The Thing On The Doorstep.

It is true that I have sent Six Bullets through the head of my best friend and yet I hope to show by this statement that I am not his murderer at first I shall be called a Madman matter than the man I shot in his cell at the Arkham sanitarium later some of my readers will weigh each statement correlated with the known facts and ask themselves how I could have believed otherwise than I did After facing the evidence of that horror that thing on the doorstep until then I also saw nothing but Madness in the

wild Tales I have acted on even now I ask myself whether I was misled or whether I am not mad after all I do not know but others have strange things to tell of Edward and asenath Darby and even the stolid police are at their wits ends to account for that last Terrible visit they have tried weakly to concoct a theory of a ghastly justest or warning by discharged servants yet they know in their hearts that the truth is something infinitely more terrible and incredible so I say that I have not murdered Edward Darby rather

have I Avenged him and in so doing purged the Earth of a horror whose survival might have loosed un told Terrors on all mankind there are black zones of Shadow close to our daily paths and now and then some Evil Soul Breaks A Passage through when that happens the man who knows must strike before Reckoning the consequences I have known Edward Pikman Darby all his life eight years my junior he was so precocious that we had much in common from the time he was eight and I was 16 he was the most phenomenal child scholar

I have ever known and at seven was writing verse of a somber fantastic almost morbid cast which astonished the tutors surrounding him perhaps his private education and coddled seclusion had something to do with his premature flowering an only child he had organic weaknesses which startled his doting parents and caused them to keep him closely chained to their side He was never allowed out without his nurse and seldom had a chance to play unconstrained with other children all this doubtless fostered a strange secretive life in the boy with imagination as his one Avenue of Freedom at

any rate his juvenile learning was prodigious and bizarre and his fcil writings such as to Captivate me despite my greater age about that time I had leanings toward art of a a somewhat grotesque Cast and I found in this younger child a rare kindred spirit what lay behind our joint Love Of Shadows and Marvels was no doubt the ancient moldering and subtly fearsome town in which we live which cursed Legend haunted Arkham whose huddled sagging Gamel roofs and crumbling Georgian ballustrades brewed out the centuries beside the Darkly muttering miskatonic as time went by I turned

to architecture and gave up my design of Illustrating a book of Edward's demoniac poems yet our comradeship suffered no lessening young Darby's odd genius developed remarkably and in his 18th year his collected nightmare lyrics made a real sensation when issued under the title aatho and other Horrors he was a close correspondent of the notorious ban poet Justin Jeffrey who wrote the people of the monolith and died screaming in a mad house in 1926 after a visit to a Sinister ill- Regged Village in Hungary in self-reliance and practical Affairs however Darby was greatly because of his

coddled existence his health had improved but his habits of childish dependence were fostered by over careful parents so that he never traveled alone made independent decisions or assumed responsib abilities it was early seen that he would not be equal to a struggle in the business or professional Arena but the family Fortune was so ample that this formed no tragedy as he grew to years of manhood he retained a deceptive aspect of boyishness blond and blue-eyed he had the fresh complexion of a child and his attempt to raise a mustache were discernable only with difficulty his

voice was soft and Light and his unexercised life gave him a juvenile chubbiness rather than the punchiness of premature middle Age he was of good height and his handsome face would have made him a notable Gallant had not his shyness held him to seclusion and bookishness Darby's parents took him abroad every summer and he was quick to seize on the surface aspects of European thought and expression his polike talents turned more more and more toward the decadent and other artistic sensitiveness and yearnings were half aroused in Him we had great discussions in those days I

had been through Harvard had studied in a Boston architect's office had married and had finally returned to Arkham to practice my profession settling in the family Homestead in Sultan Stall Street since my father had moved to Florida for his health Edward used to call almost every evening evening till I came to regard him as one of the household he had a characteristic way of Ringing the doorbell or sounding the knocker that grew to be a veritable code signal so that after dinner I always listened for the familiar three brisk Strokes followed by two more after

a pause less frequently I would visit at his house and note with Envy the Obscure volumes in his constantly growing Library Darby went through miskatonic University in Arkham since his parents would not let him board away from them he entered at 16 and completed his Course in three years majoring in English and French literature and receiving High marks in everything but mathematics and the Sciences he mingled very little with the other students though looking enviously at the daring or Bohemian set whose superficially smart language and meaningless ironic pose aped and whose dubious conduct he wished

he dared adopt what he did do was to become an almost fanatical devotee of subterranean Magical lore for which miskatonic library was and is famous always a dweller on the surface of fantasy and strangeness he now delved deep into the actual runes and riddles left by a fabulous past for the guidance or puzzlement of posterity he read things like the frightful book of ibon the Fon unoin culton of Fon Yun and the Forbidden Necronomicon of the Mad Arab Abdul Alhaz though he did not tell his parents he had seen them Edward was 20 when my

son and only child was born and seemed pleased when I named the newcomer Edward Darby Upton after him by the time he was 25 Edward Darby was a prodigiously learned man and a fairly well known poet and fantasist though his lack of contacts and responsibilities had slowed down his literary growth by making his products derivative and over Bookish I was perhaps his closest friend finding him an inexhaustable mind of vital theoretical topics while he relied on me for advice in whatever matters he did not wish to refer to his parents he remained single more through

shyness inertia and parental protectiveness than through inclination and moved in society only to the slightest and most perun extent when the war came both health and ingrained timidity kept him at Home I went to platsburg for a commission but never got overseas so the years wore on Edward's mother died when he was 34 and for months he was incapacitated by some odd psychological malady his father took him to Europe however and he managed to pull out of his trouble without visible effects afterward he seemed to feel a sort of grotesque exhilaration as if of partial

escape From some unseen bondage he began to mingle in the more advanced College set despite his middle age and was present at some extremely wild doings on one occasion paying heavy blackmail which he borrowed of me to keep his presence at a certain Affair from his father's notice some of the whispered rumors about the wild miskatonic set were extremely singular there was even talk Of black magic and of happenings utterly Beyond credibility Edward was 38 when he met asenath weight she was I judge about 23 at the time and was taking a special course in

medieval metaphysics at miskatonic the daughter of a friend of mine had met her before in the hall school at Kingsport and had been inclined to shun her because of her odd reputation she was dark smallish and Very good-look except for over protuberant eyes but something in her expression alienated extremely sensitive people it was however largely her origin in conversation which caused average folk to avoid her she was one of the ins mouth weights and Dark Legends have clustered for Generations about crumbling half deserted in mouth and its people there are Tales of horrible Bargains about

the year 1850 and of a strange element not quite human in the ancient families of the rundown fishing port Tales such as only oldtime Yankees can devise and repeat with proper awesomeness asenath's case was aggravated by the fact that she was ephra wait's daughter the child of his old age by an unknown wife who always went veiled Ephraim lived in a half decayed mansion in Washington Street insouth and those who had seen the place Arkham folk avoid going to insouth whenever they can declared that the attic windows were always boarded and that strange sounds sometimes

floated from within as evening Drew on the old man was known to have been a prodigious magical student in his day and legend averred that he could raise or quell storms at Sea according to his whim I had seen him once or twice in my youth as he came to Arkham to consult forbidden tomes at the college library And had hated his wolfish saturnine face with its tangle of iron Gray beard he had died insane under rather queer circumstances just before his daughter by his will made a nominal ward of the principal entered the hall

school but she had been his morbidly Avid pupil and looked fishlyn weight repeated many curious things when the news of Edward's acquaintance with her began to spread about asenath it seemed had posed as a Kind of magician at school and had really seemed able to accomplish some highly baffling Marvels she professed to be able to raise thunderstorms though her seeming success was generally laid to some uncanny Knack at prediction all animals markedly disliked her and she could make any dog howl by certain motions of her right hand there were times when she displayed snatches of

knowledge in language very Singular and very shocking for a young girl when she would frighten her schoolmates with Lear and Winks of an inexplicable kind and would seem to extract an obscene zestful irony from her present situation most unusual though were the well attested cases of her influence over other persons she was beyond question a genuine hypnotist by gazing peculiarly at a Fellow student she would often give the latter a distinct feeling of exchanged personality as if the subject were placed momentarily in The Magician's body and able to stare half across the room at her

real body whose eyes blazed and protruded with an alien expression asenath often made wild claims about the nature of Consciousness and about its independence of the physical frame or at least from the life Processes of the physical frame her crowning rage however was that she was not a man since she believed a male brain had certain unique and far-reaching Cosmic powers given a man's brain she declared she could not only equal but surpass her father in Mastery of unknown forces Edward met asenath at a gathering of intelligencia held in one of the students rooms and

could talk of nothing else when he came to see me the next day He had found her full of the interests and erudition which engrossed him most and was in addition wildly taken with her appearance I had never seen the young woman and recalled casual references only faintly but I knew who she was it seemed rather regrettable that Darby should become so upheaved about her but I said nothing to discourage him since infatuation thrives on opposition he was not he said mentioning Her to his father in the next few weeks I heard a very little

but Asin from Young Darby others now remarked Edward's autumnal gallantry though they agreed that he did not look even nearly his actual age or seem at all inappropriate as an escort for his bizarre Divinity he was only a trifle ponchy despite his indolence and self-indulgence and his face was Absolutely without lines asenath on the other hand had the premature crow's feet which come from the exercises of an intense will about this time Edward brought the girl to call on me and at once saw that his interest was by no means one-sided she eyed him continually

with an almost predatory air and I perceived that their intimacy was beyond untangling soon afterward I had a visit from old Mr Darby whom I had always Admired and respected he had heard the tales of his son's new friendship and had wormed the whole truth out of the boy Edward meant to marry asth and had even been looking at houses in the suburbs knowing my usually great influence with his son the father wondered if I could help to break the ill-advised Affair off but I regretfully expressed my doubts this time it was not a question

Of Edward's weak will but of the woman's strong will The Perennial child had transferred his dependence from the parental image to a new and stronger image and nothing could be done about it the wedding was performed a month later by a Justice of the Peace according to the bride's request Mr Darby at my advice offered no opposition and he my wife my son and I attended the brief ceremony the other Guests being wild young people from the college asenath had bought the old crown and shield place in the country at the end of High Street

and they proposed to settle there after a short trip to insouth when when three servants and some books and household goods were to be brought it was probably not so much consideration for Edward and his father as a personal wish to be near the college its library and its crowd of sophisticates that made asenath settle In Arkham instead of returning permanently home when Edward called on me after the honeymoon I thought he looked slightly changed asenath had made him get rid of the undeveloped mustache but there was more than that he looked soberer and more

thoughtful his habitual pout of childish rebelliousness being exchanged for a look almost of genuine sadness I was puzzled to decide whether I liked or disliked the change certainly he seemed for the moment more normally adult than ever before perhaps the marriage was a good thing might not the change of dependence form a start toward actual neutral aaton leading ult ultimately to responsible Independence he came alone for asenath was very busy she had brought a vast store of books and apparatus from insouth Darby shuddered as he spoke the name and was finishing the restoration Of the

crown and shield house and grounds her home in that town was a rather disgusting place but certain objects in it had taught him some surprising things he was progressing fast in esoteric l now that he had asenath's guidance some of the experiments she proposed were very daring and radical he did not feel at Liberty to describe them but he had confidence in her powers and intentions the three servants were very Queer an incredibly aged couple who had been with old Ephraim and referred occasionally to him and to asenath's dead mother in a cryptic way and

a swy young wench who had marked anomalies of feature and seemed to exude a Perpetual odor of fish for the next two years I saw less and less of Darby a fortnite would sometimes slip by without the familiar three and two strokes at the front door and when he did call or when as happened With increasing in frequency I called on him he was very little disposed to converse on vital topics he had become secretive about those occult studies which he used to describe and discuss so minutely and preferred not to talk of his wife

she had aged tremendously since her marriage till now oddly enough she seemed the Elder of the two her face held the most concentratedly determined expression I Had ever seen and her whole aspect seemed to gain a vague unplaceable repulsiveness my wife and son noticed it as much as I and we all ceased gradually to call on her for which Edward admitted in one of his boyishly tactless moments she was unmitigatedly grateful occasionally the darbi's would go on long trips ostensibly to Europe though Edward sometimes hinted at obscur destinations it was after the first year that

people began talking about the Change in Edward Darby it was very casual talk for the change was purely psychological but it brought up some interesting points now and then it seemed Edward was observed to wear an expression and to do things wholly incompatible with his usual flabby nature for example although in the old days he could not drive a car he was now seen occasionally to dash into or out of The old crown and shield driveway with asin's powerful Packard handling it like a master and meeting traffic entanglements with a skill and determination utterly alien

to his accustomed nature in such cases he seemed always to be just back from some trip or just starting on one what sort of trip no one could guess although he mostly favored the inmou road oddly the metamorphosis did not Seem altogether pleasing people said he looked too much like his wife or like old eph from weight himself in these moments or perhaps these moments seemed unnatural because they were so rare sometimes hours after starting out in this way he would return listlessly sprawled on the rear seat of the car while an obviously hired chauffeur

or mechanic drove also his preponderant aspect on The streets during his decreasing round of social contacts including I may say his calls on me was the oldtime indecisive one its irresponsible childishness even more marked than in the past while asenath's face aged Edward aside from those exceptional occasions actually relaxed into a kind of exaggerated immaturity save when a trace of the new sadness or understanding would flash across it it was really very Puzzling meanwhile the Darby's almost dropped out of the gay college Circle not through their own disgust we heard but because something about their

present studies shocked even the most callous of the other decadents it was in the third year of the marriage that Edward began to hint openly to me of a certain fear and dissatisfaction he would let fall remarks about things going too far and would talk Darkly about the need of Gaining his identity at first I ignored such references but in time I began to question him guardedly remembering what my friend's daughter had said about asenath's hypnotic influence over the other girls at school the cases where students had thought they were in her body looking across

the room at themselves this questioning seemed to make him at once alarmed and grateful and once he mumbled something About having a serious talk with me later about this time old Mr Darby died for which I was afterward very thankful Edward was badly upset though by no means disorganized he had seen astonishingly little of his parents since his marriage for asth had concentrated in herself all his vital sense of family linkage some called him callous in his loss especially since those jaunty and confident moods in the car began to Increase he now wished to move

back into the old family Mansion but asenath insisted on staying in the crown and shield house to which she had become well adjusted not long afterward my wife heard a curious thing from a friend one of the few who had not dropped the darbies she had been out to the end of High Street to call on the couple and had seen a car shoot briskly out of the drive with Edward's oddly confident and Almost sneering face above the wheel ringing the bell she had been told by the repulsive wench that asenath was also out but

had chanced to look at the house in leaving there at one of Edward's Library Windows she had glimpsed a hastily withdrawn face a face whose expression of pain defeat and wistful hopelessness was poignant Beyond description it was incredibly enough in view of its usual domineering cast Asins yet the caller had vowed that in that instant the sad muddled eyes of poor Edward were gazing out from it Edward's call WS now grew a trifle more frequent and his hints occasionally became concrete what he said was not to be believed even in centuri and Legend haunted Arkham

but he threw out his dark Lore with a sincerity and convincingness which made one fear for his sanity he talked about terrible meetings In lonely places of cyclopian ruins in the heart of the main Woods beneath which vast staircases LED down to abysses of kned Secrets of complex angles that led through invisible walls to other regions of space and time and of hideous exchanges of Personality that permitted Explorations in remote and forbidden places on other worlds and in different SpaceTime continua he would now and then back up certain crazy hints by exhibiting objects which utterly

Nonplused me elusively colored and bafflingly textured objects like nothing ever heard of on Earth whose insane curves and surfaces answered no conceivable purpose and followed no conceivable geometry these things he said came from outside and his wife knew how to get them sometimes but always in frightened and ambiguous whisper he would suggest things about old Ephraim weight whom he had seen Occasionally at the college library in the old days these adumbrations were never specific but seemed to revolve around some especially horrible doubt as to whether the old wizard were really dead in a spiritual as

well as corporeal sense at times Darby would halt abruptly in his Revelations and I wondered whether asenath could possibly have divined his speech at a distance and cut him off Through some unknown sort of telepathic mesmerism some power of the kind she had displayed at school certainly she suspected that he told me things for as the weeks passed she tried to stop his visits with words and glances of a most inexplicable potency only with difficulty could he get to see me for although he would pretend to be going somewhere else some invisible force would generally

clog his Motions or make him forget his destination for the time being his visits usually came when asenath was way away in her own body as he once oddly put it she always found out later the servants watched his goings and coming but evidently she thought it inexpedient to do anything drastic Derby had been married more than three years on that August day when I Got that telegram from Maine I had not seen him for 2 months but had heard he was away on business asenath was supposed to be with him though watchful gossip declared

there was someone upstairs in the house behind the doubly curtained Windows they had watched the purchases made by the servants and now the town Marshall of chessen cook had wired of the draggled madman who stumbled out of the woods With Delirious ravings and scream to me for protection it was Edward and he had been just able to recall his his own name and address chessen cook is close to the wildest deepest and least explored Forest belt in Maine and it took a whole day of feverish jolting through fantastic and forbidding scenery to get there in

a car I found Darby in a Cell at the Town Farm vacillating between frenzy and Apathy he knew me at once and began pouring out a meaningless half incoherent torrent of words in my my direction Dan for God's sake the pit of the shaggoths down the 6,000 steps the abomination of Abominations I never would let her take me and then I found myself there yeah shub narath the shape rose up from The Altar and there were 500 that howled the hooded thing bleeded Cog Cog that was old ephraim's secret name in the coven I was

there where she promised she wouldn't take me a minute before I was locked in the library and then I was there where she had gone with my body in the place of utter blasphemy the Unholy pit where the Black Realm begins and The Watcher guards the gate I saw a shaggoth it changed shape I can't stand it I'll kill her if she ever sends me There again I'll kill that identity her him it I'll kill it I'll kill it with my own hands it took me an hour to quiet him but he subsided at last

the next day I got him decent clothes in the village and set out with him for Arkham his Fury of Hysteria was spent and he was inclined to be silent though he began muttering Darkly to himself when the car passed through Augusta as if the sight of a city aroused unpleasant memories it was clear that he did not wish to go home and considering the Fantastic delusions he seemed to have about his wife delusions undoubtedly springing from some actual hypnotic ordeal to which he had been subjected I thought it would be better if he did

not I would I resolved put him up myself for a time no matter what unpleasantness It would make with asenath later I would help him get a divorce for most assuredly there were mental factors which made this marriage suicidal for him when we struck Open Country again Darby's muttering faded away and I let him nod and drowse on the seat beside me as I drove during our Sunset Dash through Portland the muttering commenced again more distinctly than before and as I Listened I caught a stream of utterly insane driil about asth the extent to which

she had prayed on Edward's nerves was plain for he had woven a whole set of hallucinations around her his present predicament he mumbled furtively was only one of a long series she was getting hold of him and he knew that someday she would never let go even now she probably let him go only when she had to because she couldn't Hold on Long at a time she constantly took his body and went to nameless places for nameless rights leaving him in her body and locking him upstairs but sometimes she couldn't hold on and he would

find himself suddenly in his own body again in some far off horrible and perhaps unknown Place sometimes she'd get hold of him again and sometimes she couldn't often he was left stranded somewhere as I had found Him time and again he had to find his way home from Fright ful distances getting somebody to drive the car after he found it the worst thing was that she was holding on to him longer and longer at a time she wanted to be a man to be fully human that was why she got hold of him she had

sensed the mixture of fine rot brain and weak will in him someday she would crowd him out and disappear with his body disappear to Become a great magician like her father and leave him maroon in that female shell that wasn't even quite human yes he knew about the ins mouth blood now there had been traffic with things from the sea it was horrible and old Ephraim he had known the secret and when he grew old did a hideous thing to keep alive he wanted to live forever aseneth would succeed one successful demonstration had taken place

already as Darby muttered on I turned to Look at him closely verifying the impression of change which an earlier scrutiny had given me paradoxically he seemed in better shape than usual harder more normally developed and without the trace of sickly flabbiness caused by his indolent habits it was as if he had been really active and properly exercised for the first time in his coddled life and I judged that Asenath's Force must have pushed him into un wanted channels of motion and alertness but just now his mind was in a pitiable state for he was mumbling

wild extravagances about his wife about black magic about old Ephraim and about some Revelation which would convince even me he repeated names which I recognized from bygone browsings in Forbidden volumes and at times made me shudder with a certain thread of mythological consistency or convincing coherence Which ran through his mandering again and again he would pause as if to gather courage for some final and terrible disclosure Dan Dan don't you remember him wild eyes and the unkempt beard that never turned white he glared at me once and I never forgot it now she glares that

way and I know why he found it in the Necronomicon the formula I don't dare tell you the page yet but When I do you can read and understand then you will know what has engulfed me on on on on body to body to body he means never to Die the LIF glow he knows how to break the link it can flicker on a while even when the body is dead I'll give you hints and maybe you'll guess listen Dan do you know why my wife always takes such pains with that silly backhand writing have

you ever seen a manuscript Of old ephraims do you want to know why I shivered when I saw some Hasty notes asenath had jotted down asath is there such a person why did they half think there was poison in old ephraim's stomach why do the gilmans whisper about the way he shrieked like a frightened child when he went mad and asenath locked him up in the padded attic room Where the other had been was it old ephraim's soul that was locked in who locked in whom why had he been looking for months for someone with

a fine mind and a weak will why did he curse that his daughter wasn't a son tell me Daniel Upton what devilish exchange was perpetrated in the house of horror where that Blasphemous monster had his trusting weak will half-human child at his Mercy didn't he make it permanent as She'll do in the end with me tell me why that thing that calls itself asenath writes differently off guard so that you can't tell its script from then the thing happened Darby's voice was rising to a thin treble scream as he raved when suddenly it was shut

off with an almost mechanical click I thought of those other occasions at my home when his confidences had abruptly ceased when I had half fancied that some Obscure telepathic wave of asenath's mental force was intervening to keep him silent this though was something altogether different and I felt infinitely more horrible the face beside me was twisted almost unrecognizably for a moment while through the whole body there passed a shivering motion as if all the bones or organs muscles nerves and glands were adjusting themselves to a radically different Posture set of stresses and general personality just

where the Supreme horror lay I could not for my life tell yet there swept over me such a swamping wave of sickness and repulsion such a freezing petrifying sense of utter alienage and abnormality that my grasp of the wheel grew feeble and uncertain the figure beside me seemed less like a lifelong friend than like some monstrous intrusion from outer space some damnable Utterly accursed focus of unknown and malign Cosmic forces I had faltered only a moment but before another moment was over my companion had seized the wheel and forced me to change places with him

the dusk was now very thick and the lights of Portland far behind so I could not see much of his face the blaze of his eyes though was phenomenal and I knew that he must now be in that queerly energized state so unlike his usual self which so many People had noticed it seemed odd and incredible that listless Edward Darby he who could never assert himself and who had never learned to drive should be ordering me about and taking the wheel of my own car yet that was precisely what had happened he did not speak

for some time and in my inexplicable horror I was glad he did not in the lights of bord and Sako I saw his firmly set mouth and shivered at the Blaze of his eyes the people were right he did look dambly like his wife and like old Ephraim when in these moods I did not Wonder that the moods were disliked there was certainly something unnatural in them and I felt the Sinister element all the more because of the wild ravings I had been hearing this man for all my lifelong knowledge of Edward Pikman Darby was

a Stranger an intrusion of some sort from the black abyss he did not speak until we were on a dark stretch of road and when he did his voice seemed utterly unfamiliar it was deeper firmer and more decisive than I had ever known it to be while its accent and pronunciation were altogether changed though vaguely remotely and rather disturbingly recalling something I could not quite place there was I thought a trace of Very profound and very genuine irony in the tamber not the flashy meaninglessly jaunty pseudo irony of the callow sophisticate which Darby had habitually

affected but something Grim basic pervasive and potentially evil I marveled at the self-possession so soon following the spell of panic struck muttering I hope you'll forget my attack back there Upton he was saying you know what my nerves are and I guess you can Excuse such things I'm enormously grateful of course for this lift home and you must forget too any crazy things I may have been saying about my wife and about things in general that's what comes from overstudy in a field like mine My Philosophy is full of bizarre Concepts and when the mind

gets worn out it Cooks up all sorts of imaginary concrete applications I shall take a rest from Now on you probably won't see me for some time and you needn't blame asenath for it this trip was a bit queer but it's really very simple there are certain Indian relics in the Northwood standing stones and all that which mean a good deal in folklore and asenath and I are following that stuff up it was a hard search so I seemed to have gone off my head I must send somebody for the car When I get home

A month's relaxation will put me on my feet I do not recall just what my own part of the conversation was for the baffling alienage of my seatmate filled all my Consciousness with every moment my feeling of elusive Cosmic horror increased till at length I was in a virtual delirium of longing for the end of the drive Darby did not offer to relinquish The wheel and I was glad of the speed with which Portsmouth and Newbury port flashed by at the junction where the main Highway runs Inland and a voids in's mouth I was half

afraid my driver would take the Bleak Shore Road that goes through that damnable place he did not however but darted rapidly past Rowley and ipswitch toward our destination we reached Arkham before Midnight and found the lights still on at the old crown and shield house Darby left the car with a hasty repetition of his thanks and I drove home alone with a curious feeling of relief it had been a terrible drive all the more terrible because I could not quite tell why and I did not regret Darby's forecast of a long absence from my company

the next two months were full of rumors people spoke of seeing Darby more And more in his new energized State and asenath was scarcely ever into her callers I had only one visit from Edward when he called briefly in asenath's car duly reclaimed from where wherever he had left it in Maine to get some books he had lent me he was in his new state and paused only long enough for some evasively polite remarks it was plain that he had nothing to discuss with me when in this Condition and I noticed that he did not

even trouble to give the old three and two signal when ringing the doorbell as on that evening in the car I felt a faint infinitely deep horror which I could not explain so that his Swift departure was a prodigious relief in mid-september Darby was away for a week and some of the decadent College set talked knowingly of the matter hinting At a meeting with a notorious cult leader lately expelled from England who had established headquarters in New York for my part I could not get that strange ride from Maine out of my head the transformation

I had witnessed had affected me profoundly and I caught myself again and again trying to account for the thing and for the extreme horror it had inspired in me but the oddest rumors were those about the sobbing in the old Crown and shield house The Voice seemed to be a woman's and some of the younger people thought it sounded like asins it was heard only at rare intervals and would sometimes times be choked off as if by force there was talk of an investigation but this was dispelled one day when asenath appeared in the streets

and chatted in a sprightly way with a large number of Acquaintances apologizing for her recent absence and speaking incidentally about the nervous breakdown and hysteria of a guest from Boston the guest was never seen But asenath's appearance left nothing to be said head and then someone complicated Matters by Whispering that the sobs had once or twice been in a man's voice one evening in mid October I heard the familiar three and two ring at the Front door answering it myself I found Edward on the steps and saw in a moment that his personality was the

old one which I had not encountered since the day of his ravings on that terrible ride from chesen cook his face was twitching with a mixture of OD emotions in which fear and Triumph seemed to share dominion and he looked furtively over his shoulder as I closed the door behind him following me clumsily to the study He asked for some whiskey to steady his nerves I forbore to question him but waited till he felt like beginning whatever he wanted to say at length he ventured some information in a choking voice asenath has gone Dan we

had a long talk last night while the servants were out and I made her promise to stop praying on me of course I had certain certain occult defenses I never told you about she had to give in but Got frightfully angry just packed up and started for New York walked right out to catch the 820 into Boston I suppose people will talk but I can't help that you needn't mention that there was any trouble just say she's gone on a long research trip she's probably going to stay with one of her horrible groups of devotees

I hope she'll go west and get a divorce anyhow I've made her promise to Keep away and let me alone it was horrible Dan she was stealing my body crowding me out making a prisoner of me I lay low and pretended to let her do it but I had had to be on the watch I could plan if I was careful for she can't read my mind literally or in detail all she could read of my planning was a sort of General mood of rebellion and she always thought I was helpless never thought I could

get the Best of her but I had a spell or two that worked Darby looked over his shoulder and took some more whiskey I paid off those damn servants this morning when they got back back they were ugly about it and asked questions but they went they're her kin ins mouth people and were hand and glove with her I hope they'll let me Alone I didn't like the way they laughed when they walked away I must get as many of Dad's old servants again as I can I'll move back home now I suppose you think

I'm crazy Dan but Arkham history ought to hint at things that back up what I've told you and what I'm going to tell you you've seen one of the changes too in your car after I told you about asenath that day coming home from Maine That was when she got me drove me out of my body the last thing I remember was when I was all worked up trying to tell you what that she devil is then she got me and in a Flash I was back at the house in the library where those damned

servants had me locked up and in that cursed fiend's body that isn't even human you know it was she you must have ridden home with that praying wolf in my Body you ought to have known the difference I shuddered as Darby paused surely I had known the difference yet could I accept an explanation as insane as this but my distracted collar was growing even Wilder I had to save myself I had to Dan she'd have got me for good at Hall Mass they hold a Sabbath up there Beyond chessen cook and the sacrifice would have

clinched things she'd have got me For good she'd have been I and I'd have been she forever too late my body wouldd have been hers for good she'd have been a man and fully human just as she wanted to be I suppose she'd have put me out of the way killed her own ex body with me in it damn her just as she did before just as she did or it did before Edward's face was now atrociously distorted and he bent it uncomfortably close to mine as his voice fell to a Whisper you must know

what I hinted in the car that she isn't asenath at all but really old ephra himself I suspected it a year and a half ago and I know it now her handwriting shows it when she goes off guard sometimes she jots down a note in writing that's just like her father's manuscripts stroke for stroke and sometimes she says things that nobody but an old man like Ephraim Could say he changed forms with her when he felt death coming she was the only one he could find with the right kind of brain and a weak enough

will he got her body permanently just as she almost got mine and then poisoned the old body he'd put her into haven't you seen old ephraim's soul glaring out of that she Devil's eyes dozens of times and out of mine when she has Control of my body the Whisperer was panting and paused for breath I said nothing and when he resumed his voice was nearer normal this I reflected was a case for the Asylum but I would not be the one to send him there perhaps time and freedom from asenath would do its work I

could see that he would never wish to dabble in morbid occultism again I'll tell you more later I must have a long rest now I'll tell you Something of the Forbidden Horrors she led me into something of the age-old horrors that even now are festering in outof theeway Corners with a few monstrous priests to keep them alive some people know things about the universe that nobody ought to know and can do things that nobody ought to be able to do I've been in it up to my neck but that's the End today I'd burn that

damn Necronomicon and all the rest if I were librarian at msonic but she can't get me now I must get out of that UR cursed house as soon as I can and settle down at home you'll help me I know if I need help those devilish servants you know and if people should get too inquisitive about asenath you see I can't give them her Address then there are certain groups of Searchers certain Cults you know that might misunderstand our breaking up some of them have damnably curious ideas and methods I know you'll stand by me

if anything happens even if I have to tell you a lot that will shock you I had Edward stay and sleep in one of the guest chambers that night and in the morning he seemed calmer we discussed certain possible Arrangements for his moving back into the Darby mansion and I hoped he would lose no time in making the change he did not call the next evening but I saw him frequently during the ensuing weeks we talked as little as possible about strange and unpleasant things but discussed the renovation of the old Darby house and the

travels which Edward promised to take with my son and me the following Summer of asenath we said almost nothing for I saw that the subject was a peculiarly disturbing one gossip of course was rif but that was no novelty in connection with the strange Mina at the old crown and shield house one thing I did did not like was what Darby's Banker let fall in an overexpansion mood at the miskatonic club about the checks Edward was sending regularly to a Moses and Abigail Sergeant and a Eunice Babson in innsmouth that looked as if those evil

faac servants were extorting some kind of tribute from him yet he had not mentioned the matter to me I wished that the summer and my son's Harvard vacation would come so so that we could get Edward to Europe he was not I soon saw mending as rapidly as I had hoped he would for there was something a bit hysterical in His occasional exhilaration while his moods of fright and depression were all together too frequent the old Darby house was ready by December yet Edward constantly put off moving though he hated and seemed to fear the

crown and shield place he was at the same time time queerly enslaved by it he could not seem to begin dismantling things and invented every kind of excuse to postpone Action when I pointed this out to him he appeared unaccountably frightened his father's old Butler who was there with other reacquired servants told me one day that Edward's occasional prowling about the house and especially down Cellar looked odd and UNH wholesome to him I wondered if asenath had been writing disturbing letters but the butler said there was no mail which could have come from her it

was about Christmas that Darby Broke down one evening while calling on me I was steering the conversation toward next Summer's travels when he suddenly shrieked and leaped up from his chair with a look of shocking uncontrollable fright a cosmic panic and Loathing such as only the nether Gulfs of nightmare could bring to any sane mind my brain my brain God Dan it's tugging from Beyond knocking clawing that she devil even now Ephraim kog kog the pit Of the shaggoths yaia shab narath the goat with a thousand Young The Flame the flame Beyond body Beyond life

in the earth oh God I pulled him back to his chair and poured some wine down his throat as his frenzy sank to a dull apathy he did not resist but kept his lips moving as if talking to himself presently I realized that he was trying to talk to me and bent my ear to his mouth to catch the feeble Words again again she's trying I might have known nothing can stop that force not distance nor magic nor death it comes and comes mostly in the night I can't leave it's horrible oh God Dan if

you only knew as I do just how horrible it is when he had slumped down into a stuper I propped him with pillows and let normal sleep overtake him I did not Call a doctor for I knew what would be said of his sanity and wished to give nature a chance if I possibly could he wak at midnight and I put him to bed upstairs but he was gone by morning he had let himself quietly out of the house and his Butler when called on the wire said he was at home pacing about the library

Edward went to Pieces rapidly after that he did not call again but I went daily to see him he would always be Sitting in his Library staring at nothing and having an air of abor normal listening sometimes he talked rationally but always on trivial topics any mentioned of his trouble of future plans or if asth would send him into a frenzy his Butler said he had frightful seizures at night during which he might eventually do himself harm I had a long talk with his doctor banker and lawyer and finally took the Physician with two specialist

colleagues to visit him the spasms that resulted from the first questions were violent and pitiable and that evening a closed car took his poor struggling body to the Arkham sanitarium I was made his guardian and called on him twice weekly almost weeping to hear his wild shrieks awesome Whispers And Dreadful droning repetitions of such phrases as I had to do it I had to do it it'll get me it'll Get me down there down there in the dark Mother Mother Dan save me save me how much hope of recovery there was no one could say

but I tried my best to be optimistic Edward must have a home if he emerged so I transferred his servants to the Darby Mansion which would surely be his sane Choice what to do about the crown and shield place with its complex arrangements and collections of utterly inexplicable objects I could not decide So left it momentarily untouched telling the Darby household to go over and dust the chief rooms once a week and ordering the furnace man to have a fire on those days the Final Nightmare came before candl mess heralded in Cruel irony by a

false gleam of Hope one morning late in January the sanitarium telephone to report that Edward's reason had suddenly come back his continuous memory that they Said was badly impaired but sanity itself was certain of course he must remain some time for observation but there could be little doubt of the outcome all going well he would surely be free in a week I hastened over in a flood of delight but stood bewildered when a nurse took me to Edward's room the patient Rose to greet me extending his hand with a polite smile but I saw in

an instant That he bore the strangely energized personality which had seemed so foreign to his own nature the competent personality I had found so vaguely horrible and which Edward himself had once vowed was the intruding soul of his wife there was the same blazing Vision so like asins and old ephraims and the same firm mouth and when he spoke I could sense the same Grim pervasive irony in his voice the Deep irony so rent of potential Evil this was the person who had driven my car through the night 5 months before the person I had

not seen since that brief call when he had forgotten the oldtime doorbell signal and stirred such nebulous fears in me and now he filled me with the same dim feeling of Blasphemous alienage and ineffable Cosmic hideousness he spoke affably of a rang ments for release and there was nothing for me to do but Ascent despite some Remarkable gaps in his recent memories yet I felt that something was terribly inexplicably wrong and abnormal there were Horrors in this thing that I could not reach this was a sane person but was it indeed the Edward Derby I

had known if not who or what was it and where was Edward ought it to be free or confined or ought it to be extrap from the face of the Earth there was a hint of the abysmally Sardonic in everything the creature said the asenath likee eyes lent a special and baffling mockery to certain words about the early Liberty earned by an especially close confinement I must have behaved very awkwardly and was glad to beat a retreat all that day and the next I racked my brain over the problem what had happened what sort of

Mind looked out through those alien eyes in Edward's Face I could think of nothing but this dimly terrible Enigma and gave up all efforts to perform my usual work the second morning the hospital called up to say that the recovered patient was unchanged and by evening I was close to a nervous collapse a state I admit though others will vow it colored my subsequent vision I have nothing to say on this point Except that no Madness of mine could account for all the evidence te was in the night after that second evening that Stark utter

horror burst over me and waited my spirit with a black clutching Panic from which it can never Shake free it began with a telephone call just before midnight I was the only one up and sleepily took down the receiver in the library no one seemed to be on the wire and I Was about to hang up and go to bed when my ear caught a very faint suspicion of sound at the other end was someone trying under great difficulties to talk as I listened I thought I heard a sort of half liquid bubbling noise glub

glub glub which had an odd suggestion of inarticulate unintelligible word and syllable divisions I called who is it but the only answer was glub glub glub Glub I could only assume that the noise was mechanical but fancying that it might be a case of a broken instrument able to receive but not to send I added I can't hear you better hang up and try information immediately I heard the receiver go on the hook at the other end this I say was just about midnight when the call was traced afterward it was found to come from

the old crown and shield house though it was fully half a week from the housemaid's day to be There I shall only hint what was found at that house the upheaval in a remote Cellar store room the tracks the dirt the hastily rifled wardrobe the baffling marks on the telephone the clumsily used stationer and the detestable stench lingering over everything the police poor fools have their smug little theories and are still searching for those Sinister discharged servants who have dropped out of sight amidst the present Furer they speak of a ghoulish revenge for things that

were done and say I was included because I was Edward's best friend and advisor idiots do they fancy those brutish clowns could have forged that handwriting do they fancy they could have brought what later came are they blind to the changes in that body that was Edward's as for me I now believe all that Edward Darby ever told me there are Horrors Beyond life's Edge that we do not suspect and once in a while man's evil prying calls them just within our range Ephraim asenath that devil called them in and they engulfed Edward as they

are engulfing me can I be sure that I am safe those Powers survive the life of the physical Form the next day in the afternoon when I pulled out of my prostration and was able to walk and talk coherently I went to the mad house and shot him dead for Edwards in the world's sake but can I be sure till he is cremated they are keeping the body for some silly autopsies by different doctors but I say he must be cremated he must be cremated he who was not Edward Derby when I shot him I

shall Go mad if he is not for I may be the next but my will is not weak and I shall not Let It Be undermined by the Terrors I know are seething around it one life Ephraim asenath and Edward who now I will not be driven out of my body I will not change Souls with that bullet-ridden Lich of in the mad house but let me try to tell coherently of that final horror I will not speak of what the police persistantly ignored the tales of that dwarfed Grotesque malodorous thing met by at least

three Wayfarers in High Street just before 2:00 and the nature of the single Footprints in certain places I will say only that just about two the doorbell and knocker waked me doorbell and knocker both applied alter alternately and uncertainly in a kind of weak desperation and each trying to keep Edward's old signal of three and two strokes roused from sound sleep my mind Leaped into a turmoil Darby at the door and remembering the old code that new personality had not remembered it was Edward suddenly back in his rightful State why was he here in such

evident stress and haste had he been released ahead of time or had he escaped perhaps I thought as I flung on a robe and bounded Downstairs his return to his own self had brought raving and violence revoking his discharge and driving him to a desperate dash for Freedom whatever had happened he was good old Edward again and I would help him when I opened the door into the El arched Blackness a gust of insufferably FedEd wind almost flly me prostrate I choked in nausea and for a second scarcely saw the dwarfed humped figure on the

Steps the summons had been Edward's but who was this foul stunted parody where had Edward had time to go his ring had sounded only a second before the door opened the caller had on one of Edward's overcoats its bottom almost touching the ground and its sleeves rolled back back yet still covering the hands on the head was a slouch hat pulled low while a black silk Muffler concealed the Face as I stepped unsteadily forward the figure made a semi liquid sound like that I had heard over the telephone glub glove and thrust at me a

large closely written paper impaled on the end of a long pencil still reeling from The Morbid and unaccountable feeder I seized the paper and tried to read it in the light from the doorway Beyond question it was in Edward's Script but why had he written when he was close enough to ring and why was the script so awkward coarse and shaky I could make out nothing in the dim halflight so edged back into the Hall the dwarf figure clumping mechanically after but pausing on the inner door's threshold the odor of this singular messenger was really

appalling and I hoped not in vain thank God that my wife would not wake and confront it then as I Read the paper I felt my knees give under me and my vision go black I was lying on the floor when I came to that accursed sheet still clutched in my fear rigid hand this is what it said Dan go to the sanitarium and kill it exterminate it it isn't n't Edward Darby anymore she got me it's asenath and she has been dead 3 months and a half I lied when I said she had gone

away I killed her I had To it was sudden but we were alone and I was in my right body I saw a Candlestick and smashed her head in she would have got me for good at hallow Mass I buried her in the farther Cellar store room under some old box boxes and cleaned up all the traces the servants suspected next morning but they have such secrets that they dare not tell the police I sent them off but God knows what they and others Of the cult will do I thought for a while I was

all right and then I felt the tugging at my brain I knew what it was I ought to have remembered a soul like hers or ephraim's is half detached and keeps right on after death as long as the body lasts she was getting me making me change bodies with her seizing my body and putting me in that corpse of hers buried in the cellar I knew what was coming that's why I snapped and had to Go to the Asylum then it came I found myself choked in the dark in asenath's rotting carcass down there in

the cellar under the the boxes where I put it and I knew she must be in my body at the sanitarium permanently for it was after Hall mass and the sacrifice would work even without her being there Sane and ready for release as a menace to the world I was desperate and in spite of everything I clawed my way out I'm too far gone to talk I couldn't manage man AG to telephone but I can still write I'll get fixed up somehow and bring this last word and warning kill that fiend if you value the

peace and comfort of the World see that it is cremated if you don't it will live on and on body to body forever and I can't tell you what it will do keep clear of black magic Dan it's the devil's business goodbye you've been a great friend tell the police whatever they'll believe and I'm dambly sorry to drag all this on you I'll be at peace before long this thing won't hold together much more hope you can read this and kill that Thing kill it yours Ed it was only afterward that I read the last

half of this paper for I had fainted at the end of the third paragraph I fainted again when I saw and smelled melled what cluttered up the threshold where the warm air had Struck it the messenger would not move or have Consciousness anymore the butler tougher fibered than I did not faint at what met him in the Hall in the morning instead he telephoned the police when they came I had been taken upstairs to bed but the other Mass lay where it had collapsed in the night the men put hand CHS to their noses what

they finally found inside Edward's oddly assorted clothes was mostly liquescent horror there were bones two and a crushed in skull some dental work positively Identified the skull as asins