 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 Keith Worrell. The Alchemist by H.P. Lovecraft. High up, crowing the grassy summit of a swelling mount whose sides are wooded near the base with the gnarled trees of a primeval forest stands the old chateau of my ancestors. For centuries, its lofty battlements have frowned down upon the wild and rugged countryside about, serving as a home and stronghold for the proud houses whose honored line is older even than moss-grown castle walls. These ancient turrets, stained by the storms of generations and crumbling under the slow yet mighty pressure of time, formed in the ages of feudalism, one of the most dreaded and formidable fortresses in all France. From its mucky-colyted paraphets and mounted battlements, barrens, counts, and even kings have been defied, yet never has its spacious hall resounded to the footsteps of the invader. But since those glorious years all has changed, a poverty but little above the level of dire want, together with a pride of name that forbids its alleviation by the pursuits of commercial life, have prevented the silence of our line from maintaining their estates in pristine splendor, and the falling stone of the walls, the overgrown vegetation of the parks, the dry and dusty moat, the ill-pay-for-yards, and toppling towers without, as well as the sagging floors, the worm-eaten wanecoats, and the faded tapestries within all tell a gloomy tale of fallen grandeur. As the ages passed, first one, then another, of the four great turrets were left to ruin, until at last but a single tower housed the sadly reduced descendants of the once mighty lords of the estate. It was in one of the vast and gloomy chambers of this remaining tower that I, Antoine, last of the unhappy and accursed counts of deceit, first saw the light of day ninety long years ago. Within these walls and amongst the dark and shadowy forests, the wild ravines and grottoes of the hillside below were spent the first years of my troubled life. My parents I never knew. My father had been killed at the age of thirty-two, a month before I was born. By the fall of a stone, somehow dislodged from one of the deserted parapets of the castle, and my mother having died at my birth, my care and education devolved solely upon one remaining servitor, an old and trusted man of considerable intelligence, whose name I remember as Pierre. I was an only child, and the lack of companionship which this fact entailed upon me was augmented by the strange care exercised by my aged guardian in excluding me from society of the peasant children whose abodes were scattered here and there upon the plains that surround the base of the hill. At the time, Pierre said that this restriction was imposed upon me because my noble birth laced me above association with such plebeian company. Now I know its real object was to keep from my ears the idle tales of the dread curse upon our line that were nightly told and magnified by the simple tenantry as they conversed in their hushed accents in the glow of their cottage hearths. Thus isolated and thrown upon my own resources, I spent the hours of my childhood in pouring over the ancient tombs that filled the shadow-haunted library of the chateau. And in roaming without aim or purpose through the perpetual dust of the spectral wood that closed the side of the hill near its foot, it was perhaps an effect of such surrounding that my mind early acquired a shade of melancholy. Those studies in pursuit which partake of the dark and occult in nature most strongly claimed my attention. Of my own race, I was permitted to learn singularly little, yet what small knowledge of it I was able to gain seemed to depress me much. Perhaps it was at first only the manifest reluctance of my old preceptor to discuss with me my paternal ancestry that gave rise to the terror which I ever felt at the mention of my great house. Yet as I grew out of childhood, I was able to piece together disconnected fragments of discourse, let it slip from the unwilling tongue which had begun to falter in approaching senility and had a sort of relation to a certain circumstance which I had always deemed strange but which now became dimly terrible. The circumstances to which I allude is the early age at which all the counts of my line had met their end. Whilst I had hitherto considered this but a natural attribute of a family of short-lived men, I afterwards pondered long upon the premature deaths and began to connect them with the wanderings of the old man who often spoke of a curse which for centuries had prevented the lives of the holders of my title from much exceeding the span of thirty-two years. Upon my twenty-first birthday, the aged Pierre gave to me a family document which he said had for many generations been handed down from father to son and continued by each possessor. Its contents were of the most startling nature and its perusal confirmed the gravest of my apprehension. At this time, my belief in the supernatural was firm and deep-seated else I would have dismissed with scorn the incredible narrative unfolded before my eyes. The paper carried me back to the days of the thirteenth century when the old castle in which I sat had been a feared and impregnable fortress. It told of a certain ancient man who had once dwelled on our estates, a person of no small accomplishments, though little above the rank of peasant. By name, Michael, usually designated by a surname of Malvase, the evil, ought a count of his sinister reputation. He had studied beyond the custom of his kind, seeking such things as a philosopher's stone or the elixir of eternal life, and was reputed wise in the terrible secrets of black magic and alchemy. Michael Malvase had one son named Charles, a youth as proficient as himself in the hidden arts, who had therefore become called Les Sorcerer, or the Wizard. This pair, shunned by all honest folk, were suspected of the most hideous practices. Old Michael was said to have burnt his wife alive as a sacrifice to the devil, and the unaccountable disappearance of many small peasant children was laid at the dreaded door of these two. Yet through the dark natures of the father and son ran one deemingly ray of humanity. The old man loved his offspring with fierce intensity, whilst the youth had for his parent a more than filial affection. One night the castle on the hill was thrown into the wild's confusion by the vanishment of a young godfrey, son to Henry, the Count. A searching party headed by the frantic father invaded the cottage of the sorcerers, and there came upon old Michael Malvase, busy over a huge and violently bouldering cauldron. Without certain cause in the ungoverned madness of fury and despair, the Count laid hands on the aged wizard, and ere he released his murderous hold, his victim was no more. Meanwhile, joyful servants were proclaiming the finding of young godfrey in a distant and unused chamber of the great edifice, telling too late that poor Michael had been killed in vain. As the Count and his associates turned away from the lovely abode of the alchemist, the form of Charles the sorcerer appeared through the trees. The excited chatter of menials standing about told him what had occurred, yet he seemed at first unmoved at his father's fate. Then, slowly advancing to meet the Count, he pronounced in dull yet terrible accents the curse that ever afterward haunted the house of sea. May never a noble of thy murderous line survive to reach a greater age than thine, spoke he. When suddenly leaping backwards into the black woods, he drew from his tunic a file of colorless liquid which he threw into the faces of his father's slayer as he disappeared behind the inky curtain of the night. The Count died without utterance and was buried the next day, but little more than two and thirty years from the hour of his birth. No trace of the assassin could be found, though relentless vans of peasants scoured the neighboring woods and the meadowland around the hill. Thus time and the want of a remainder dulled the memory of the curse in the mind of the late Count's family, so that when Godfrey, innocent cause of the whole tragedy and now bearing the title, was killed by an arrow whilst hunting at the age of thirty-two, there were no thoughts save those of grief at his demise. But when, years afterwards, the next young Count, Robert by name, was found dead in a nearby field of no apparent cause, the peasants told in whispers that their son year had but lately passed his thirty-second birthday when surprised by early death. Louis, son to Robert, was found drowned in the moat at the same fateful age, and thus down through the centuries ran the ominous chronicle, Henrys, Robert, Antonius, and Armand, snatched from happy and virtuous lives when little below the age of their unfortunate ancestor at his murder. That I had left at most but eleven years of further existence was made certain to me by the words which I had read. My life previously held its small value now became dearer to me each day, as I delved deeper and deeper into the mysteries of the hidden world of black magic. Isolated as I was, modern science had produced no impression upon me, and I labored as in the Middle Ages as wrapped as had been Old Michael and Young Charles themselves in the acquisition of demonological and alchemyrical learning. Yet read as I might in no manner could I account for the strange curse upon my line. In unusually rational moments I would even go so far as to seek a natural explanation, attributing the early deaths of my ancestors to the sinister Charles, Les Saucers, and his heirs. Yet having found upon careful inquiry that there were no known descendants of the alchemist, I would fall back to occult studies, and once more endeavor to find a spell that would release my house from its terrible burden. Upon one thing I was absolutely resolved. I should never wed, for since no other branch of my family was in existence I might thus end the curse with myself. As I drew near the age of thirty, Old Pierre was called to the land beyond. Alone I buried him beneath the stones of the courtyard, about which he had loved to wander in life. Thus was I, left a ponder on myself as the only human creature within the great fortress, and in my utter solitude my mind began to cease a vain protest against the impending doom, to become almost reconciled to the fate which so many of my ancestors had met. Much of my time now was occupied with the exploration of the ruined and abandoned halls of the towers of the Old Chateau, which in my youth here had caused me to shun, and some of which Old Pierre had once told me had not been trodden by human foot for over four centuries. Strange and awesome were many of the objects I encountered. Furniture covered by the dust of ages and crumbling with the rot of long dampness met my eyes. Cobwebs in a profusion never before seen by me were spun everywhere, and huge bats flapped their bony and uncanny wings on all sides of the otherwise unteninated gloom. Of my exact age, even down to days and hours, I kept a most careful record for each movement of the pendulum of the massive lock in the library pulled off so much of my doomed existence. At length I approached that time, which I had so long viewed with apprehension, since most of my ancestors had been seized some little while before they reached the exact age. Of Count Henry at his end, I was every moment on the watch for the coming of the unknown death, in what strange form the curse should overtake me I knew not, but I was resolved at least that it should not find me a cowardly or passive victim. With new vigor, I applied myself to my examination of the old chateau and its contents. It was upon one of the longest of all my excursions of discovery in the deserted portion of the castle less than a week before that fatal hour which I felt must mark the utmost limit of my stay on earth, beyond which I could not even the slightest hope of continuing to draw breath, that I came upon the culminating event of my whole life. I had spent the better part of the morning in climbing up and down half-ruined staircases in one of the most dilapidated and ancient turrets. As the afternoon progressed, I saw the lower levels descending into what appeared to be either a medieval place of confinement or a more recently excavated storehouse for gunpowder. Slowly traversed the nitrogen-crusted passageway at the foot of the last staircase, the paving became very damp, and soon I saw by the light of my flickering torch that a blank, water-stained wall impeded my journey. Turning to retrace my steps, my eye fell upon a small trapped door with a ring which lay directly beneath my foot. Then I succeeded with difficulty in raising it, whereupon there was revealed a black aperture exhaling nauseous fumes which caused my torch to sputter and disclosing in the unsteady glare the top of a flight of stone steps. As soon as the torch which I lowered into the repellent depth burned freely and steadily, I commenced my descent. The steps were many and led to a narrow stone-lagged passage which I knew must be far underground. This passage proved of great length and terminated in the massive oaken door, dripping with the moisture of the place and stoutly resisting all my attempts to open it. Ceasing after a time, my efforts in this direction, I had receded back some distance towards the steps where there suddenly fell, to my experience, one of the most profound and maddening shocks capable of reception by the human mind. Without warning, I heard the heavy door behind me creak slowly open upon its rusty hinges. My immediate sensations were incapable of analysis. To be confronted in place as thoroughly deserted as I had deemed the old castle with evidence of the presence of man or spirit produced in my brain a horror of the most acute description. When at last I turned and faced the seed of the sound, my eyes must have started from their orbits at the site that they beheld. There, in the ancient Gothic doorway stood a human figure. It was that of a man, flat in a skull-cap and long medieval tunic of a dark color. His long hair and flowing beard were of a terrible and intense lacu and incredible profusion. His forehead high beyond the usual dimensions, his cheeks deep sunken and heavily lined with wrinkles, and his hands long claw-like and gnarled, were such a deadly marble-like whiteness as I had never elsewhere seen in man. His figure, leaned to proportions of a skeleton, was strangely bent and almost lost within the volumes of olds of his particular garment. But strangest of all were his eyes, twin caves of abysmal blackness, profound in expression of understanding yet inhuman in degree of wickedness. These were now fixed upon me, piercing my soul with their hatred and rooting me to the spot whereon I stood. At last the figure spoke in a rumbling voice that chilled me through with its dull hollowness and latent malevolence. The language in which the discourse was clothed was that debased form of Latin in use amongst the more learned men of the Middle Ages and made familiar to me by my prolonged researches into the works of the old alchemists and demonologists. The apparitions spoke of the curse which had hovered over my house, told me of the coming end, dwelt on the wrong perpetuated by my ancestor against old Michael Malveas, and gloated over the revenge of Charles Le Socier. He told me how young Charles had escaped into the night, returning in after years to kill Godfrey the heir with an arrow just as he approached the age which had been his father's at his assassination. How he had secretly returned to the estate and established himself unknown in the even then deserted subterranean chamber whose doorway now framed the hideous narrator. How he had seized Robert, son of Godfrey, in a field, forced poison down his throat and then left him to die at the age of 32. Thus maintaining the foul provisions of his vengeful curse. At this point I was left to imagine the solution of the greatest mystery of all. How the curse had been fulfilled since that time when Charles Le Socier must in the course of nature have died for the man digressed into an account of a deep alchemaical studies of two wizards, father and son, speaking most particularly of the researches of Charles Le Socier concerning the elixir which should grant him who partook of it in eternal life and youth. His enthusiasm had seemed for the moment to remove from his terrible eyes the black malevolence that had versed so haunted me. But suddenly the fiendish glare returned and with a shocking sound like the hissing of a serpent the stranger raised a glass vial with the evident intent of ending my life as had Charles Le Socier 600 years before ended that of my ancestor. Prompted by some preserving instinct of self-defense I broke through the spell that had hint or two held me immovable and flung my now dying torch at the creature who menaced my existence. I heard the file break harmlessly against the stones of the passage as the tunic of the strange man caught fire and lit the horrid scene with a ghastly radiance. The shriek of fright and impotent malice emanated by the would-be assassin proved too much for my already shaken nerves and I fell prone upon the slimy floor in a total faint. When at last my senses returned always frightfully dark and my mind remembering what had occurred shrank from the idea of beholding any more yet curiosity over mastered all. Who, I ask myself, was the man of evil and how come he within the castle walls? Why should he seek to avenge the death of Michael Mavaeus and how had the curse been carried on through all these long centuries since the time of Charles Le Socier? The dread of years was lifted from my shoulders for I knew that he whom I had felt was the source of all my danger from the curse and now I was free. I burned with desire to learn more of the sinister thing which had haunted my line for centuries and made of my own youth one long continued nightmare. Determined upon further exploration I felt my pockets for lint and steel and lit the unused torch which I had with me. First of all, new light revealed the distorted and blackened form of the mysterious stranger. The hideous eyes were now closed. Disliking the sight, I turned away and entered the chamber beyond the gothic door. Here I found what seemed much like an alchemist's laboratory. In one corner was an immense pile of shining yellow metal that sparkled gorgeously in the light of the torch. It may have been gold, but I did not pause to examine it for I was strangely affected by that which I had undergone. At the farthest end of the apartment was an opening leading out into one of the many wild ravines of the dark hillside forest. Filled with wonder yet now realizing how the man had obtained access to the chateau I proceeded to return. I had intended to pass by the remains of the stranger with averted face but as I approached the body I seemed to hear emanating from it a faint sound as though life were not yet wholly extinct. Aghast I turned to examine the charred and shriveled figure on the floor. Then all at once the horrible eyes blackened even then the seared face in which they were set opened wide with an expression which I was unable to interpret. The cracked lips tried to frame words I could not well understand. Once I caught the name of Charles Le Socierre and again I fancied the words years and curse issued from the twisted mouth. Still I was at a loss to gather the purport of his disconnected speech at my evident ignorance of his meaning. The pitchy eyes once more flashed malevolently at me until helpless as I saw my opponent to be I trembled as I watched him. Suddenly the wretch animated with his last burst of strength raised his pitch's head from the damp and sunken pavement. Then as I remained paralyzed with fear he found his voice and his dying breath screamed forth those words which I've ever afterwards haunted my days and nights. Fool he shrieked, had you not guessed my secret? Have you no brain whereby you may recognize the will which has through six long centuries fulfilled the dreadful curse upon the house? Have I not told you the great elixir of eternal life? Know you not how the secret of alchemy was solved? I tell you it is I, I, I have lived for six hundred years to maintain my revenge for I am Charles Le Socierre. End of The Alchemist. The Beast in the Cave by H. P. Lovecraft The horrible conclusion which had been gradually intruding itself upon my confused and reluctant mind was now an awful certainty. I was lost, completely hopelessly lost in the vast and labyrinthine recess of the mammoth cave. Turn as I might in no direction could my straining vision seize on any object capable of serving as a guidepost to set me on the outward path. That nevermore should I behold the blessed light of day or scan the pleasant hills and dales of the beautiful world outside my reason could no longer entertain the slightest unbelief. Hope had departed. Yet indoctrinated as I was by a life of philosophical study I derived no small measure of satisfaction from my unimpassioned demeanor for although I had frequently read of the wild frenzies into which were thrown the victims of similar situations, I experienced none of these, but stood quiet as soon as I clearly realized the loss of my bearings. Nor did the thought that I had probably wandered beyond the utmost limits of an ordinary search caused me to abandon my composure even for a moment. If I must die, I reflected, then was this terrible yet majestic cavern as welcome as a polker as that which any churchyard might afford, a conception which carried with it more of tranquility than of despair. Starving would prove my ultimate fate of this I was certain. Some I knew had gone mad under circumstances such as these, but I felt that this end would not be mine. My disaster was the result of no fault save my own, since unknown to the guide I had separated myself from the regular party of sight seers and wandering for over an hour in forbidden avenues of the cave had found myself unable to retrace the devious windings which I had pursued since forsaking my companions. Already my torch had begun to expire. Soon I would be enveloped by the total and almost palpable blackness of the bowels of the earth. As I stood in the waning, unsteady light, I idly wondered over the exact circumstances of my coming end. I remembered the accounts which I had heard of the colony of consumptives who, taking their residence in this gigantic grotto of fine health from the apparently salubrious air of the underground world with its steady, uniform temperature, pure air and peaceful quiet, had found instead death in strange and ghastly form. I had seen the sad remains of their ill-made cottages as I passed them by with the party, and had wondered what unnatural influence along sojourn in this immense and silent cavern would exert upon one as healthy and vigorous as I. Now I grimly told myself my opportunity for settling this point had arrived, provided that want of food should not bring me too speedy a departure from this life. As the last fitful rays of my torch faded into obscurity, I resolved to leave no stone unturned, no possible means of escape neglected. So, summoning all the powers possessed by my lungs, I set up a series of loud shoutings in the vain hope of attracting the attention of the guide by my clamor. Yet, as I called, I believed in my heart that my cries were to no purpose, and that my voice, magnified and reflected by the numberless ramparts of the black maze about me, fell upon no ears, save my own. All at once, however, my attention was fixed with a start as I fancied that I heard the sound of soft approaching steps on the rocky floor of the cavern. Was my deliverance about to be accomplished so soon? Had then all my horrible apprehensions been for naught? And was the guide having marked my own warranted absence from the party, following my course and seeking me out in this limestone labyrinth? Whilst these joyful queries arose in my brain, I was on the point of renewing my cries in order that my discovery might come the sooner, when in an instant my delight was turned to horror as I listened, for my ever acute ear now sharpened an even greater degree by the complete silence of the cave, bore to my benumbed understanding the unexpected and dreadful knowledge that these footfalls were not like those of any mortal man. In the unearthly stillness of this subterranean region, the tread of the booted guide would have sounded like a series of sharp and incisive blows. These impacts were soft and stealthy as of the paws of some feline. Besides, when I listened carefully, I seemed to trace the falls of four instead of two feet. I was now convinced that I had by my own cries aroused and attracted some wild beast, perhaps a mountain lion, which had accidentally strayed within the cave. Perhaps I considered the Almighty had chosen for me a swifter and more merciful death than that of hunger. Yet the instinct of self-preservation, never wholly dormant, was stirred in my breast, and though escape from the oncoming peril might but spare me for a sterner and more lingering, and I determined nevertheless to part with my life at as high a price as I could command. Strange as it may seem, my mind conceived of no intent on the part of the visitor save that of hostility. Accordingly I became very quiet, in the hope that the unknown beast would, in the absence of a guiding sound, lose its direction as had I, and thus pass me by. But this hope was not destined for realization, for the strange footfalls steadily advanced. The animal evidently having obtained my scent, which in an atmosphere so absolutely free from all distracting influences as is that of the cave, could doubtless be followed at great distance. Seeing therefore that I must be armed for defense against an uncanny and unseen attack in the dark, I grouped about me the largest of the fragments of rock which were strewn upon all parts of the floor of the cavern and the vicinity, and grasping one in each hand for immediate use, awaited with resignation the inevitable result. Meanwhile the hideous pattering of the paws drew near. Certainly the conduct of the creature was exceedingly strange. Most of the time the tread seemed to be that of a quadruped, walking with a singular lack of unison betwixt hind and four feet. Yet at brief and infrequent intervals I fancied that but two feet were engaged in the process of locomotion. I wondered what species of animal was to confront me. It must, I thought, be some unfortunate beast who had paid for its curiosity to investigate one of the entrances of the fearful grotto with a lifelong confinement in its interminable recesses. It doubtless obtained as food the eyeless fish, bats and rats of the cave, as well as some of the ordinary fish that are wafted in at every freshet of Green River, which communicates in some occult manner with the waters of the cave. I occupied my terrible vigil with grotesque conjectures of what alteration cave life might have wrought in the physical structure of the beast. Remembering the awful appearance is ascribed by local tradition to the consumptives who had died after long residence in the cave. Then I remembered with a start that, even should I succeed in felling my antagonist, I should never behold its form as my torch had long since been extinct, and I was entirely unprovided with matches. The tension on my brain now became frightful. My disordered, fancy, conjured up hideous and fearsome shapes from the sinister darkness that surrounded me, and that actually seemed to press upon my body. Nearer, nearer the dreadful footfalls approached, it seemed that I must give vent to a piercing scream, yet had I been sufficiently irresolute to attempt such a thing my voice could scarce have responded. I was petrified, rooted to the spot. I doubted if my right arm would allow me to hurl its missile at the oncoming thing when the crucial moment should arrive. Now the steady pat pat of the steps was close at hand, now very close. I could hear the labored breathing of the animal, and terror struck as I was. I realized that it must have come from a considerable distance, and was correspondingly fatigued. Suddenly the spell broke. My right hand, guided by my ever-trustworthy sense of hearing, threw with full force the sharp-angled bit of limestone which it contained toward that point in the darkness from which emanated the breathing and pattering and, wonderful to relate, it nearly reached its goal for I heard the thing jump, landing at a distance away, where it seemed to pause. Having readjusted my aim I discharged my second missile, this time most effectively, for with a flood of joy I listened as the creature fell in what sounded like a complete collapse, and evidently remained prone and unmoving, almost overpowered by the great relief which rushed over me I reeled back against the wall. The breathing continued in heavy gasping inhalations and expirations, once I realized that I had no more than wounded the creature, and now all desire to examine the thing ceased. At last something allied to groundless superstitious fear had entered my brain, and I did not approach the body, nor did I continue to cast stones at it in order to complete the extinction of its life. Instead I ran at full speed in what was as nearly as I could estimate in my frenzied condition the direction from which I had come. Suddenly I heard a sound, or rather a regular succession of sounds, in another instant they had resolved themselves into a series of sharp metallic clicks, this time there was no doubt. It was the guide, and then I shouted, yelled, screamed even shrieked with joy as I beheld in the vaulted arches above the faint and glimmering effulgence which I knew to be the reflected light of an approaching torch. I ran to meet the flare, and before I could completely understand what had occurred was lying upon the ground at the feet of the guide embracing his boots and gibbering despite my boasted reserve in a most meaningless and idiotic manner, pouring out my terrible story and at the same time overwhelming my auditor with protestations of gratitude. The length I awoke to something like my normal consciousness. The guide had noted my absence upon the arrival of the party at the entrance of the cave and had from his own intuitive sense of direction proceeded to make a thorough canvas of bypassages just ahead of where he had last spoken to me locating my whereabouts after a quest of about four hours. By the time he had related this to me I, emboldened by his torch and his company, began to reflect upon the strange beast which I had wounded but a short absence back in the darkness and suggested that we ascertain by the flashlight's aid what manner of creature was my victim. Accordingly I retraced my steps, this time with the courage born of companionship to the scene of my terrible experience. Soon we described a white object upon the floor, an object whiter even than the gleaming limestone itself. Cautiously advancing we gave vent to a simultaneous ejaculation of wonderment. For of all the unnatural monsters either of us had in our lifetimes beheld, this was in surpassing degree the strangest. It appeared to be an anthropoid ape of large proportions, escaped perhaps from some itinerant menagerie, its hair was snow white, a thing do no doubt to the bleaching action of a long existence within the inky confines of the cave, but it was also surprisingly thin, being indeed largely absent save on the head where it was of such length and abundance that it fell over the shoulders in considerable perfusion. The face was turned away from us as the creature lay almost directly upon it. The inclination of the limbs was very singular, explaining, however, the alternation in their use which I had before noted, whereby the beast used sometimes all four and on other occasions but two for its progress. From the tips of the fingers or toes long rat-like claws extended, the hands or feet were not prehensile, a fact that I ascribed to that long residence in the cave, which as I before mentioned seemed evident from the all-pervading and almost unearthly whiteness so characteristic of the whole anatomy. No tail seemed to be present. The respiration had now grown very feeble and the guide had drawn his pistol with the evident intent of dispatching the creature when a sudden sound emitted by the latter caused the weapon to fall unused. The sound was of a nature difficult to describe. It was not like the normal note of any known species of simian, and I wonder if this unnatural quality were not the result of a long continued and complete silence broken by the sensations produced by the advent of the light, a thing which the beast could not have seen since its first entrance into the cave. The sound which I might feebly attempt to classify as a kind of deep-toned chattering was faintly continued. All at once a fleeting spasm of energy seemed to pass through the frame of the beast. The paws went through a convulsive motion, and the limbs contracted. With a jerk the white body rolled over so that its face was turned in our direction. For a moment I was so struck with horror at the eyes, thus revealed, that I noted nothing else. They were black, those eyes, deep, jetty black, in hideous contrast to the snow-white hair and flesh. Like those of other cave denizens they were deeply sunken in their orbits and were entirely destitute of iris. As I looked more closely I saw that they were sat in a face less prognathous than that of the average ape, and infinitely less hairy. The nose was quite distinct. As we gazed upon the uncanny sight presented to our vision the thick lips opened and several sounds issued from them after which the thing relaxed in death. The guide clutched my coat-sleeve and trembled so violently that the light shook fitfully, casting weird moving shadows on the walls. I made no motion, but stood rigidly still. My horrified eyes fixed upon the floor ahead. The fear left. And wonder, awe, compassion, and reverence succeeded in its place. For the sounds uttered by the stricken figure that lay stretched out on the limestone had told us the awesome truth. The creature I had killed, the strange beast of the unfathomed cave, was, or had at one time been, a man, end of the beast in the cave by H.P. Lovecraft. The Wall of Sleep by H.P. Lovecraft I have often wondered if the majority of mankind ever paused to reflect upon the occasionally titanic significance of dreams, and of the obscure world to which they belong. Whilst the greater number of our nocturnal visions are perhaps no more than faint and fantastic reflections of our waking experiences, Freud to the contrary with his pure isle symbolism, there are still a certain remainder whose imondane and ethereal character permit of no ordinary interpretation, and whose vaguely exciting and disquieting effect suggests possible minute glimpses into a sphere of mental existence no less important than physical life, yet separated from that life by an all but impassable barrier. From my experience I cannot doubt but that man, when lost to terrestrial consciousness, is indeed so journeying in another and uncorporeal life of far different nature from the life we know, and of which only the slightest and most indistinct memories linger after waking. From those blurred and fragmentary memories we may infer much, yet prove little. We may guess that in dreams, life, matter, and vitality, as the earth knows such things, are not necessarily constant, and that time and space do not exist as our waking selves comprehend them. Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon. It was from a youthful reverie filled with speculations of this sort that I arose one afternoon in the winter of 1900 and 1901 when to the state psychopathic institution in which I served as an intern was brought the man whose case has ever since haunted me so unceasingly. His name, as given on the records, was Joe Slater, or Slater, and his appearance was that of the typical denizen of the Catskill Mountain region. One of those strange, repellent scions of a primitive colonial peasant stock whose isolation for nearly three centuries in the hilly fastnesses of a little traveled countryside has caused them to sink to a kind of barbaric degeneracy. Rather than advance with their more fortunately placed brethren of the thickly settled districts, among these odd folk who correspond exactly to the decadent element of white trash in the south, law and morals are non-existent, and their general mental status is probably below that of any other section of Native American people. Joe Slater, who came to the institution in the vigilant custody of four state policemen and who was described as a highly dangerous character, certainly presented no evidence of his perilous disposition when I first beheld him. Though well above the middle stature and of somewhat brawny frame, he was given an absurd appearance of harmless stupidity by the pale, sleepy blueness of his small watery eyes, the scantiness of his neglected and never-shaven growth of yellow beard, and the listless drooping of his heavy nether lip. His age was unknown, since among his kind neither family records nor permanent family ties exist. But from the baldness of his head in front and from the decayed condition of his teeth, the head surgeon wrote him down as a man of about forty. From the medical and court documents we learned all that could be gathered of his case. This man, a vagabond hunter and trapper, had always been strange in the eyes of his primitive associates. He had habitually slept at night beyond the ordinary time, and upon waking would often talk of unknown things in a manner so bizarre as to inspire fear even in the hearts of an unimaginative populace. Not that his form of language was at all unusual, for he never spoke save in the debased patois of his environment. But the tone and tenor of his utterances were of such mysterious wildness that none might listen without apprehension. He himself was generally as terrified and baffled as his auditors, and within an hour after awakening would forget all that he had said, or at least all that had caused him to say what he did, relapsing into a bovine half-amiable normality like that of the other hill dwellers. As later grew older, it appeared, his metutinal aberrations had gradually increased in frequency and violence, till about a month before his arrival at the institution had occurred the shocking tragedy which caused his arrest by the authorities. One day, near noon, after a profound sleep begun in a whiskey debauch at about five of the previous afternoon, the man had roused himself most suddenly with eulations so horrible and unearthly that they brought several neighbors to his cabin, a filthy sty where he dwelt with a family as indescribable as himself. Rushing out into the snow, he had flung his arms aloft and commenced a series of leaps directly upward in the air, the while shouting his determination to reach some, big, big cabin with brightness in the roof and walls and floor and the loud queer music far away. As two men of moderate size sought to restrain him, he had struggled with maniacal force and fury, screaming of his desire and need to find and kill a certain thing that shines and shakes and laughs. At length, after temporarily felling one of his detainers with a sudden blow, he had flung himself upon the other in a demonic ecstasy of bloodthirstiness, shrieking fiendishly that he would jump high in the air and burn his way through anything that stopped him. Family and neighbours had now fled in a panic and when the more courageous of them returned, Slater was gone, leaving behind an unrecognisable pulp-like thing that had been a living man but an hour before. None of the mountaineers had dared to pursue him and it is likely that they would have welcomed his death from the cold, but when several mornings later they heard his screams from a distant ravine, they realized that he had somehow managed to survive and that his removal in one way or another would be necessary. Then had followed an armed searching party, whose purpose, whatever it may have been originally, became that of a sheriff's posse after one of the seldom popular state troopers had by accident observed then questioned and finally joined the seekers. On the third day, Slater was found unconscious in the hollow of a tree and taken to the nearest jail where alienists from Albany examined him as soon as his senses returned. To them he told a simple story. He had, he said, gone to sleep one afternoon about sundown after drinking much liquor. He had awakened to find himself standing bloody-handed in the snow before his cabin, the mangled corpse of his neighbour, Peter Slater, at his feet. Horrified he had taken to the woods in a vague effort to escape from the scene of what must have been his crime. Beyond these things he seemed to know nothing nor could the expert questioning of his interrogators bring out a single additional fact. That night Slater slept quietly and the next morning he awakened with no singular feature save a certain alteration of expression. Dr. Barnard, who had been watching the patient, thought he noticed in the pale blue eyes a certain gleam of peculiar quality and in the flaccid lips an all but imperceptible tightening as if of intelligent determination. But when questioned, Slater relapsed into the habitual vacancy of the mountaineer and only reiterated what he had said on the preceding day. On the third morning occurred the first of the man's mental attacks. After some show of uneasiness in sleep he burst forth into a frenzy so powerful that the combined efforts of four men were needed to bind him in a straight jacket. The alienists listened with keen attention to his words since their curiosity had been aroused to a high pitch by the suggestive yet mostly conflicting and incoherent stories of his family and neighbours. Slater raved for upward of fifteen minutes babbling in his backwoods dialect of green edifices of light, oceans of space, strange music, and shadowy mountains and valleys. But most of all did he dwell upon some mysterious blazing entity that shook and laughed and mocked at him. This vast, vague personality seemed to have done him a terrible wrong and to kill it in triumphant revenge was his paramount desire. In order to reach it he said, he would soar through abysses of emptiness, burning every obstacle that stood in his way. Thus ran his discourse, until with the greatest suddenness he ceased. The fire of madness died from his eyes and in dull wonder he looked at his questioners and asked why he was bound. Dr. Barnard unbuckled the leather harness and did not restore it till night and succeeded in persuading Slater to don it of his own volition for his own good. The man had now admitted that he sometimes talked queerly, though he knew not why. Within a week two more attacks appeared, but from them the doctors learned little. On the source of Slater's visions they speculated at length, for since he could neither read nor write and had apparently never heard a legend or fairy tale, his gorgeous imagery was quite inexplicable. That it could not come from any known myth or romance was made especially clear by the fact that the unfortunate lunatic expressed himself only in his own simple manner. He raved of things he did not understand and could not interpret, things which he claimed to have experienced, but which he could not have learned through any normal or connected narration. The alienists soon agreed that abnormal dreams were the foundation of the trouble, dreams whose vividness could for a time completely dominate the waking mind of this basically inferior man. With due formality Slater was tried for murder, acquitted on the ground of insanity and committed to the institution wherein I held so humble a post. I have said that I am a constant speculator concerning dream life and from this you may judge of the eagerness with which I applied myself to the study of the new patient as soon as I had fully ascertained the facts of his case. He seemed to sense a certain friendliness in me for no doubt of the interest I could not conceal and the gentle manner in which I questioned him. Not that he ever recognized me during his attacks when I hung breathlessly upon his chaotic but cosmic word pictures, but he knew me in his quiet hours when he would sit by his barred window weaving baskets of straw and willow and perhaps pining for the mountain freedom he could never again enjoy. His family never called to see him. Probably it had found another temporary head after the manner of decadent mountain folk. By degrees I commenced to feel an overwhelming wonder at the mad and fantastic conceptions of Joe Slater. The man himself was pitiably inferior in mentality and language alike, but his glowing titanic visions though described in a barbarous disjointed jargon were assuredly things which only a superior or even exceptional brain could conceive. How, I often asked myself, could the stolid imagination of a cat-skilled degenerate conjure up-sights whose very possession argued a lurking spark of genius? How could any backwards duller to have gained so much as an idea of those glittering realms of supernal radiance and space about which Slater ranted in his furious delirium? More and more I inclined to the belief that in the pitiful personality who cringed before me lay the disordered nucleus of something beyond my comprehension, something infinitely beyond the comprehension of my more experienced but less imaginative medical and scientific colleagues. And yet I could extract nothing definite from the man. The sum of all my investigation was that, in a kind of semi-corporeal dream life, Slater wandered or floated through resplendent and prodigious valleys, mountains, gardens, cities, and palaces of light in a region unbounded and unknown to man. That there he was no peasant or degenerate but a creature of importance and vivid life, moving proudly and dominantly and checked only by a certain deadly enemy, who seemed to be a being of visible, yet ethereal structure, and who did not appear to be of human shape, since Slater never referred to it as a man, or as ought, save a thing. This thing had done Slater some hideous but unnamed wrong, which the maniac, if maniac he were, yearned to avenge. From the manner in which Slater alluded to their dealings I judged that he and the luminous thing had met on equal terms, that in his dream existence the man was himself a luminous thing of the same race as his enemy. This impression was sustained by his frequent references to flying through space and burning all that impeded his progress. Yet these conceptions were formulated in rustic words wholly inadequate to convey them, the circumstance which drove me to the conclusion that if a dream world indeed existed oral language was not its medium for the transmission of thought. Could it be that the dream soul inhabiting this inferior body desperately struggling to speak things which the simple and halting tongue of dullness could not utter? Could it be that I was face to face with intellectual emanations which would explain the mystery if I could but learn to discover and read them? I did not tell the older physicians of these things for middle ages skeptical, cynical, and disinclined to accept new ideas. Besides, the head of the institution had but lately warned me in his paternal way that I was overworking, that my mind needed a rest. It had long been my belief that human thought consists basically of atomic or molecular motion convertible into ether waves or radiant energy like heat, light, and electricity. This belief had early led me to contemplate the possibility of telepathy or mental communication by means of suitable apparatus. And I had in my college days prepared a set of transmitting and receiving instruments somewhat similar to the cumbers devices employed in wireless telegraphy at that crude pre-radio period. These I had tested with a fellow student but achieving no result had soon packed them away with other scientific odds and ends for possible future use. Now, in my intense desire to probe into the dream life of Joe Slater, I sought these instruments again and spent several days in repairing them for action. When they were complete once more, I missed no opportunity for their trial. At each outbreak of Slater's violence I would fit the transmitter to his forehead and the receiver to my own, constantly making delicate adjustments for various hypothetical wavelengths of intellectual energy. I had but little notion of how the thought impressions would, if successfully conveyed, arouse an intelligent response in my brain, but I felt certain that I could detect and interpret them. Accordingly, I continued my experiments, though informing no one of their nature. It was on the 21st of February, 1901, that the thing occurred. As I looked back across the years, I realized how unreal it seems, and sometimes wonder if old Dr. Fenton was not right when he charged it all to my excited imagination. I recall that he listened with great kindness and patience when I told him, but afterward gave me a nerve powder and arranged for the half-year's vacation on which I departed the next week. That fateful night I was wildly agitated and perturbed, for despite the excellent care he had received, Joe Slater was unmistakably dying. Perhaps it was his mountain freedom that he missed, or perhaps the turmoil in his brain had grown to acute for his rather sluggish physique. But, at all events, the flame of vitality flickered low in the decadent body. He was drowsy near the end, and as darkness fell he dropped off into a troubled sleep. I did not strap on the straitjacket as was customary when he slept, and I saw that he was too feeble to be dangerous even if he woke in mental disorder once more before passing away. But I did place upon his head and mine the two ends of my cosmic radio, hoping against hope for a first and last message from the dream world in the brief time remaining. In the cell with us was one nurse, a mediocre fellow who did not understand the purpose of the apparatus, or think to inquire into my course. As the hours wore on, I saw his head droop awkwardly in sleep, but I did not disturb him. I myself, lulled by the rhythmical breathing of the healthy and the dying man, must have nodded a little later. The sound of weird lyric melody was what aroused me. Chords, vibrations, and harmonic ecstasies echoed passionately on every hand, while on my ravished sight burst the stupendous spectacle of ultimate beauty. Walls, columns, and architraves of living fire blazed effulgently around the spot where I seemed to float in air, extending upward to an infinitely high vaulted dome of indescribable splendor. Blending with this display of palatial magnificence, or rather, supplanting it at times in kaleidoscopic rotation, were glimpses of wide plains and graceful valleys, high mountains, and inviting grottos, covered with every lovely attribute of scenery which my delighted eyes could conceive of, yet formed wholly of some glowing ethereal plastic entity, which in consistency partook as much of spirit as of matter. As I gazed, I perceived that my own brain held the key to these enchanting metamorphoses. For each vista which appeared to me was the one my changing mind most wished to behold. Amidst this Elysian realm, I dwelt not as a stranger. For each sight and sound was familiar to me, just as it had been for uncounted eons of eternity before, and would be for like eternities to come. Then the resplendent aura of my brother of light drew near and held colloquy with me, soul to soul, with silent and perfect interchange of thought. The hour was one of approaching triumph. For was not my fellow being escaping at last from a degrading periodic bondage, escaping forever, and preparing to follow the accursed oppressor even unto the uttermost fields of ether that upon it might be wrought a flaming cosmic vengeance which would shake the spheres. We floated thus for a little time when I perceived a slight blurring and fading of the objects around us, as though some force were recalling me to earth where I least wished to go. The form near me seemed to feel a change also. For it gradually brought its discourse toward a conclusion, and itself prepared to quit the scene, fading from my sight at a rate somewhat less rapid than that of the other objects. A few more thoughts were exchanged, and I knew that the luminous one and I were being recalled to bondage, though for my brother of light it would be the last time. The sorry planet shell being well nigh spent. In less than an hour my fellow would be free to pursue the oppressor along the Milky Way and pass the hither stars to the very confines of infinity. A well-defined shock separates my final impression of the fading scene of light from my sudden and somewhat shame-faced awakening and straightening up in my chair as I saw the dying figure on the couch move hesitantly. Jost later was indeed awakening, though probably for the last time. As I looked more closely, I saw that in the sallow cheeks shone spots of colour which had never before been present. The lips too seemed unusual, being tightly compressed as if by the force of a stronger character than had been slaters. The whole face finally began to grow tense and the head turned restlessly with closed eyes. I did not rouse the sleeping nurse, but readjusted the slightly disarranged headband of my telepathic radio, intent to catch any parting message the dreamer might have to deliver. All at once, the head turned sharply in my direction and the eyes fell open, causing me to stare in blank amazement at what I beheld. The man who had been Jost later, the cat-skilled decadent, was gazing at me with a pair of luminous, expanding eyes whose blue seemed subtly to have deepened. Neither mania nor degeneracy was visible in that gaze and I felt beyond a doubt that I was viewing a face behind which lay an active mind of high order. At this juncture, my brain became aware of a steady external influence operating upon it. I closed my eyes to concentrate my thoughts more profoundly and was rewarded by the positive knowledge that my long-sought mental message had come at last. Each transmitted idea formed rapidly in my mind and, though no actual language was employed, my habitual association of conception and expression was so great that I seemed to be receiving the message in ordinary English. Jost later is dead, came the sole petrifying voice of an agency from beyond the wall of sleep. My opened eyes sought the couch of pain and curious horror, but the blue eyes were still calmly gazing and the countenance was still intelligently animated. He is better dead, for he was unfit to bear the active intellect of cosmic entity. His gross body could not undergo the needed adjustments between ethereal life and planet life. He was too much an animal, too little a man, yet it is through his deficiency that you have come to discover me. The cosmic and planet souls rightly should never meet. He has been in my torment and diurnal prison for forty-two of your terrestrial years. I am an entity like that which you yourself become in the freedom of dreamless sleep. I am your brother of light and have floated with you in the effulgent valleys. It has not permitted me to tell your waking earth self of your real self, but we are all romers of vast spaces and travelers in many ages. Next year I may be dwelling in the Egypt, which you call ancient, or in the cruel empire of Tsang Shan, which is to come three thousand years hence. You and I have drifted to the worlds that reel about the red Arcturus and dwelt in the bodies of the insect philosophers that crawl proudly over the fourth moon of Jupiter. How little does the earth's self know life and its extent, how little indeed ought it to know for its own tranquility. Of the oppressor I cannot speak. You on earth have unwittingly felt its distant presence. You, without knowing, idly gave the blinking beacon the name of Algol, the demon star. It is to meet and conquer the oppressor that I have vainly striven for eons, held back by bodily encumbrances. Tonight I go as a nemesis, bearing just and blazingly cataclysmic vengeance. Watch me in the sky close to the demon star. I cannot speak longer, for the body of Joslater grows cold and rigid, and the coarse brains are ceasing to vibrate as I wish. You have been my only friend on this planet, the only soul to sense and seek for me within the repellent form which lies on this couch. We shall meet again, perhaps in the shining mists of Orion's sword, perhaps on a bleak plateau in prehistoric Asia, perhaps in unremembered dreams tonight, perhaps in some other form and eon hence, when the solar system shall have been swept away. At this point the thought waves abruptly ceased, the pale eyes of the dreamer, or can I say dead man, commenced to glaze fishily. In a half-stupor I crossed over to the couch and felt of his wrist, but found it cold, stiff, and pulseless. The sallow cheeks paled again, and the thick lips fell open, disclosing the repulsively rotten fangs of the degenerate Joslater. I shivered, pulled a blanket over the hideous face, and awakened the nurse. Then I left the cell and went silently to my room. I had an instant and unaccountable craving for a sleep whose dreams I should not remember. The climax? What plain tale of science can boast of such a rhetorical effect? I have merely set down certain things, appealing to me as facts, allowing you to construe them as you will. As I have already admitted, my superior, old Dr. Fenton, denies the reality of everything I have related. He vows that I was broken down with nervous strain and badly in need of a long vacation on full pay which he so generously gave me. He assures me, on his professional honour, that Joslater was but a low-grade paranoiac whose fantastic notions must have come from the crude hereditary folk tales which circulated even in the most decadent of communities. All this he tells me. Yet I cannot forget what I saw in the sky on the night after Slater died. Lest you think me a biased witness, another pen must add this final testimony, which may perhaps supply the climax you expect. I will quote the following account of the star, Nova Persei verbatim, from the pages of that eminent astronomical authority, Professor Garrett P. Service. Quote, On February 22, 1901, a marvellous new star was discovered by Dr. Anderson of Edinburgh, not very far from Algol. No star had been visible at that point before. Within 24 hours the stranger had become so bright that it had outshone Capella. In a week or two it had visibly faded, and in the course of a few months it was hardly discernable with a naked eye. Unquote. And beyond the Wall of Sleep by H. P. Lovecraft. This recording is in the public domain. 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. The Cats of Ulthar by H. P. Lovecraft. It is said that in Ulthar, which lies beyond the river sky, no man may kill a cat, and this I can verily believe as I gaze upon him who sitteth purring before the fire. For the cat is cryptic, and close to strange things which men cannot see. He is the soul of antique Egyptis, and bearer of tales from forgotten cities in Meroe and Ophir. He is the kin of the jungle's lords, and heir to the secrets of Horry and Sinister Africa. The Sphinx is his cousin, and he speaks her language. But he is more ancient than the Sphinx, and remembers that which she hath forgotten. In Ulthar, before ever the Burgesses forbade the killing of cats, there dwelt an old codder and his wife who delighted to trap and slay the cats of their neighbors. Why they did this I know not, save that many hate the voice of the cat in the night, and take it ill that cats should run stealthily about yards and gardens at twilight. But whatever the reason, this old man and woman took pleasure in trapping and slaying every cat which came near to their hovel. And from some of the sounds heard after dark, many villagers fancied that the manner of slaying was exceedingly peculiar. But the villagers did not discuss such things with the old man and his wife, because of the habitual expression on the withered faces of the two, and because their cottage was so small and so darkly hidden under spreading oaks at the back of a neglected yard. In truth, much as the owners of cats and these odd folk, they feared them more. And instead of berating them as brutal assassins, merely took care that no cherished pet or mouser should stray toward the remote hovel under the dark trees. When through some unavoidable oversight a cat was missed and sounds heard after dark, the loser would lament impotently or console himself by thanking fate that it was not one of his children who had thus vanished. For the people of Ulthar were simple as it is all cats first came. One day a caravan of strange wanderers from the south entered the narrow cobbled streets of Ulthar. Dark wanderers they were, and unlike the other roving folk who passed through the village twice every year. In the marketplace they told fortunes for silver and bought gay beads from the merchants. What was the land of these wanderers none could tell, but it was seen that they were given to strange prayers painted on the sides of their wagons strange figures with human bodies and the heads of cats, hawks, rams and lions. And the leader of the caravan wore a headdress with two horns and a curious disc betwixt the horns. There was in this singular caravan a little boy with no father or mother but only a tiny black kitten to cherish. The plague had not been kind to him, yet had left him this small furry thing to mitigate his sorrow, but very young one can find great relief in the lively antics of a black kitten. So the boy whom the dark people called Menes smiled more often than he wept as he sat playing with his graceful kitten on the steps of an oddly painted wagon. On the third morning of the wanderers' stay in Ulthar Menes could not find his kitten, and as he sobbed aloud in the marketplace certain villagers told him of the old man and his wife and of sounds heard in the night. And when he heard these things his sobbing gave place to meditation and finally to prayer. He stretched out his arms toward the sun and prayed in a tongue no villager could understand, though indeed the villagers did not try very hard to understand since their attention was mostly taken up by the sky and the odd shapes the clouds were assuming. It was very peculiar, but as the little boy uttered his petition there seemed to form overhead the shadowy nebulous figures of exotic things, of hybrid creatures crowned with horn-flanked discs. Nature is full of such illusions to impress the imaginative. That night the wanderers left Ulthar and were never seen again. And the householders were troubled when they noticed that in all the village there was not a cat to be found. From each hearth the familiar cat had vanished. Cats large and small, black, gray, striped, yellow and white. Old Cranon, the burgomaster, swore that the dark folk had taken the cats away in revenge for the killing of Menace's kitten and cursed the caravan and the little boy. But Nith, the lean notary, declared that the old Cotter and his wife were more likely persons to suspect where their hatred of cats was notorious and increasingly bold. Still no one durst complained to the sinister couple. Even little Atal, the innkeeper's son, vowed that he had at twilight seen all the cats of Ulthar in that accursed yard under the trees, pacing very slowly and solemnly in a circle around the cottage, too abreast as if in performance of some unheard of rite of beasts. The villagers did not know how much to believe from so small a boy, and though they feared that the evil pair had lost to their death, they preferred not to chide the old Cotter till they met him outside his dark and repellent yard. So Ulthar went to sleep in vain anger, and when the people awakened at dawn, behold, every cat was back at his accustomed hearth. Large and small, black, gray, striped, yellow and white, none was missing. Very sleek and fat did the cats appear and sonorous with purring content. The citizens talked with one another of the affair and marveled not a little. Old Cranon again insisted that it was the dark folk who had taken them, since cats did not return alive from the cottage of the ancient man and his wife, but all agreed on one thing, that the refusal of all the cats to eat their portions of meat or drink their saucers of milk was exceedingly curious. And for two whole days the sleek, lazy cats of Ulthar would touch no food, but only doze by the fire or in the sun. It was fully a week before the villagers noticed that no lights were appearing at dusk in the windows of the cottage under the trees. Then the lean nith remarked that no one had seen the old man or his wife since the night the cats were away. In another week the burgomaster decided to overcome his fears and call at the strangely silent dwelling as a matter of duty, though in so doing he was careful to take with him shying the blacksmith and thul the cutter of stone as witnesses. And when they had broken down the frail door they found only this. Two cleanly picked human skeletons on the earthen floor and a number of singular beetles crawling in the shadowy corners. There was subsequently much talk among the burgesses of Ulthar. Zath the coroner disputed at length with nith the lean notary, and Kranon, and Shang, and Thul were overwhelmed with questions. Even little Atal the innkeeper's son was closely questioned and given a sweetmeat as a reward. They talked of the old Cotter and his wife, of the caravan of dark wanderers, of small menace and his black kitten, of the prayer of menace and of the sky during that prayer, of the doings of the cats on the night the caravan left and of what was later found in the cottage under the dark trees in the repellent yard. And in the end the burgesses passed that remarkable law which is told of by traders in Hathag and discussed by travelers in Nier, namely that in Ulthar no man may kill a cat. This is the end of the Cats of Ulthar by H.P. Lovecraft. This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Garrett Fitzgerald. Cellophase by H.P. Lovecraft. In a dream, Caranus saw the city in the valley and the seacoast beyond and the snowy peak overlooking the sea and the gaily painted galleys that sail out of the harbor toward distant regions where the sea meets the sky. In a dream it was also that he came by his name of Caranus for when awake he was called by another name. Perhaps it was natural for him to dream a new name for he was the last of his family and alone among the indifferent millions of London so there were not many to speak to him and remind him who he had been. His money and lands were gone and he did not care for the ways of the people about him but preferred to dream and write of his dreams. What he wrote was laughed at by those to whom he showed it so that after a time he kept his writings to himself and finally ceased to write. Before he withdrew from the world about him the more wonderful became his dreams and it would have been quite futile to try to describe them on paper. Caranus was not modern and did not think like others who wrote. Whilst they strove to strip from life its embroidered robes of myth and to show in naked ugliness the foul thing that is reality Caranus sought for beauty alone. When truth and experience failed to reveal it he sought it in fancy and illusion and found it on his very doorstep amid the nebulous memories of childhood tales and dreams. There are not many persons who know what wonders are open to them in the stories and visions of their youth for when as children we listen and dream we think but half-formed thoughts and when as men we try to remember we adduld and prosaic with the poison of life. But some of us awaken the night with strange fantasms of enchanted hills and gardens of fountains that sing in the sun of golden cliffs overhanging murmuring seas of plains that stretch down to sleeping cities of bronze and stone and of shadowy companies of heroes that ride comparison white horses along the edges of thick forests and then we know that we have looked back through the ivory gates into that world of wonder which was ours before we were wise and unhappy. Coranus came very suddenly upon his old world of childhood. He had been dreaming of the house where he had been born the great stone house covered with ivy where thirteen generations of his ancestors had lived and where he had hoped to die. It was moonlight and he had stolen out into the fragrant summer night through the gardens down the terraces past the great oaks of the park and along the long white road to the village. The village seemed very old eaten away at the edge like the moon which had commenced to wane and Coranus wondered whether the peaked roofs of the small houses hid sleep or death. In the streets were spears of long grass and the window panes on either side broken or filmily staring. Coranus had not lingered but had plotted on as though summoned towards some goal. He dared not disobey the summons for fear it might prove an illusion like the urges and aspirations of waking life which do not lead to any goal. Then he had been drawn down the lane that led off from the village street towards the channel cliffs and had come to the end of things to the precipice in the abyss where all the village and all the world fell abruptly into the unechoing emptiness of infinity and where even the sky ahead was empty and unlit by the crumbling moon and the peering stars. Faith had urged him on over the precipice and into the gulf where he had floated down, down, down past dark, shapeless, undreamed dreams faintly glowing spheres that may have been partly dreamed dreams and laughing winged things that seemed to mock the dreamers of all the worlds. Then a rift seemed to open in the darkness before him and he saw the city of the vales glisteningly, radiantly, far, far below with the background of sea and sky and a snow-capped mountain near the shore. Koranus had awakened the very moment he beheld the city yet he knew from his brief glance that it was none other than cellophase in the valley of Uth-Nargai beyond the Tenerian hills where his spirit had dwelt all the eternity of an hour one summer afternoon very long ago when he had slipped away from his nurse and let the warm sea breeze low him to sleep as he watched the clouds from the cliff near the village. He had protested then when they had found him, waked him, and carried him home for just as he was aroused he had been about to sail in a golden galley for those alluring regions where the sea meets the sky. And now he was equally resentful of awakening for he had found his fabulous city after forty weary years. But three nights afterward Koranus came again to cellophase. As before he dreamed first of the village that was asleep or dead and of the abysm of the city that was asleep or dead and of the abyss down which one must float silently. Then the rift appeared again and he beheld the glittering minarets of the city and saw the graceful galleys riding at anchor in the blue harbor and watched the ginkgo trees of Mount Aran swaying in the sea breeze. But this time he was not snatched away and like a winged being settled gradually over a grassy hillside till finally his feet rested gently on the turf. He had indeed come back to the valley of Uth Nurgai and the splendid city of cellophase. Down the hill amid scented grasses and brilliant flowers walked Koranus over the bubbling naraxa on the small wooden bridge carved his name so many years ago and through the whispering grove to the great stone bridge by the city gate. All was as of old nor were the marble walls discolored nor the polished bronze statues upon them tarnished and Koranus saw that he need not tremble lest the things he knew be vanished for even the centuries on the ramparts were the same and still as young as he remembered them. When he entered the city past the bronze gates and over the onyx pavements the merchants and camel drivers greeted him as if he had never been away and it was the same at the turquoise temple of Hath-Northath where the orchid wreathed priests told him that there is no time in Uth Nurgai and only perpetual youth. Then Koranus walked through the street of pillars to the seaward wall where gathered the traders and sailors and strange men from the regions where the sea meets the sky. There he stayed long gazing out over the bright harbor where the ripples sparkled beneath an unknown sun and where rode lightly the galleys from far places over the water and he gazed also upon Mount Aran rising regally from the shore its lower slopes green with swaying trees and its white summit touching the sky. More than ever Koranus wished to sail in a galley to the far places of which he had heard so many strange tales and he sought again the captain who had agreed to carry him so long ago. He found the man, Atheb, sitting on the same chest of spice he had sat on before and Atheb seemed not to realize that any time had passed. Then the two rode to a galley in the harbor and giving orders to the oarmen commenced to sail out into the billowy Serenarian sea that leads to the sky. For several days they glided undulatingly over the water till finally they came to the horizon where the sea meets the sky. Here the galley paused not at all but floated easily in the blue of the sky among fleecy clouds tinted with rose. And far beneath the keel Koranus could see strange lands and rivers and cities of surpassing beauty spread indolently in the sunshine and seemed never to lessen or disappear. At length Atheb told him that their journey was near its end and that they would soon enter the harbor of Serenian the pink marble city of the clouds which is built on that ethereal coast where the west wind flows into the sky. But as the highest of the city's carven towers came into sight there was a sound somewhere in space and Koranus awaked in his London Garrett. For many months after that Koranus sought the marvelous city of Salaface and its sky-bound galleys in vain and though his dreams carried him to many gorgeous and unheard of places no one whom he met could tell him how to find Euth Nargai beyond the Tenerian hills. One night he went flying over dark mountains where there were faint lone campfires at great distances apart and strange shaggy herds with tinkling bells on the leaders and in the wildest part of this hilly country so remote that few men could ever have seen it he found a hideously ancient wall or causeway of stone zigzagging along the ridges and valleys too gigantic ever to have risen by human hands and of such a length that neither end of it could be seen. Beyond that wall in the grey dawn he came to a land of quaint gardens and cherry trees and when the sun rose he beheld such beauty of red and white flowers green foliage and lawns white paths, diamond brooks, blue lakelets carbon bridges and red-roofed pagodas that he for a moment forgot cellar face and sheer delight but he remembered it again when he walked down a white path toward the red-roofed pagoda and would have questioned the people of this land about it had he not found that there were no people there but only birds and bees and butterflies. On another night Johnus walked up a damp stone spiral stairway endlessly and came to a tower window overlooking a mighty plain in river lit by the full moon and in the silent city that spread away from the river bank he thought he beheld some feature or arrangement which he had known before he would have descended and asked the way to Uthnargai had not a fearsome aurora sputtered up from some remote place beyond the horizon showing the ruin and antiquity of the city and the stagnation of the Reedy River and the death lying upon that land as it had lain since King Kynarotholus came home from his conquests to find the vengeance of the gods so Korana sought fruitlessly for the marvelous city of Selaphace and its galleys that sailed to Seranian in the sky meanwhile seeing many wonders and once barely escaping from the high priest not to be described which wears a yellow silken mask over its face and dwells all alone in a prehistoric stone monastery in the cold desert plateau of Leng in time he grew so impatient of the bleak intervals of the day that he began buying drugs in order to increase his periods of sleep Hashish helped a great deal and once set him to a part of space where form does not exist but where glowing gases study the secrets of existence and the violet colored gas told him that this part of space was outside what he had called infinity the gas had not heard of planets and organisms before but identified Koranas merely as one from the infinity where matter, energy and gravitation exist Koranas was now very anxious to return to minaret-studded Selaphace and increased his doses of drugs but eventually he had no more money left and could buy no drugs then one summer day he was turned out of his garret and wandered aimlessly through the streets drifting over a bridge to a place where the houses grew thinner and thinner and it was there that fulfillment came and he met the cortege of knights come from Selaphace to bear him thither forever handsome knights they were astride ron-horses and clad in shining armor with tabards of cloth of gold curiously emblazoned so numerous were they that Koranas almost mistook them for an army but they were sent in his honor since it was he who had created Uthnargai in his dreams on which account he was now to be appointed its chief god forevermore then they gave Koranas a horse and placed him at the head of the cavalcade and all roads majestically through the downs of Surrey and onward toward the region where Koranas and his ancestors were born it was very strange but as the riders went on they seemed to gallop back through time for wherever they passed through a village in the twilight they saw only such houses and villages as Chaucer or men before him might have seen and sometimes they saw knights on horseback with small companies of retainers when it grew dark they traveled more swiftly till soon they were flying uncannily as if in the air in this dim dawn they came upon the village which Koranas had seen alive in his childhood and asleep or dead in his dreams it was alive now and early villagers curtsied as the hortsmen clattered down the street and turned off into the lane that ends in the abyss of dreams Koranas had previously entered that abyss only at night and wondered what it would look like by day so he watched anxiously as the column approached its brink just as they galloped up the rising ground to the precipice a golden glare came somewhere out of the west and hid all the landscape in a falgent draperies the abyss was a seething chaos of rosy it and cerulean splendor and invisible voices sang exultantly as the nightly entourage plunged over the edge and floated gracefully down past glittering clouds and silvery coruscations endlessly down the horsemen floated their charges pawing the aether as if galloping over golden sands and then the luminous vapours spread apart to reveal a greater brightness the brightness of the city cellar face and the sea coast beyond and the snowy peak overlooking the sea and the gaily painted galleys that sail out of the harbor toward distant regions where the sea meets the sky and Koranas reigned thereafter over Uthnargai and all the neighboring regions of dream and held his court alternately in cellar face and in the cloud-fashioned seranian he reigns there still and will reign happily forever though below the cliffs at Innsmouth this channel tides played mockingly with the body of a tramp who had stumbled through the half-deserted village of dawn played mockingly and casted upon the rocks by ivy-covered Trevor Towers where a notably fat and especially offensive millionaire brewer enjoys the purchased atmosphere of extinct nobility End of Cellar Face Recording by Garrett Fitzgerald Brewer, Maine 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 Joseph Canna The Crawling Chaos by H.P. Lovecraft Of the pleasures and pains of opium much has been written The ecstasies and horrors of dequancy and the paradise artificialus of Baudelaire are preserved and interpreted with an art which makes them immortal and the world knows well the beauty, the terror, and the mystery of those obscure realms into which the inspired dreamers transported But much, as has been told, no man has yet dared intimate the nature of the phantasms thus unfolded to the mind or hint at the direction of the unheard of roads along whose ornate and exotic course the partaker of the drug is so irresistibly born Dequancy was drawn back into Asia, a teaming land of nebulous shadows whose hideous antiquity is so impressive that the vast age of the race and name overpowers the sense of youth in the individual But farther than that he dared not go Those who have gone farther seldom returned and even when they have, they have been either silent or quite mad I took opium once In the year of the plague, when the doctors sought to deaden the agonies they could not cure there was an overdose My physician was worn out with horror and exertion and I traveled very far indeed In the end I returned and lived but my nights are filled with strange memories nor have I permitted a doctor to give me opium again The pain and pounding in my head had been quite unendurable when the drug was administered of the future I had no heed to escape, whether by cure, unconsciousness, or death was all that concerned me I was partly delirious so that it is hard to place the exact moment of transition but I think the effect must have begun shortly before the pounding ceased to be painful As I have said there was an overdose so my reactions were probably far from normal The sensation of falling, curiously disassociated from the idea of gravity or direction, was paramount Though there was subsidiary impressions of unseen throngs and inal-calculable profusion throngs of infinitely diverse nature, but all more or less related to me Sometimes it seemed less as though I were falling than as though the universe or the ages were falling past me Suddenly my pain ceased and I began to associate the pounding with an external rather than internal force The falling had ceased also, giving place to a sensation of uneasy temporary rest And when I listened closely, I fancy the pounding was that of the vast inscrutable sea as its sinister colossal breakers lacerated some desolate shore after a storm of titanic magnitude Then I opened my eyes For a moment my surroundings seemed confused like a projected image hopelessly out of focus but gradually I realized my solitary presence in a strange and beautiful room lighted by many windows Of the exact nature of the apartment I could form no idea for my thoughts were still from settled but I noticed van-colored rugs and draperies elaborately fashioned tables, chairs, ottomans, and divans and delicate vases and ornaments which conveyed a suggestion of the exotic without actually being alien These things I noticed, yet they were not long uppermost in my mind Slowly but inexorably crawling upon my consciousness and rising above every other impression came a dizzying fear of the unknown a fear of the greater because I could not analyze it and seeming to concern a stealthily approaching menace not death, but some nameless unheard of thing inexpressibly more ghastly and abhorrent and shrink from glancing through the arched lattice windows that open so bewilderingly on every hand perceiving shutters attached to these windows I closed them all averting my eyes from the exterior as I did so then employing a flint and steel which I found on one of the small tables I lit many candles reposing the walls and arabesque sconces the added sense of security brought by closed shutters and artificial light calmed my nerves to some degree but I could not shut out the monotonous pounding now that I was calmer the sound became as fascinated as it was fearful I felt a contradictory desire to seek out its source despite my still powerful shrinking opening a portiere on the side of the room nearing the pounding I beheld a small and richly draped corridor ending in a cavern door and large Oreo windows to this window I was irresistibly drawn though my ill-defined apprehensions seemed almost equally bent on holding me back as I approached it I could see a chaotic roll of waters in the distance then as I attained it and glanced out on all sides the stupendous picture of my surroundings burst upon me with full and devastating force I beheld such a sight as I had never beheld before in which no living person can have seen, save in the delirium of fever or the inferno of opium the building stood on a narrow point of land or what was now a narrow point of land fully 300 feet above what must lately have been a seething vortex of mad water on either side of the house there was a newly washed out precipice of red earth whilst ahead of me the hideous waves were still rolling and frightfully eating away the land with ghastly monotony and deliberation out a mile or more their rows fell menacing breakers at least 50 feet in height and on the far horizon ghoulish black clouds of grotesque conchure were resting and brooding like unwholesome vultures the waves were dark and purplish, almost black and clutched at the yielding red mud of the bank as if it with uncouth greedy hands and could not but feel that some noxious marine mind had declared a war of extermination upon all the solid ground perhaps abetted by the angry sky recovering at length from the stupor into which this unnatural spectacle had thrown me I realized that my physical danger was acute even whilst I gazed the bank had lost many feet and it could not be long before the house would fall undermined into this awful pit of lashing waves accordingly I hastened to the opposite side of the edifice and finding a door emerged at once unlocking it after me with a curious key which had hung inside I now beheld more of the strange region about me and marked a singular division which seemed to exist in the hostile ocean infirmament on each side of the jutting promontory different conditions held sway at my left as I faced inland was a gently heaving sea with great green waves rolling peacefully in under a brightly shining sun something about that sun's nature and position made me shudder but I could not tell then and could not tell now what it was at my right also was the sea but it was blue calm and only gently undulating while the sky above it was darker in the washed out bank more nearly white than reddish I now turned my attention to the land and found occasion for fresh surprise for the vegetation resembled nothing I had seen or read about it was apparently tropical or at least subtropical a conclusion borne out of the intense heat of the air sometimes I thought I could trace strange neologies on the floor of my native land fancying the well-known plants and shrubs might assume such forms under the radical change of climate but that gigantic and omnipresent palm trees were plainly foreign the house I had just left was very small hardly more than a cottage but its material was evidently marble and its architecture was weird and composite involving a quaint fusion of western and eastern forms at the corners were Corinthian columns where the red tile roof was like that of a Chinese pagoda from the door inland there stretched a path of singularly white sand about four feet wide and lined either side with strange palms unidentifiable flowering shrubs and plants it lay toward the side of the promontory where the sea was blue and the bank rather whitish down this path I felt impelled to flee as if pursued by some malignant spirit from the pounding ocean at first it was slightly uphill then I reached a gentle crest behind me I saw the scene I had left the entire point with the cottage and black water with the green sea on one side and the blue sea on the other and a curse unnamed and unnameable lowering overall I never saw it again and often wonder after this last look I strode ahead and surveyed the inland panorama before me the path as I have intimated ran along the right hand shore as one went inland ahead and to the left I now view the magnificent valley facing thousands of acres and covered with a swaying growth of tropical grass higher than my head almost at the limit of vision was a colossal palm tree which seemed to fascinate and beckon me by this time wonder and escape from the imperiled peninsula had largely dissipated my fear but as I paused and sank fatigued to the path idly digging with my hands into the warm whitish golden sand a new and acute sense of danger seized me some terror and the swishing tall grass seemed to added to that of the diabolically pounding sea and I started up crying in disjointly tiger? tiger is it tiger beast? beast is it beast that I am afraid of? my mind wandered back to the ancient classical story of tigers which I had read I stroved to recall the author but had difficulty then in the midst of my fear I remembered that the tale was by Rudyard Kipling in order to the grotesaness of deeming him in an ancient author occur to me I wished for the volume containing this story and had almost started back toward the doom cottage to procure it but my better sense and the lure of the palm prevented me whether or not I could have resisted the backward beckoning without the counter-fascination of this vast palm tree I do not know this attraction was now dominant and I left the path and crawled on hands and knees down the valley slope despite my fears of the grass and of the serpents it might contain I resolved to fight for life and reason as long as possible against all menaces of land or sea though I sometimes fear defeat as the maddening swish of the uncanny grasses join the still audible and irritating pounding of the distant breakers I would frequently pause and put my hands to my ears for relief but could never quite shut out the detestable sound it was as it seemed to me only after ages that I finally dragged myself to the beckoning palm tree quietly quiet beneath its protecting shade there now ensued a series of incidents which transported me to the opposite extremes of ecstasy and horror incidents which I trembled to recall and dare not seek to interpret no sooner had I crawled beneath the overhanging foliage of the palm then there dropped from its branches a young child of such beauty as I never beheld before though ragged and dusty this being bore the features of a fawn or demigod it seemed almost to fuse a radiance in the dense shadow of the tree it smiled and extended its hand but before I could arise and speak I heard in the upper air the exquisite melody of singing notes high and low blend with the sublime and ethereal harmoniousness the sun had by this time sunk below the horizon and in the twilight I saw an orial of lambent light encircled the child's head then in a tone of silver it addressed me it is the end they have come down through the gloaming from the stars now all is over and beyond the Aeronurian streams we shall dwell blissfully in Tello as a child spoke I beheld a soft radiance through the leaves of the palm tree and rising greeted a pair whom I knew to be the chief singers among those I had heard a god and goddess they must have been for such beauty is not mortal and they took my hand saying come child you have heard the voices in all as well in Tello beyond the Milky Way and in the Aeronurian streams are cities all of amber and calcity and upon their domes of many facets glisten the images of strange and beautiful stars under the ivory bridges of Tello flow rivers of liquid gold bearing the pleasure barges bound for blasphemy Scytherian of the Seven Sons and in Tello in a Scytherian abide only youth beauty and pleasure nor are any sounds heard save of laughter song and the loot only the gods dwell in Tello of the golden rivers but among them shout thou dwell as I listened and chanted I suddenly became aware of the change in my surroundings the palm tree so lately overshadowed my exhausting form was now some distance to my left and considerably below me I was obviously floating in the atmosphere companion not only by the strange child in the radiant pair but by constantly increasing throng of half luminous fine crowned youths and maidens with wind-blown hair and joyful countenance we slowly ascended together as if born on a fragrant breeze which blew not from the earth but from the golden nebula and the child whispered in my ear that I must look always upward to the pathways of light and never backward to the sphere I had just left the youths and maidens now chanted malifluous choreambics to the accompaniment of lutes and I felt enveloped in a peace and happiness more profound than any I had in life imagined when the intrusion of a single sound altered my destiny and shattered my soul through the ravishing strains of the singers and the lutenists as if in mocking demonic concord throbbed from gulfs below the damnable and detestable pounding of that hideous ocean as those blackbreakers beat their message into my ears I forgot the words of the child and looked back down upon the doomed scene from which I thought I had escaped and come through the ether I saw the accursed earth slowly turning ever turning with angry and tempestuous seas gnawing at the wild desolate shores and dashing foam against the tottering towers of a deserted cities and under a ghastly moon and their gleam sights I could never describe sights I could never forget deserts of corpse like clay and jungles of ruin and decadence were once stretched the populous plains and villages of my native land and maelstroms of frothing ocean and temples of my forefathers round the northern pole streamed a morass of noisome growths and myasmo vapors hissing before the onslaught of the ever-mounting waves that curled and fretted from the shuttering deep then a rending report claved the night and athwart the desert of deserts appeared a smoking rift still the black ocean foamed and gnawed eating away the desert on either side as the rift in the center widened and widened there was now no land left but the desert and still the fuming ocean ate and ate all at once I thought even the pounding sea seemed afraid of something afraid of dark gods of the inner earth that are greater than the evil gods of water but even if it was it could not turn back and the desert had suffered too much from those nightmare waves to help them now so the ocean ate the last of the land and poured into the smoking gulf thereby giving up all it had ever conquered from the newly flooded lands that flowed again uncovering death and decay and from its ancient immemorial bed it trickled loathomely uncovering knighted secrets of the years when time was young and the gods unborn above the waves rose weedy remembered spires the moon laid pale lilies of light on dead London and Paris stood from its damp grade to be sacrificed with star dust then rose spires and monoliths that were weedy but not remembered terrible spires and monoliths of land that men never knew were lands there was not any pounding now but only the unearthly roaring and hissing of waters tumbling into the rift the smoke of that rift had changed to steam and almost hid the world as it grew denser and denser it seared my face and hands and when I looked to see how it affected my companions I found they had all disappeared then very suddenly it ended I knew no more until I awakened upon a bed of convalescence as the cloud of steam from the plutonic gulf finally concealed the entire surface from my sight all the firmament shrieked at a sudden agony of mad reverberations which shook the trembling ether and one delirious flash and burst it happened one blinding deafening holocaust fire smoke and thunder that dissolved the wan moon and it sped outward to the void and when the smoke cleared and I sought to look upon the earth I beheld against a background of cold humorous stars only the dying sun and the pale mournful planets searching for their sister End of The Crawling Chaos by H. P. Lovecraft Recording by Joseph Canna, Chicago, Illinois