancy And who, like me, loves the churchyard What I have dared relate of my experiences within the vault has brought me only pitying smiles My father, who visits me frequently, declares that at no time did I pass the chained portal And swears that the rusted padlock had not been touched for fifty years when he examined it He even says that all the village knew of my journeys to the tomb And that I was often watched as I slept in the bower outside the grim facade My half-open eyes fixed on the crevice that leads to the interior Against these assertions I have no tangible proof to offer Since my key to the padlock was lost in the struggle on that night of horrors The strange things of the past which I learned during those nocturnal meetings with the dead He dismisses as the fruits of my lifelong and omnivorous browsing amongst the ancient volumes of the family library Had it not been for my old servant Herum I should have by this time become quite convinced of my madness But Herum, loyal to the last, has held faith in me And has done that which impels me to make public at least a part of my story A week ago he burst open the lock which chains the door of the tomb perpetually ajar And descended with a lantern into the murky depths On a slab at an alcove he found an old but empty coffin Whose tarnished plate bears the single word Jervis In that coffin and in that vault they have promised me I shall be buried End of The Tomb by H. P. Lovecraft This recording is in the public domain