The Shadow in the Attic by August Derleth & H. P. Lovecraft

Author:August Derleth & H. P. Lovecraft [August Derleth & H. P. Lovecraft]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

IV

That night was memorable for what I chose then to believe pure hallucination. It began, literally, with a step on the stair some time after I had gone to bed. I listened for a moment, to hear it again; then I slipped out of bed, made my way in the dark to the door, and opened it just enough to enable me to look out.

The cleaning woman had just passed my door, bound for the ground floor. I backed into my room at once, fumbled my way to my dressing-gown in my bag - I had not had occasion to use it before - and let myself out of the room, bent upon facing the woman at her work.

I moved quietly in the darkness down the stairs, though the dark was alleviated somewhat by the iridescence of moonlight flowing into the house from outside. Not quite midway down, I experienced that curious sensation I had known previously - of being watched.

I turned.

There in the well of glowing darkness behind and a little above me hung the spectral likeness of Great-uncle Uriah Garrison - something as ephemeral as air - the heavy bearded face distorted a little by the moonlight’s iridescence, the burning eyes, the shock of touseled hair, the high bones of his cheeks with the parchment skin tight over them - seen for an instant so unmistakably - then it collapsed like a pricked balloon and vanished, save for a thin, serpentine coil or rope of some dark substance which seemed to flow writhing and turning, down the stairs to where I stood, until it, too, disappeared like smoke.

I stood frozen with terror until reason reasserted control. I told myself I had had an hallucination of a kind not to be entirely unexpected, in view of my concern during the day about my great-uncle and his curious preoccupations, though I should have thought this far more likely to have occurred in dream than in a vision while awake. But at this moment, too, I questioned the degree of my wakefulness. I had to think what I was doing on the stairs, and remembered the cleaning woman. I had an impulse to return to my room and go to sleep, but I would not. I pulled myself together and went on.

There was a light in the kitchen - a lamp burning dimly and low, by the glow of it. I crept silently toward the kitchen and stood where I could look in.

The woman was there, cleaning, as always. Now was the time to front her directly and demand an accounting of her presence.

But something held me where I was. Something about the woman repelled me. Something other stirred my memories, and I remembered that other woman I had seen there in the years of my childhood. Slowly, certainly, I became aware that they were one and the same; the woman’s impassive, expressionless face was unchanged over twenty years or more, her actions were mechanical, and she seemed even to be

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