The Shunned House
Page 7
cellar door of the shunned house inBenefit Street. After that I tried to sleep; and failing, passed thehours in reading and in the composition of inane verses to counteract mymood.
At eleven a. m. the next day I commenced digging. It was sunny weather,and I was glad of that. I was still alone, for as much as I feared theunknown horror I sought, there was more fear in the thought of tellinganybody. Later I told Harris only through sheer necessity, and becausehe had heard odd tales from old people which disposed him ever so littletoward belief. As I turned up the stinking black earth in front of thefireplace, my spade causing a viscous yellow ichor to ooze from thewhite fungi which it severed, I trembled at the dubious thoughts of whatI might uncover. Some secrets of inner earth are not good for mankind,and this seemed to me one of them.
My hand shook perceptibly, but still I delved; after a while standing inthe large hole I had made. With the deepening of the hole, which wasabout six feet square, the evil smell increased; and I lost all doubt ofmy imminent contact with the hellish thing whose emanations had cursedthe house for over a century and a half. I wondered what it would looklike--what its form and substance would be, and how big it might havewaxed through long ages of life-sucking. At length I climbed out of thehole and dispersed the heaped-up dirt, then arranging the great carboysof acid around and near two sides, so that when necessary I might emptythem all down the aperture in quick succession. After that I dumpedearth only along the other two sides; working more slowly and donning mygas-mask as the smell grew. I was nearly unnerved at my proximity to anameless thing at the bottom of a pit.
Suddenly my spade struck something softer than earth. I shuddered, andmade a motion as if to climb out of the hole, which was now as deep asmy neck. Then courage returned, and I scraped away more dirt in thelight of the electric torch I had provided. The surface I uncovered wasfishy and glassy--a kind of semi-putrid congealed jelly with suggestionsof translucency. I scraped further, and saw that it had form. There wasa rift where a part of the substance was folded over. The exposed areawas huge and roughly cylindrical; like a mammoth soft blue-whitestovepipe doubled in two, its largest part some two feet in diameter.Still more I scraped, and then abruptly I leaped out of the hole andaway from the filthy thing; frantically unstopping and tilting the heavycarboys, and precipitating their corrosive contents one after anotherdown that charnel gulf and upon the unthinkable abnormality whose titan_elbow_ I had seen.
* * * * *
The blinding maelstrom of greenish-yellow vapor which surgedtempestuously up from that hole as the floods of acid descended, willnever leave my memory. All along the hill people tell of the yellow day,when virulent and horrible fumes arose from the factory waste dumped inthe Providence River, but I know how mistaken they are as to the source.They tell, too, of the hideous roar which at the same time came fromsome disordered water-pipe or gas main underground--but again I couldcorrect them if I dared. It was unspeakably shocking, and I do not seehow I lived through it. I did faint after emptying the fourth carboy,which I had to handle after the fumes had begun to penetrate my mask;but when I recovered I saw that the hole was emitting no fresh vapors.
The two remaining carboys I emptied down without particular result, andafter a time I felt it safe to shovel the earth back into the pit. Itwas twilight before I was done, but fear had gone out of the place. Thedampness was less fetid, and all the strange fungi had withered to akind of harmless grayish powder which blew ash-like along the floor. Oneof earth's nethermost terrors had perished for ever; and if there be ahell, it had received at last the demon soul of an unhallowed thing. Andas I patted down the last spadeful of mold, I shed the first of the manytears with which I have paid unaffected tribute to my beloved uncle'smemory.
The next spring no more pale grass and strange weeds came up in theshunned house's terraced garden, and shortly afterward Carrington Harrisrented the place. It is still spectral, but its strangeness fascinatesme, and I shall find mixed with my relief a queer regret when it is torndown to make way for a tawdry shop or vulgar apartment building. Thebarren old trees in the yard have begun to bear small, sweet apples, andlast year the birds nested in their gnarled boughs.
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from _Weird Tales_ October 1937. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.