 Section 21 of Lovecraft's Influences and Favourites This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Rafe Ball The Hashish Man by Lord Dunsony I was at dinner in London the other day. The ladies had gone upstairs and no one sat on my right. On my left there was a man I did not know, but he knew my name somehow, apparently, for he turned to me after a while and said, I read a story of yours about Beth Mora in a review. Of course I remembered the tale. It was about a beautiful oriental city that was suddenly deserted in a day. Nobody quite knew why. I said, oh, yes, and slowly searched in my mind for some more fitting acknowledgement of the compliment that his memory had paid me. I was greatly astonished when he said, You were wrong about the Nusa sickness. It was not that at all. I said, why, have you been there? And he said, yes, I do it with Hashish. I know Beth Mora well. And he took out of his pocket a small box full of some black stuff that looked like tar, but had a stranger smell. He warned me not to touch it with my finger, as the stain remained for days. I got it from a gypsy, he said. He had a lot of it, as it had killed his father. But I interrupted him, for I wanted to know for certain what it was that had made desolate that beautiful city, Beth Mora, and why they fled from it swiftly in a day. Was it because of the desert's curse? I asked. And he said, partly it was the fury of the desert, and partly the advice of the Emperor Thubamline, for that fearful beast is in some way connected with the desert on his mother's side. And he told me this strange story. You remember the sailor with the black scar, who was there on the day you described when the messengers came on mules to the gate of Beth Mora, and all the people fled? I met this man in a tavern, drinking rum, and he told me all about the flight from Beth Mora, but knew no more than you did what the message was, or who had sent it. However, he said he would see Beth Mora once more, whenever he touched again at an eastern port, even if he had to face the devil. He often said that he would face the devil to find out the mystery of that message that emptied Beth Mora in a day, and in the end he had to face Thubamline, whose weak ferocity he had not imagined. For one day the sailor told me he had found a ship, and I met him no more after that in a tavern drinking rum. It was about that time that I got the hashish from the gypsy, who had a quantity that he did not want. It takes one literally out of oneself. It is like wings. You swoop over distant countries and into other worlds. Once I found out the secret of the universe. I have forgotten what it was, but I know that the creator does not take creation seriously, for I remember that he sat in space with all his work in front of him and laughed. I have seen incredible things in fearful worlds. As it is your imagination that takes you there, so it is only by your imagination that you can get back. Once, out into Aether, I met a battered, prowling spirit that had belonged to a man whom drugs had killed a hundred years ago, and he led me to regions that I had never imagined, and we parted in anger beyond the Pleiades, and I could not imagine my way back. And I met a huge gray shape that was the spirit of some great people, perhaps of a whole star, and I besought it to show me my way home, and it halted beside me like a sudden wind, and pointed, and, speaking quite softly, asked me if I discerned a certain tiny light, and I saw a far star faintly, and then it said to me, that is the solar system, and strode tremendously on. And somehow I imagined my way back, and only just in time, for my body was already standing in a chair in my room, and the fire had gone out, and everything was cold, and I had to move each finger one by one, and there were pins and needles in them, and dreadful pains in the nails which began to thaw, and at last I could move one arm and reach the bell, and for a long time no one came, because everyone was in bed, but at last they appeared, and they got a doctor, and he said that it was his sheesh poisoning, but it would have been all right if I hadn't met that battered, prowling spirit. I could tell you astounding things that I have seen, but you want to know who sent that message to Beth Mora. Well, it was Thubham Lean, and this is how I know. When I went to the city after that day that you wrote of, I used to take a sheesh of an evening in my flat, and I always found it uninhabited. Sand had poured into it from the desert, and the streets were yellow and smooth, and through open, swinging doors the sand had drifted. One evening I had put the guard in front of the fire, and settled into a chair, and my hashish, and the first thing I saw when I came to Beth Mora was the sailor with the black scar, strolling down the street and making footprints in the yellow sand, and now I knew that I should see what secret power it was that kept Beth Mora uninhabited. I saw that there was anger in the desert, for there were storm clouds heaving along the skyline, and I heard a muttering amongst the sand. The sailor strolled on down the street, looking into the empty houses as he went. Sometimes he shouted, and sometimes he sang, and sometimes he wrote his name on a marble wall. Then he sat down on a step, and ate his dinner. After a while he grew tired of the city, and came back up the street. As he reached the gate of Green Copper three men on camels appeared. I could do nothing. I was only a consciousness, invisible, wandering. My body was in Europe. The sailor fought well with his fists, but he was overpowered, and bound with ropes, and led away through the desert. I followed for as long as I could stay, and found that they were going by way of the desert round the hills of Hap towards Utnavehi, and then I knew that the camelmen belonged to Thubamline. I work in an insurance office all day, and I hope you won't forget me if ever you want to insure life, fire, or motor, but that's no part of my story. I was desperately anxious to get back to my flat, though it is not good to take Hashish two days running. But I wanted to see what they would do to the poor fellow, for I had heard bad rumours about Thubamline. When at last I got away I had a letter to write. Then I rang for my servant, and told him that I must not be disturbed, though I left my door unlocked in case of accidents. After that I made up a good fire, and sat down and partook of the pot of dreams. I was going to the Palace of Thubamline. I was kept back longer than usual by noises in the street, but suddenly I was up above the town. The European countries rushed by beneath me, and there appeared the thin white palace spires of horrible Thubamline. I found him presently at the end of a little narrow room. A curtain of red leather hung behind him, on which all the names of God, written in Yannish, were worked with a golden thread. Three windows were small and high. The Emperor seemed no more than about twenty, and looked small and weak. No smiles came on his nasty yellow face, though he titted continually. As I looked from his low forehead to his quivering underlip, I became aware that there was some horror about him, though I was not able to perceive what it was, and then I saw it. The man never blinked, and though later on I watched those eyes for a blink, it never happened once. And then I followed the Emperor's rapt glance, and I saw the sailor lying on the floor, alive but hideously rent, and the royal torturers were at work all round him. They had torn long strips from him, but had not detached them, and they were torturing the ends of them far away from the sailor. The man that I met at dinner told me many things which I must admit. The sailor was groaning softly, and every time he groaned Thubamline titted. I had no sense of smell, but I could hear and see, and I do not know which was the most revolting, the terrible condition of the sailor, or the happy, unblinking face of the horrible Thubamline. I wanted to go away, but the time was not yet come, and I had to stay where I was. Suddenly the Emperor's face began to twitch violently, and his underlip quivered faster, and he whimpered with anger, and cried with a shrill voice in yannish to the captain of his torturers that there was a spirit in the room. I feared not, for living men cannot lay hands on a spirit, but all the torturers were appalled at his anger, and stopped their work, for their hands trembled with fear. Then two men of the spear-guard slipped from the room, and each of them brought back presently a golden bowl with knobs on it, full of hashish, and the bowls were large enough for the heads to have floated in had they been filled with blood. And the two men fell too rapidly, eating each with two great spoons. There was enough in each spoonful to have given dreams to a hundred men. And there came upon them soon the hashish state, and their spirits hovered, preparing to go free, while I feared horribly, but ever and anon they fell back again to the bodies, recalled by some noise in the room. Still the men ate, but lazily now, and without ferocity. At last the great spoons dropped out of their hands, and their spirits rose and left them. I could not flee, and the spirits were more horrible than the men, because they were young men, and not yet wholly moulded to fit their fearful souls. Still the sailor groaned softly, evoking little titters from the Emperor Thubham-Lean. Then the two spirits rushed at me, and swept me thence as gusts of winds sweep butterflies, and away we went from that small, pale, heinous man. There was no escaping from these spirits' fierce insistence. The energy in my minute lump of the drug was overwhelmed by the huge spoons full that these men had eaten with both hands. I was whirled over arvel-woundery, and brought to the lands of Sniff, and swept on still until I came to Cragoire, and beyond this to those bleak lands that are nearly unknown to fancy. Then we came at last to those ivory hills that are named the Mountains of Madness, and I tried to struggle against the spirits of that frightful Emperor's men, for I heard on the other side of the ivory hills the pittering of those beasts that prey on the mad as they prowled up and down. It was no fault of mine that my little lump of hashish could not fight with their horrible spoons full. Someone was tugging at the hall doorbell. Presently a servant came and told our host that a policeman in the hall wished to speak with him at once. He apologised to us, and went outside, and we heard a man in heavy boots who spoke in a low voice to him. My friend got up and walked over to the window, and opened it, and looked outside. I should think it will be a fine night, he said. Then he jumped out. When we put our astonished heads out of the window to look for him, he was already out of sight. End of The Hashishman. Recording by Wraith Ball Section 22 of Lovecraft's Influences and Favorites This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Unhappy Body by Lord Dunzeny Why do you not dance with us and rejoice with us, they said to a certain body, and then that body made the confession of its trouble. It said, I am united with a fierce and violent soul. That is altogether tyrannous and will not let me rest. And he drags me away from the dances of my kin to make me toil at his detestable work. And he will not let me do the little things that would give pleasure to the folk I love, but only cares to please posterity when he has done with me and left me to the worms. And all the while, he makes absurd demands of affection from those that are near to me, and is too proud even to notice any less than he demands, so that those that should be kind to me all hate me. And the unhappy body burst into tears. And they said, No sensible body cares for its soul. A soul is a little thing and should not rule a body. You should drink and smoke more till he ceases to trouble you. But the body only wept and said, Mine is a fearful soul. I have driven him away for a little while with drink, but he will soon come back. Oh, he will soon come back. And the body went to bed hoping to rest, for it was drowsy with drink. But just as sleep was near it, it looked up and there was its soul sitting on the window sill, a misty blaze of light and looking into the street. Come, said that tear in his soul, and look into the street. I have need of sleep, said the body. But the street is a beautiful thing, the soul said vehemently. A hundred of the people are dreaming there. I am ill through want of rest, the body said. That does not matter, the soul said to it. There are millions like you in the earth, and millions more to go there. The people's dreams are wandering a field. They pass the seas and the mountains of fairy. Threading the intricate passes led by their souls. They come to golden temples a ring with a thousand bells. They pass up steep streets lit by paper lanterns, where the doors are green and small. They know their way to witches' chambers and castles of enchantment. They know the spell that brings them to the causeway along the ivory mountains. On one side looking downward, they behold the fields of their youth, and on the other lie the radiant plains of the future. Arise and write down what the people dream. What reward is there for me, said the body, if I write down what you bid me? There is no reward, said the soul. Then I shall sleep, said the body, and the soul began to hum an idle song sung by a young man in a fabulous land as he passed a golden city where fiery sentinels stood and knew that his wife was within it, though as yet but a little child and knew by prophecy that furious wars not yet arisen in far and unknown mountains should roll above him with their dust and thirst before he ever came to that city again. The young man sing it as he passed the gate and was now dead with his wife a thousand years. I cannot sleep for that abominable song, the body cried to the soul. Then do as you are commanded, the soul replied, and wearily the body took a pen again. Then the soul spoke merrily as he looked through the window. There is a mountain lifting sheer above London, part crystal and part mist. Thither the dreamers go when the sound of the traffic has fallen. At first they scarcely dream because of the roar of it, but before midnight it stops and turns and ebbs with all its wrecks. Then the dreamers arise and scale the shimmering mountain and at its summit find the galleons of dream. Thence some sail east, some west, some into the past and some into the future. For the galleons sail over the years as well as over the spaces, but mostly they head for the past and the old in harbors. For thither the size of men are mostly turned and the dream ships go before them as the merchant men before the continual trade winds go down the African coast. I see the galleons even now raise anchor after anchor. The stars flash by them. They slip out of the night. Their prowls go gleaming into the twilight of memory. And night soon lies far off, a black cloud hanging low and faintly spangled with stars, like the harbor and shore of some low-lying land seen far with its harbor lights. Dream after dream that soul related as he sat there by the window. He told of tropical forests seen by unhappy men who could not escape from London and never would. Forests made suddenly wondrous by the song of some passing bird, flying to unknown iris and singing an unknown song. He saw the old men lightly dancing to the tune of elfin pipes. Beautiful dances with fantastic maidens. All night on moonlit imagery mountains. He heard far off the music of glittering springs. He saw the fairness of blossoms of apple and may thirty years fallen. He heard old voices. Old tears came glistening back. Romance sat cloaked and crowned upon southern hills and the soul knew him. One by one he told the dreams of all that slept in that street. Sometimes he stopped to revile the body because it worked badly and slowly. Its chill fingers wrote as fast as they could, but the soul cared not for that. And so the night wore on till the soul heard tinkling in oriental skies far footfalls of the morning. See now, said the soul, the dawn that the dreamers dread. The sails of light are paling on those unreckable galleons. The mariners that steer them slip back into fable and myth. That other sea the traffic is turning now at its ebb and is about to hide its pallid wrecks and to come swinging back with its tumult at the flow. Already the sunlight flashes in the gulfs behind the east of the world. The gods have seen it from their palace of twilight that they built above the sunrise. They warm their hands at its glow as it streams through their gleaming arches before it reaches the world. All the gods are there that have ever been and all the gods that shall be. They sit there in the morning, chanting and praising man. I am numb and very cold for want of sleep, said the body. You shall have centuries of sleep, said the soul. But you must not sleep now, for I have seen deep meadows with purple flowers, flaming tall and strange above the brilliant grass and herds of pure white unicorns that gamble there for joy and a river running by with a glittering galleon on it. All of gold that goes from an unknown inland to an unknown isle of the sea to take a song from the king of over the hills to the queen of far away. I will sing that song to you, and you shall write it down. I have toiled for you for years, the body said. Give me now but one night's rest, for I am exceeding weary. Oh, go and rest. I am tired of you. I am off, said the soul. And he arose and went. We know not wither, but the body, they laid in the earth. And the next night, at midnight, the raves of the dead came drifting from their tombs to facilitate that body. You are free here, you know, they said to their new companion. Now I can rest, said the body, and of the unhappy body. It goes past the powers of my pen to try to describe real foot lake for you, so that you, reading this, will get the picture of it in your mind as I have it in mine. For real foot lake is like no other lake that I know anything about. It is an afterthought of creation. The rest of this continent was made and had dried in the sun for thousands of years, for millions of years for all I know, before real foot came to be. It's the newest big thing in nature on this hemisphere probably, for it was formed by the great earthquake of 1811, just a little more than a hundred years ago. That earthquake of 1811 surely altered the face of the earth on the then far frontier of this country. It changed the course of rivers, it converted hills into what are now the sunk lands of three states and it turned the solid ground to jelly and made it roll in waves like the sea and in the midst of the reaching of the land and the vomiting of the waters it's depressed to varying depths, a section of the earth crust 60 miles long taking it down, trees, hills, hollows and all and a crack broke through to the Mississippi River so that for three days the river ran upstream filling the hole. The result was the largest lake south of the Ohio, lying mostly in Tennessee but extending up across what is now the Kentucky Line and taking its name from a fancied resemblance in its outline to the splay, reeled foot of a cornfield negro. Nigga Wood Swamp, not so far away, may have got his name from the same man who christened real foot, at least so it sounds. Real foot is and has always been a lake of mystery, in places it is bottomless. Other places, the skeletons of the cypress trees that went down when the earth sank still stand upright so that if the sun shines from the right quarter and the water is less muddy than common, a man peering face downward into its depths sees or thinks he sees down below him the bare top limbs up stretching like drowned men's fingers, all coated with the mud of years and bandaged with pennons of the Green Lake Slime. In still other places the lake is shallow for long stretches, no deeper than breast deep to a man, but dangerous because of the weed growths and the sunken drifts which entangle a swimmer's limbs. Its banks are mainly mud, its waters are muddied too, being a rich coffee-colour in the spring and a copperish yellow in the summer and the trees along its shore are mud-coloured, clear up to their lower limbs after the spring floods when the dried sediment covers their trunks with a thick scruffy-less looking coat. There are stretches of unbroken woodland around it and slashes where the cypress' knees rise countlessly like headstones and footstones for the dead snags that rot in the soft ooze. There are deadenings with the lowland corn growing high and rank below and the bleached fire-blackened girdled trees rising above, barren of leaf and limb. There are long dismal flats where in the spring the clotted frog-spawn clings like patches of white mucus among the weed stalks and at night the turtles crawl out to lay clutches of perfectly round white eggs with tough rubbery shells in the sand. There are bayous leading off to nowhere and sloughs that wind aimlessly like great blind worms to finally join the big river that rolls its semi-liquid torrents a few miles to the westward to finally join the big river that rolls its semi-liquid torrents a few miles to the westward. So real foot lies there flat in the bottoms, freezing lightly in the winter, steaming torridly in the summer, swollen in the spring when the woods have turned a vivid green and the buffalo-nats by the million and the billion fill the flooded hollows with their pestilential buzzing and in the fall ringed about gloriously with all the colours which the first frost brings are called of hickory, yellow russet of sycamore, red of dogwood and ash, and purple-black of sweet gum. But the real foot country has its uses. It is the best game-and-fish country, natural or artificial, that is left in the south today in their appointed seasons to duck and the geese flock in and even semi-tropical birds like the brown pelican and the florida snakebird have been known to come there to nest. Pigs, gone back to wildness, range the ridges. Each razor-backed drove, captained by a gaunt, savage, slabsided old boar. By night the bull-frogs inconceivably big and tremendously vocal bellow under the banks. It is a wonderful place for fish, bass and crappie and perch and the snouted buffalo-fish. How these edible sorts live to spawn and how they are spawn in turn, live to spawn again, is a marvel seeing how many of the big fish-eating cannibal fish there are in real foot. Here, bigger than anywhere else, you find the garfish, all bones and appetite and horny plates with a snout like an alligator. The nearest link, naturalists say, between the animal life of today and the animal life of the reptilian period. The shovel-nosed cat, really a deformed kind of freshwater sturgeon with a great fan-shaped, membranous plate jutting out from his nose like a boughsprit jumps all day in the quiet places with mighty splashing sounds as though a horse had fallen into the water. On every stranded log the huge snapping turtles lie on sunny days in groups of four and six baking their shells black in the sun with their little snaky heads raised watchfully ready to slip noiselessly off at the first sound of oars grating in the rollox. But the biggest of them all are the catfish. These are monstrous creatures, these catfish of real foot. Scaleless, slick things with corpsy dead eyes and poisonous fins like javelins and long whiskers dangling from the sides of their cavernous heads. Six and seven feet long they grow to be and to weigh two hundred pounds or more and they have mouths wide enough to take in a man's foot or a man's fist and strong enough to break any hook save the strongest and greedy enough to eat anything living or dead or putrid that the horny jaws can master. Oh, but they are wicked things and they tell wicked tales of them down there. They call them man-eaters and compare them in certain of their habits to sharks. Fish-head was of a piece with this setting. He fitted into it as an acorn fits its cup. All his life he had lived on real foot, always in the one place at the mouth of a certain slough. He had been born there of a negro father and a half-breed Indian mother, both of them now dead. And the story was that before his birth his mother was frightened by one of the big fish so that the child came into the world most hideously marked. Anyhow Fish-head was a human monstrosity, the veritable embodiment of nightmare. He had the body of a man, a short, stocky, sinewy body, but his face was as near to being the face of a great fish as any face could be and yet retain some trace of human aspect. His skull sloped back so abruptly that he could hardly be said to have a forehead at all. His chin slanted off right into nothing. His eyes were small and round with shallow glazed pale yellow pupils and they were set wide apart in his head and they were unwinking and staring like a fish's eyes. His nose was no more than a pair of tiny slits in the middle of the yellow mask. His mouth was the worst of all. It was the awful mouth of a catfish, lipless and almost inconceivably wide, stretching from side to side. Also, when Fish-head became a man grown his likeness to a fish increased for the hair upon his face grew out into two tightly kinked slender pendants that drooped down either side of the mouth like the beards of a fish. If he had any other name than Fish-head, none excepting he knew it, as Fish-head he was known and as Fish-head he answered. Because he knew the waters and the woods of real foot better than any other man there he was valued as a guide by the city-men who came every year to hunt or fish. But there were few such jobs that Fish-head would take. Mainly he kept to himself, tending his corn-patch, netting the lake, trapping a little and in season pot-hunting for the city markets. His neighbours, Agu-Bitten-Whites and Malaria-proof Negroes alike, left him to himself. Indeed for the most part they had a superstitious fear of him, so he lived alone with no kith nor kin nor even a friend, shunning his kind and shunned by them. His cabin stood just below the state-line where mud-slower runs into the lake. It was a shack of logs, the only human habitation for four miles up or down. Behind it the thick timber came shouldering right up to the edge of Fish-head's small truck-patch, enclosing it in thick shade except when the sun stood just overhead. He cooked his food in a primitive fashion outdoors over a hole in the soggy earth or upon the rusted red ruin of an old cook-stove, and he drank the saffron-water of the lake out of a dipper made of a gourd, fairing and fending for himself, a master hand at skiff and net, competent with duck-gun and fish-spear, yet a creature of affliction and loneliness, part savage, almost amphibious, set apart from his fellows, silent and suspicious. In front of his cabin jutted out a long, fallen cotton-wood trunk, lying half in and half out of the water. Its topside burnt by the sun and worn by the friction of Fish-head's bare feet until it showed countless patterns of tiny, scrolled lines. Its underside black and rotted and lapped at unceasingly by little waves like tiny, licking tongues. Its farther end reached deep water, and it was a part of Fish-head, for no matter how far his fishing and trapping might take him in the daytime, sunset would find him back there, his boat drawn up on the bank, and he on the outer end of this log. From a distance men had seen him there many times, sometimes squatted motionless as the big turtles that would crawl upon its dipping tip in his absence. Sometimes erect and vigilant like a creek crane, his misshapen yellow form outlined against the yellow sun, the yellow water, the yellow banks, all of them yellow together. If the real footers shunned Fish-head by day, they feared him by night and avoided him as a plague, dreading even the chance of a casual meeting, for there were ugly stories about Fish-head, stories which all the Negroes and some of the whites believed. They said that a cry which had been heard just before dusk and just after, skittering across the darkened waters, was his calling cry to the big cats, and at his bidding they came trooping in, and that in their company he swam in the lake on moonlight nights, sporting with them, diving with them, even feeding with them on what manner of unclean things they fed. The cry had been heard many times, that much was certain, and it was certain also that the big fish were noticeably thick at the mouth of Fish-head's slough. No native real footer, white or black, would willingly wet a leg or an arm there. Here Fish-head had lived, and here he was going to die. The Baxter's were going to kill him, and this day in Midsummer was to be the time of the killing. The two Baxter's, Jake and Joel, were coming in their dugout to do it. This murder had been a long time in the making. The Baxter's had to brew their hate over a slow fire for months before it reached the pitch of action. They were poor whites, poor in everything, repute and worldly goods, and standing, a pair of fever-ridden squatters, who lived on whiskey and tobacco when they could get it, and on fish and cornbread when they couldn't. The feud itself was of months standing, meeting Fish-head one day in the spring on the spindly scaffolding of the skiff landing at Walnut log, and being themselves far overtaken in liquor, and vain-glorious with a bogus alcoholic substitute for courage. The brothers had accused him, wantonly and without proof, of running their trot line and stripping it of the hooked catch, an unforgivable sin among the water-dwellers and the shanty-boaters of the south, seeing that he bore this accusation in silence, only eyeing them steadfastly. They had been emboldened then to slap his face, and thereupon he turned and gave them both the beating of their lives, bloodying their noses and bruising their lips with hard blows against their front teeth, and finally leaving them mauled and prone in the dirt. Moreover, in the onlookers, a sense of the everlasting fitness of things had triumphed over race prejudice and allowed them two free-born sovereign whites to be licked by a nigger. Therefore they were going to get the nigger. The whole thing had been planned out amply. They were going to kill him on his log at sundown. There would be no witnesses to see it, no retribution to follow after it. The very ease of the undertaking made them forget even their inborn fear of the place of fish-heads' habitation. For more than an hour now they had been coming from their shack across a deeply indented arm of the lake. They dug out, fashioned by fire and adds and draw-knife from the bowl of a gum-tree, moved through the water as noiselessly as a swimming-mallard, leaving behind it a long, wavy trail on the stilled waters. Jake, the better oarsman, sat flat in the stern of the round-bottomed craft, paddling with quick, splashless strokes. Joel, the better shot, was squatted forward. There was a heavy, rusted duck-gun between his knees. Though their spying upon the victim had made them certain sure he would not be about the shore for hours, a doubled sense of caution led them to hug closely the weedy banks. They slid along the shore like shadows, moving so swiftly and in such silence that the watchful mud-turtles barely turned their snakey heads as they passed. So, a full hour before the time, they came slipping around the mouth of the slough and made for a natural embuscade, which the mixed-breed had left within a stone's jerk of his cabin to his own undoing. Where the slough's flow joined deeper water, a partly uprooted tree was stretched, prone from shore, at the top, still thick and green with leaves that drew nourishment from the earth and the half-uncovered roots yet held and twined about with an exuberance of trumpet vines and wild fox-grapes. All about was a huddle of drift, last year's cornstalks, shreddy strips of bark, chunks of rotted weed, all the riffle and dunnage of a quiet eddy. Straight into this green clump glided the dugout and swung broadside on against the protecting trunk of the tree, hidden from the inner side by the intervening curtains of rank growth, just as the Baxes had intended it should be hidden when, days before in their scouting, they marked this masked place of waiting and included it then and there in the scope of their plans. There had been no hitch or mishap. No one had been abroad in the late afternoon to mark their movements, and in a little while fish-head ought to be due. Jake's woodman's eye followed the downward swing of the sun speculatively. The shadows, thrown shoreward, lengthened and slithered on the small ripples. The small noises of the coming night began to multiply. The green-bodied flies went away and big mosquitoes with speckled grey legs came to take the places of the flies. The sleepy lake sucked at the mud-banks with small, mouthing sounds, as though it found the taste of the raw mud agreeable. A monster crawfish, big as a chicken lobster, crawled out of the top of his dried mud chimney and perched himself there, an armoured sentinel on the watch-tower. Pull-bats began to flicker back and forth above the tops of the trees. A pudgy musk-rat swimming with head up was moved to sidle off briskly as he met a cotton-mouth moccasin snake so fat and swollen with summer poison that it looked almost like a legless lizard as it moved along the surface of the water in a series of slow, torpid esses directly above the head of either of the waiting assassins, a compact little swarm of midges hung holding to a sort of kite-shaped formation. A little more time passed and fish-head came out of the woods at the back walking swiftly with a sack over his shoulder. For a few seconds his deformities showed in the clearing then the black inside of the cabin swallowed him up. By now the sun was almost down only the red nub of it showed above the timber-line across the lake and the shadows lay inland a long way. Out beyond the big cats were stirring and the great smacking sounds as their twisted bodies leapt clear and fell back in the water came shoreward in a chorus. But the two brothers in their green cover gave heed to nothing except the one thing upon which their hearts were set and their nerves tensed. Joel gently shoved his gun-barrels across the log cuddling the stock to his shoulder and slipping two fingers caressingly back and forth upon the triggers. Jake held the narrow dug-out steady by a grip upon a fox-grape tendril. A little wait and then the finish came. Fish-head emerged from the cabin door and came down the narrow foot-path to the water and out upon the water on his log. He was bare-footed and bare-headed. His cotton shirt opened down the front to show his yellow neck and breast. His dungaree trousers held about his waist by a twisted toe-string, his broad-splay feet with the prehensile toes outspread gripped the polished curve of the log as he moved along its swaying, dipping surface until he came to its outer end and stood there erect, his chest filling, his chinless face lifted up and something of master-ship and dominion in his poise. And then his eye caught what another's eyes might have missed, the round, twin ends of the gun-barrels, the fixed gleams of Joel's eyes aimed at him through the green tracery. In that swift passage of time, too swift almost to be measured by seconds, realisation flashed all through him and he threw his head still higher and opened wide his shapeless trap of a mouth and out across the lake he sent skittering and rolling his cry and in his cry was the laugh of a loon and the croaking bellow of a frog and the bay of a hound all the compounded night noises of the lake and in it, too, was a farewell and a defiance and an appeal. The heavy roar of the duck-gun came. At twenty yards the double-charge tore the throat out of him. He came down face-forward upon the log and clung there his trunk twisting distortedly, his legs twitching and kicking like the legs of a speared frog. His shoulders hunching and lifting spasmodically as the life ran out of him all in one swift coursing flow. His head canted up between the heaving shoulders. His eyes looked full on the staring face of his murderer and then the blood came out of his mouth and fish-head in death, still as much fish as man, slid flopping head-first off the end of the log and sank face-downward slowly. His limbs all extended out. One after another a string of big bubbles came up to burst in the middle of a widening reddish stain on the coffee-coloured water. The brothers watched this held by the horror of the thing they had done and the cranky dugout tipped far over by the recoil of the gun took water steadily across its gunnel and now there was a sudden stroke from below upon its careening bottom and it went over and they were in the lake but sure was only twenty feet away the trunk of the up-rooted tree only five. Joel still holding fast to his hot gun made for the log, gaining it with one stroke. He threw his free arm over it and clung there, treading water as he shook his eyes free. Something gripped him, some great sinewy unseen thing, gripped him fast by the thigh down on his flesh. He uttered no cry, but his eyes popped out and his mouth set in a square shape of agony and his fingers gripped into the bark of the tree like grapples. He was pulled down and down by steady jerks, not rapidly, but steadily, so steadily and as he went his fingernails tore four little white strips in the tree-bark. His mouth went under, his cheeks next, his popping eyes, then his erect hair and finally his clawing, clutching hand and that was the end of him. Jake's fate was harder still for he lived longer, long enough to see Joel's finish. He saw it through the water that ran down his face and with a great surge of his whole body he literally flung himself across the log and jerked his legs up high into the air and flung himself too far though for his face and chest hit the water on the far side and out of this water rose the head of a great fish with the lake slime of years on its flat black head, its whiskers bristling, its corpse-eyes alight, its horny jaws closed and clamped in the front of Jake's flannel shirt. His hand struck out wildly and was speared on a poisoned fin and, unlike Joel, he went from sight with a great yell and a whirling and a churning of the water that made the corn stalks circle on the edges of a small whirlpool. But the whirlpool soon thinned away into widening rings of ripples and the corn stalks quit circling and became still again and only the multiplying night noises sounded about the mouth of the slough. The bodies of all three came ashore on the same day near the same place. Except for the gaping gunshot wound where the neck met the chest, Fishhead's body was unmarked. But the bodies of the two backsters were so marred and mauled that the real footers buried them together on the bank without ever knowing which might be Jake's and which might be Joel's. End of Fishhead Bow down. I am the emperor of dreams. I crown me with the million-colored sun of secret worlds incredible and take their trailing skies for vestment when I soar, thrown on the mounting zenith and allume the spaceward-flown horizon's infinite. Like rampant monsters roaring for their glut, the fiery crested oceans rise and rise by jealous moons maleficently urged to follow me forever. Mountains horned with peaks of sharpest adamant and mawed with sulfur-lit volcanoes lava-langued, usurp the skies with thunder, but in vain. Incontinence of serpent-shapen trees with slimy trunks that linked in league by league pursue my flight through ages spurned to fire by that supreme ascendance. Sorcerers and evil kings predominantly armed with scrolls of fulvis dragon skin whereon our worm-like runes of ever-twisting flame would stay me and the sirens of the stars with foam-like songs from silver-fragrance wrought would lure me to their crystal reefs and moons where viper-eyed senescent devils dwell with antique gnomes abominably wise heave up their icy horns across my way but not deters me from the goal ordained by suns and aeons and immortal wars longed by moons and motes the goal whose name is all the secret of forgotten glyphs by sinful gods in torrid rubies writ for ending of a brazen book the goal where at my soaring ecstasy may stand in amplest heavens multiplied to hold my hordes of thunder vested avatars and Promethean armies of my thought that brandish claspid leavens there I call my memories intolerantly clad in light the peaks of paradise may wear and lead the Armageddon of my dreams whose instant shout of triumph has become immensity's own music for their feet are founded on innumerable worlds remote in alien epochs and their arms upraised are columns potent to exalt with ease and effable the countless thrones of all the gods that are and gods to be or bear the seats of as my day and set above the seventh paradise supreme incominent omniscience manifold and served by senses multitudinous far posted on the shifting walls of time with eyes that roam the star unwinnowed fields of utter night and chaos I convoke the babble of their vision and attend at once their myriad witness I behold an ombos where the fallen titans dwell with mountain-builded walls and gulfs for moat the secret cleft that cunning dwarves have dug beneath an out-like buttress and I list too late the clang of adamantine gongs dinned by their drowsy guardians whose feet have felt the wasp-like sting of little knives imbrewed with slobber of the basilisk or juice of wounded upas and I see in gardens of a crimson litten world the sacred flower with lips of purple flesh and silver-lashed vermilion-litted eyes of torpid azure whom his furtive priests at moonless eve in terror seek to slay with bubbling grails of sacrificial blood that hide a hueless poison and I read upon the tongue of a forgotten sphinx the annulling word a spiteful demon wrote with gall of slain chimeras and I know what pentacles the lunar wizards use that once allured the gulf-returning rock with ten great wings of furloughed storm to pause midmost an alabaster mount and there with bolder-weighted webs of dragon's gut uplift by cranes a captive giant built that wound the monstrous moonquake-throbbing bird and plucked from off his saber-talloned feet uranium sapphires fast in frozen blood with amethyst from Mars I lean to read with slanted-lipped images in an evil star the monstrous archives of a war that ran through wasted aeons and the prophecy of war's renewed that shall commemorate some enmity of wyvern-headed kings even to the brink of time I know the blooms of bluish fungus freaked with mercury that bloat within the craters of the moon and in one still salinic hour have shrunk to pools of slime and fettor and I know what clammy blossoms blanched and cavern-grown are proffered in Uranus to their gods by mole-eyed peoples and the livid seed of some black fruit a king and saturnate which cast upon his tinkling palace floor took root between the burnished flags and now hath mounted and become a hellish tree whose lithe and hairy branches lined with mouths net like a hundred ropes his lurching throne and strain at starting pillars I behold the slowly thronging corals that usurp some harbor of a million-masted sea and sun them on the leagues-long wharves of gold bulks of enormous crimson kraken-limbed and kraken-headed lifting up as crowns the octareems of perished emperors and galleys fraught with royal gems that sailed from a sun-deserted haven swift to grow the visions now a mighty city looms hewn from a hill of purest cinnabar to domes and tourists like a sunrise throng with tear-on-tear of captive moons half-drowned and shifting ebber essence but whose hands were sculptors of its doors and columns wrought to semblance of prodigious blooms of old no aromite hath lingered there to say and no man comes to learn for long ago a prophet came warning its timid king against the plague of lichens wrapped across subverted empires and the sand of wastes that cyclopean mountains ward which, slow and ineluctable, would come to take his fiery bastions and his feigns and quench his domes with greenish tether now I see a host of naked giants armed with horms of behemoth and unicorn who wander blinded by the clinging spells of hostile wizardry and stagger on to forests where the very leaves have eyes and ebbenes like wrathful dragons roar to teaks of chuckle in a loathly gloom where coiled liana's lean with serried fangs from writhing palms with swollen bowls that moan where leeches of a scarlet moss have sucked the eye of some dead monster and have crawled to bask upon his azure-spotted spine where hydra-throated blossoms hiss and sing or yawn with mouths that drip a sluggish dew whose touch is death and slow corrosion then I watch a war of pygmies met by night with pitter of their drums of parrots hide on plains with no horizon where a god might lose his way for centuries and there in wreathed light and folgers all convolved a route of green enormous moons ascend with rays that like a shivering venom run on inch-long swords of lizardfang surveyed from this my throne as from a central sun the pageantries of worlds and cycles pass forgotten splendors dream by dream unfold like tapestry and vanish violet suns or sons of changel iridescence bring their rays about me like the colored lights imploring priests might lift to glory the face of some averted god the songs of mystic poets in a purple world ascend to me in music that is made from unconceived perfumes and the pulse of love ineffable the lute players whose lutes are strung with gold of the utmost moon call forth delicious langurs never known save to their golden kings the sorcerers of hooded stars inscrutable to god surrender me their demon rested scrolls inscribed with lore of monstrous alchemies and awful transformations if I will I am at once the vision and the seer and mingle with my ever-streaming pumps and still abide their suzerain I am the neophyte who serves a nameless god within whose feign the feigns of hechotompilos where arcs the titan worshippers might bear or flags to pave the threshold or I am the god himself who calls the fleeing clouds into the nave where the suns might congregate and veils the darkling mountain of his face with fold on solemn fold for whom the priests amass their monthly hechotome of gems opals that are a camel-cumbering load and monstrous alambrodines one from war with realms of hostile serpents which arise combustible in vapors many hewed and murmur excelling perfumes it is I the king who holds with scepter dropping hand the great barge of chrysalite sailing upon an amethystine sea to aisles of timeless summer or the snows of hyperborean winter and their winds sleep in his jewel-builded capital nor any charm of flame-wrought wizardry nor conjured suns may rout them so he flees with captive kings to urge his serried oars hopeful of dales where amorentine dawn hath never left the faintly sighing loat or I fair impanopled with azure diamond as hero of a quest ashenar lights to deserts filled with ever-wandering flames that feed upon the sullen moral and soar to wrap the slopes of mountain and to leap with tongues intolerably lengthening that lick the blanched heavens but there lives secure as in a garden walled from wind a lonely flower by a placid well midmost the flaring tumult of the flames that roar as roars the storm-possessed sea implacable forever and within that simple grail the blossom lifts there lies one drop of an incomparable dew which heals the parched weariness of kings and cures the wound of wisdom I am paged to an emperor who reigns ten thousand years and through his labyrinthine palace rooms through courts and colonnades and balconies and immensity itself is mazed I seek the golden gorget he hath lost on which the names of his conniving stars are writ in little sapphires and I roam for centuries and hear the brazen clocks innumerably clang with such a sound as brazen hammers make by devil's dinde on tombs of all the dead and never more I find the gorget but at length I find a sealed room whose nameless prisoner moans with a nameless torture and I would turn to hell's red rack as to a lilyed couch from that whereon they stretched him and I find prostrate upon a lotus-painted floor the loveliest of all beloved slaves my emperor hath and from her pulse withside a serpent rises whiter than the root of some venific bloom in darkness grown and gazes up with greenlit eyes like drops of cold congealing poison hark what word was whispered in a tongue unknown in crypts of some impenetrable world whose is the dark bethroning secrecy I cannot share though I am the king of sons and king therewith of strong eternity whose nomans with their swords of shadow guard my gates and slay the intruder silence loads the wind of ether and the worlds are still to hear the word that flees me dreams fall like a rack of fuming vapors raised to semblance by a necromat and leaves spirit and sense unthinkably alone above a universe of shrouded stars and sons that wander cowled with sullen gloom like witches to a Sabbath fear is born in crypts below the nadir and hath crawled reaching the floor of space and waits for wings to lift it upward like a hellish worm feigned for the flesh of serifs eyes that gleam but are not eyes of sons or galaxies gather and throng to the base of darkness flame behind some black abysmal curtain burns implacable and fan to whitest wrath by razored wings that flail the whiffled gloom and make a brief and broken wind that moans as one who rides a throbbing rack there is the thing that crouches worlds and years remote whose horns a demon sharpens rasping forth a note to shatter the dungeon keeps of time and crack the sphere of crystal all is dark for ages and my tolling heart suspends its clamor as within the clutch of death tightening with tense hermetic rigors then in one enormous million flashing flame the stars unveil the suns remove their cows and beam to their responding planets time is mine once more and armies of its dreams rally to that insuperable throne firmed on the central zenith now I seek the means of shining moly I had found in some remotor vision by a stream no cloud hath ever tarnished or the sun a gold narcissus loyters evermore above his golden image but I find a corpse the ebbing waters will not keep with eyes like sapphires that have lain in hell and felt the hissing embers and the flowers about me turn to hooded serpents swayed by flutes of devils in a hellish dance meet for the nod of satan and he reigns above the raging sabbath and is wooed by sarabans of witches but I turn to mountains guarding with their horns of snow the source of that befalled rill and seek a pinnacle where none but eagles climb and they with failing pinnons but in vain I flee for on that pylon of the sky the source hath turned the unprinted snow to flame red fires that curl and cluster to my tread trying the summits narrow serp and now I see a silver python far beneath vast as a river that a fiend hath witch'd and forced to flow remant in its course to fountains whence it issued rapidly it winds from slope to crumbling slope and fills ravines and chasmal gorges till the crags totter with coil on coil incumbent soon it hath entwined the pinnacle I keep and gapes with a fanged unfathomable maw wherein great typhon and encyclotus were orcs of daily glut but I am gone for at my call a hippogriff hath come and firm between its thunder-beating wings I mount the sheer cerulean walls of noon and see an earth, a spurned pebble fall lost in the fields of nether stars and seek a planet where the outwearyed wings of time might pause and furl for its fight or the plumes of death be stayed and loiter in reprieve above some deathless lily for therein beauty hath found an avatar of flowers blossoms that clothe it as a colored flame from peak to peak from pole to sullen pole and turn the skies to perfume there I find a lonely castle, calm and unbe-set saved by the purple spears of aramath walls up-built of flushed marble wonderful with rose and domes like golden bubbles and minarets that take the clouds as coronal these are mine for voiceless looms the peaceful barbican and the heavy-teeth portcullis hangs aloft as if to smile a welcome so I leave my hippogriff to crop the magic needs and pass into a court the lilies hold and tread them to a fragrance that pursues the portico whose columns, carved of lazuli and amber, mock the palms of bright adenic forests capitoled with fronds of stone fretted to airy lace in folding droops that seem as tawny clusters of breasts of unknown hurries and convolved with vines of shut and shadow-leaved flowers like the dropped lids of women that endure some loin-dissolving rapture through a door inlaid with lilies twined luxuriously I enter, dazed and blinded with the sun and here in gloom that changing colors cloud a chuckle sharp as crepitating ice up-heaved and cloven by shoulders of the damned who strive in Antonora when my eyes undazzle and the cloud of color fades I find me in a marble guarded room where marble apes with wings of griffin's crowd and walls an evil sculptor wrought and beasts wherein the sloth and vampire bat unite pendulous by their toes of tarnished bronze usurp the shadowy interval of lamps that hang from ebb and arches like a ripple born by the wind from pool to sluggish pool in fields where wide cositis flows his bound a crackling smile around that circle runs stone-wrought gibbons stare at me with eyes that turned glowing coals a fear that found no name in babble flings me on breathless and fate with horror to a hall within whose weary self-reverting round the languid curtains heavier than Paul's unnumerably depict a weary king who feign would cool his jewel-crusted hands in lakes of emerald evening where the fields of dreamless poppies pier with rain I flee onward and all the shadowy curtain shake with tremors of a silken sighing mirth and whispers of the innumerable king breathing a tale of ancient pestilence whose very words are vile contagion. Then I reach a room where caryatids carved in the form of tall voluptuous Titan women surround a throne of flowering ebony where creeps a vine of crystal on the throne there lulls a wan enormous worm the bulk tumid with all the rottenness of kings or flows its arms with fold on creased fold of fat obscenely bloating open mouth telenes and from his throat a score of tongues the pending like-to-rees of torpid vipers drivel with phosphorescent slime that runs down all the length of soft and monstrous folds and creeping among the flowers of ebony lends them the life of tiny serpents now ere the horror ope those red and lashless slits of eyes that draw the net and midge I turn and follow down a dusty hall whose gloom lined by the statues with their mighty limbs ends in a golden root balcony, spearing the flowered horizon ere my heart hath hushed the panic tumult of its pulses I listen from beyond the horizon's rim a mutter faint as when the far samoon mounting from unknown deserts opens forth wide as the waist those wings of torrid night that fling the doom of cities from their folds and musters in its vand a thousand winds that with disrouted palms or bosoms rise and sweep the sands to fury as the storm approaching mounts and loudens to the ears of them that toil in the fields of sesame so grows the creeps above the gold horizon like a dawn of darkness climbing sunward now they come a sabbath of abominable shapes led by the fiends and lamea of worlds that owned my sway of foretime cockatrice python triglyphus leviathan chimera morticoras bmf garion and sphinx and hydra on my kin rise as might some a free to build a city consummate in the lifting of a lash with thundrous domes and sounding obelisks and towers of night and fire alternate wings of white hot stone along the hissing wind bear up the huge and furnished hearted beasts of hell's beyond reticulus and things whose lightless length would meet the guyer of moons born from the caverns of a dying sun uncoil to the very zenith from gulfs below the horizon octopi like blazing moons with countless arms of fire climb from the seas of ever surging flame that roll and roar through planets unconsumed beating on coasts of unknown metals beasts that range the mighty words of alioth rise afforsing the heavens with multitudinous horns within whose maze the winds are lost and born on cliff like brows of plunging skull apprentice the shell wrought towers of ocean witches loom and griffin mounted gods and demons thrown on sable dragons and the cockadrill's that bear the splendid pygmies on their backs and blue faced wizards from the worlds of safe on whom titanic scorpions fawn and armies that move with fronts reverted from the foe and strike a thork their shoulders at the shapes their shields reflect in crystals and idol of fashion within unfathomable caves by hands of eyeless people and the blind and worm shaped monsters of a sunless world with crackens from the ultimate abyss and demogorgons of the outer dark a rising shout with multitudinous thunders and threatening me with dooms ineffable in words were at the heavens leap to flame advance on the magic palace thrown before for league on league their blasting shadows blight and eat like fire the amaranthine meads leaving an ashen desert in the palace I hear the apes of marble shriek and howl and all the women shape and columns moan babbling with unknown terror in my fear a monstrous dread unnamed in any hell I rise and flee with the fleeing wind for wings and in a trice the magic palace reels inspiring to a single tower of flame goes out and leaves nor shard nor ember flown beyond the world upon that fleeing wind I reach the gulf's irrespirable verge where fails the strongest storm for breath and falls supportless through the nadir plunged gloom beyond the scope and visions of the sun to other skies and systems in a world deep wooded with the multicolored fungi that soared a semblance of fantastic palms I fall as falls the meteor stone and break a score of trunks to powder all unheard I rise and through the illimitable woods among the trees of flimsy opal roam and see their tops to that clamor hour by hour to touch the sons of iris things unseen whose carnal breath informs the tideless air with spreading pools of fettore follow me elusive past the ever-changing palms and pittering moths with wide and ashen wings flit on before and insects ember hewed descending hurdle through the gorgeous gloom and quench themselves in crumbling thickets heard far off the gong like roar of beasts unknown resounds at measured intervals of time shaking the riper trees to dust that falls in clouds of accurate perfume stifling me beneath a pall of iris now the palms grow far apart and lessen momently to shrubs a dwarf might topple over them I see an empty desert all ablaze with amethysts and rubies and the dust of garnets or carnelians on I roam treading the gorgeous grit that dazzles me the leaping waves of endless rudolence whereby the air is turned to a crimson gloom through which I wander blind as any cobalt till underfoot the grinding sands give place to stone or metal with a massive ring more welcome to mine ears than golden bells or tinkle of silver fountains when the gloom of crimson lifts I stand upon the edge of a broad black plane of adamant that reaches level as a windless water to the verge of all the world and through the sable plane a hundred streams of shattered marble run and streams of broken steel and streams of bronze like to the ruin of all the wars of time to plunge with clanger of timeless cataracts a down the gulf's eternal so I follow between a river of steel and a river of bronze with ripples loud and tuneless as the clash of a million loots and come to the precipice from which they fall and make the mighty sound of a million swords that meet a million shields or den of spears and armor in the wars of all the worlds and aeons far beneath they fall through gulfs and cycles of the void and vanish like a stream of broken stars into the nether darkness nor the gods of any sun nor demons of the gulf will dare to know what everlasting sea is fed thereby and mounts forevermore with mighty tides unebbing low what cloud or night of sudden and supreme eclipse is on the sons of opals at my side the river's rail with a wand and ghostly gleam through darkness falling as the night that falls from mighty spheres extinguished turning now I see betwixt the desert and the sun's the poised wings of all the dragon route far flown in black occlusion thousandfold through stars and deeps and devastated worlds upon my trail of terror griffons rocks and sluggish dark chimeras heavy winged after the raven of dispeopled lands with harpies and the vulture birds of hell hot from abominable feasts and feign to cool their beaks and talons in my blood all all have gathered and the wingless rear with rank on rank of foul colossal worms like pillars of embattled night and flame looms on the wide horizon from the van I hear the shriek of wyverns loud and shrill as tempests in a broken feign and roar of sphinxes like the unrelenting toll of bells from towers infernal cloud on cloud they arch the zenith and a dreadful wind falls from them like the wind before the storm and in the wind my cloven garment streams and flutters in the face of all the void even as flows a flapping spirit lost on the pit's undying tempest louder grows the thunder of the streams of stone and bronze redoubled with the roar of torrent wings inseparably mingled scarce I keep my footing in the gulfward winds of fear and mighty thunders beating to the void in sea like waves incessant and would flee with them and prove the nadir found at night where fall the streams of ruin but when I reach the verge and seek through sun defeating gloom to measure with my gaze the dread descent I see a tiny star within the depths a light that stays me while the wings of doom convene their thickening thousands where the star increases taking to its hewless orb with all the speed of horror changed dreams the light of a million million moons and floating up through gulfs and glooms eclipsed it grows and grows a huge white eyeless face that fills the void and fills the universe and bloats against the limits of the world with lips a flame that open end of the ashish eater or the apocalypse of evil by Clark Ashton Smith section 25 of Lovecraft's influences and favorites this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Wraith Ball Seaton's Aunt by Walter Delamere Part 1 I had heard rumours of Seaton's Aunt long before I actually encountered her Seaton in the hush of confidence or at any little show of toleration on our part would remark my Aunt or my old Aunt, you know as if his relative might be a kind of cement to an entente cordial he had an unusual quantity of pocket money or at any rate it was bestowed on him in unusually large amounts and he spent it freely though none of us would have described him as an awfully generous chap Hello Seaton he would say the old beagum at the beginning of term 2 he used to bring back surprising and exotic dainties in a box with a trick padlock that accompanied him from his first appearance at gummages in a billy cock hat to the rather abrupt conclusion of his school days from a boy's point of view he looked distastefully foreign with his yellow skin and slow chocolate coloured eyes and lean, weak figure merely for his looks he was treated by most of us true blue Englishmen with condescension, hostility or contempt we used to call him pongo but without any better excuse for the nickname than his skin he was, that is, in one sense of the term what he assuredly was not in the other sense a sport Seaton and I were never in any sense intimate at school our orbits only intersected in class I kept instinctively aloof from him I felt vaguely he was a sneak and remained quite unmolefied by advances on his side which, in a boy's barbarous fashion unless it suited me to be magnanimous I haughtily ignored we were both of us quick-footed and at prisoner's base used occasionally to hide together and so I best remember Seaton his narrow watchful face in the dusk of summer evening his peculiar crouch and his inarticulate whisperings and mumblings otherwise he played all games slackly and limply used to stand and feed at his locker with a crony or two until his tuck gave out or waste his money on some outlandish fancy or other he bought, for instance, a silver bangle which he wore above his left elbow until some of the fellows showed their masterly contempt of the practice by dropping it nearly red-hot down his neck it needed, therefore, a rather peculiar taste a rather rare kind of schoolboy courage and a difference to criticism to be much associated with him and I had neither the taste nor the courage nonetheless he did make advances and on one memorable occasion went to the length of bestowing on me a whole pot of some outlandish mulberry-coloured jelly that had been duplicated in his term's supplies in the exuberance of my gratitude I promised to spend the next half-term holiday with him at his aunt's house I had clean forgotten my promise when two or three days before the holiday he came up and triumphantly reminded me of it well, to tell you the honest truth seat an old chap, I began graciously but he cut me short my aunt expects you, he said she is very glad you are coming she's sure to be quite decent to you with us I looked at him in some astonishment the emphasis was unexpected it seemed to suggest an aunt not hitherto hinted at and a friendly feeling on Seaton's side that was more disconcerting than welcome we reached his home partly by train partly by a lift in an empty farm cart and partly by walking it was a whole day holiday and we were to sleep the night he lent me extraordinary night gear, I remember the village street was unusually wide and was fed from a green by two converging roads with an inn and a high green sign at the corner about a hundred yards down the street was a chemist's shop Mr. Tanner's we descended the two steps into his dusky and odorous interior to buy, I remember some rat poison a little beyond the chemists was the forge he then walked along a very narrow path under a fairly high wall nodding here and there with weeds and tufts of grass and so came to the iron garden gates and saw the high flat house behind its huge sycamore a coach house stood on the left of the house and on the right a gate led into a kind of rambling orchard the lawn lay away over to the left again and at the bottom for the whole garden sloped gently to a sluggish and rushy pond-like stream was a meadow we arrived at noon and entered the gates out of the hot dust beneath the glitter of the dark-curtained windows Seton led me at once through the little garden gate to show me his tadpole pond swarming with what, being myself not the least bit of a naturalist I considered the most horrible creatures of all shapes, consistencies and sizes but with whom Seton seemed to be on the most intimate of terms I can see his absorbed face now as he sat on his heels and fished the slimy things out in his sallow palms wearing at last of his pets we loitered about a while in a nameless fashion Seton seemed to be listening or at any rate waiting for something to happen or for someone to come but nothing did happen and no one came that was just like Seton anyhow the first view I got of his aunt was when at the sons of a distant gong we turned from the garden very hungry and thirsty to go into luncheon we were approaching the house when Seton suddenly came to a standstill indeed I had always had the impression that he plucked my sleeve something at least seemed to catch me back as it were as he cried, look out, there she is she was standing in an upper window which opened wide on a hinge and at first sight she looked an excessively tall and overwhelming figure this however was mainly because the window reached all but to the floor of her bedroom she was in reality rather an undersized woman in spite of her long face and big head she must have stood, I think, unusually still with eyes fixed on us though this impression may be due to Seton's sudden warning and to my consciousness of the cautious and subdued air that had fallen on him at sight of her I know that without the least reason in the world I felt a kind of guiltiness as if I had been caught there was a silvery star pattern sprinkled on her black silk dress and even from the ground I could see the immense coils of her hair and the rings on her left hand which was held fingering the small jet buttons of her bodice she watched our united advance without stirring until, imperceptibly, her eyes raised and lost themselves in the distance so that it was out of an assumed reverie that she appeared suddenly to awaken to our presence beneath her when we drew close to the house so this is your friend Mr. Smithers, I suppose she said, bobbing to me withers aren't, said Seton it's much the same, she said with eyes fixed on me come in Mr. Withers and bring him along with you she continued to gaze at me at least I think she did so I know that the fixity of her scrutiny and her ironical Mr. made me feel peculiarly uncomfortable but she was extremely kind and attentive to me though perhaps her kindness and attention showed up more vividly against her complete neglect of Seton only one remark that I have any recollection of she made to him when I look on my nephew Mr. Smithers I realise that dust we are and dust shall become you are hot, dirty and incorrigible Arthur she sat at the head of the table, Seton at the foot and I, before a wide waist of Damasque tablecloth between them it was an old and rather close dining-room with windows thrown wide to the green garden and a wonderful cascade of fading roses Miss Seton's great chair faced this window so that its rose-reflected light shone full on her yellowish face and on just such chocolate eyes as my school fellows except that hers were more than half-covered by unusually long and heavy lids there she sat, eating, with those sluggish eyes fixed for the most part on my face above them stood the deep-lined fork between her eyebrows and above that the wired expanse of a remarkable brow beneath its strange, steep bank of hair the lunch was copious and consisted, I remember, of all such dishes as are generally considered mischievous and too good for the schoolboy digestion lobster mayonnaise, cold game sausages an immense veal and ham pie fast with eggs and numberless delicious flavours sauces, kick-shaws, creams and sweet-meats we even had wine, a half-glass of old, darkish sherry each Miss Seton enjoyed and indulged an enormous appetite her example and a natural schoolboy veracity soon overcame my nervousness of her even to the extent of allowing me to enjoy to the best of my bent, so rare a spread Seton was singularly modest the greater part of his meal consisted of almonds and raisins which he nibbled surreptitiously and as if he found difficulty in swallowing them I don't mean that Miss Seton conversed with me she merely scattered trenchant remarks and now and then twinkled a baited question over my head but her face was like a dense and involved accompaniment to her talk she presently dropped the Mr to my intense relief and called me now withers, or wither, now smithers and even once towards the close of the meal distinctly Johnson, though how on earth my name suggested it or whose face mine had reanimated in memory I cannot conceive and is Arthur a good boy at school, Mr Wither? was one of her many questions does he please his masters? is he first in his class? what does the Reverend Dr Gummidge think of him, eh? I knew she was jeering at him but her face was adamant against the least flicker of sarcasm or facetiousness I gazed fixedly at a blushing crescent of lobster I think you're eighth, aren't you, Seton? Seton moved his small pupils towards his aunt but she continued to gaze with a kind of concentrated detachment at me Arthur will never make a brilliant scholar, I fear she said, lifting a dexterously burdened fork to her wide mouth after luncheon she proceeded me up to my bedroom it was a jolly little bedroom with a brass fender and rugs and a polished floor on which it was possible, I afterwards found, to play snowshoes over-the-wash stand was a little black-framed water-colour drawing depicting a large eye with an extremely fish-like intensity in the spark of light on the dark pupil and in illuminated lettering beneath was printed very minutely Thou God-ceased me, followed by a long-looped monogram S.S. in the corner the other pictures were all of the sea bricks on blue water, a schooner over-topping chalk cliffs a rock island of prodigious steepness with two tiny sailors dragging a monstrous boat up a shelf of beach this is the room withers my brother William died in when a boy admire the view I looked out of the window across treetops it was a day hot with sunshine over the green fields and the cattle were standing swishing their tails in the shallow water but the view at the moment was only exaggeratedly vivid because I was horribly dreading that she would presently inquire after my luggage and I had not brought even a toothbrush I need have had no fear hers was not that highly civilized type of mind that is stuffed with sharp material details nor could her ample presence be described as in the least motherly I would never consent to question a school-fellow behind my nephew's back she said, standing in the middle of the room but tell me, Smithers, why is Arthur so unpopular? you, I understand, are his only close friend she stood in a dazzle of sun and out of it her eyes regarded me with such leaden penetration beneath their thick lids that I doubt if my face concealed the least thought from her but there, there, she added very swiftly, stooping her head a little don't trouble to answer me I never extort an answer boy's a queer fish Brains might perhaps have suggested his washing hands before luncheon but not my choice, Smithers God forbid and now perhaps you would like to go into the garden again I cannot actually see from here but I should not be surprised if Arthur is now skulking behind that hedge he was I saw his head come out and take a rapid glance at the windows join him, Mr. Smithers we shall meet again, I hope, at the tea-table the afternoon I spend in retirement whether or not Seaton and I had not been long engaged with the aid of two green switches in riding round and round a lumbering old grey horse we found in the meadow before a rather bunched-up figure appeared walking along the field path on the other side of the water with a magenta parasol studiously lowered in our direction throughout her slow progress as if that were the magnetic needle and we the fixed pole Seaton at once lost all nerve in his riding at the next lurch of the old mare's heels he toppled over into the grass and I slid off the sleek broad back to join him where he stood rubbing his shoulder and sowly watching the rather pompous figure till it was out of sight was that your aunt Seaton, I inquired, but not till then he nodded why didn't she take any notice of us then? she never does why not? oh, she knows all right without that's the damn awful part of it Seaton was about the only fellow at Gummages who ever had the ostentation to use bad language he had suffered for it too but it wasn't, I think, bravado I believe he really felt certain things more intensely than most of the other fellows and they were generally things that fortunate and average people do not feel at all the peculiar quality, for instance, of the British schoolboy's imagination I tell you with us, he went on moodily slinking across the meadow with his hands covered up in his pockets she sees everything and what she doesn't see, she knows without but how? I said, not because I was much interested but because the afternoon was so hot and tiresome and purposeless and it seemed more of a bore to remain silent Seaton turned gloomily and spoke in a very low voice don't appear to be talking of her, if you wouldn't mind it's because she's in league with the devil he nodded his head and stooped to pick up a round flat pebble I tell you, he said, still stooping you fellows don't realise what it is I know I'm a bit close and all that but so would you be if you had that old hag listening to every thought you think I looked at him, then turned and surveyed one by one the windows of the house where's your Peter? I said awkwardly dead, ages and ages ago and my mother too she's not my aunt by rights what is she then? I mean she's not my mother's sister because my grandmother married twice and she's one of the first lot I don't know what you call her but anyhow, she's not my real aunt she gives you plenty of pocket money Seaton looks dead fastly at me out of his flat eyes she can't give me what's mine when I come of age half of the whole lot will be mine and what's more, he turned his back on the house I'll make her hand over every blessed shilling of it I put my hands in my pockets and stared at Seaton is it much? he nodded who told you? he got suddenly very angry a darkish red came into his cheeks his eyes glistened but he made no answer and we loitered listlessly about the garden until it was time for tea Seaton's aunt was wearing an extraordinary kind of lace jacket when we sidled sheepishly into the drawing room together she greeted me with a heavy and protracted smile and bade me bring a chair close to the little table I hope Arthur has made you feel at home she said as she handed me my cup in her crooked hand he don't talk much to me but then I'm an old woman you must come again with her and draw him out of his shell you old snail she wagged her head at Seaton who sat munching cake and watching her intently and we must correspond perhaps she nearly shut her eyes at me you must write and tell me everything behind the creature's back I confess I found her rather disquieting company the evening drew on lamps were brought by a man with a nondescript face and very quiet footsteps Seaton was told to bring out the chessmen and we played a game, she and I with her big chin thrust over the board at every move as she gloated over the pieces and occasionally croaked, check after which she would sit back inscrutably staring at me but the game was never finished she simply hemmed me defencelessly in with a cloud of men that held me impotent and yet one and all refused to administer to my poor flustered old king a merciful coup de gras there, she said as the clock struck ten a drawn game with us we are very evenly matched a very creditable defence with us you know your room there's supper on a tray in the dining room don't let the creature overeat himself the gong will sound three quarters of an hour before a punctual breakfast she held out her cheek to Seaton and he kissed it with obvious perfunctoriness with me she shook hands an excellent game she said cordially but my memory is poor and she swept the pieces helter-skelter into the box the result will never be known she raised her great head far back eh? it was a kind of challenge and I could only murmur oh I was absolutely in a hole you know when she burst out laughing and waved us both out of the room Seaton and I stood and ate our supper with one candle stick to light us in a corner of the dining room well and how would you like it? he said very softly after cautiously poking his head round the doorway like what? being spied on every blessed thing you do and think I shouldn't like it at all I said if she does and yet you let her smash you up at chess I didn't let her I said indignantly well you funked it then and I didn't funk it either I said she's so jolly clever with her knights Seaton stared fixedly at the candle you wait that's all he said slowly and we went upstairs to bed I had not been long in bed I think when I was cautiously awakened by a touch on my shoulder and there was Seaton's face in the candle light and his eyes looking into mine what's up? I said rising quickly to my elbow don't scurry he whispered oh she'll hear I'm sorry for waking you but I didn't think you'd be asleep so soon why what's the time then? Seaton wore what was then rather unusual a night suit and he hauled his big silver watch out of the pocket in his jacket it's a quarter to twelve I never get to sleep before twelve not here what do you do then? oh I read and listen listen Seaton stared into his candle flame as if he were listening even then you can't guess what it is all you read in ghost stories that's all rot you can't see much with us but you know all the same know what? why that there there who's there? I asked fretfully glancing at the door why in the house it swarms with them just you stand still and listen outside my bedroom door in the middle of the night I have dozens of times they're all over the place look here Seaton I said you asked me to come here and I don't mind chucking up a leaf just to oblige you and because I'd promised but don't get talking a lot of rot that's all all you'll know the difference when we get back don't fret coldly turning away I shan't be at school long and what's more you're here now and there isn't anybody else to talk to I'll chance the other look here Seaton I said you may think you're going to scare me with a lot of stuff about voices and all that but I'll just thank you to clear out and you may please yourself about pottering about all night he made no answer he was standing by the dressing table looking across his candle into the looking glass he turned and stared slowly round the walls even this room's nothing more than a coffin I suppose she told you it's all exactly the same as when my brother William died trust her for that and good luck to him, say I look at that he raised his candle close to the little watercolour I have mentioned there's hundreds of eyes like that in the house God does see you he takes precious good care you don't see him and it's just the same with them I tell you what with us I'm getting sick of all this I shan't stand it much longer the house was silent within and without and even in the yellowish radiance of the candle a faint silver showed through the open window on my blind I slipped off the bedclothes, wide awake and sat irresolute on the bedside I know you're only gying me I said angrily but why is the house full of what you say? why do you hear what you do hear tell me that you silly foal Seaton sat down on a chair and rested his candlestick on his knee he blinked at me calmly she brings them he said with lifted eyebrows who? your aunt? he nodded how? I told you he answered pettishly she's in league you don't know she's as good as killed my mother I know that but it's not only her by a long talk she just sucks you dry I know and that's what she'll do for me because I'm like her like my mother I mean she simply hates to see me alive I wouldn't be like that old sheaw for a million pounds and so he broke off with a comprehensive wave of his candlestick they're always here oh my boy wait till she's dead she'll hear something then I can tell you it's all very well now but wait till then I wouldn't be in her shoes when she has to clear out for something don't you go and believe I care for ghosts or whatever you like to call them we're all in the same box we're all under her thumb he was looking almost nonchalantly at the ceiling at the moment when I saw his face change saw his eyes suddenly drop like shot birds and fix themselves on the cranny of the door he had just left a jar even from where I sat I could see his colour change he went greenish he crouched without stirring simply fixed an eye scarcely daring to breathe sat with creeping skin simply watching him his hands relaxed and he gave a kind of sigh was that one? I whispered with a timid show of jauntiness he looked round opened his mouth and nodded what? I said he jerked his thumb with meaningful eyes and I knew that he meant his aunt had been there listening at our door cranny look here Seaton I said once more wriggling to my feet you may think I'm a jolly noodle just as you please but your aunt has been civil to me and all that and I don't believe a word you say about her that's all? never did every fellow is a bit off his pluck at night and you may think it a fine sport to try your rubbish on me I heard your aunt come upstairs before I fell asleep and I bet you a level tanner she's in bed now what's more you can keep your blessed ghosts to yourself it's a guilty conscience I should think Seaton looked at me curiously without answering for a moment I'm not a liar withers but I'm not going to quarrel either you're the only chap I care a button for or at any rate you're the only chap that's ever come here and it's something to tell a fellow what you feel I don't care a fig for fifty thousand ghosts although I swear on my solemn oath that I know they're here but she he turned deliberately you laid a tanner she's in bed withers well I know different she's never in bed much of the night and I'll prove it too just to show you I'm not such a gnolly as you think I am come on come on where why to see I hesitated he opened a large cupboard and took out a small dark dressing gown and a kind of shawl jacket he threw the jacket on the bed and put on the gown his dusky face was colourless and I could see by the way he fumbled at the sleeves he was shivering but it was no good showing the white feather now so I threw the tasseled shawl over my shoulder's end leaving our candle brightly burning on the chair we went out together and stood in the corridor now then listen Seton whispered we stood leaning over the staircase it was like leaning over a well so still and chill the air was all around us but presently as I suppose happens in most old houses began to echo an answer in my ears a medley of infinite small stirrings and whisperings now out of the distance an old timber would relax its fibres or a scurry die away behind the perishing wainscot but amid and behind such sounds as these I seemed to begin to be conscious as it were of the lightest of footfalls sounds as faint as the vanishing remembrances of voices in a dream Seton was all in obscurity except his face out of that his eyes gleamed darkly watching me you'd hear too in time my fine soldier he muttered come on he descended the stairs slipping his lean fingers lightly along the balusters he turned to the right at the loop barefooted along a thickly carpeted corridor at the end stood a door a jar and from here we very stealthily and in complete blackness ascended five narrow stairs Seton with immense caution slowly pushed open a door and we stood together looking into a great pool of duskiness out of which, lit by the feeble clearness of a nightlight rose a vast bed a heap of clothes lay on the floor beside them two slippers dozed with noses each to each two yards apart somewhere a little clock ticked huskily there was a rather close smell of lavender and odour cologne mingled with the fragrance of ancient sachets, soap and drugs yet it was ascent even more peculiarly commingled than that and the bed I stared wearily in and I mounted gigantically and it was empty Seton turned a vague pale face all shadows what did I say? he muttered who's the fool now, I say how are we going to get back without meeting her, I say answer me that I wish that goodness you hadn't come here with us he stood visibly shivering in his skimpy gown and could hardly speak for his teeth chattering and very distinctly in the hush that followed his whisper I heard approaching a faint, unhurried, voluminous rustle Seton clutched my arm, dragged me to the right across the room to a large cupboard and drew the door close to on us and presently as with bursting lungs I peeked out into the long low, curtained bedroom waddled in that wonderful great-headened body I can see her now all patched and lined with shadow her tied up hair she must have had enormous quantities of it for so old a woman her heavy lids above those flat slow, vigilant eyes she just passed across my ken in the vague dusk but the bed was out of sight we waited on and on listening to the clocks muffled ticking not the ghost of a sound rose up from the great bed either she lay archly listening or slept asleep serena than an infant's and when it seemed we had been hours in hiding and were cramped, chilled and half suffocated we crept out on all fours with terror knocking at our ribs and sewed down the five narrow stairs and back to the little candlelit blue and gold bedroom once there Seton gave in he sat livid on a chair with closed eyes here I said shaking his arm I'm going to bed I've had enough of this foolery I'm going to bed his lids quivered but he made no answer I poured out some water into my basin and with that cold pictured azure eye fixed on us bespattered Seton's shallow face and forehead and dabbled his hair he presently sighed and opened fish-like eyes get on my back if you like and I'll carry you into your bedroom he waved me away and stood up so with my candle in one hand I took him under the arm and walked him along according to his direction down the corridor his was a much dingier room than mine and littered with boxes, paper cages and clothes I huddled him into bed and turned to go and suddenly I can hardly explain it now a kind of cold and deadly terror swept over me I almost ran out of the room with eyes fixed rigidly in front of me blew out my candle and buried my head under the bed clothes End of Seton's Aunt Part 1 Recording by Rafe Ball