The Door to Saturn

by Clark Ashton Smith

  “The house is full of rats,” he explained, as he caught my inquiring glance. “I have never been able to get rid of them, with all my efforts.”

  The noise, which still continued, was that which a rat might make in dragging some object slowly along the floor. It seemed to draw closer, to approach the door of Carnby’s room; and then, after an intermission, it began again and receded. My employer’s agitation was marked— he listened with fearful intentness and seemed to follow the progress of the sound with a terror that mounted as it drew near and decreased a little with its recession.

  “I am very nervous,” he said. “I have worked too hard lately, and this is the result. Even a little noise upsets me.”

  The sound had now died away somewhere in the house. Carnby appeared to recover himself in a measure.

  “Will you please re-read your translation?” he requested. “I want to follow it very carefully, word by word.”

  I obeyed. He listened with the same look of unholy absorption as before; and this time we were not interrupted by any noises in the hallway. Carnby’s face grew paler, as if the last remnant of blood had been drained from it, when I read the final sentences; and the fire in his hollow eyes was like phosphorescence in a deep vault.

  “That is a most remarkable passage,” he commented. “I was doubtful about its meaning, with my imperfect Arabic; and I have found that the passage is wholly omitted in the Latin of Olaus Wormius. Thank you for your scholarly rendering—you have certainly cleared it up for me.”

  His tone was dry and formal, as if he were repressing himself and holding back a world of unsurmisable thoughts and emotions. Somehow I felt that Carnby was more nervous and upset than ever, and also that my rendering from the Necronomicon had in some mysterious manner contributed to his perturbation. He wore a ghastly brooding expression, as if his mind were busy with some unwelcome and forbidden theme.

  However, seeming to collect himself, he asked me to translate another passage. This turned out to be a singular incantatory formula for the exorcism of the dead, with a ritual that involved the use of rare Arabian spices and the proper intoning of at least a hundred names of ghouls and demons. I copied it all out for Carnby, who studied it for a long time with a rapt eagerness that was more than scholarly.

  “That, too,” he observed, “is not in Olaus Wormius.” After perusing it again, he folded the paper carefully and put it away in the same drawer from which he had taken the Necronomicon.

  That evening was one of the strangest I have ever spent. As we sat for hour after hour discussing renditions from that unhallowed volume, I came to know more and more definitely that my employer was mortally afraid of something, that he dreaded being alone and was keeping me with him on this account rather than for any other reason. Always he seemed to be waiting and listening with a painful, tortured expectation; and I saw that he gave only a mechanical awareness to much that was said. Among the weird appurtenances of the room, in that atmosphere of unmanifested evil, of untold horror, the rational part of my mind began to succumb slowly to a recrudescence of dark ancestral fears. A scorner of such things in my normal moments, I was now ready to believe in the most baleful creations of superstitious fancy. No doubt, by some process of mental contagion, I had caught the hidden terror from which Carnby suffered.

  By no word or syllable, however, did the man admit the actual feelings that were evident in his demeanor; but he spoke repeatedly of a nervous ailment. More than once, during our discussion, he sought to imply that his interest in the supernatural and the Satanic was wholly intellectual—that he, like myself, was without personal belief in such things. Yet I knew infallibly that his implications were false—that he was driven and obsessed by a real faith in all that he pretended to view with scientific detachment, and had doubtless fallen a victim to some imaginary horror entailed by his occult researches. But my intuition afforded me no clue to the actual nature of this horror.

  There was no repetition of the sounds that had been so disturbing to my employer. We must have sat till after midnight with the writings of the mad Arab open before us. At last Carnby seemed to realize the lateness of the hour.

  “I fear I have kept you up too long,” he said apologetically. “You must go and get some sleep. I am selfish, and I forget that such hours are not habitual to others, as they are to me.”

  I made the formal denial of his self-impeachment which courtesy required, said good-night, and sought my own chamber with a feeling of intense relief. It seemed to me that I would leave behind me in Carnby’s room all the shadowy fear and oppression to which I had been subjected.

  Only one light was burning in the long passage. It was near Carnby’s door; and my own door at the further end, close to the stair-head, was in deep shadow. As I groped for the knob, I heard a noise behind me, and turned to see in the gloom a small, indistinct body that sprang from the hall-landing to the top stair, disappearing from view. I was horribly startled; for even in that vague, fleeting glimpse, the thing was much too pale for a rat and its form was not at all suggestive of an animal. I could not have sworn what it was; but the outlines had seemed unmentionably monstrous. I stood trembling violently in every limb, and heard on the stairs a singular bumping sound, like the fall of an object rolling downward from step to step. The sound was repeated at regular intervals, and finally ceased.

  If the safety of the soul and body had depended upon it, I could not have turned on the stair-light; nor could I have gone to the top steps to ascertain the agency of that unnatural bumping. Anyone else, it might seem, would have done this. Instead, after a moment of virtual petrification, I entered my room, locked the door, and went to bed in a turmoil of unresolved doubt and equivocal terror. I left the light burning; and I lay awake for hours, expecting momentarily a recurrence of that abominable sound. But the house was silent as a morgue; and I heard nothing. At length, in spite of my anticipations to the contrary, I fell asleep and did not awaken till after many sodden, dreamless hours.

  It was ten o’clock, as my watch informed me. I wondered whether my employer had left me undisturbed through thoughtfulness, or had not yet arisen himself. I dressed and went downstairs, to find him waiting at the breakfast table. He was paler and more tremulous than ever, as if he had slept badly.

  “I hope the rats didn’t annoy you too much,” he remarked, after a preliminary greeting. “Something really must be done about them.”

  “I didn’t notice them at all,” I replied. Somehow, it was utterly impossible for me to mention the queer, ambiguous thing which I had seen and heard on retiring the night before. Doubtless I had been mistaken, doubtless it had been merely a rat after all, dragging something down the stairs. I tried to forget the hideously repeated noise and the momentary flash of unthinkable outlines in the gloom.

  My employer eyed me with uncanny sharpness, as if he sought to penetrate my inmost mind. Breakfast was a dismal affair; and the day that followed was no less dreary. Carnby isolated himself till the middle of the afternoon; and I was left to my own devices in the well-supplied but conventional library downstairs. What Carnby was doing alone in his room I could not surmise; but I thought more than once that I heard the faint, monotonous intonations of a solemn voice. Horror-breeding hints and noisome intuitions invaded my brain. More and more the atmosphere of that house enveloped and stifled me with poisonous, miasmal mystery; and I felt everywhere the invisible brooding of malignant incubi.

  It was almost a relief when my employer summoned me to his study. Entering, I noticed that the air was full of a pungent, aromatic smell and was touched by the vanishing coils of a blue vapor, as if from the burning of Oriental gums and spices in the church censers. An Ispahan rug had been moved from its position near the wall to the center of the room, but was not sufficient to cover entirely a curving violet mark that suggested the drawing of a magic circle on the floor. No doubt Carnby had been performing some sort of incantation; and I thought of the awesome formula I had translated at his request.

>   However, he did not offer any explanation of what he had been doing. His manner had changed remarkably, and was more controlled and confident than at any former time. In a fashion almost business-like he laid before me a pile of manuscript which he wanted me to type for him. The familiar click of the keys aided me somewhat in dismissing my apprehensions of vague evil, and I could almost smile at the recherché and terrific information comprised in my employer’s notes, which dealt mainly with formulae for the acquisition of unlawful power. But still, beneath my re-assurance, there was a vague, lingering disquietude.

  Evening came; and after our meal we returned again to the study. There was a tenseness in Carnby’s manner now, as if he were eagerly awaiting the result of some hidden test. I went on with my work; but some of his emotion communicated itself to me, and ever and anon I caught myself in an attitude of strained listening.

  At last, above the click of the keys, I heard that peculiar slithering in the hall. Carnby had heard it, too, and his confident look had utterly vanished, giving place to the most pitiable fear and agitation.

  The sound drew nearer and was followed by a dull, dragging noise, and then by more sounds of an unidentifiable slithering and scuttling nature, that varied in loudness. The hall was seemingly full of them, as if a whole army of rats were hauling some carrion booty along the floor. And yet no rodent—or number of rodents—could have made such sounds, or could have moved anything so heavy as the object which came behind the rest. There was something in the character of those noises—something without name or definition—which caused a slowly creeping chill to invade my spine.

  “Good Lord! What is all that racket?” I cried.

  “The rats! I tell you it is only the rats!” Carnby’s voice was a high, hysterical shriek.

  A moment later, there came an unmistakable knocking on the door, near the sill. At the same time I heard a heavy thudding in the locked cupboard at the further end of the room. Carnby had been standing erect; but now he sank limply into a chair. His features were ashen, and his look was almost maniacal with fright.

  The nightmare doubt and tension became unbearable. I ran to the door and flung it open, in spite of a frantic remonstrance from my employer. I had no idea what I should find as I stepped across the sill into the feebly litten hall.

  When I looked down and saw the thing on which I had almost trodden, my feeling was one of sick amazement and actual nausea. It was a human hand which had been severed at the wrist—a bony, bluish hand like that of a week-old corpse, with garden-mould on the fingers and under the long nails. The damnable thing had moved, it had drawn back to avoid me, and was crawling along the passage somewhat in the manner of a crab! And following it with my gaze, I saw that there were other things beyond it, one of which I recognized as a man’s foot and another as a fore-arm. I dared not look at the rest. All were moving slowly, hideously away in a charnel procession—and I cannot describe the fashion in which they moved. Their individual vitality was horrifying beyond endurance. It was more than the vitality of life—yet the air was laden with a carrion taint. I averted my eyes and stepped back into Carnby’s room, closing the door behind me with a shaking hand. Carnby was at my side with the key, which he turned in the lock with palsy-stricken fingers that had become as feeble as those of an old man.

  “You saw them?” he asked in a dry, quavering whisper.

  “In God’s name, what does it all mean?” I cried.

  Carnby went back to his chair, tottering a little with weakness. His lineaments were agonized by the gnawing of some inward horror, and he shook visibly like an ague patient. I sat down in a chair beside him; and he began to stammer forth his unbelievable confession, half-incoherently, with inconsequential mouthings and many breaks and pauses:

  “He is stronger than I am—even in death... even with his body dismembered by the surgeon’s knife and saw that I used... I thought he could not return after that... after I had buried the fragments in a dozen different places... in the cellar... beneath the shrubs... at the foot of the ivy-vines. But the Necronomicon is right ... and Helman Carnby knew it. He warned me before I killed him—he told me he could return—even in that condition. But I did not believe him. I hated Helman, and he hated me too. He had attained to higher power and knowledge and was more favored by the Dark Ones than I... That was why I killed him—my own twin-brother, and my brother in the service of Satan and of Those who were before Satan. We had studied together for many years. We had celebrated the Black Mass together... we were attended by the same familiars... But Helman Carnby had gone deeper into the occult... into the forbidden, where I could not follow him. I feared him, and I could not endure his supremacy.

  “It is more than a week—it is ten days since I did the deed. But Helman—or some part of him—has returned every night... . God! his accursed hands crawling on the floor!... his feet, his arms, the segments of his legs, climbing the stairs in some unmentionable way to haunt me! ... Christ! his awful, bloody torso lying in wait!... I tell you, his hands have come even by day to tap and fumble at my door ... and I have stumbled over his arms in the dark.

  “Oh, God! I shall go mad with the awfulness of it... But he wants me to go mad, he wants to torture me till my brain gives way. That is why he haunts me in this piecemeal fashion. He could end it all at any time, with the demoniacal power that is his. He could re-knit his sundered limbs and body and slay me as I slew him.

  “How carefully I buried the portions, with what infinite forethought! And how useless it was!... I buried the knife and saw, too, at the further end of the garden, as far away as possible from his evil, itching hands... But I did not bury the head with the other pieces—I kept it in that cupboard at the end of my room. Sometimes I have heard it moving there—as you heard it a while ago... . But he does not need the head—his will is elsewhere, and can work intelligently through all his members.

  “Of course, I locked all the doors and windows at night when I found that he was coming back... But it made no difference. And I have tried to exorcise him with the appropriate incantations—with all those that I knew. Today I tried that sovereign formula from the Necronomicon which you translated for me... I got you here to translate it. Also, I could no longer bear to be alone... and I thought that it might help if there were someone else in the house... That formula was my last hope. I thought it would hold him—it is a most ancient and most dreadful incantation. But... as you have seen... it is useless....”

  His voice trailed off in a broken mumble, and he sat staring before him with sightless, intolerable eyes in which I saw the beginning flare of madness. I could say nothing—the confession he had made was so ineffably atrocious. The moral shock, and the ghastly supernatural horror, had almost stupified me. My sensibilities were stunned; and it was not till I had begun to recover myself that I felt the irresistible surge of a flood of loathing for the man beside me.

  I rose to my feet. The house had grown very silent, as if the macabre and charnel army of beleaguerment had now retired to its various graves. Carnby had left the key in the lock; and I went to the door and turned it quickly.

  “Are you leaving? Don’t go,” Carnby begged in a voice that was tremulous with alarm, as I stood with my hand on the door-knob.

  “Yes, I am going,” I said coldly. “I am resigning my position right now; and I intend to pack my belongings and leave your house with as little delay as possible.”

  I opened the door and went out, refusing to listen to the arguments and pleadings and protestations he had begun to babble. For the nonce, I preferred to face whatever might lurk in the gloomy passage, no matter how loathsome and terrifying, rather than endure any longer the society of John Carnby.

  The hall was empty; but I shuddered with repulsion at the memory of what I had seen, as I hastened to my room. I think I should have screamed aloud at the least sound or movement in the shadows.

  I began to pack my valise with a feeling of the most frantic urgency and compulsion. It seemed to me that I could n
ot escape soon enough from that house of abominable secrets, over which there hung an atmosphere of smothering menace. I made mistakes in my hurry, I stumbled over chairs, and my brain and fingers grew numb with a paralyzing dread.

  I had almost finished my task, when I heard the sound of slow, measured footsteps coming up the stairs. I knew that it was not Carnby, for he had locked himself immediately in his room when I had left, and I felt sure that nothing could have tempted him to emerge. Anyway, he could hardly have gone downstairs without my hearing him.

  The footsteps came to the top landing and went past my door along the hall, with that same dead, monotonous repetition, regular as the movement of a machine. Certainly it was not the soft, nervous tread of John Carnby.

  Who, then, could it be? My blood stood still in my veins; I dared not finish the speculation that arose in my mind.

  The steps paused; and I knew that they had reached the door of Carnby’s room. There followed an interval in which I could scarcely breathe; and then I heard an awful crashing and shattering noise, and above it the soaring scream of a man in the uttermost extremity of fear.

  I was powerless to move, as if an unseen iron hand had reached forth to restrain me; and I have no idea how long I waited and listened. The scream had fallen away in a swift silence; and I heard nothing now, except a low, peculiar, recurrent sound which my brain refused to identify.

  It was not my own volition, but a stronger will than mine, which drew me forth at last and impelled me down the hall to Carnby’s study. I felt the presence of that will as an overpowering, superhuman thing—a demoniac force, a malign mesmerism.

  The door of the study had been broken in and was hanging by one hinge. It was splintered as by the impact of more than mortal strength. A light was still burning in the room, and the unmentionable sound I had been hearing ceased as I neared the threshold. It was followed by an evil, utter stillness.