H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction

by H. P. Lovecraft

  “I am writing this—and am going to keep writing this—because I want people to know the truth after I am gone. Also, I am afraid I shall really go mad if I don’t set things down in plain black and white. Everything is going against me, and if it keeps up I shall have to use the secrets in the Book and call in certain Powers. Three months ago that sculptor Arthur Wheeler came to Mountain Top, and they sent him up to me because I am the only man in the place who knows anything except farming, hunting, and fleecing summer boarders. The fellow seemed to be interested in what I had to say, and made a deal to stop here for $13.00 a week with meals. I gave him the back room beside the kitchen for his lumps of stone and his chiselling, and arranged with Nate Williams to tend to his rock blasting and haul his big pieces with a drag and yoke of oxen.

  “That was three months ago. Now I know why that cursed son of hell took so quick to the place. It wasn’t my talk at all, but the looks of my wife Rose, that is Osborne Chandler’s oldest girl. She is sixteen years younger than I am, and is always casting sheep’s eyes at the fellows in town. But we always managed to get along fine enough till this dirty rat shewed up, even if she did balk at helping me with the Rites on Roodmas and Hallowmass. I can see now that Wheeler is working on her feelings and getting her so fond of him that she hardly looks at me, and I suppose he’ll try to elope with her sooner or later.

  “But he works slow like all sly, polished dogs, and I’ve got plenty of time to think up what to do about it. They don’t either of them know I suspect anything, but before long they’ll both realise it doesn’t pay to break up a Van Kauran’s home. I promise them plenty of novelty in what I’ll do.

  “Nov. 25—Thanksgiving Day! That’s a pretty good joke! But at that I’ll have something to be thankful for when I finish what I’ve started. No question but that Wheeler is trying to steal my wife. For the time being, though, I’ll let him keep on being a star boarder. Got the Book of Eibon down from Uncle Hendrik’s old trunk in the attic last week, and am looking up something good which won’t require sacrifices that I can’t make around here. I want something that’ll finish these two sneaking traitors, and at the same time get me into no trouble. If it has a twist of drama in it, so much the better. I’ve thought of calling in the emanation of Yoth, but that needs a child’s blood and I must be careful about the neighbours. The Green Decay looks promising, but that would be a bit unpleasant for me as well as for them. I don’t like certain sights and smells.

  “Dec. 10—Eureka! I’ve got the very thing at last! Revenge is sweet—and this is the perfect climax! Wheeler, the sculptor—this is too good! Yes, indeed, that damned sneak is going to produce a statue that will sell quicker than any of the things he’s been carving these past weeks! A realist, eh? Well—the new statuary won’t lack any realism! I found the formula in a manuscript insert opposite page 679 of the Book. From the handwriting I judge it was put there by my great-grandfather Bareut Picterse Van Kauran—the one who disappeared from New Paltz in 1839. Iä! Shub-Niggurath! The Goat with a Thousand Young!

  “To be plain, I’ve found a way to turn those wretched rats into stone statues. It’s absurdly simple, and really depends more on plain chemistry than on the Outer Powers. If I can get hold of the right stuff I can brew a drink that’ll pass for home-made wine, and one swig ought to finish any ordinary being short of an elephant. What it amounts to is a kind of petrification infinitely speeded up. Shoots the whole system full of calcium and barium salts and replaces living cells with mineral matter so fast that nothing can stop it. It must have been one of those things great-grandfather got at the Great Sabbat on Sugar-Loaf in the Catskills. Queer things used to go on there. Seems to me I heard of a man in New Paltz—Squire Hasbrouck—turned to stone or something like that in 1834. He was an enemy of the Van Kaurans. First thing I must do is order the five chemicals I need from Albany and Montreal. Plenty of time later to experiment. When everything is over I’ll round up all the statues and sell them as Wheeler’s work to pay for his overdue board bill! He always was a realist and an egoist—wouldn’t it be natural for him to make a self-portrait in stone, and to use my wife for another model—as indeed he’s really been doing for the past fortnight? Trust the dull public not to ask what quarry the queer stone came from!

  “Dec. 25—Christmas. Peace on earth, and so forth! These two swine are goggling at each other as if I didn’t exist. They must think I’m deaf, dumb, and blind! Well, the barium sulphate and calcium chloride came from Albany last Thursday, and the acids, catalytics, and instruments are due from Montreal any day now. The mills of the gods—and all that! I’ll do the work in Allen’s Cave near the lower wood lot, and at the same time will be openly making some wine in the cellar here. There ought to be some excuse for offering a new drink—though it won’t take much planning to fool those moonstruck nincompoops. The trouble will be to make Rose take wine, for she pretends not to like it. Any experiments that I make on animals will be down at the cave, and nobody ever thinks of going there in winter. I’ll do some wood-cutting to account for my time away. A small load or two brought in will keep him off the track.

  “Jan. 20—It’s harder work than I thought. A lot depends on the exact proportions. The stuff came from Montreal, but I had to send again for some better scales and an acetylene lamp. They’re getting curious down at the village. Wish the express office weren’t in Steenwyck’s store. Am trying various mixtures on the sparrows that drink and bathe in the pool in front of the cave—when it’s melted. Sometimes it kills them, but sometimes they fly away. Clearly, I’ve missed some important reaction. I suppose Rose and that upstart are making the most of my absence—but I can afford to let them. There can be no doubt of my success in the end.

  “Feb. 11—Have got it at last! Put a fresh lot in the little pool—which is well melted today—and the first bird that drank toppled over as if he were shot. I picked him up a second later, and he was a perfect piece of stone, down to the smallest claws and feather. Not a muscle changed since he was poised for drinking, so he must have died the instant any of the stuff got to his stomach. I didn’t expect the petrification to come so soon. But a sparrow isn’t a fair test of the way the thing would act with a large animal. I must get something bigger to try it on, for it must be the right strength when I give it to those swine. I guess Rose’s dog Rex will do. I’ll take him along the next time and say a timber wolf got him. She thinks a lot of him, and I shan’t be sorry to give her something to sniffle over before the big reckoning. I must be careful where I keep this book. Rose sometimes pries around in the queerest places.

  “Feb. 15—Getting warm! Tried it on Rex and it worked like a charm with only double the strength. I fixed the rock pool and got him to drink. He seemed to know something queer had hit him, for he bristled and growled, but he was a piece of stone before he could turn his head. The solution ought to have been stronger, and for a human being ought to be very much stronger. I think I’m getting the hang of it now, and am about ready for that cur Wheeler. The stuff seems to be tasteless, but to make sure I’ll flavour it with the new wine I’m making up at the house. Wish I were surer about the tastelessness, so I could give it to Rose in water without trying to urge wine on her. I’ll get the two separately—Wheeler out here and Rose at home. Have just fixed a strong solution and cleared away all strange objects in front of the cave. Rose whimpered like a puppy when I told her a wolf had got Rex, and Wheeler gurgled a lot of sympathy.

  “March 1—Iä R’lyeh! Praise the Lord Tsathoggua! I’ve got the son of hell at last! Told him I’d found a new ledge of friable limestone down this way, and he trotted after me like the yellow cur he is! I had the wine-flavoured stuff in a bottle on my hip, and he was glad of a swig when we got here. Gulped it down without a wink—and dropped in his tracks before you could count three. But he knows I’ve had my vengeance, for I made a face at him that he couldn’t miss. I saw the look of understanding come into his face as he keeled over. In two minutes he was solid stone.

  “I
dragged him into the cave and put Rex’s figure outside again. That bristling dog shape will help to scare people off. It’s getting time for the spring hunters, and besides, there’s a damned ‘lunger’ named Jackson in a cabin over the hill who does a lot of snooping around in the snow. I wouldn’t want my laboratory and storeroom to be found just yet! When I got home I told Rose that Wheeler had found a telegram at the village summoning him suddenly home. I don’t know whether she believed me or not but it doesn’t matter. For form’s sake, I packed Wheeler’s things and took them down the hill, telling her I was going to ship them after him. I put them in the dry well at the abandoned Rapelye place. Now for Rose!

  “March 3—Can’t get Rose to drink any wine. I hope that stuff is tasteless enough to go unnoticed in water. I tried it in tea and coffee, but it forms a precipitate and can’t be used that way. If I use it in water I’ll have to cut down the dose and trust to a more gradual action. Mr. and Mrs. Hoog dropped in this noon, and I had hard work keeping the conversation away from Wheeler’s departure. It mustn’t get around that we say he was called back to New York when everybody at the village knows no telegram came, and that he didn’t leave on the bus. Rose is acting damned queer about the whole thing. I’ll have to pick a quarrel with her and keep her locked in the attic. The best way is to try to make her drink that doctored wine—and if she does give in, so much better.

  “March 7—Have started in on Rose. She wouldn’t drink the wine so I took a whip to her and drove her up in the attic. She’ll never come down alive. I pass her a platter of salty bread and salt meat, and a pail of slightly doctored water, twice a day. The salt food ought to make her drink a lot, and it can’t be long before the action sets in. I don’t like the way she shouts about Wheeler when I’m at the door. The rest of the time she is absolutely silent.

  “March 9—It’s damned peculiar how slow that stuff is in getting hold of Rose. I’ll have to make it stronger—probably she’ll never taste it with all the salt I’ve been feeding her. Well, if it doesn’t get her there are plenty of other ways to fall back on. But I would like to carry this neat statue plan through! Went to the cave this morning and all is well there. I sometimes hear Rose’s steps on the ceiling overhead, and I think they’re getting more and more dragging. The stuff is certainly working, but it’s too slow. Not strong enough. From now on I’ll rapidly stiffen up the dose.

  “March 11—It is very queer. She is still alive and moving. Tuesday night I heard her piggling with a window, so went up and gave her a rawhiding. She acts more sullen than frightened, and her eyes look swollen. But she could never drop to the ground from that height and there’s nowhere she could climb down. I have had dreams at night, for her slow, dragging pacing on the floor above gets on my nerves. Sometimes I think she works at the lock on the door.

  “March 15—Still alive, despite all the strengthening of the dose. There’s something queer about it. She crawls now, and doesn’t pace very often. But the sound of her crawling is horrible. She rattles the windows, too, and fumbles with the door. I shall have to finish her off with the rawhide if this keeps up. I’m getting very sleepy. Wonder if Rose has got on her guard somehow. But she must be drinking the stuff. This sleepiness is abnormal—I think the strain is telling on me. I’m sleepy. . . .”

  (Here the cramped handwriting trails out in a vague scrawl, giving place to a note in a firmer, evidently feminine handwriting, indicative of great emotional tension.)

  “March 16—4 a.m.—This is added by Rose C. Morris, about to die. Please notify my father, Osborne E. Chandler, Route 2, Mountain Top, N.Y. I have just read what the beast has written. I felt sure he had killed Arthur Wheeler, but did not know how till I read this terrible notebook. Now I know what I escaped. I noticed the water tasted queer, so took none of it after the first sip. I threw it all out of the window. That one sip has half paralysed me, but I can still get about. The thirst was terrible, but I ate as little as possible of the salty food and was able to get a little water by setting some old pans and dishes that were up here under places where the roof leaked.

  “There were two great rains. I thought he was trying to poison me, though I didn’t know what the poison was like. What he has written about himself and me is a lie. We were never happy together and I think I married him only under one of those spells that he was able to lay on people. I guess he hypnotised both my father and me, for he was always hated and feared and suspected of dark dealings with the devil. My father once called him The Devil’s Kin, and he was right.

  “No one will ever know what I went through as his wife. It was not simply common cruelty—though God knows he was cruel enough, and beat me often with a leather whip. It was more—more than anyone in this age can ever understand. He was a monstrous creature, and practiced all sorts of hellish ceremonies handed down by his mother’s people. He tried to make me help in the rites—and I don’t dare even hint what they were. I would not, so he beat me. It would be blasphemy to tell what he tried to make me do. I can say he was a murderer even then, for I know what he sacrificed one night on Thunder Hill. He was surely the Devil’s Kin. I tried four times to run away, but he always caught and beat me. Also, he had a sort of hold over my mind, and even over my father’s mind.

  “About Arthur Wheeler I have nothing to be ashamed of. We did come to love each other, but only in an honourable way. He gave me the first kind treatment I had ever had since leaving my father’s, and meant to help me get out of the clutches of that fiend. He had several talks with my father, and was going to help me get out west. After my divorce we would have been married.

  “Ever since that brute locked me in the attic I have planned to get out and finish him. I always kept the poison overnight in case I could escape and find him asleep and give it to him somehow. At first he waked easily when I worked on the lock of the door and tested the conditions at the windows, but later he began to get more tired and sleep sounder. I could always tell by his snoring when he was asleep.

  “Tonight he was so fast asleep I forced the lock without waking him. It was hard work getting downstairs with my partial paralysis, but I did. I found him here with the lamp burning—asleep at the table, where he had been writing in this book. In the corner was the long rawhide whip he had so often beaten me with. I used it to tie him to the chair so he could not move a muscle. I lashed his neck so that I could pour anything down his throat without his resisting.

  “He waked up just as I was finishing and I guess he saw right off that he was done for. He shouted frightful things and tried to chant mystical formulas, but I choked him off with a dish towel from the sink. Then I saw this book he had been writing in, and stopped to read it. The shock was terrible, and I almost fainted four or five times. My mind was not ready for such things. After that I talked to that fiend for two or three hours steady. I told him everything I had wanted to tell him through all the years I had been his slave, and a lot of other things that had to do with what I had read in this awful book.

  “He looked almost purple when I was through, and I think he was half delirious. Then I got a funnel from the cupboard and jammed it into his mouth after taking out the gag. He knew what I was going to do, but was helpless. I had brought down the pail of poisoned water, and without a qualm, I poured a good half of it into the funnel.

  “It must have been a very strong dose, for almost at once I saw that brute begin to stiffen and turn a dull stony grey. In ten minutes I knew he was solid stone. I could not bear to touch him, but the tin funnel clinked horribly when I pulled it out of his mouth. I wish I could have given that Kin of the Devil a more painful, lingering death, but surely this was the most appropriate he could have had.

  “There is not much more to say. I am half-paralysed, and with Arthur murdered I have nothing to live for. I shall make things complete by drinking the rest of the poison after placing this book where it will be found. In a quarter of an hour I shall be a stone statue. My only wish is to be buried beside the statue that was Arthur—when it
is found in that cave where the fiend left it. Poor trusting Rex ought to lie at our feet. I do not care what becomes of the stone devil tied in the chair. . . .”

  The Horror in the Museum

  Written in 1932 with Hazel Heald

  Originally published in Weird Tales, July 1933

  It was languid curiosity which first brought Stephen Jones to Rogers’ Museum. Someone had told him about the queer underground place in Southwark Street across the river, where waxen things so much more horrible than the worst effigies at Madame Tussaud’s were shewn, and he had strolled in one April day to see how disappointing he would find it. Oddly, he was not disappointed. There was something different and distinctive here, after all. Of course, the usual gory commonplaces were present—Landru, Dr. Crippen, Madame Demers, Rizzio, Lady Jane Grey, endless maimed victims of war and revolution, and monsters like Gilles de Rais and Marquis de Sade—but there were other things which had made him breathe faster and stay till the ringing of the closing bell. The man who had fashioned this collection could be no ordinary mountebank. There was imagination—even a kind of diseased genius—in some of this stuff.

  Later he had learned about George Rogers. The man had been on the Tussaud staff, but some trouble had developed which led to his discharge. There were aspersions on his sanity and tales of his crazy forms of secret worship—though latterly his success with his own basement museum had dulled the edge of some criticisms while sharpening the insidious point of others. Teratology and the iconography of nightmare were his hobbies, and even he had had the prudence to screen off some of his worst effigies in a special alcove for adults only. It was this alcove which had fascinated Jones so much. There were lumpish hybrid things which only fantasy could spawn, moulded with devilish skill, and coloured in a horribly life-like fashion.