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John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC

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_.