The Lurker at the Threshold: Posthumous Collaborations

by August Derleth

  It took great physical and mental effort for him to drive into Arkham and deposit the letter to Stephen Bates beyond recall in the post-office of that city, whose ancient gambrel roofs and shuttered windows seemed to crouch and leer at him with ghastly camaraderie as he went by.

  II. Manuscript of Stephen Bates

  MOVED BY THE URGENCE of the summons from my cousin, Ambrose Dewart, I arrived at the old Billington house within a week following my receipt of his letter.

  In the wake of my arrival, there took place a series of events which, starting from a most prosaic beginning, culminated in the circumstances which have caused me to set down this singular narrative to be added to those fragmentary data and various notes in Ambrose’s hand.

  I have said that the events began prosaically, but this is not precisely correct; I should say, rather, they were prosaic in juxtaposition to the later occurrences at and in the vicinity of the house in Billington’s Wood. Episodic and unrelated as these events seemed to be, they were all in fact essential parts of one pattern, irrespective of time and space and place, as I was to discover. This was unfortunately anything but clear initially. But, from the beginning I found in my cousin some evidence of primary schizophrenia—or what I then thought to be schizophrenia, but later came to fear as something quite different and far more terrible.

  This two-faceted aspect of Ambrose’s personality made my own research far more difficult, for it took the avenues of friendly co-operation on the one hand, and sly, guarded hostility on the other. This was manifest from the beginning; the man who had written me that frantic note was a man who sincerely asked and needed some assistance toward an explanation of a problem in which he found himself caught, however inexplicably; but the man who met me in Arkham in response to my wire announcing my arrival was cool, cautious, and very much self-contained, making light of his need, and seeking from the very start of my visit to impose a limit of no more than a fortnight upon it—and preferably even less. He was courteous and even affable; but there was about him a curious reticence and an aloofness which were not in accord with the tone of the hasty scrawl he had sent to me.

  “When I got your wire, I realized you didn’t get my second letter,” he said in greeting me at the station in Arkham.

  “If you sent one, I didn’t get it.”

  He shrugged and observed only that he had written to put my mind at ease in regard to his earlier letter. And from this beginning, he made the suggestion that he had resolved his difficulties without my assistance, though he was happy that I had come, even if the urgence of his letter were no longer a motivating factor.

  Instinctively, as well as psychically, I could not escape the impression that what he said was not quite true; I felt it was possible that he believed in what he was saying to me, but of this I could not be certain. I said only that I was happy to know that the pressing problem, at the instigation of which he had written to me, no longer seemed to him so imperative. This seemed to satisfy him, and he grew less uneasy, and more amenable, making a few small observations in regard to the nature of the country along the Aylesbury Pike, observations which surprised me because I had not thought him long enough in Massachusetts to have learned so much about the immediate and past history of the region in which he lived, a region which was not usual in that it was considerably more ancient than many other parts of the oldest inhabited areas of New England, a region which included strangely haunted Arkham, a mecca for scholars with architectural leanings, since its ancient gambrel roofs and fanlighted doorways antedated the less old but no less attractive Georgian and Greek revival houses along its shaded and shadowed streets; and which, on the other hand, included also such forgotten valleys of desolation, of degeneracy and decay as Dunwich, and only a little farther away, the accursed seaport town of Innsmouth—a country out of which has come many a half-whispered and suppressed rumor of murder, strange disappearances, curious cult-revivals, and many crimes and manifestations of degeneracy far worse, unmentionable in essence, and far more easily forgotten about than investigated for fear of what any investigation might uncover of matters far better hidden forever.

  In this fashion we reached the house at last, and I found it as well preserved as it had been the last time I had seen it, some two decades before—indeed, as well preserved as it had always been, it seemed, as long as I could remember it, and my mother before me; a house which showed the ravages of time and of neglect far less than hundreds of other houses which had had far less of both years and desertion to contend with. In addition, Ambrose had restored it and refurnished it a great deal, though nothing much but a new coat of paint had been given its front, which still stood out with a past century’s dignity with its four tall square pillars built into its front elevation, and its squarely centered door, which was set in a frame of singular architectural perfection. The interior in every way complemented the exterior; Ambrose’s personal tastes had permitted no innovations out of character of the house, and the result, as I had expected it to be, was highly felicitous.

  I observed everywhere the evidence of my cousin’s preoccupation with matters he had barely mentioned to me in Boston some time ago— genealogical research, for the most part; this was particularly manifest in the yellowed papers seen in the study, and the ancient tomes which had been taken down from the laden shelves for consultation.

  As we entered the study, I noticed the second of those curious facts which were later on to bulk so largely in my discoveries. I saw that Ambrose glanced involuntarily, and with a certain mixture of apprehension and expectation, at the leaded window set high in the wall of the study; when he looked away, I saw again that admixture of two opposites—both relief and disappointment. It was extraordinary almost to being uncanny. I said nothing, however, reasoning that at some point in the near future, however extended the cycle might be, whether of twenty-four hours or a week or more, Ambrose would reach again that stage at which he had been impelled originally to write to me.

  That time came sooner than I had expected.

  We spent that evening in small talk, and I saw that Ambrose was very tired, since he suffered some obvious difficulty in keeping awake. Pleading tiredness myself, I relieved him by going to my own room, which he had shown me shortly after my arrival. However, I was far from tired; so I did not go to bed, but sat up for some time reading. Only after I had become somewhat indifferent to the novel I had brought along, did I put out my lamp—and this was sooner than I had expected to do so; for I found it extremely trying to become accustomed to my cousin’s unfortunately necessary mode of lighting. The hour, I believed, looking back upon it now, must have been in the vicinity of midnight.

  I undressed in the darkness, which was not too dark, for the moonlight shone into one corner of the room and made a faint glowing which illumined all the room.

  I had got but partially undressed when I was startled at the sound of a shout.

  I knew that my cousin and I were alone in the house; I knew that he expected no one else to join us. I realized instantly that, since I had not shouted, either it was my cousin who had, or it was not; and if it were not, then the shout was raised by an intruder. Without hesitation, I left my room and ran into the hall. I saw a white-robed figure descending the stairs, and hastened after it.

  At this moment the shout came again, and I heard it distinctly—a strange, meaningless crying aloud. “Iä! Shub-Niggurath. Iä! Nyarlathotep!” And I recognized together, voice and shouter; it was my cousin Ambrose, and he was clearly walking in his sleep. I took him gently but firmly by the arm with the intention of guiding him back to his bed, but he resisted with unexpected vigor. I released him, and followed him; but when I saw that he meant to go out into the night, I again took hold of him and attempted to turn him. Once more he resisted, with very great strength, so great, in fact, that I was surprised he did not waken, for I opposed him, and finally, after an almost exhausting time, I managed to turn him and guide him back up the stairs to his room, where he returned to hi
s bed docilely enough.

  I was both somewhat amused, and a little disturbed. I sat for a short while beside his bed, which was in the room used by the much-disliked Alijah, our great-great-grandfather, thinking he might awaken again. Since I sat in line with the window, I was able to look out, and did so from time to time, receiving the most curious impression that at irregular intervals a kind of glowing, as of a concealed light, shone from the conical roof of the old stone tower on the property and in line with this wall of the house. I was unable, however, to convince myself that this was not due to some property of the stones under the moonlight, though I watched the phenomenon for some time.

  At length, however, I left my cousin’s room. I was still wide awake; if anything, this little adventure of Ambrose’s had awakened me still more. I left the door of my room open a little, corresponding to Ambrose’s, and was thus prepared for any further rambling my cousin might do. He did not ramble, however; instead, he began to mutter and mumble in his uneasy sleep, and presently I found myself listening. Again, what he said made no sense to me. I was impelled to take down his words, and moved over into the moonlight to avoid lighting the lamp. Much of what he said was incoherent; no word of it could be distinguished, but there were occasional lucid sentences—lucid, that is, in the sense that they seemed to be sentences, however stilted and unnatural my cousin’s voice sounded in his sleep. There were, in short, seven such sentences, and each occurred after an interval of perhaps five minutes of muttering and tossing, turning and mumbling. I took them down as well as I was able, making corrections later to bring their wording clear. In sequence, broken as I have said, by mutterings which were not intelligible, my cousin Ambrose murmured in his sleep these lines.

  “To bring up Yogge-Sothothe thou shalt wait upon the sun in the fifth house, with Saturn in trine; then shalt thou draw the pentagram of fire, saying the ninth verse thrice, repeating which each Roodemas and Hallow’s Eve causeth the Thing to breed in the Outside Spaces beyond the gate, of which Yogge-Sothothe is the Guardian.”

  “He hath all knowledge; he knoweth where the Old Ones came through in the aeons past, and he knoweth where they will break through again.”

  “Past, present, future—all are one in him.”

  “The accused Billington did affirm that he caused no noises to be made, whereupon there ensued at once a great tittering and laughing, which fortunately for him was audible only to him.”

  “Ah, ah!—the smell! The smell! Ai! Ai! Nyarlathotep”

  “That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die.”

  “In his house at R’lyeh—in his great house at R’lyeh—he lies not dead, but sleeping. ...”

  This extraordinary rigmarole was succeeded by a deep silence, out of which came soon the sound of my cousin’s regular breathing, which told me that he had at last sunk into a quiet and natural sleep.

  My first few hours at Billington’s house were, therefore, filled with a variety of contradictory impressions. These were to continue. I had hardly put away the notes I had transcribed and got into bed and to sleep, still leaving my door open, and not closing Ambrose’s, when I was startled awake, by the hurried banging of a door and the discovery of Ambrose looming up beside my bed, one hand and arm outreached as if to awaken me.

  “Ambrose,” I cried. “What is it?”

  He was trembling, and his voice shook. “Do you hear?” he asked shakily.

  “Hear what?”

  “Listen!”

  I obeyed.

  “What do you hear?”

  “The wind in the trees.”

  He gave a bitter laugh. “‘The wind gibbers with Their voices, and the earth mutters with Their consciousness.’ Wind, indeed! Is it only the wind?”

  “Only the wind,” I replied firmly. “Have you been having a nightmare, Ambrose?”

  “No,—no!” he answered in a cracked voice. “Not tonight—it was just beginning, and then it stopped; something stopped it, and I was glad.”

  I knew what had stopped it, and was gratified; but I said nothing.

  He sat down on the bed, and put one hand affectionately on my shoulder.

  “Stephen, I am glad you are here. But, if I should say things to you which should not seem in concord with that pleasure I feel, I beg you to disregard it. It seems sometimes I am not myself.”

  “You’ve been working too hard.”

  “Perhaps.” He raised his head, and now in the dim reflection of the moonlight, I saw how drawn his face was; he was listening again. “No, no.” he said, “it is not the wind in the trees, it is not even the winds among the stars, it is something farther away—something from Outside, Stephen. Can’t you hear it?”

  “I hear nothing,” I said gently, “and perhaps if you could sleep you would hear nothing either.”

  “Sleep does not matter,” he said enigmatically, speaking in a whisper, as if he feared some third person might hear. “Sleep is worse.”

  I got out of bed, walked over to the window, and threw it open. “Come and listen, then,” I said.

  He came over to my side and leaned against the window-frame.

  “Wind in the trees—no more.”

  He sighed. “I will tell you tomorrow—if I can.”

  “Tell me whenever you like. But why not now, when you feel like it?”

  “Now?” He looked over his shoulder with dreadfully frightening implications. “Now?” he repeated again, huskily. And then—“What was it Alijah did at the tower? How did he entreat of the stones? What did he call out of the hills or the heavens?—I do not know which. And what was it lurked and at what threshold?” At the conclusion of this singular spate of baffling questions, he looked searchingly into my eyes in that half-darkness, and, shaking his head, said, “You do not know. None does. But something is happening here, and before God I fear I have brought it about by some means I know not of.”

  So saying, he turned abruptly and, with a curt “Good night, Stephen,” he retired to his room and closed the door behind him.

  I stood for a few moments, cold with amazement, at the open casement. Was it indeed but the wind whose voice came from the wood? Or was it something more? My cousin’s bizarre performance left me shaken, ready to doubt my own senses. And suddenly, as I stood there, feeling the freshness of the wind against my body, I was conscious with a rapidly mounting oppression, with a crushing sense of despair, of a horrible foulness, of a black, blasting evil of and around this woods-girt house, a cloying, infiltrating loathsomeness of the nethermost abysses of the human soul.

  It was not purely imaginary; it was a tangible thing, for I was aware of the coolness of the air flowing in through the open window as contrast. The apprehension of evil, of terror and loathing, settled like a cloud in the room; I felt it pour from the walls like invisible fog. I walked away from the window and into the hall; it was the same out there. I went downstairs in the dark; nothing was changed—everywhere in this old house brooded a malign and terrible evil, and it was this, surely, which had affected my cousin. It required all my effort to cast off the oppression and despair I felt; it took conscious endeavor to repel the infiltration of terror which swept out from all the walls; it was a struggle against something invisible which had twice the force of a physical opponent; and, returning to my room, I realized that I was hesitant to sleep, lest in that sleep I become prey to that insidious penetration which sought to infect everything within reach as it had already infected this ancient house and its new habitant, my cousin Ambrose.

  I remained therefore in a state of watchful sleep, drowsing a little, and resting. After perhaps an hour, the sense of brooding evil, of awful terror and loathsomeness receded and fell away as suddenly as it had come, but by this time I had achieved a state of reasonable comfort, and I did not make any attempt to fall into an even deeper sleep. I got up at dawn, dressed, and went downstairs. Ambrose was not yet down, and this afforded me a chance to examine some of the papers in the study.

 
These were of various kinds, though none was of a personal nature, such as letters to Ambrose. There were what appeared to be copies of newspaper accounts of curious happenings, particularly certain matters pertaining to Alijah Billington; there was a much annotated account of something which had taken place when America was young, to a protagonist put down as “Richard Bellingham or Bollinhan,” and identified, in my cousin’s script, as “R. Billington”; there were recent newspaper clippings concerning two disappearances in nearby Dunwich, of which I had read cursorily in the Boston newspapers prior to my coming to Arkham. I had no time to do more than glance at this extraordinary collection before I heard my cousin stirring, and left off to wait for him.

  I had some purpose in waiting here, for I wished to observe Ambrose’s reaction to the leaded window. As I half-expected he might, he gave it again an involuntary glance over one shoulder as he advanced into the room. I was not able, however, to determine whether this morning’s Ambrose was the man who had met me in Arkham or that other, more recognizable cousin who had spoken to me in my room last night.

  “I see you’re up, Stephen. I’ll get coffee and toast ready. There’s a recent paper somewhere. I have to depend on rural delivery out of Arkham, you know—I don’t get into town myself very much, and you couldn’t pay a newsboy enough to cycle out this far—even if it weren’t for. . . .”

  He stopped abruptly. “If it weren’t for what?” I asked bluntly.

  “For the reputation the house and the woods have.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “You know about it?”

  “I’ve heard some things.”

  He stood for a moment and gazed at me, and I could see that he appeared to be caught in a dilemma, which suggested again that there was something he wished very much to tell me but feared to or, for some reason not yet manifest to me, was extremely reluctant to put into words. Then he turned and left the study.