The Outsider, a short story by HP Lovecraft

THE OUTSIDER

By H. P. Lovecraft

That night the Baron dreamt of many a wo;

  And all his warrior-guests, with shade and form

  Of witch, and demon, and large coffin-worm,

  Were long be-nightmared.

                                                         Keats

Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and

sadness.  Wretched is he who looks back upon lone hours in vast and

dismal chambers with brown hangings and maddening rows of antique

books, or upon awed watches in twilight groves of grotesque,

gigantic, and vine-encumbered trees that silently wave twisted

branches far aloft.  Such a lot the gods gave to me--to me; the

dazed, the disappointed; the barren, the broken.  And yet I am

strangely content and cling desperately to those sere memories, when

my mind momentarily threatens to reach beyond to _the other_.

I know not where I was born, save that the castle was infinitely old

and infinitely horrible, full of dark passages and having high

ceilings where the eye could find only cobwebs and shadows.  The

stones in the crumbling corridors seemed always hideously damp; there

was an accursed smell everywhere, as of the piled-up corpses of dead

generations.  It was never light, so that I used sometimes to light

candles and gaze steadily at them for relief, nor was there any sun

outdoors, since the terrible trees grew high above the topmost

accessible tower.  There was one black tower which reached above the

trees into the unknown outer sky, but that was partly ruined and

could not be ascended save by a well-nigh impossible climb up the

sheer wall, stone by stone.

I must have lived years in this place, but I cannot measure the time.

Beings must have cared for my needs, yet I can not recall any person

except myself, or anything alive but the noiseless rats and bats and

spiders.  I think that whoever nursed me must have been shockingly

aged, since my first conception of a living person was that of

something mockingly like myself, yet distorted, shriveled, and

decaying like the castle.  To me there was nothing grotesque in the

bones and skeletons that strewed some of the stone crypts deep down

among the foundations.  I fantastically associated these things with

everyday events, and thought them more natural than the colored

pictures of living beings which I found in many of the moldy books.

From such books I learned all that I know.  No teacher urged or

guided me, and I do not recall hearing any human voice in all those

years--not even my own; for although I had read of speech, I had

never thought to try to speak aloud.  My aspect was a matter equally

unthought of, for there were no mirrors in the castle, and I merely

regarded myself by instinct as akin to the youthful figures I saw

drawn and painted in the books.  I felt conscious of youth because I

remembered so little.

Outside, across the putrid moat and under the dark mute trees, I

would often lie and dream for hours about what I read in the books;

and would longingly picture myself amidst gay crowds in the sunny

world beyond the endless forest.  Once I tried to escape from the

forest, but as I went farther from the castle the shade grew denser

and the air was filled with brooding fear; so I ran frantically back

lest I lose my way in a labyrinth of nighted silence.

So through endless twilights I dreamed and waited, though I knew not

what I waited for.  Then in the shadowy solitude my longing for light

grew so frantic that I could rest no more, and I lifted entreating

hands to the single black ruined tower that reached above the forest

into the unknown outer sky.  And at last I resolved to scale that

tower, fall though I might; since it were better to glimpse the sky

and perish, than to live without ever beholding day.

In the dank twilight I climbed the worn and aged stone stairs till I

reached the level where they ceased, and thereafter clung perilously

to small footholds leading upward.  Ghastly and terrible was that

dead, stairless cylinder of rock; black, ruined, and deserted, and

sinister with startled bats whose wings made no noise.  But more

ghastly and terrible still was the slowness of my progress; for climb

as I might, the darkness overhead grew no thinner, and a new chill as

of haunted and venerable mold assailed me.  I shivered as I wondered

why I did not reach the light, and would have looked down had I

dared.  I fancied that night had come suddenly upon me, and vainly

groped with one free hand for a window embrasure, that I might peer

out and above, and try to judge the height I had attained.

All at once, after an infinity of awesome, sightless crawling up that

concave and desperate precipice, I felt my head touch a solid thing,

and I knew I must have gained the roof, or at least some kind of

floor.  In the darkness I raised my free hand and tested the barrier,

finding it stone and immovable.  Then came a deadly circuit of the

tower, clinging to whatever holds the slimy wall could give; till

finally my testing hand found the barrier yielding, and I turned

upward again, pushing the slab or door with my head as I used both

hands in my fearful ascent.

There was no light revealed above, and as my hands went higher I knew

that my climb was for the nonce ended; since the slab was the

trap-door of an aperture leading to a level stone surface of greater

circumference than the lower tower, no doubt the floor of some lofty

and capacious observation chamber.  I crawled through carefully, and

tried to prevent the heavy slab from falling back into place, but

failed in the latter attempt.  As I lay exhausted on the stone floor

I heard the eery echoes of its fall, but hoped when necessary to pry

it up again.

Believing I was now at a prodigious height, far above the accursed

branches of the wood, I dragged myself up from the floor and fumbled

about for windows, that I might look for the first time upon the sky,

and the moon and stars of which I had read.  But on every hand I was

disappointed; since all that I found were vast shelves of marble,

bearing odious oblong boxes of disturbing size.  More and more I

reflected; and wondered what hoary secrets might abide in this high

apartment so many eons cut off from the castle below.  Then

unexpectedly my hands came upon a doorway, where hung a portal of

stone, rough with strange chiseling.  Trying it, I found it locked;

and with a supreme burst of strength I overcame all obstacles and

dragged it open inward.  As I did so there came to me the purest

ecstasy I have ever known; for shining tranquilly through an ornate

grating of iron, and down a short stone passageway of steps that

ascended from the newly-found doorway, was the radiant full moon,

which I had never before seen save in dreams and in vague visions I

dared not call memories.

Fancying now that I had attained the very pinnacle of the castle, I

commenced to rush up the few steps beyond, the door; but the sudden

veiling of the moon by a cloud caused me to stumble, and I felt my

way more slowly in the dark.  It was still very dark when I reached

the grating--which I tried carefully and found unlocked, but which I

did not open for fear of falling from the amazing height to which I

had climbed.  Then the moon came out.

Most demoniacal of all shocks is that of the abysmally unexpected and

grotesquely unbelievable.  Nothing I had before undergone could

compare in terror with what I now saw; with the bizarre marvels that

sight implied.  The sight itself was as simple as it was stupefying,

for it was merely this: instead of a dizzying prospect of tree tops

seen from a lofty eminence, there stretched around me on the level

through the grating nothing less than _the solid ground_, decked and

diversified by marble slabs and columns, and overshadowed by an

ancient stone church, whose ruined spire gleamed spectrally in the

moonlight.

Half unconscious, I opened the grating and staggered out upon the

white gravel path that stretched away in two directions.  My mind,

stunned and chaotic as it was, still held the frantic craving for

light; and not even the fantastic wonder which had happened could

stay my course.  I neither knew nor cared whether my experience was

insanity, dreaming, or magic; but was determined to gaze on

brilliance and gayety at any cost.

I knew not who I was or what I was, or what my surroundings might be;

though as I continued to stumble along I became conscious of a kind

of fearsome latent memory that made my progress not wholly

fortuitous.  I passed under an arch out of that region of slabs and

columns, and wandered through the open country; sometimes following

the visible road, but sometimes leaving it curiously to tread across

meadows where only occasional ruins bespoke the ancient presence of a

forgotten road.

Once I swam across a swift river where crumbling, mossy masonry told

of a bridge long vanished.

Over two hours must have passed before I reached what seemed to be my

goal, a venerable ivied castle in a thickly wooded park, maddeningly

familiar, yet full of perplexing strangeness to me.  I saw the moat

was filled in, and that some of the well-known towers were

demolished; whilst new wings existed to confuse the beholder.  But

what I observed with chief interest and delight were the open

windows--gorgeously ablaze with light and sending forth sound of the

gayest revelry.  Advancing to one of these I looked in and saw an

oddly dressed company, indeed; making merry, and speaking brightly to

one another.  I had never, seemingly, heard human speech before and

could guess only vaguely what was said.  Some of the faces seemed to

hold expressions that brought up incredibly remote recollections,

others were utterly alien.

I now stepped through the low window into the brilliantly lighted

room, stepping as I did so from my single bright moment of hope to my

blackest convulsion of despair and realization.  The nightmare was

quick to come, for as I entered, there occurred immediately one of

the most terrifying demonstrations I had ever conceived.

Scarcely had I crossed the sill when there descended upon the whole

company a sudden and unheralded fear of hideous intensity, distorting

every face and evoking the most horrible screams from nearly every

throat.

Flight was universal, and in the clamor and panic several fell in a

swoon and were dragged away by their madly fleeing companions.  Many

covered their eyes with their hands, and plunged blindly and

awkwardly in their race to escape, overturning furniture and

stumbling against the walls before they managed to reach one of the

many doors.

The cries were shocking; and as I stood in the brilliant apartment

alone and dazed, listening to their vanishing echoes, I trembled at

the thought of what might lurk near me unseen.  At a casual

inspection the room seemed deserted, but when I moved toward one of

the alcoves I thought I detected a presence there--a hint of motion

beyond the golden-arched doorway leading to another and somewhat

similar room.  As I approached the arch I began to perceive the

presence more clearly; and then, with the first and last sound I ever

uttered--a ghastly ululation that revolted me almost as poignantly as

its noxious cause--I beheld in full, frightful vividness the

inconceivable, indescribable, and unmentionable monstrosity which had

by its simple appearance changed a merry company to a herd of

delirious fugitives.

I can not even hint what it was like, for it was a compound of all

that is unclean, uncanny, unwelcome, abnormal, and detestable.  It

was the ghoulish shade of decay, antiquity, and desolation; the

putrid, dripping eidolon of unwholesome revelation, the awful baring

of that which the merciful earth should always hide.  God knows it

was not of this world--or no longer of this world--yet to my horror I

saw in its eaten-away and bone-revealing outlines a leering,

abhorrent travesty on the human shape; and in its moldy,

disintegrating apparel an unspeakable quality that chilled me even

more.

I was almost paralyzed, but not too much so to make a feeble effort

toward flight; a backward stumble which failed to break the spell in

which the nameless, voiceless monster held me.  My eyes, bewitched by

the glassy orbs which stared loathesomely into them, refused to

close; though they were mercifully blurred, and showed the terrible

object but indistinctly after the first shock.  I tried to raise my

hand to shut out the sight, yet so stunned were my nerves that my arm

could not fully obey my will.  The attempt, however, was enough to

disturb my balance; so that I had to stagger forward several steps to

avoid falling.  As I did so I became suddenly and agonizingly aware

of the nearness of the carrion thing, whose hideous hollow breathing

I half fancied I could hear.  Nearly mad, I found myself yet able to

throw out a hand to ward off the fetid apparition which pressed so

close; when in one cataclysmic second of cosmic nightmarishness and

hellish accident _my fingers touched the rotting outstretched paw of

the monster beneath the golden arch_.

I did not shriek, but all the fiendish ghouls that ride the

night-wind shrieked for me as in that second there crashed down upon

my mind a single and fleeting avalanche of soul-annihilating memory.

I knew in that second all that had been; I remembered beyond the

frightful castle and the trees, and recognized the altered edifice in

which I now stood; I recognized, most terrible of all, the unholy

abomination that stood leering before me as I withdrew my sullied

fingers from its own.

But in the cosmos there is balm as well as bitterness, and that balm

is nepenthe.

In the supreme horror of that second I forget what had horrified me,

and the burst of black memory vanished in a chaos of echoing images.

In a dream I fled from that haunted and accursed pile, and ran

swiftly and silently in the moonlight.

When I returned to the churchyard place of marble and went down the

steps I found the stone trap-door immovable; but I was not sorry, for

I had hated the antique castle and the trees.  Now I ride with the

mocking and friendly ghouls on the night-wind, and play by day

amongst the catacombs of Nephren-Ka in the sealed and unknown valley

of Hadoth by the Nile.  I know that light is not for me, save that of

the moon over the rock tombs of Neb, nor any gayety save the unnamed

feasts of Nitokris beneath the Great Pyramid; yet in my new wildness

and freedom I almost welcome the bitterness of alienage.

For although nepenthe has calmed me, I know always that I am an

outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still

men.  This I have known ever since I stretched out my fingers to the

abomination within the great gilded frame; stretched out my fingers

and touched _a cold and unyielding surface of polished glass_.