“The room looked strange and vague in the dull glow of light from the circles, and I had a feeling that a taint of monstrosity was all about me in the air. I remembered what Bains had told me of the feeling he’d always had after coming up out of ‘that place’—as if some horrible atmosphere had followed him up and filled his bedroom. I understood him perfectly now—so much so that I had mentally used almost his exact phrase in explaining to myself what I felt.
“Turning round to speak to him I saw there was something curious about the centre of the ‘defense’.
“Now, before I tell you fellows any more I must explain that there are certain, what I call ‘focussing’, qualities about this new ‘defense’ I’ve been trying.
“The Sigsand manuscript puts it something like this: ‘Avoid diversities of colour; nor stand ye within the barrier of the colour lights; for in colour hath Satan a delight. Nor can he abide in the Deep if ye adventure against him armed with red purple. So be warned. Neither forget that in blue, which is God’s colour in the Heavens, ye have safety.’
“You see, from that statement in the Sigsand manuscript I got my first notion for this new ‘defense’ of mine. I have aimed to make it a ‘defense’ and yet have ‘focussing’ or ‘drawing’ qualities such as the Sigsand hints at. I have experimented enormously, and I’ve proved that reds and purples—the two extreme colours of the spectrum—are fairly dangerous; so much so that I suspect they actually ‘draw’ or ‘focus’ the outside forces. Any action or ‘meddling’ on the part of the experimentalist is tremendously enhanced in its effect if the action is taken within barriers composed of these colours, in certain proportions and tints.
“In the same way blue is distinctly a ‘general defense’. Yellow appears to be neutral, and green a wonderful protection within limits. Orange, as far as I can tell, is slightly attractive and indigo is dangerous by itself in a limited way, but in certain combinations with the other colours it becomes a very powerful ‘defense’. I’ve not yet discovered a tenth of the possibilities of these circles of mine. It’s a kind of colour organ upon which I seem to play a tune of colour combinations that can be either safe or infernal in its effects. You know I have a keyboard with a separate switch to each of the colour circles.
“Well, you fellows will understand now what I felt when I saw the curious appearance of the floor in the middle of the ‘defense’. It looked exactly as if a circular shadow lay, not just on the floor, but a few inches above it. The shadow seemed to deepen and blacken at the centre even while I watched it. It appeared to be spreading from the centre outwardly, and all the time it grew darker.
“I was watchful, and not a little puzzled; for the combination of lights that I had switched on approximated a moderately safe ‘general defense’. Understand, I had no intention of making a focus until I had learnt more. In fact, I meant that first investigation not to go beyond a tentative inquiry into the kind of thing I had got to deal with.
“I knelt down quickly and felt the floor with the palm of my hand, but it was quite normal to the feel, and that reassured me that there was no Saaaiti mischief abroad; for that is a form of danger which can involve, and make use of, the very material of the ‘defense’ itself. It can materialise out of everything except fire.
“As I knelt there I realised all at once that the legs of the table on which Bains lay were partly hidden in the ever-blackening shadow, and my hands seemed to grow vague as I felt at the floor.
“I got up and stood away a couple of feet so as to see the phenomenon from a little distance. It struck me then that there was something different about the table itself. It seemed unaccountably lower.
“ ‘It’s the shadow hiding the legs,’ I thought to myself. ‘This promises to be interesting; but I’d better not let things go too far.’
“I called out to Bains to stop thinking so hard. ‘Stop concentrating for a bit,’ I said; but he never answered, and it occurred to me suddenly that the table appeared to be still lower.
“ ‘Bains,’ I shouted, ‘stop thinking a moment.’ Then in a flash I realised it. ‘Wake up, man! Wake up!’ I cried.
“He had fallen over asleep—the very last thing he should have done; for it increased the danger twofold. No wonder I had been getting such good results! The poor beggar was worn out with his sleepless nights. He neither moved nor spoke as I strode across to him.
“ ‘Wake up!’ I shouted again, shaking him by the shoulder.
“My voice echoed uncomfortably round the big empty room; and Bains lay like a dead man.
“As I shook him again I noticed that I appeared to be standing up to my knees in the circular shadow. It looked like the mouth of a pit. My legs, from the knees downwards, were vague. The floor under my feet felt solid and firm when I stamped on it; but all the same I had a feeling that things were going a bit too far, so striding across to the switchboard I switched on the ‘full defense’.
“Stepping back quickly to the table I had a horrible and sickening shock. The table had sunk quite unmistakably. Its top was within a couple of feet of the floor, and the legs had that fore-shortened appearance that one sees when a stick is thrust into water. They looked vague and shadowy in the peculiar circle of dark shadows which had such an extraordinary resemblance to the black mouth of a pit. I could see only the top of the table plainly with Bains lying motionless on it; and the whole thing was going down, as I stared, into that black circle.”
3
“There was not a moment to lose, and like a flash I caught Bains round his neck and body and lifted him clean up into my arms off the table. And as I lifted him he grunted like a great swine in my ear.
“The sound sent a thrill of horrible funk through me. It was just as though I held a hog in my arms instead of a human. I nearly dropped him. Then I held his face to the light and stared down at him. His eyes were half opened, and he was looking at me apparently as if he saw me perfectly.
“Then he grunted again. I could feel his small body quiver with the sound.
“I called out to him. ‘Bains,’ I said, ‘can you hear me?’
“His eyes still gazed at me; and then, as we looked at each other, he grunted like a swine again.
“I let go one hand, and hit him across the cheek, a stinging slap.
“ ‘Wake up, Bains!’ I shouted. ‘Wake up!’ But I might have hit a corpse. He just stared up at me. And suddenly I bent lower and looked into his eyes more closely. I never saw such a fixed, intelligent, mad horror as I saw there. It knocked out all my sudden disgust. Can you understand?
“I glanced round quickly at the table. It stood there at its normal height; and, indeed, it was in every way normal. The curious shadow that had somehow suggested to me the black mouth of the pit had vanished. I felt relieved; for it seemed to me that I had entirely broken up any possibility of a partial ‘focus’ by means of the full ‘defense’ which I had switched on.
“I laid Bains on the floor, and stood up to look round and consider what was best to do. I dared not step outside of the barriers, until any ‘dangerous tensions’ there might be in the room had been dissipated. Nor was it wise, even inside the full ‘defense’, to have him sleeping the kind of sleep he was in; not without certain preparations having been made first, which I had not made.
“I can tell you, I felt beastly anxious. I glanced down at Bains, and had a sudden fresh shock; for the peculiar circular shadow was forming all round him again, where he lay on the floor. His hands and face showed curiously vague, and distorted, as they might have looked through a few inches of faintly stained water. But his eyes were somehow clear to see. They were staring up, mute and terrible, at me, through that horrible darkening shadow.
“I stopped, and with one quick lift, tore him up off the floor into my arms, and for the third time he grunted like a swine, there in my arms. It was damnable.
“I stood up, in the barrier, holding Bains, and looked about the room again; then back at the floor. The shadow was still thick round abo
ut my feet, and I stepped quickly across to the other side of the table. I stared at the shadow, and saw that it had vanished; then I glanced down again at my feet, and had another shock; for the shadow was showing faintly again, all round where I stood.
“I moved a pace, and watched the shadow become invisible; and then, once more, like a slow stain, it began to grow about my feet.
“I moved again, a pace, and stared round the room, meditating a break for the door. And then, in that instant, I saw that this would be certainly impossible; for there was something indefinite in the atmosphere of the room—something that moved, circling slowly about the barrier.
“I glanced down at my feet, and saw that the shadow had grown thick about them. I stepped a pace to the right, and as it disappeared, I stared again round the big room and somehow it seemed tremendously big and unfamiliar. I wonder whether you can understand.
“As I stared I saw again the indefinite something that floated in the air of the room. I watched it steadily for maybe a minute. It went twice completely round the barrier in that time. And, suddenly, I saw it more distinctly. It looked like a small puff of black smoke.
“And then I had something else to think about; for all at once I was aware of an extraordinary feeling of vertigo, and in the same moment, a sense of sinking—I was sinking bodily. I literally sickened as I glanced down, for I saw in that moment that I had gone down, almost up to my thighs, into what appeared to be actually the shadowy, but quite unmistakable, mouth of a pit. Do you under stand? I was sinking down into this thing, with Bains in my arms.
“A feeling of furious anger came over me, and I swung my right boot forward with a fierce kick. I kicked nothing tangible, for I went clean through the side of the shadowy thing, and fetched up against the table, with a crash. I had come through something that made all my skin creep and tingle—an invisible, vague something which resembled an electric tension. I felt that if it had been stronger, I might not have been able to charge through as I had. I wonder if I make it clear to you?
“I whirled round, but the beastly thing had gone; yet even as I stood there by the table, the slow greying of a circular shadow began to form again about my feet.
“I stepped to the other side of the table, and leaned against it for a moment: for I was shaking from head to foot with a feeling of extraordinary horror upon me, that was in some way, different from any kind of horror I have ever felt. It was as if I had in that one moment been near something no human has any right to be near, for his soul’s sake. And abruptly, I wondered whether I had not felt just one brief touch of the horror that the rigid Bains was even then enduring as I held him in my arms.
“Outside of the barrier there were now several of the curious little clouds. Each one looked exactly like a little puff of black smoke. They increased as I watched them, which I did for several minutes; but all the time as I watched, I kept moving from one part to another of the ‘defense’, so as to prevent the shadow forming round my feet again.
“Presently, I found that my constant changing of position had resolved into a slow monotonous walk round and round, inside the ‘defense’; and all the time I had to carry the unnaturally rigid body of poor Bains.
“It began to tire me; for though he was small, his rigidity made him dreadfully awkward and tiring to hold, as you can understand; yet I could not think what else to do; for I had stopped shaking him, or trying to wake him, for the simple reason that he was as wide awake as I was mentally; though but physically inanimate, through one of those partial spiritual disassociations which he had tried to explain to me.
“Now I had previously switched out the red, orange, yellow and green circles, and had on the full defense of the blue end of the spectrum—I knew that one of the repelling vibrations of each of the three colours: blue, indigo and violet were beating out protectingly into space; yet they were proving insufficient, and I was in the position of having either to take some desperate action to stimulate Bains to an even greater effort of will than I judged him to be making, or else to risk experimenting with fresh combinations of the defensive colours.
“You see, as things were at that moment, the danger was increasing steadily; for plainly, from the appearance of the air of the room outside the barrier, there were some mighty dangerous tensions generating. While inside the danger was also increasing; the steady recurrence of the shadow proving that the ‘defense’ was insufficient.
“In short, I feared that Bains in his peculiar condition was literally a ‘doorway’ into the ‘defense’; and unless I could wake him or find out the correct combinations of circles necessary to set up stronger repelling vibrations against that particular danger, there were very ugly possibilities ahead. I felt I had been incredibly rash not to have foreseen the possibility of Bains falling asleep under the hypnotic effect of deliberately paralleling the associations of sleep.
“Unless I could increase the repulsion of the barriers or wake him there was every likelihood of having to chose between a rush for the door—which the condition of the atmosphere outside the barrier showed to be practically impossible—or of throwing him outside the barrier, which, of course, was equally not possible.
“All this time I was walking round and round inside the barrier, when suddenly I saw a new development of the danger which threatened us. Right in the centre of the ‘defense’ the shadow had formed into an intensely black circle, about a foot wide.
“This increased as I looked at it. It was horrible to see it grow. It crept out in an ever-widening circle till it was quite a yard across.
“Quickly I put Bains on the floor. A tremendous attempt was evidently going to be made by some outside force to enter the ‘defense’, and it was up to me to make a final effort to help Bains to ‘wake up’. I took out my lancet, and pushed up his left coat sleeve.
“What I was going to do was a terrible risk, I knew, for there is no doubt that in some extraordinary fashion blood attracts.
“The Sigsand mentions it particularly in one passage which runs something like this: ‘In blood there is the Voice which calleth through all space. Ye Monsters in ye Deep hear, and hearing, they lust. Likewise hath it a greater power to reclaim backward ye soul that doth wander foolish adrift from ye body in which it doth have natural abiding. But woe unto him that doth spill ye blood in ye deadly hour; for there will be surely Monsters that shall hear ye Blood Cry.’
“That risk I had to run. I knew that the blood would call to the outer forces; but equally I knew that it should call even more loudly to that portion of Bains’ ‘Essence’ that was adrift from him, down in those depths.
“Before lancing him, I glanced at the shadow. It had spread out until the nearest edge was not more than two feet away from Bains’ right shoulder; and the edge was creeping nearer, like the blackening edge of burning paper, even while I stared. The whole thing had a less shadowy, less ghostly appearance than at any time before. And it looked simply and literally like the black mouth of a pit.
“ ‘Now, Bains,’ I said, ‘pull yourself together, man. Wake up!’ And at the same time as I spoke to him, I used my lancet quickly but superficially.
“I watched the little red spot of blood well up, then trickle round his wrist and fall to the floor of the ‘defense’. And in the moment that it fell the thing that I had feared happened. There was a sound like a low peal of thunder in the room, and curious deadly-looking flashes of light rippled here and there along the floor outside the barrier.
“Once more I called to him, trying to speak firmly and steadily as I saw that the horrible shadowy circle had spread across every inch of the floor space of the centre of the ‘defense’, making it appear as if both Bains and I were suspended above an unutterable black void—the black void that stared up at me out of the throat of that shadowy pit. And yet, all the time I could feel the floor solid under my knees as I knelt beside Bains holding his wrist.
“ ‘Bains!’ I called once more, trying not to shout madly at him. ‘Bains, wake up! Wake
up, man! Wake up!’
“But he never moved, only stared up at me with eyes of quiet horror that seemed to be looking at me out of some dreadful eternity.”
4
“By this time the shadow had blackened all around us, and I felt that strangely terrible vertigo coming over me again. Jumping to my feet I caught up Bains in my arms and stepped over the first of the protective circles—the violet, and stood between it and the indigo circle, holding Bains as close to me as possible so as to prevent any portion of his helpless body from protruding outside the indigo and blue circles.
“From the black shadowy mouth which now filled the whole of the centre of the ‘defense’ there came a faint sound—not near but seeming to come up at me out of unknown abysses. Very, very faint and lost it sounded, but I recognised it as unmistakably the infinitely remote murmur of countless swine.
“And that same moment Bains, as if answering the sound, grunted like a swine in my arms.
“There I stood between the glass vacuum tubes of the circles, gazing dizzily into that black shadowy pit-mouth, which seemed to drop sheer into hell from below my left elbow.
“Things had gone so utterly beyond all that I had thought of, and it had all somehow come about so gradually and yet so suddenly, that I was really a bit below my natural self. I felt mentally paralysed, and could think of nothing except that not twenty feet away was the door and the outer natural world; and here was I face to face with some unthought-of danger, and all adrift, what to do to avoid it.
“You fellows will understand this better when I tell you that the bluish glare from the three circles showed me that there were now hundreds and hundreds of those small smoke-like puffs of black cloud circling round and round outside the barrier in an unvarying, unending procession.
“And all the time I was holding the rigid body of Bains in my arms, trying not to give way to the loathing that got me each time he grunted. Every twenty or thirty seconds he grunted, as if in answer to the sounds which were almost too faint for my normal hearing. I can tell you, it was like holding something worse than a corpse in my arms, standing there balanced between physical death on the one side and soul destruction on the other.
The House on the Borderland and Other Mysterious Places Page 36