 This is a LibreVox recording. All LibreVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibreVox.org. Recording by Michael Sample, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, 2008. Dagon by HP Lovecraft. I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more. Penelous, and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone makes life indurable, I can bear the torture no longer, and shall cast myself from this garret window into the squalid street below. Do not think, from my slavery to morphine, that I am a weakling or a degenerate. When you have read these hastily scrawled pages you may guess, though never fully realize, why it is that I must have forgetfulness or death. It was in one of the most open and least frequented parts of the broad Pacific that the packet of which I was to supercargo fell a victim to the German sea raider. The Great War was then at its very beginning, and the ocean forces of the Han had not completely sunk to their later degradation, so that our vessel was made a legitimate prize, whilst we of her crew were treated with all the fairness and consideration due us as naval prisoners. So liberal indeed was the discipline of our captors that five days after we were taken I managed to escape alone in a small boat with water and provisions for a good length of time. When I finally found myself adrift and free, I had but little idea of my surroundings. Never a competent navigator, I could only guess vaguely by the sun and stars that I was somewhat south of the equator. Of the longitude I knew nothing, and no island or coastline was in sight. The weather kept fair, and for uncounted days I drifted aimlessly beneath the scorching sun, waiting either for some passing ship or to be cast on the shores of some habitable land. But neither ship nor land appeared, and I began to despair in my solitude upon the heaving vastness of unbroken blue. The change happened whilst I slept. Its details I shall never know, for my slumber, though troubled and dream infested, was continuous. When at last I awakened, it was to discover myself half sucked into a slimy expanse of hellish black mire which extended about me in monotonous undulations as far as I could see, and in which my boat lay grounded some distance away. Though one might well imagine that my first sensation would be of wonder at so prodigious and unexpected a transformation of scenery, I was in reality more horrified than astonished, for there was in the air and in the rotting soil a sinister quality which chilled me to the very core. The region was putrid with the carcasses of decaying fish and of other less describable things which I saw protruding from the nasty mud of the unending plain. Perhaps I should not hope to convey in mere words the unutterable hideousness that can dwell in absolute silence in barren immensity. There was nothing within hearing, and nothing in sight save a vast reach of black slime. Yet the very completeness of the stillness and the homogeneity of the landscape oppressed me with a nauseating fear. The sun was blazing down from a sky which seemed to me almost black in its cloudless cruelty, as though reflecting the inky marsh beneath my feet. As I crawled into the stranded boat I realized that only one theory could explain my position. Through some unprecedented volcanic upheaval a portion of the ocean floor must have been thrown to the surface, exposing regions which for innumerable millions of years had lain hidden under unfathomable watery depths. So great was the extent of the new land which had risen beneath me that I could not detect the faintest noise of the surging ocean stream my ears as I might, nor were there any seafowls to prey upon the dead things. For several hours I sat thinking or brooding in the boat which lay upon its side and afforded a slight shade as the sun moved across the heavens. As the day progressed the ground lost some of its stickiness and seemed likely to dry sufficiently for travelling purposes in a short time. That night I slept but little, and the next day I made for myself a pack containing food and water, preparatory to an overland journey in search of the vanished sea and possible rescue. On the third morning I found the soil dry enough to walk upon with ease. The odor of the fish was maddening, but I was too much concerned with graver things to mind so slight and evil, and set out boldly for an unknown goal. All day I forged steadily westward, guided by a faraway hummock which rose higher than any other elevation on the rolling desert. That night I encamped, and on the following day still travelled toward the hummock, though that object seemed scarcely nearer than when I had first aspired it. By the fourth evening I attained the base of the mound, which turned out to be much higher than it had appeared from a distance, on intervening valleys setting it out in sharper relief from the general surface. Too weary to ascend I slept in the shadow of the hill. I know not why my dreams were so wild that night, but ere the waning and fantastically gibbous moon that had risen far above the eastern plain, I was awake in a cold perspiration, determined to sleep no more. Such visions as I had experienced were too much for me to endure again, and in the glow of the moon I saw how unwise I had been to travel by day. Without the glare of the parching sun my journey would have cost me less energy. Indeed, I now felt quite able to perform the ascent which had deterred me at sunset. Picking up my pack I started for the crest of the eminence. I have said that the unbroken monotony of the rolling plain was a source of vague horror to me, but I think my horror was greater when I gained the summit of the mound and looked down the other side into an immeasurable pit or canyon whose black recesses the moon had not yet soared high enough to illuminate. I felt myself on the edge of the world, peering over the rim into a fathomless chaos of eternal night. Through my terror ran curious reminiscence of paradise lost and Satan's hideous climb through the unfashioned realms of darkness. As the moon climbed higher in the sky I began to see that the slopes of the valley were not so perpendicular as I had imagined. Ledges and outcroppings of rock afforded fairly easy footholds for a descent whilst after a drop of a few hundred feet the declivity became very gradual. Urged on by an impulse which I cannot definitely analyze I scrambled with some difficulty down the rocks and stood on a gentler slope beneath gazing into the Stygian deeps where no light had yet penetrated. All at once my attention was captured by a vast and singular object on the opposite slope which rose steeply about a hundred yards ahead of me, an object which gleamed whitely in the newly bestowed rays of the ascending moon. That it was merely a gigantic piece of stone I soon assured myself but I was conscious of a distant impression that its contour and position were not altogether the work of nature. A closer scrutiny filled me with sensations I cannot express for despite its enormous magnitude and its position in an abyss which had yawned at the bottom of the seas since the world was young I perceived beyond a doubt that the strange object was a well-shaped monolith whose massive bulk had known the workmanship and perhaps the worship of living and thinking creatures. Yet not without a certain thrill of the scientists or archaeologists' delight I examined my surroundings more closely. The moon, now near the zenith, shone weirdly and vividly above the towering steeps that hemmed in the chasm and revealed the fact that a far-flung body of water flowed at the bottom, winding out of sight in both directions and almost lapping my feet as I stood on the slope. Across the chasm the wavelets washed the base of the Cyclopean monolith on whose surface I could now trace both inscriptions and crude sculptures. The writing was in a system of hieroglyphics unknown to me and unlike anything I had ever seen in books consisting for the most part of conventionalized aquatic symbols such as fishes, eels, octopi, crustaceans, mollusks, whales, and the like Several characters obviously represented marine things which are unknown to the modern world but whose decomposing forms I had observed on the ocean-risen plane. It was the pictorial carving, however, that did most to hold me spellbound. Plainly visible across the intervening water on account of their enormous size was an array of ba-reliefs whose subject would have excited the envy of a door. I think that these things were supposed to depict men, at least a certain sort of men though the creatures were shown to sporting like fishes in the waters of some marine grotto or paying homage at some monolithic shrine which appeared to be under the waves as well. Of their faces and forms I dare not speak in detail for the mere remembrance makes me gro faint. Grotesque beyond the imagination of a poe or a bulwer they were damnably human in the general outline despite webbed hands and feet, shockingly wide and flabby lips, glassy, bulging eyes, and other features less pleasant to recall. Curiously enough they seem to have been chiseled badly at proportion with their scenic background for one of the creatures was shown in the act of killing a whale represented as but a little larger than himself. I remarked, as I say, their grotesqueness and strange size. But in a moment decided they were merely the imaginary gods of some primitive fishing or seafaring tribe, some tribe whose last ascended had perished eras before the first ancestor of the pilt-down or Neanderthal man was born. Ostruck at this unexpected glimpse into a past beyond the conception of the most daring anthropologist, I stood musing whilst the moon cast queer reflections on the silent channel before me. Then suddenly I saw it. With only a slight churning to mark its rise to the surface, the thing slid into view above the dark waters. Vast, polyphemous-like and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith, about which it flung its gigantic scaly arms for a while at bowed its hideous head and gave vent to certain measured sounds. I think I went mad then. Of my frantic ascent of the sloping cliff and of my delirious journey back to the stranded boat, I remember little. I believe I sang a great deal and laughed oddly when I was unable to sing. I have indistinct recollections of a great storm, some time after I reached the boat. At any rate, I knew that I heard peals of thunder and other tones which nature utters only in her wildest moods. When I came out of the shadows I was in a San Francisco hospital, brought thither by the captain of the American ship which had picked up my boat in mid-ocean. In my delirium I had said much, but found that my words had been given scant attention. Of any land upheaval in the Pacific my rescuers knew nothing, nor did I deem it necessary to insist upon a thing which I knew they could not believe. Once I sought out a celebrated ethnologist and abused him with peculiar questions regarding the ancient Philistine legend of Dagon, the Fish God, but soon perceiving that he was hopelessly conventional, I did not press my inquiries. It is at night, especially when the moon is gibbous and waning that I see the thing. I tried morphine, but the drug has given only transient surcease and has drawn me into its clutches as a hopeless slave. So now I am to end it all, having written a full account for the information of the contemptuous amusement of my fellow men. Often I ask myself if it could not all have been pure phantasm, a mere freak of fever as I lay sun-stricken and raving in the open boat after my escape from the German Man of War. This I ask myself, but ever does there come before me a hideously vivid vision in reply. I cannot think of the deep sea without shuddering at the nameless things that may at this very moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshiping their ancient stone idols and carving their own detestable likenesses on submarine obelisks of water-soaked granite. I dream of a day when they may rise above the billows to drag down in their reeking talons the remnants of a puny war exhausted mankind, of a day when the land shall sink and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium. The end is near. I hear a noise at the door as of some immense, slippery body lumbering against it. It shall not find me. God, that hand, the window, the window! End of Dagon. This has been a recording by Michael Sample, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, 2008. 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 Matt Bonhoff. The Doom That Came to Sarnath by H. P. Lovecraft. There is, in the land of Manar, a vast, still lake that is fed by no stream, and out of which no stream flows. Ten thousand years ago, there stood by its shore, the mighty city of Sarnath, but Sarnath stands there no more. It is told that in the immemorial years, when the world was young before ever the men of Sarnath came to the land of Manar, another city stood beside the lake, the grey stone city of Ibb, which was as old as the lake itself, and peopled by beings not pleasing to behold. Very odd and ugly were these beings, as indeed are most beings of a world yet incoate and rudely fashioned. It is written on the Britsilinders of Perthatheron that the beings of Ibb were in hue as green as the lake and the mists that rise above it, that they had bulging eyes, pouting flabby lips and curious ears, and were without voice. It is also written that they descended one night from the moon in a mist, they and the vast, still lake and the grey stone city Ibb. However this may be, it is certain that they worshipped a sea-green stone idol chiseled in the likeness of Baccarab, the great water lizard, before which they danced horribly when the moon was gibbous. And it is written in the Papyrus of Illarneck that one day they discovered fire, and thereafter kindled flames on many ceremonial occasions. But not much is written of these beings, because they lived in very ancient times, and man is young and knows but little of the very ancient living things. After many eons, men came to the land of Manar, with their fleecy flocks, who built Thra, Illarneck and Kadatharon on the winding river Eye, and certain tribes, more hardy than the rest, pushed on to the border of the lake, and built Sarnath at a spot where precious metals were found in the earth. Not far from the grey city of Ibb did the wandering tribes lay the first stones of Sarnath, and at the beings of Ibb they marveled greatly. But with their marveling was mixed hate, for they thought it not neat that beings of such aspect should walk about the world of men at dusk, nor did they like the strange sculptures upon the grey monoliths of Ibb, for why those sculptures lingered so late in the world, even until the coming of men? None can tell, unless it is because the land of Manar is very still and remote for most other lands, both of waking and of dream. As the men of Sarnath beheld more of the beings of Ibb, their hate grew, and it was not less because they found the beings weak and soft as jelly to the touch of stones and arrows. So one day the young warriors, the slingers and the spearmen and the bowmen, marched against Ibb and slew all the inhabitants thereof, pushing the queer bodies into the lake with long spears because they did not wish to touch them, and because they did not like the grey sculpted monoliths of Ibb, they cast these also into the lake, wondering from the greatness of the labour however the stones were brought from afar as they must have been, since there is not like them in the land of Manar or the land's adjacent. Thus, of the very ancient city of Ibb, nothing was spared, save the sea-green stone idol chiseled in the likeness of Bakrug, the water lizard. This the young warriors took back with them as a symbol of conquest over the old gods and beings of Thth, and as a sign of leadership in Manar. But on the night after it was set up in the temple, a terrible thing must have happened, for weird lights were seen over the lake, and in the morning the people found the idol gone, and the high priest, Taran Ish, lying dead, as from some fear unspeakable, and before he died, Taran Ish had scrawled upon the altar of Chrysalite in coarse shaky strokes, the sign of doom. After Taran Ish, there were many high priests in Sarnath, but never was the sea-green stone idol found, and many centuries came and went, wherein Sarnath prospered exceedingly, so that only priests and old women remembered what Taran Ish had scrawled upon the altar of Chrysalite. Betwixt Sarnath and the city of Illarneck arose a caravan route, and the precious metals from the earth were exchanged for other metals and rare cloths and jewels and books and tools for artificers and all things of luxury that are known to the people who dwell along the winding river eye and beyond. So Sarnath waxed mighty and learned and beautiful and sent forth conquering armies to subdue the neighboring cities, and in time there sat upon a throne in Sarnath the kings of all the land of Manar and of many lands adjacent. The wonder of the world and the pride of all mankind was Sarnath the Magnificent. A polished desert quarried marble were its walls, in height 300 cubits and in breadth 75, so that chariots might pass each other as men drove them along the top. For full 500 stadia did they run, being open only on the side toward the lake where a green stone seawall kept back the waves that rose oddly once a year at the festival of the destroying of Ib. In Sarnath were 50 streets from the lake to the gates of the caravans and 50 more intersecting them with onyx where they paved, save those whereupon the horses and camels and elephants trod which were paved with granite. And the gates of Sarnath were as many as the landward ends of the streets, each of bronze and flanked by the figures of lions and elephants carving from some stone no longer known among men. The houses of Sarnath were a glazed brick and chalcedoni, each having its walled garden and crystal lakelet. With strange art where they build it, for no other city had houses like them and travelers from Thra and Alarnac and Kadatharon marveled at the shining domes wherewith they were surmounted. But more marvelous still were the palaces and the temples and the gardens made by Zocar the Olden King. There were many palaces, the last of which were mightier than any in Thra or Alarnac or Kadatharon, so high were they that one within might sometimes fancy himself beneath only the sky. Yet when lighted with torches dipped in the oil of Dothar, their walls showed vast paintings of kings and armies of a splendor at once inspiring and stupefying to the beholder. Many were the pillars of the palaces, all of tinted marble and carving into designs of surpassing beauty. And in most of the palaces the floors were mosaics of barrel and lapis lazuli in sardonex and carbuncle and other choice materials so disposed that the beholder might fancy himself walking over beds of the rarest flowers. And there were likewise fountains which cast scented waters about and pleasing jets arranged with cunning art, outshining all others was the palace of the kings of Minar and of the land's adjacent. On a pair of golden crouching lions rested the throne, many steps above the gleaming floor, and it was wrought of one piece of ivory, though no man lives who knows whence so vast a piece could have come. In that palace there were also many galleries and many amphitheaters where lions and men and elephants battled at the pleasure of the kings. Sometimes the amphitheaters were flooded with water conveyed from the lake in mighty aqueducts and then were enacted stirring sea fights where combats betwixt swimmers and deadly marine things. Lofty and amazing were the 17 tower-like temples of Sarnath fashioned of a bright multi-colored stone not known elsewhere. A full thousand cubits high stood the greatest among them wherein the high priests dwelt with a magnificence scarce less than that of the kings. On the ground were halls as vast and splendid as those of the palaces where gathered throngs in worship of Zocalar and Tamash and Lobon, the chief gods of Sarnath, whose incense enveloped shrines were as the thrones of monarchs. Not like the icons of other gods were those of Zocalar and Tamash and Lobon were so close to life where they that one might swear the graceful bearded gods themselves sat on the ivory thrones. And up on the ending steps of Zircon was the tower chamber where from the high priests looked out over the city and the plains and the lake by day and at the cryptic moon and significant stars and planets and their reflections in the lake at night. Here was done the very secret and ancient rite and detestation of Bakrug the water lizard and here rested the altar of Chrysolite which bore the doomed scrawl of Tehran-ish. Wonderful likewise were the gardens made by Zocar the Olden King in the center of Sarnath-Vele covering a great space and then circled by a high wall and they were surmounted by a mighty dome of glass through which shone the sun and moon and planets when it was clear and from which were hung full-gint images of the sun and moon and stars and planets when it was not clear. In summer the gardens were cooled with fresh odorous breezes wafted by fans and in winter they were heated with concealed fires so that in those gardens it was always spring. There ran little streams over bright pebbles dividing needs of green and gardens of many hues and spanned by a multitude of bridges. Many were the waterfalls in their courses and many were the huge lake-lits into which they expanded over the streams and lake-lits rode white swans whilst the music of rare birds chimed in with the melody of the waters. In order to terraces rose the green banks adorned here and there with bowers of vines and sweet blossoms and seats and benches of marble and porphyry and there were many small shrines and temples where one might rest or pray to small gods. Each year there was celebrated in Sarnath the feast of the destroying of Ibb at which time wine, song, dancing and merriment of every kind abounded. Great honors were laid to the shades of those who had annihilated the odd ancient beings and the memory of those beings and of their elder gods was derided by dancers and lutenists who drowned with roses from the gardens of Zocar and the kings would look out over the lake and curse the bones of the dead that lay beneath it. At first the high priests liked not these festivals for there had descended among them queer tales of how the sea-green icon had vanished and how Tehran-ish had died from fear and left a warning and they said that from their high tower they sometimes saw lights like the waters of the lake but as many years passed without calamity even the priests laughed and cursed and joined in the orgies of the feasters indeed had they not themselves in their high tower often performed to the very ancient and secret rite and detestation of Bakrug the water lizard and a thousand years of riches and the light passed over Sarnath wonder of the world. Gorgeous beyond thought was the feast of the thousandth year of the destroying of Ibb for a decade had it been talked of in the land of Manar and as it drew nigh there came to Sarnath on horses and camels and elephants men from Thra, the Larnak and Kadatharon and all the cities of Manar and the lands beyond. Before the marble walls on the appointed night were pitched the pavilions of princes and the tents of travelers within his banquet hall reclined Nargis Hai the king drunken with ancient wine from the vaults of conquered Panath and surrounded by feasting nobles and hurrying slaves there were eaten many strange delicacies that feast peacocks from the distant hills of Linplan heels of camels from the Banazic desert nuts and spices from Sindathrian groves and pearls from wavewashed dissolved in the vinegar of Thra of sauces there were an untold number prepared by the subtlest cooks in all Manar and suited to the palette of every feaster but most prized of all the vians were the great fishes from the lake each of vast size and served upon golden platters set with rubies and diamonds welts the king and his nobles feasted within the palace and viewed the crowning dish as it awaited them on golden platters others feasted elsewhere in the tower of the great temple the priests held revels and in pavilions without the walls the princes of neighboring lands made merry and it was the high priest Gani Ka who first saw the shadows that descended from the gibbous moon into the lake and the damnable green mists that rose from the lake to meet the moon and to shroud in a sinister haze the towers and the domes of faded sarnath thereafter those in the towers and without the walls beheld strange lights on the water and saw that the grey rock a curion which was want to rear high above it near the shore was almost submerged and fear grew vaguely yet swiftly so that the princes of Alarnac and of Far Rakhol took down and folded their tents and pavilions and departed though they scarce knew the reason for their departing then close to the hour of midnight all the bronze gates of sarnath burst open and emptied forth a frenzied throng that blackened the plain so that all the visiting princes and travelers fled away in fright for on the faces of this throng was writ a madness born of horror unendurable and on their tongues were words so terrible that no hearer paused for proof men whose eyes were wild with fear shrieked aloud of the sight within the king's banquet hall where through the windows were seen no longer the forms of Nargis High and his nobles and slaves but a horde of indescribable green voiceless things with bulging eyes pouting tears, things which danced horribly bearing in their paws golden plates set with rubies and diamonds and containing uncouth flames and the princes and travelers as they fled from the doomed city of sarnath on horses and camels and elephants looked back again upon the mist beginning lake and saw the grey rock Kurion was quite submerged through all the land of Manar and the land adjacent spread the tales of those who had fled from sarnath and caravans sought that accursed city and its precious metals no more it was long ere any travel went thither and even then only the brave and adventurous young men of yellow hair and blue eyes who were no kin to the men of Manar these men indeed went to the lake to view sarnath but though they found the vast still itself and the grey rock Kurion which rears high above it near the shore they beheld not the wonder of the world and the pride of all mankind where once had risen walls of 300 cubits and hours yet higher now stretched only the marshy shore where once had dwelt 50 million men now crawled the detestable water lizard not even the minds of precious metal remained doom had come to sarnath but half buried in the rushes was spied a curious green idol an exceedingly ancient idol chiseled in the likeness of bakrug the great water lizard that idol enshrined in the high temple at a lar neck was subsequently worshiped beneath the gibbous moon throughout the land of Manar end of the doom that came to sarnath recording by matt von haf 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 James Ponto Lillo x Oblivione by H.P. Lovecraft when the last days were upon me and the ugly trifles of existence began to drive me to madness like the small drops of water that torturers let fall ceaselessly upon one spot of their victim's body I loved the irradiate refuge of sleep in my dreams I found a little of the beauty I had vainly sought in life and wandered through old gardens and enchanted woods once when the wind was soft and scented I heard the south calling and sailed endlessly and languorously under strange stars once when the gentle rain fell I glided in a barge down a sunless stream under the earth till I reached another world of purple twilight iridescent arbors and undying roses and once I walked through a golden valley that led to shadowy groves and ruins and ended in a mighty wall green with antique vines and pierced by a little gate of bronze many times I walked through that valley and longer and longer would I pause in the spectral half-light where the giant trees squirmed and twisted grotesquely and the gray ground stretched damply from trunk to trunk sometimes disclosing the mold-stained stones of buried temples and always the goal of my fancies was the mighty vine-grown wall with the little gate of bronze therein after a while as the days of waking became less and less bearable from their greyness and sameness I would often drift in opiate peace through the valley and the shadowy groves and wonder how I might seize them for my eternal dwelling-place so that I need no more crawl back to a dull world stripped of interest and new colors and as I looked upon the little gate in the mighty wall I felt that beyond it lay a dream-country from which once it was entered there would be no return so each night in sleep I strove to find the hidden latch of the gate in the ivied antique wall though it was exceedingly well hidden and I would tell myself that the realm beyond the wall was not more lasting merely but more lovely and radiant as well then one night in the dream-city of Zakarian I found a yellowed papyrus filled with the thoughts of dream sages who dwelt of old in that city the two wise ever to be born in the waking world therein were written many things concerning the world of dream and among them was lore of a golden valley and a sacred grove with temples and a high wall pierced by a little bronze gate when I saw this lore I knew that it touched on the scenes I had haunted and I therefore read long in the yellowed papyrus some of the dream sages wrote gorgeously of the wonders of a passable gate but others told of horror and disappointment I knew not which to believe yet longed more and more to cross forever into the unknown land for doubt and secrecy are the lore of lures and no new horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the common place so when I learned of the drug which would unlock the gate and drive me through I resolved to take it when next I awaked last night I swallowed the drug and entered it dreamily into the golden valley and the shadowy groves and when I came this time to the antique wall I saw that the small gate of bronze was a jar from beyond came a glow that weirdly lit the giant twisted trees and the tops of the buried temples and I drifted on songfully expectance of the glories of the land from whence I should never return but as the gate swung wider and the sorcery of the drug and the dream pushed me through and glories were at an end for in that new realm was neither land nor sea but only the white void of unpeopled and illimitable space so happier than I had ever dared hope to be I dissolved again into that native infinity of crystal oblivion from which the daemon life had called me for one brief and desolate hour this is the end of Ex Oblivione by H.P. Lovecraft 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 Victoria Horsman facts concerning the late Arthur German and his family by H.P. Lovecraft part one life is a hideous thing and from the background behind what we know of it pure demoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousand fold more hideous science already oppressive with its shocking revelations will perhaps be the ultimate exterminator of our human species if separate species we be for its reserve of guest horrors could never be born by mortal brains if loosed upon the world if we knew what we are we should do as Sir Arthur German did and Arthur German soaked himself in oil and set fire to his clothing one night no one placed the charred fragments in an urn or set a memorial to him who had been for certain papers and a certain boxed object were found which made men wish to forget some who knew him do not admit that he ever existed Arthur German went out on the moor and burned himself after seeing a boxed object which had come from Africa it was this object and not his peculiar personal appearance which made him in his life many would have disliked to live if possessed of the peculiar features of Arthur German but he had been a poet and a scholar and had not minded learning was in his blood for his great grandfather Sir Robert German Baronette had been an anthropologist of note whilst his great great great grandfather Sir Wade German was one of the earliest explorers of the Congo region and had written eruditely of its tribes animals and supposed antiquities indeed old Sir Wade had possessed an intellectual zeal amounting almost to a mania his bizarre conjectures on a prehistoric white Congolese civilization earning him much ridicule when his book Observations on the Several Parts of Africa was published in 1765 this fearless explorer had been placed in a madhouse at Huntington madness was in all the Germans and people were glad there were not many of them the line put forth no branches and Arthur was the last of it if he had not been one cannot say what he would have done when the object came the Germans never seem to look quite right something was amiss though Arthur was the worst and the old family portraits in German house showed fine faces enough before Sir Wade's time certainly the madness began with Sir Wade whose wild stories of Africa were at once the delight and terror of his few friends it showed in his collection of trophies and specimens which were not such as a normal man would accumulate and preserve and appeared strikingly in the oriental seclusion in which he kept his wife the latter he had said was the daughter of a Portuguese trader whom he met in Africa and did not like English ways she, with an infant son born in Africa had accompanied him back from the second and longest of his trips and had gone with him on the third and last never returning no one had ever seen her closely not even the servants for her position had been violent and singular during her brief stay at German house she occupied a remote wing and was waited on by her husband alone Sir Wade was indeed most peculiar in his solicitude for his family for when he returned to Africa he would permit no one to care for his young son save a loathsome black woman from Guinea upon coming back after the death of Lady German he himself assumed complete care of the boy but it was the talk of Sir Wade especially when in his cups which chiefly led his friends to deem him mad in a rational age like the 18th century it was unwise man of learning to talk about wild sights and strange scenes under a Congo moon of the gigantic walls and pillars of a forgotten city crumbling and vine grown and of damp silent stone steps leading interminably down into the darkness of abysmal treasure vaults and inconceivable catacombs especially was it unwise to rave of the living things that might haunt such a place of creatures half of the jungle and half of the impiously aged city fabulous creatures which even a Pliny might describe with skepticism things that might have sprung up after the great apes had overrun the dying city with the walls and the pillars the vaults and the weird carvings yet after he came home for the last time Sir Wade would speak of such matters with a shudderingly uncanny zest mostly after his third glass at the night's head boasting of what he had found in the jungle and of how he had dwelt among terrible ruins known only to him and finally he had spoken of the living things in such a manner that he was taken to the madhouse he had shown little regret when shut into the barred room and Huntingdon for his mind moved curiously ever since his son had commenced to grow out of infancy he had liked his home less and less till at last he had seemed to dread it the night's head had been his headquarters and when he was confined he expressed some vague gratitude as if for protection three years later he died Wade German's son Philip was a highly peculiar person despite a strong physical resemblance to his father his appearance and conduct were in many particulars so coarse that he was universally shunned though he did not inherit the madness which was feared by some he was densely stupid and given to brief periods of uncontrollable violence in frame he was small but intensely powerful and was of incredible agility twelve years after succeeding to his title he married the daughter of his gamekeeper a person said to be of gypsy extraction but before his son was born joined the navy as a common sailor completing the general disgust which his habits and misalliance had begun after the close of the American war he was heard of as a sailor on a merchantman in the African trade having a kind of reputation for feats of strength and climbing but finally disappearing one night as his ship lay off the Congo coast in the sun of Sir Philip German the now accepted family peculiarity took a strange and fatal turn tall and fairly handsome with a sort of weird eastern grace despite certain slight oddities of proportion Robert German began life as a scholar and investigator it was he who first studied scientifically the vast collection of relics which his mad grandfather had brought from Africa and who made the family name as celebrated in ethnology as an exploration in 1815 Sir Robert married a daughter of the seventh Viscount bright home and was subsequently blessed with three children and youngest of whom were never publicly seen on account of deformities in mind and body saddened by these family misfortunes the scientists sought relief in work and made two long expeditions in the interior of Africa in 1849 his second son Neville a singularly repellent person who seemed to combine the surliness of Philip German with the auteur of the bright homes ran away with a vulgar dancer but was pardoned upon his return in the following year he came back to German House of Widower with an infant son, Alfred who was one day to be the father of German Friends said that it was this series of griefs which unhinged the mind of Sir Robert German yet it was probably merely a bit of African folklore which caused the disaster the elderly scholar had been collecting legends of the Ungah tribes near the field of his grandfathers and his own explorations being in some way to account for Sir Wade's wild tales of a lost city peopled by strange hybrid creatures a certain consistency in the strange papers of his ancestor suggested that the madman's imagination might have been stimulated by native myths on October 19th 1852 the explorer Samuel Seton called at German House with a manuscript of notes collected among the Ungahs believing that certain legends of a grey city of white apes ruled by a white god might prove valuable to the ethnologist in his conversation he probably supplied many additional details the nature of which will never be known since a hideous series of tragedies suddenly burst into being when Sir Robert German emerged from his library he left behind the strangled corpse of the explorer and before he could be restrained had put an end to all three of his children the two who were never seen and the son who had run away Neville German died in the successful defense of his own two-year-old son who had apparently been included in the old man's madly murderous scheme Sir Robert himself after repeated attempts at suicide and a stubborn refusal to utter an articulate sound died of apoplexy in the second year of his confinement Sir Alfred German was a baronet before his fourth birthday but his tastes never matched his title at twenty he had joined a band of musical performers he deserted his wife and child to travel with an itinerant American circus his end was very revolting among the animals in the exhibition with which he traveled was a huge bull gorilla of lighter color than average a surprisingly tractable beast of much popularity with the performers with this gorilla Alfred German was singularly fascinated and on many occasions the two would eye each other for long periods through the intervening bars eventually German asked and obtained permission to train the animal astonishing audiences and fellow performers alike with his success one morning in Chicago as the gorilla and Alfred German were rehearsing an exceedingly clever boxing match the former delivered a blow of more than usual force hurting both the body and the dignity of the amateur trainer of what followed members of the greatest show on earth do not like to speak they did not expect to hear sir Alfred German he met a shrill inhuman scream or to see him sees his clumsy antagonist with both hands dash it to the floor of the cage and bite fiendishly at its hairy throat the gorilla was off its guard but not for long and before anything could be done by the regular trainer the body which had belonged to a baronet was passed recognition part 2 Arthur German was the son of sir Alfred German and a musical singer of unknown origin when the husband and father deserted his family the mother took the child to German house where there was none left to object to her presence she was not without notions of what a nobleman's dignity should be and saw to it that her son received the best education which limited money could provide the family resources were now sadly slender and German house had fallen into woeful disrepair but young Arthur loved the old edifice and all its contents he was not like any other German who had ever lived for he was a poet and a dreamer some of the neighboring families who had heard tales of old serwayed Germans unseen Portuguese wife declared that her Latin blood must be showing itself but most persons merely sneered his sensitiveness to beauty attributing it to his musical mother who was socially unrecognized the poetic delicacy of Arthur German was the more remarkable because of his uncouth personal appearance most of the Germans had possessed a subtly odd and repellent cast but Arthur's case was very striking it's hard to say just what he resembled but his expression his facial angle and the length of his arms gave a thrill of repulsion to those who met him for the first time it was the mind and character of Arthur German which atoned for his aspect gifted and learned he took highest honors at Oxford and seemed likely to redeem the intellectual fame of his family though of poetic rather than scientific temperament he planned to continue the work of his forefathers in African ethnology and antiquities utilizing the truly wonderful those strange collection of serwayed with his fanciful mind he thought often prehistoric civilization in which the mad explorer had so implicitly believed and would weave tale after tale about the silent jungle mentioned in the ladders wilder notes and paragraphs for the nebulous utterances concerning a nameless, unsuspected race of jungle hybrids he had a peculiar feeling of mingled terror and attraction speculating on the possible basis of such a fancy and seeking to obtain light among the more recent data gleaned by his great grandfather and Samuel Seton amongst the Angas in 1911 after the death of his mother Sir Arthur German pursued his investigations to the utmost extent selling a portion of his estate to obtain the requisite money he outfitted an expedition and sailed for the Congo arranging with Belgian authorities for a party of guides he spent a year in the Anga and Khan country finding data beyond the highest of his expectations among the Kaliris was an aged chief called Muanu who possessed not only a highly retentive memory but a singular degree of intelligence and interests in the old legends this ancient confirmed every tale which German had heard adding his own account of the stone city and of the white apes told to him according to Muanu the grey city and the hybrid creatures were no more having been annihilated by the war like Nibangus many years ago this tribe after destroying most of the edifices and killing the live beings had carried off the stuffed goddess which had been the object of their quest the white ape goddess which the strange beings worshiped and which was held by Congo tradition to be the form of one who had reigned as a princess among these beings just what the white ape like creatures could have been Muanu had no idea but he thought they were the builders of the ruined city German could form no conjecture but by close questioning a very picturesque legend of the stuffed goddess the ape princess it was said became the consort of a great white god who had come out of the west for a long time they had reigned over the city together but when they had a son all three went away later the god and princess had returned and upon the death of the princess her divine husband had mummified the body and enshrined it in a vast house of stone where it was worshiped then he departed alone the legend here seemed to present three variants according to one story nothing further happened save that the stuffed goddess became a symbol of supremacy for whatever tribe might possess it because for this reason that the Nabangus carried it off a second story told of a god's return and death at the feet of his enshrined wife a third told of the return of the son grown to manhood or apehood or godhood as the case might be yet unconscious of his identity surely alternative blacks had made the most of whatever events might lie behind the extravagant legendary of the reality of the jungle city described by Sir Wade Arthur German had no further doubt and was hardly astonished when early in 1912 he came upon what was left of it its size must have been exaggerated yet the stones lying about proved that it was no mere negro village unfortunately no carvings could be found and the small size of the expedition prevented operations toward clearing the one visible passageway that seemed to lead down into the system of vaults which Sir Wade had mentioned the white apes and the stuffed goddess were discussed with all the native chiefs of the region but it remained for European to improve on the data offered by old Moannu Moseur Verharan Belgian agent at a trading post on the Congo believed that he could not only locate but obtain the stuffed goddess of which he had vaguely heard since the once mighty Nabangus were now the submissive servants of King Albert's government and with but little persuasion could be induced to part with the gruesome deity they had carried off when German sailed for England therefore it was with the exultant probability that he would within a few months receive a priceless ethnological relic confirming the wildest of his great great great grandfather's narratives that is the wildest which he had ever heard countrymen near German house had perhaps heard wilder tales handed down from ancestors who had listened to Sir Wade around the table of the night's head Arthur German waited very patiently for the expected box from Moseur Verharan meanwhile studying with increased diligence the manuscripts left by his mad ancestor he began to feel closely akin to Sir Wade and to see relics of the latter's personal life in England as well as of his African exploits oral accounts of the mysterious and secluded wife had been numerous but no tangible relic of her stay at German house remained German wondered what circumstance had prompted or permitted such an effacement and decided that the husband's insanity was the prime cause his great great great grandmother he recalled was said to have been the daughter of a Portuguese trader in Africa no doubt her practical heritage and superficial knowledge of the dark continent had caused her to flout Sir Wade's tales of the interior a thing which such a man would not be likely to forgive she had died in Africa perhaps dragged thither by a husband determined to prove what he had told but as German indulged in these reflections he could not but smile at their futility a century and a half after the death of both of his strange progenitors in June 1913 a letter arrived from Manger Verharan telling of the finding of the stuffed goddess it was the belgium a most extraordinary object an object quite beyond the power to classify whether it was human or simian only a scientist could determine and the process of determination would be greatly hampered by its imperfect condition time and the Congo climate are not kind to mummies especially when their preparation is as amateurish as seem to be the case here around the creature's neck had been found a golden chain bearing an empty locket on which were armorial designs no doubt some hapless traveler's keepsake taken by the Nabangus and hung upon the goddess as a charm in commenting on the contour of the mummies face Manger Verharan suggested a whimsical comparison or rather expressed a humorous wonder just how it would strike his correspondent but was much too interested scientifically to waste many words in levity the stuffed goddess he wrote would arrive duly packed about a month after receipt of the letter the boxed object was delivered at German house on the afternoon of August 3rd, 1913 being conveyed immediately to the large chamber which housed the collection of African specimens as arranged by Sir Robert and Arthur what ensued can best be gathered by the tales of servants and from things and papers later examined of the various tales that of aged Psalms the family Butler is most ample and coherent according to this trustworthy man Sir Arthur German dismissed everyone from the room before opening the box though the instant sound of hammer and chisel showed he did not delay the operation nothing was heard for some time just how long the Psalms cannot exactly estimate but it was certainly less than a quarter of an hour later that the horrible scream undoubtedly in German's voice was heard immediately afterward German emerged from the room rushing frantically toward the front of the house as if pursued by some hideous enemy the expression on his face ghastly enough in repose was beyond description when near the front door he seemed to think of something and turned back in his flight finally disappearing down the stairs to the cellar the servants were utterly dumbfounded and watched at the head of the stairs but their master did not return a smell of oil was all that came up from the regions below a spark a rattling was heard at the door leading from the cellar into the courtyard and a stable boy saw Arthur German glistening from head to foot with oil and redolent of that fluid steel furtively out and vanish on the black moor surrounding the house then in an exaltation of supreme horror everyone saw the end a spark appeared on the moor a flame arose and a pillar of human fire reached to the heavens the house of German no longer existed the reason why Arthur German's charred fragments were not collected and buried lies in what was found afterward principally the thing in the box the stuffed goddess was a nauseous sight withered and eaten away but it was clearly a mummified white ape of some unknown species less hairy than any recorded variety and infinitely nearer mankind quite shockingly so detailed description would be rather unpleasant but two salient features must be told for they fit in revoltingly with certain notes of Sir Wade German's African expeditions and with the Congolese legends of the white god and the ape princess the two particulars in question are these the arms on the golden locket about the creature's neck were the German arms and the Jaco's suggestion of Muldger Verharan about certain resemblance as connected with the shriveled face applied with vivid ghastly and unnatural horror to none other than the sensitive Arthur German great great great grandson of Sir Wade German and an unknown wife members of the Royal Anthropological Institute burn the thing and through the locket into a well and some of them do not admit that Arthur German ever existed the end of facts concerning the late Arthur German and his family this is the LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Matt Bohnhoff Herbert West reanimator by HP Lovecraft Part A to be dead to be truly dead must be glorious there are far worse things awaiting man than death Count Dracula Part One of Herbert West who was my friend in college and in afterlife I can speak only with extreme terror this terror is not due altogether to the sinister manner of his recent disappearance but was engendered by the whole nature of his life work and first gained its acute form more than 17 years ago when we were in the third year of our course at the Miskatonic University Medical School in Arkham while he was with me the wonder and diabolism of his experiments fascinated me utterly and I was his closest companion now that he is gone and the spell is broken the actual fear is greater memories and possibilities are even more hideous than realities the first horrible incident of our acquaintance was the greatest shock I ever experienced and it is only with reluctance that I repeat it as I have said it happened when we were in the medical school where West had already made himself notorious through his wild theories on the nature of death and the possibility of overcoming it artificially his views which were ridiculed by the faculty and by his fellow students hinged on the essentially mechanistic nature of life and concerned means for operating the organic machinery of mankind calculated chemical action after the failure of natural processes in his experiments with the various animating solutions he had killed and treated immense numbers of rabbits guinea pigs cats, dogs and monkeys till he had become the prime nuisance of the college several times he had actually obtained signs of life in animals supposedly dead in many cases violent signs but he soon saw that the perfection of his process, if indeed possible would necessarily involve a lifetime of research yet likewise became clear that since the same solution never worked alike on different organic species he would require human subjects for further and more specialized progress it was here that he first came into conflict with the college authorities and was debarred from further experiments by no less a dignitary than the dean of the medical school himself the learned and benevolent Dr. Alan Halsey whose work on behalf of the stricken is recalled by every old resident of Arkham I had always been exceptionally tolerant of West's pursuits and we frequently discussed his theories whose ramifications and corollaries were almost infinite holding with Hegel that all life is the chemical and physical process and that the so-called soul is a myth my friend believed that artificial reanimation of the dead can depend only on the condition of the tissues and that unless actual decomposition has set in a corpse fully equipped with organs made with suitable measures be set going again in the peculiar fashion known as life that the psychic or intellectual life might be impaired by the slight deterioration of sensitive brain cells which even a short period of death caused West fully realized it had been at first his hope to find a reagent which would restore vitality before the actual advent of death and only repeated failures on animals had shown him that the natural and artificial life motions were incompatible he then sought extreme freshness in his specimens injecting his solution into the blood immediately after the extinction of life it was this circumstance which made the professors so carelessly skeptical for they felt that true death had not occurred in any case they did not stop to view the matter closely and reasoningly it was not long after the faculty had interdicted his work that West confided to me his resolution to get fresh human bodies in some manner and continue in secret the experiments he could no longer perform openly to hear him discussing ways and means was rather ghastly or at the college we had never procured anatomical specimens ourselves whenever the morgue proved inadequate two local Negroes attended to this matter and they were seldom questioned West was then a small slender spectacle youth with delicate features yellow hair, pale blue eyes and a soft voice and it was uncanny to hear him dwelling on the relative merits of Christchurch cemetery and the Potters field we finally decided on the Potters field basically everybody in Christchurch was involved, a thing of course ruinous to West's researches I was, by this time, his active and enthralled assistant and helped him make all his decisions not only concerning the source of bodies but concerning a suitable place for our loath smorg it was I who thought of the deserted Chapman farmhouse beyond Meadow Hill where we fitted up on the ground floor an operating room and a laboratory each with dark curtains to conceal our midnight doings the place was far from any road and in sight of no other house yet precautions were nonetheless necessary since rumors of strange lights started by chance nocturnal roamers would soon bring disaster on our enterprise it was agreed to call the whole thing a chemical laboratory if discovery should occur gradually we equipped our sinister haunt of science with materials either purchased in Boston or borrowed quietly from the college materials carefully made unrecognizable save to expert eyes and provided spades and picks for the many burials we should have to make in the cellar at the college we used an incinerator but the apparatus was too costly for our unauthorized laboratory bodies were always a nuisance even the small guinea pig bodies from the slight clandestine experiments in West's room at the boarding house we followed the local death notices like ghouls for our specimens demanded particular qualities what we wanted were corpses entered soon after death and without artificial preservation preferably free from malforming disease and certainly with all organs present accident victims were our best hope not for many weeks did we hear of anything suitable though we talked with morgan hospital authorities ostensibly in the college's interest as often as we could without exciting suspicion we found that the college had the first choice in every case so that it might be necessary to remain in Arkham during the summer when only the limited summer school classes were held in the end though luck favored us for one day we heard of an almost ideal case in the potter's field a brawny young workman drowned only the morning before in summer's pond and buried at the town's expense without delay or embalming that afternoon we found the new grave and determined to begin work soon after midnight it was a repulsive task that we undertook in the black small hours even though we lacked at that time the special horror of graveyards which later experiences brought to us we carried spades and oil dark lanterns electric torches were then manufactured they were not as satisfactory as the tungsten contrivances of today the process of unerthing was slow and sordid it might have been gruesomely poetical if we had been artists instead of scientists and we were glad when our spades struck wood when the pine box was fully uncovered west scrambled down and removed the lid dragging out and propping up the contents I reached down and hauled the contents out of the grave and then both toiled hard to restore the spot to its former appearance the affair made us rather nervous especially the stiff form and the vacant face of our first trophy but we managed to remove all traces of our visit when we had padded down the last shovel full of earth we put the specimen in a canvas sack and set out for the old Chapman place beyond Meadow Hill on an improvised to dissecting table in the old farmhouse by the light of a powerful acetylene lamp the specimen was not very spectral looking it had been a sturdy and apparently unimaginative youth of wholesome plebeian type large brained grey-eyed and brown-haired a sound animal without psychological subtleties and probably having vital processes of the simplest and healthiest sort now with the eyes closed it looked more asleep than dead though the expert tests of my friend soon left no doubt on that score we had at last what West had always longed for a real dead man of the ideal kind ready for the solution as prepared according to the most careful calculations and theories for human use the tension on our part became very great we knew that there was scarcely a chance for anything like complete success could not avoid hideous fears at possible grotesque results of partial animation especially were we apprehensive concerning the mind and the impulses of the creature since in the space following death some of the more delicate cerebral cells might well have suffered deterioration I myself still held some curious notions about the traditional soul of man and felt an awe at the secrets that might be told by one returning I wondered what sights this placid youth might have seen in inaccessible spheres and what he could relate if fully restored to life but my wonder was not overwhelming since for the most part I shared the materialism of my friend he was calmer than I as he forced a large quantity of his fluid into a vein in the body's arm immediately binding the incision securely the waiting was gruesome but West never faltered every now and then he applied his stethoscope to the specimen and bore the negative results philosophically after about three quarters of an hour without the least sign of life he disappointedly pronounced the solution inadequate but determined to make the most of his opportunity and try one change in the formula before disposing of his ghastly prize we had that afternoon dug a grave in the cellar and would have to fill it by dawn although we had fixed a lock on the house we wished to shun even the remotest risk of a ghoulish discovery besides the body would not be even approximately fresh the next night so taking the solitary acetylene lamp into the adjacent laboratory we left our silent guest on the slab in the dark and bent every energy to the mixing of a new solution the weighing and measuring supervised by West with an almost fanatical care the awful event was very sudden and wholly unexpected I was pouring something from one test tube to another and West was busy over the alcohol blast lamp which had to answer for a Bunsen burner in this gasless edifice when, from the pitch black room we had left, there burst the most appalling and demonic succession of cries that either of us had ever heard not more unutterable could have been the chaos of hellish sound if the pit itself had opened to release the agony of the damned for in one inconceivable cacophony was centered all the supernal terror and the unnatural despair of animate nature human it could not have been it is not in man to make such sounds and without a thought of our late employment or its possible discovery both West and I leapt to the nearest window like stricken animals overturning tubes lamp and retorts and vaulting sadly into the start abyss of the rural night I think we screamed ourselves as we stumbled frantically toward the town though as we reached the outskirts we put on a semblance of restraint just enough to seem like belated revelers, staggering home from a debauch we did not separate but managed to get to West's room where we whispered with the gas up until dawn by then we had calmed ourselves a little with rational theories for investigation so that we could sleep through the day classes being disregarded but that evening two items in the paper wholly unrelated made it again impossible for us to sleep the old deserted Chapman house had inexplicably burned to an amorphous heap of ashes that we could understand because of the upset lamp also an attempt had been made to disturb a new grave in the potter's field as if by feudal and spade-less clawing at the earth that we could not understand for we had padded down the mold very carefully and for 17 years after that West would look frequently over his shoulder and complain of fancy footsteps behind him now he has disappeared Part 2 The Plague Demon I shall never forget that hideous summer 16 years ago when like a noxious aphorite from the halls of Eblis typhoid stocked leeringly through Arkham it is by that satanic scourge that most recall the year for truly horror brooded with bat wings over the piles of coffins in the tombs of price church cemetery yet for me there is a greater horror in that time a horror known to me alone now that Herbert West has disappeared West and I were doing post-graduate work in summer classes at the medical school of Miskatonic University and my friend had attained a wide notoriety because of his experiments leading toward the revivification of the dead after scientific slaughter of uncounted small animals the freakish work had ostensibly stopped by order of our skeptical dean Dr. Alan Halsey though West had continued to perform certain secret tests in his dingy boarding house room that on one terrible and unforgettable occasion taken a human body from its grave in the potters field to a deserted farmhouse beyond Meadow Hill I was with him on that odious occasion and saw him inject into the still veins the elixir which he thought would to some extent restore life's chemical and physical processes it had ended horribly in a delirium of fear which we gradually came to attribute to our own overwrought nerves and West had never afterward been able to shake off the maddening sensation of being haunted and hunted the body had not been quite fresh enough it is obvious that to restore normal mental attributes a body must be very fresh indeed and the burning of the old house had prevented us from burying the thing it would have been better if we could have known it was underground after that experience West had dropped his researches for some time but the zeal of the born scientist slowly returned and he again became in-portionate with the college faculty fleeting for the use of the dissecting room and of fresh human specimens for the work he regarded as so overwhelmingly important his pleas however were wholly in vain for the decision of Dr. Halsey was inflexible and the other professors all endorsed the verdict of their leader in the radical theory of reanimation they saw nothing but the immature vagarities of a youthful enthusiast whose slight form yellow hair, spectacle blue eyes and soft voice gave no hint of the supernormal almost diabolical power of the cold brain within I can see him now as he was then and I shiver he grew sterner of face but never elderly and now Sefton Asylum has had the mishap and West has vanished West clashed disagreeably with Dr. Halsey near the end of our last undergraduate term in a wordy dispute that did less credit to him than to the kindly dean in point of courtesy he felt that he was needlessly and irrationally retarded in a supremely great work a work which he could of course conduct to suit himself in later years but which he wished to begin of the exceptional facilities of the university that the tradition bound elders should ignore his singular results on animals and persist in their denial of the possibility of reanimation was inexpressibly disgusting and almost incomprehensible to a youth of West's logical temperament only greater maturity could help him understand the chronic mental limitations of the professor Dr. Type generations of pathetic puritanism kindly conscientious and sometimes gentle and amiable yet always narrow intolerant, custom-ridden and lacking in perspective age has more charity for these incomplete yet high-sold characters whose worst real vice is timidity and who are ultimately punished by general ridicule for their intellectual sins sins like patolimaism calvinism Darwinism and anti-Nitsaism and every sort of sabbatinarianism and sumptuary legislation West, young despite his marvelous scientific requirements, had scant patients with good doctor Halsey and his erudite colleagues and nursed an increasing resentment coupled with a desire to prove his theories to these obtuse worthies in some striking and dramatic fashion like most youths he indulged in elaborate daydreams of revenge, triumph and final magnanimous forgiveness and then had come this scourge grinning in lethal from the nightmare caverns of Tartarus. West and I had graduated about the time of its beginning but had remained for additional work at the summer school so that we were in Arkham when it broke with full demonic fury upon the town though not as yet licensed physicians we now had our degrees and were pressed frantically into the public service as the number of the stricken grew the situation was almost past management and deaths ensued too frequently for the local undertakers to handle. Burials without embalming were made in rapid succession and even the Christchurch cemetery receiving tomb was crammed with coffins of the uninvolved dead. This circumstance was not without effect on West who thought often of the irony of the situation so many fresh specimens yet none for his persecuted researches we were frightfully overworked and the terrific mental and nervous strain made my friend rude morbidly but West's gentle enemies were no less harassed with prostrating duties college had all but closed and every doctor of the medical faculty was helping to fight the typhoid plague. Dr. Halsey in particular had distinguished himself in sacrificing service applying his extreme skill with whole hearted energy to cases which many others shunned because of danger or apparent hopelessness. Before a month was over the fearless Dean had become a popular hero though he seemed unconscious of his fame as he struggled to keep from collapsing with physical fatigue and nervous exhaustion. West could not withhold admiration for the fortitude of his foe but because of this was even more determined to prove to him the truth of his amazing doctrines taking advantage of the disorganization of both college work and municipal health regulations he managed to get a recently deceased body smuggled into the university dissecting room one night and in my presence injected a new modification of his solution the thing actually opened its eyes but only stared at the ceiling with the look of soul petrifying horror before collapsing in an inertness from which nothing could rouse it. West said it was not fresh enough the hot summer air does not favor corpses that time we were almost caught before we incinerated the thing and West doubted the advisability of repeating his daring misuse of the college laboratory the peak of the epidemic was reached in August West and I were almost dead and Dr. Halsey did die on the 14th the students all attended the hasty funeral on the 15th and bought an impressive wreath the latter was quite overshadowed by the tributes sent by wealthy Arkham citizens and by the municipality itself it was almost a public affair for the Dean had surely been a public benefactor after the entombment we were all somewhat depressed and spent the afternoon at the bar of the commercial house where West though shaken by the death of his chief opponent chilled the rest of us with references to his notorious theories most of the students went home as the evening advanced but West persuaded me to aid him in making a night of it West's landlady saw us arrive at his room about two in the morning with the third man between us and told her husband that we had all evidently dined in wine rather well apparently this is sigilus matron was right for about 3 a.m. the whole house was aroused by cries coming from West's room where when they broke down the door they found the two of us unconscious on the bloodstained carpet beaten scratched and mauled and with the broken remnants of West's bottles and instruments around us only an open window told what had become of our assailant and many wondered how he himself had fared after the terrific leap from the second story to the lawn which he must have made there were some strange garments in the room but West upon regaining consciousness said that they did not belong to the stranger but collected for bacteriological analysis in the course of investigations on the transmission of germ diseases he ordered them burnt as soon as possible in the capacious fireplace to the police we both declared ignorance of our late companion's identity he was West nervously said a congenial stranger whom we had met at some downtown bar of uncertain location we had all been rather jovial and West and I did not wish to have pugnacious companion hunted down that same night saw the beginning of the second Arkham horror the horror that to me eclipsed the plague itself Christchurch cemetery was the scene of a terrible killing a watchman having been clawed to death in a manner not only too hideous for description but raising it out as to the human agency of the deed the victim had been seen alive considerably after midnight the dawn revealed the unutterable thing the manager of a circus at the neighboring town of Bolton was questioned but he swore that no beast had at any time escaped from its cage those who found the body noted a trail of blood leading to the receiving tomb where a small pool of red lay on the concrete just outside the gate a fainter trail led away toward the woods but it soon gave out the next night devils danced on the roofs of Arkham and the natural madness howled in the wind through the fevered town had crept a curse which some said was greater than the plague and which some whispered was the embodied demon soul of the plug itself eight houses were entered by a nameless thing which strewed red death in its weight in all 17 maimed in shapeless remnants of bodies were left behind by a voiceless sadistic monster that crept abroad a few persons had half seen it in the dark and said it was white a malformed ape or anthropomorphic fiend it had not left behind quite all that it had attacked for sometimes it had been hungry the number it had killed was 14 three of the bodies had been in stricken homes and had not been alive on the third night frantic bands of searchers led by the police captured it in a house on crane street near the miscatonic campus they had organized the quest with care keeping in touch by means of volunteer telephone stations and when someone in the college district had reported hearing a scratching at a shuttered window the net was quickly spread on account of the general alarm and precautions there were only two more victims and the capture was affected without major casualties the thing was finally stopped by a bullet though not a fatal one and was rushed to the local hospital amidst universal excitement and loathing for it had been a man this much was clear despite the nausea size the voiceless simianism and the demonic savagery they dressed its wound and carted it to the asylum at sefton where it beat its head against the walls of a padded cell for 16 years until the recent mishap when it escaped under circumstances that few like to mention what had most disgusted the searchers of Arkham was the thing they noticed when they were cleaned the mocking unbelievable resemblance to a learned and self-sacrificing martyr who had been entombed but three days before the late Dr. Alan Halsey public benefactor and dean of the medical school of Miss Katanik University to the vanished Herbert West and to me the disgust and horror were supreme I shudder tonight as I think of it shudder even more than I did that morning when West muttered through his bandages that he wasn't quite fresh enough part three six shots by moonlight it is uncommon to fire all six shots of a revolver with great suddenness when one would probably be sufficient but many things in the life of Herbert West were uncommon it is for instance, not often that a young physician leaving college is obligated to conceal the principles which guide his selection of a house and office yet that was the case with Herbert West when he and I obtained our degrees at the medical school of Miss Katanik University and sought to relieve our poverty by setting up as general practitioners we took great care not to say that we chose our home because it was fairly well isolated and as near as possible to the potter's field reticence such as this is seldom without a cause nor indeed was ours for our requirements were those resulting from a life work distinctly unpopular outwardly we were doctors only but beneath the surface were aims of far greater and more terrible moment for the essence of Herbert West's existence was a quest amid black and forbidden realms of the unknown in which he hoped to uncover the secret of life and restore to perpetual animation the graveyard's cold clay such a quest demands strange materials among them fresh human bodies and in order to keep supplied with these indispensable things one must live quietly and not far from a place of informal internment West and I had met in college and I had been the only one to sympathize with his hideous experiments gradually I had come to be his inseparable assistant and now that we were out of college we had to keep together it was not easy to find a good opening for two doctors in company but finally the influence of the university secured us a practice in Bolton a factory town near Arkham the seat of the college the Bolton Warsted Mills are the largest in the Miskatonic Valley and their polyglot employees are never popular as patients with the local physicians we chose our house with the greatest care seizing at last on a rather run down cottage near the end of Pond Street five numbers from the closest neighbor and separated from the local potters field by only a stretch of meadow land bisected by a narrow neck of the rather dense forest which lies to the north the distance was greater than we wished but we could get no nearer house without going on the other side of the field wholly out of the factory district we were not much displeased however since there were no people between us and our sinister source of supplies the walk was a trifle long but we could haul our silent specimens undisturbed our practice was surprisingly large from the very first large enough to please most young doctors and large enough to prove a bore and a burden to students whose real interest lay elsewhere the mill hands were of somewhat turbulent inclinations and besides their many natural needs their frequent clashes and stabbing a phrase gave us plenty to do but what actually absorbed our minds was the secret laboratory we had fitted up in the cellar the laboratory with the long table under the electric lights where in the small hours of the morning we often injected West's very solutions into the veins of the things we dragged from the potter's field West was experimenting madly to find something which would start man's vital motions anew after they had been stopped by the thing we called death but had encountered the most ghastly obstacles the solution had to be differently compounded for different types what would serve for guinea pigs would not serve for human beings and different human specimens required large modifications the bodies had to be exceedingly fresh where the slight decomposition of brain tissue would render perfect reanimation impossible indeed the greatest problem was to get them fresh enough West had had horrible experiences during his secret college researches with corpses of doubtful vintage the results of partial or imperfect animation were much more hideous than were the total failures and we both held fearsome recollections of such things ever since our first demonic session in the deserted farmhouse on Meadow Hill in Arkham we had felt a brooding menace and West, though a calm, blond, blue-eyed scientific automaton in most respects often confessed to a shuttering sensation of stealthy pursuit he half felt that he was followed a psychological delusion of shaken nerves enhanced by the undeniably disturbing fact that at least one of our reanimated specimens was still alive a frightful, carnivorous thing in a padded cell at Sefton there was another, our first whose exact fate we had never learned we had fair luck with specimens in Bolton much better than in Arkham we had not been settled a week before we got an accident victim on the very night of burial and made it open its eyes with an amazingly rational expression before the solution failed it had lost an arm if it had been a perfect body we might have succeeded better between then and the next January we secured three more one total failure one case of marked muscular motion and one rather shivery thing it rose of itself and uttered a sound then came a period where luck was poor internments fell off and those that did occur were of specimens either too diseased or too maimed for use we kept track of all the deaths and their circumstances with systematic care one March night however we unexpectedly obtained a specimen which did not come from the potter's field in Bolton the prevailing spirit of Puritanism had outlawed the sport of boxing with the usual result the ill-conducted bouts among the mill workers were common and occasionally professional talent of low grade was imported this late winter night there had been such a match evidently with disastrous results since two timorous poles had come to us with incoherently whispered entreaties to attend to a very secret and desperate case we followed them to an abandoned barn where the remnants of a crowd of frightened foreigners were watching a silent black form on the floor the match had been between Kid O'Brien a loverly and now quaking youth with a most unhyberian hooked nose and Buck Robinson the Harlem smoke the negro had been knocked out and a moment's examination showed us that he would permanently remain so he was a loathsome gorilla-like thing with abnormally long arms which I could not help calling four legs and a face that conjured up thoughts of unspeakable Congo secrets and tom-toms pounding under an eerie moon the body must have looked even worse in life but the world holds many ugly things fear was upon the whole pitiful crowd for they did not know what the law would extract from them if the affair were not hushed up and they were grateful when West in spite of my involuntary shutters offered to get rid of the thing quietly for a purpose I knew too well there was bright moonlight over the snowless landscape but we dressed the thing and carried it home between us through the deserted streets and meadows as we had carried a similar thing one horrible night in Arkham we approached the house from the field in the rear and took the specimen in the back door and down the cellar stairs and prepared it for the usual experiment our fear of the police was absurdly great though we had timed our trip to avoid the solitary patrolman of that section the result was weirdly anti-climactic ghastly as our prize appeared it was wholly unresponsive to every solution we injected in its black arm solutions prepared from experience with white specimens only so as the hour grew dangerously near to dawn we did as we had done with the others dragged the thing across the meadows to the neck of the woods near the potter's field and buried it there in the best sort of grave the frozen ground would furnish the grave was not very deep but fully as good as that of the previous specimen the thing which had risen of itself and uttered a sound in the light of our dark lanterns we carefully covered it with leaves and dead vines fairly certain that the police would never find it in a forest so dim and dense the next day I was increasingly apprehensive about the police for a patient brought rumors of a suspected fight and death West had still another source of worry for he had been called in the afternoon to a case which ended very threateningly an Italian woman had become hysterical over her missing child a lad of five who had strayed off early in the morning and failed to appear for dinner and had developed symptoms highly alarming in view of an always weak harp it was a very foolish hysteria for the boy had often run away before but Italian peasants are exceedingly superstitious and this woman seemed as much harassed by omens by facts about seven o'clock in the evening she had died and her frantic husband had made a frightful scene in his efforts to kill West whom he wildly blamed for not saving her life friends had held him back when he drew a stiletto but West departed amidst his inhuman shrieks curses and oaths of vengeance in his latest defliction the fellow seemed to have forgotten his child who was still missing as the night advanced there was some talk of searching the woods but most of the family's friends were busy with the dead woman and the screaming man altogether the nervous strain upon West must have been tremendous thoughts of the police and of the mad Italian both weighed heavily we retired about eleven but I did not sleep well Bolton had a surprisingly good police force for so small a town and I could not help fearing the mess which would ensue if the affair of the night before were ever tracked down it might mean the end of all our local work and perhaps prison for both West and me I did not like those rumors of a fight which were floating about after the clock had struck three the moon shone in my eyes but I turned over without rising to pull down the shade then came the steady rattling at the back door I lay still and somewhat dazed but before long heard West's rap on my door he was clad in dressing gown and slippers and had in his hands a revolver and an electric flashlight from the revolver I knew that he was thinking more of the crazed Italian than of the police we'd better both go he whispered it wouldn't do not answer it anyway and it may be a patient it would be like one of those fools to try the back door so we both went down the stairs on tiptoe with a fear partly justified and partly that which comes only from the soul of the weird small hours the rattling continued growing somewhat louder when we reached the door I cautiously unbolted it and threw it open as the moon streamed revealingly down on the form silhouetted there West did a peculiar thing despite the obvious danger of attracting notice and bringing down on our heads the dreaded police investigation a thing which after all was mercifully averted by the relative isolation of our cottage my friend suddenly excitedly and unnecessarily emptied all six chambers of his revolver into the nocturnal visitor for that visitor was neither Italian nor policeman looming hideously against the spectral moon was a gigantic misshapen thing not to be imagined save in nightmares a glassy eyed ink black apparition nearly on all fours covered with bits of mold leaves and vines foul with caked blood and having between its glistening teeth a snow white terrible cylindrical object terminating in a tiny hand End of Herbert West Reanimator Part A