At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels of Terror by H. P. Lovecraft

Author:H. P. Lovecraft [Lovecraft, H.P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007386895
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 1964-06-06T16:00:00+00:00

4

Marinus Bicknell Willett has no hope that any part of his talc will be believed except by certain sympathetic friends, hence he has made no attempt to tell it beyond his most intimate circle. Only a few outsiders have ever heard it repeated, and of these the majority laugh and remark that the doctor surely is getting old. He has been advised to take a long vacation and to shun future cases dealing with mental disturbance. But Mr Ward knows that the veteran physician speaks only a horrible truth. Did not he himself see the noisome aperture in the bungalow cellar? Did not Willett send him home overcome and ill at eleven o’clock that portentous morning? Did he not telephone the doctor in vain that evening, and again the next day, and had he not driven to the bungalow itself on that following noon, finding his friend unconscious but unharmed on one of the beds upstairs? Willett had been breathing stertorously, and opened his eyes slowly when Mr Ward gave him some brandy fetched from the car. Then he shuddered and screamed, crying out, ‘’That beard … those eyes … God, who are you?’ A very strange thing to say to a trim, blue-eyed, clean-shaven gentleman whom he had known from the latter’s boyhood.

In the bright noon sunlight the bungalow was unchanged since the previous morning. Willett’s clothing bore no disarrangement beyond certain smudges and worn places at the knees, and only faint acrid odor reminded Mr Ward of what he had smelt on his son that day he was taken to the hospital. The doctor’s flashlight was missing, but his valise was safely there, as empty as when he had brought it. Before indulging in any explanations, and obviously with great moral effort, Willett staggered dizzily down to the cellar and tried the fateful platform before the tubs. It was unyielding. Crossing to where he had left his yet unused tool satchel the day before, he obtained a chisel and began to pry up the stubborn planks one by one. Underneath the smooth concrete was still visible, but of any opening or perforation there was no longer a trace. Nothing yawned this time to sicken the mystified father who had followed the doctor downstairs; only the smooth concrete underneath the planks — no noisome well, no world of subterrene horrors, no secret library, no Curwen papers, no nightmare pits of stench and howling, no laboratory or shelves or chiseled formulae, no … Dr Willett turned pale, and clutched at the younger man. ‘Yesterday,’ he asked softly, ‘did you see it here … and smell it?’ And when Mr Ward, himself transfixed with dread and wonder, found strength to nod an affirmative, the physician gave a sound half a sigh and half a gasp, and nodded in turn. ‘Then I will tell you,’ he said.

So for an hour, in the sunniest room they could find upstairs, the physician whispered his frightful tale to the wondering father. There was nothing to

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.