The Strange High House in the Mist
By H. P. Lovecraft
In the morning,
mist comes up from the sea by the cliffs beyond
Kingsport.
White and feathery it comes from the deep
to its brothers
the clouds,
full of dreams of dank pastures and caves
of leviathan.
And later,
in still summer rains on the steep roofs of
poets,
the clouds scatter bits of those dreams,
that men shall not live without rumor of old
strange secrets,
and wonders that planets tell planets alone
in the night.
When tales fly thick in the grottoes of tritons,
and conchs in seaweed cities blow wild tunes
learned from
the Elder Ones,
then great eager mists flock to heaven laden
with lore,
and oceanward eyes on tile rocks see only
a mystic whiteness,
as if the cliff's rim were the rim of all
earth,
and the solemn bells of buoys tolled free
in the aether of
faery.
Now north of archaic Kingsport the crags climb
lofty and
curious,
terrace on terrace,
till the northernmost hangs in the sky like
a gray frozen
wind-cloud.
Alone it is,
a bleak point jutting in limitless space,
for there the coast turns sharp where the
great Miskatonic
pours out of the plains past Arkham,
bringing woodland legends and little quaint
memories of New
England's hills.
The sea-folk of Kingsport look up at that
cliff as other
sea-folk look up at the pole-star,
and time the night's watches by the way it
hides or shows
the Great Bear,
Cassiopeia and the Dragon.
Among them it is one with the firmament,
and truly,
it is hidden from them when the mist hides
the stars or the
sun.
Some of the cliffs they love,
as that whose grotesque profile they call
Father Neptune,
or that whose pillared steps they term "The
Causeway";
but this one they fear because it is so near
the sky.
The Portuguese sailors coming in from a voyage
cross
themselves when they first see it,
and the old Yankees believe it would be a
much graver
matter than death to climb it,
if indeed that were possible.
Neverthcless there is an ancient house on
that cliff,
and at evening men see lights in the small-paned
windows.
The ancient house has always been there,
and people say One dwells within who talks
with the morning
mists that come up from the deep,
and perhaps sees singular things oceanward
at those times
when the cliff's rim becomes the rim of all
earth,
and solemn buoys toll free in the white aether
of faery.
This they tell from hearsay,
for that forbidding crag is always unvisited,
and natives dislike to train telescopes on
it.
Summer boarders have indeed scanned it with
jaunty
binoculars,
but have never seen more than the gray primeval
roof,
peaked and shingled,
whose eaves come nearly to the gray foundations,
and the dim yellow light of the little windows
peeping out
from under those eaves in the dusk.
These summer people do not believe that the
same One has
lived in the ancient house for hundreds of
years,
but can not prove their heresy to any real
Kingsporter.
Even the Terrible Old Man who talks to leaden
pendulums in
bottles,
buys groceries with centuried Spanish gold,
and keeps stone idols in the yard of his antediluvian
cottage in Water Street can only say these
things were the
same when his grandfather was a boy,
and that must have been inconceivable ages
ago,
when Belcher or Shirley or Pownall or Bernard
was Governor
of His Majesty's Province of the Massachusetts-Bay.
Then one summer there came a philosopher into
Kingsport.
His name was Thomas Olney,
and he taught ponderous things in a college
by Narragansett
Bay.
With stout wife and romping children he came,
and his eyes were weary with seeing the same
things for
many years,
and thinking the same well-disciplined thoughts.
He looked at the mists from the diadem of
Father Neptune,
and tried to walk into their white world of
mystery along
the titan steps of The Causeway.
Morning after morning he would lie on the
cliffs and look
over the world's rim at the cryptical aether
beyond,
listening to spectral bells and the wild cries
of what
might have been gulls.
Then,
when the mist would lift and the sea stand
out prosy with
the smoke of steamers,
he would sigh and descend to the town,
where he loved to thread the narrow olden
lanes up and down
hill,
and study the crazy tottering gables and odd-pillared
doorways which had sheltered so many generations
of sturdy
sea-folk.
And he even talked with the Terrible Old Man,
who was not fond of strangers,
and was invited into his fearsomely archaic
cottage where
low ceilings and wormy panelling hear the
echoes of
disquieting soliloquies in the dark small
hours.
Of course it was inevitable that Olney should
mark the gray
unvisited cottage in the sky,
on that sinister northward crag which is one
with the mists
and the firmament.
Always over Kingsport it hung,
and always its mystery sounded in whispers
through
Kingsport's crooked alleys.
The Terrible Old Man wheezed a tale that his
father had
told him,
of lightning that shot one night up from that
peaked
cottage to the clouds of higher heaven;
and Granny Orne,
whose tiny gambrel-roofed abode in Ship Street
is all
covered with moss and ivy,
croaked over something her grandmother had
heard at
second-hand,
about shapes that flapped out of the eastern
mists straight
into the narrow single door of that unreachable
place - for
the door is set close to the edge of the crag
toward the
ocean,
and glimpsed only from ships at sea.
At length,
being avid for new strange things and held
back by neither
the Kingsporter's fear nor the summer boarder's
usual
indolence,
Olney made a very terrible resolve.
Despite a conservative training - or because
of it,
for humdrum lives breed wistful longings of
the unknown -
he swore a great oath to scale that avoided
northern cliff
and visit the abnormally antique gray cottage
in the sky.
Very plausibly his saner self argued that
the place must be
tenanted by people who reached it from inland
along the
easier ridge beside the Miskatonic's estuary.
Probably they traded in Arkham,
knowing how little Kingsport liked their habitation
or
perhaps being unable to climb down the cliff
on the
Kingsport side.
Olney walked out along the lesser cliffs to
where the great
crag leaped insolently up to consort with
celestial things,
and became very sure that no human feet could
mount it or
descend it on that beetling southern slope.
East and north it rose thousands of feet perpendicular
from
the water so only the western side,
inland and toward Arkham,
remained.
One early morning in August Olney set out
to find a path to
the inaccessible pinnacle.
He worked northwest along pleasant back roads,
past Hooper's Pond and the old brick powder-house
to where
the pastures slope up to the ridge above the
Miskatonic and
give a lovely vista of Arkham's white Georgian
steeples
across leagues of river and meadow.
Here he found a shady road to Arkham,
but no trail at all in the seaward direction
he wished.
Woods and fields crowded up to the high bank
of the river's
mouth,
and bore not a sign of man's presence;
not even a stone wall or a straying cow,
but only the tall grass and giant trees and
tangles of
briars that the first Indian might have seen.
As he climbed slowly east,
higher and higher above the estuary on his
left and nearer
and nearer the sea,
he found the way growing in difficulty till
he wondered how
ever the dwellers in that disliked place managed
to reach
the world outside,
and whether they came often to market in Arkham.
Then the trees thinned,
and far below him on his right he saw the
hills and antique
roofs and spires of Kingsport.
Even Central Hill was a dwarf from this height,
and he could just make out the ancient graveyard
by the
Congregational Hospital beneath which rumor
said some
terrible caves or burrows lurked.
Ahead lay sparse grass and scrub blueberry
bushes,
and beyond them the naked rock of the crag
and the thin
peak of the dreaded gray cottage.
Now the ridge narrowed,
and Olney grew dizzy at his loneness in the
sky,
south of him the frightful precipice above
Kingsport,
north of him the vertical drop of nearly a
mile to the
river's mouth.
Suddenly a great chasm opened before him,
ten feet deep,
so that he had to let himself down by his
hands and drop to
a slanting floor,
and then crawl perilously up a natural defile
in the
opposite wall.
So this was the way the folk of the uncanny
house journeyed
betwixt earth and sky!
When he climbed out of the chasm a morning
mist was
gathering,
but he clearly saw the lofty and unhallowed
cottage ahead;
walls as gray as the rock,
and high peak standing bold against the milky
white of the
seaward vapors.
And he perceived that there was no door on
this landward end,
but only a couple of small lattice windows
with dingy
bull's-eye panes leaded in seventeenth century
fashion.
All around him was cloud and chaos,
and he could see nothing below the whiteness
of illimitable
space.
He was alone in the sky with this queer and
very disturbing
house;
and when he sidled around to the front and
saw that the
wall stood flush with the cliff's edge,
so that the single narrow door was not to
be reached save
from the empty aether,
he felt a distinct terror that altitude could
not wholly
explain.
And it was very odd that shingles so worm-eaten
could
survive,
or bricks so crumbled still form a standing
chimney.
As the mist thickened,
Olney crept around to the windows on the north
and west and
south sides,
trying them but finding them all locked.
He was vaguely glad they were locked,
because the more he saw of that house the
less he wished to
get in.
Then a sound halted him.
He heard a lock rattle and a bolt shoot,
and a long creaking follow as if a heavy door
were slowly
and cautiously opened.
This was on the oceanward side that he could
not see,
where the narrow portal opened on blank space
thousands of
feet in the misty sky above the waves.
Then there was heavy,
deliberate tramping in the cottage,
and Olney heard the windows opening,
first on the north side opposite him,
and then on the west just around the corner.
Next would come the south windows,
under the great low eaves on the side where
he stood;
and it must be said that he was more than
uncomfortable as
he thought of the detestable house on one
side and the
vacancy of upper air on the other.
When a fumbling came in the nearer casements
he crept
around to the west again,
flattening himself against the wall beside
the now opened
windows.
It was plain that the owner had come home;
but he had not come from the land,
nor from any balloon or airship that could
be imagined.
Steps sounded again,
and Olney edged round to the north;
but before he could find a haven a voice called
softly,
and he knew he must confront his host.
Stuck out of the west window was a great black-bearded
face
whose eyes were phosphorescent with the imprint
of
unheard-of sights.
But the voice was gentle,
and of a quaint olden kind,
so that Olney did not shudder when a brown
hand reached out
to help him over the sill and into that low
room of black
oak wainscots and carved Tudor furnishings.
The man was clad in very ancient garments,
and had about him an unplaceable nimbus of
sea-lore and
dreams of tall galleons.
Olney does not recall many of the wonders
he told,
or even who he was;
but says that he was strange and kindly,
and filled with the magic of unfathomed voids
of time and
space.
The small room seemed green with a dim aqueous
light,
and Olney saw that the far windows to the
east were not open,
but shut against the misty aether with dull
panes like the
bottoms of old bottles.
That bearded host seemed young,
yet looked out of eyes steeped in the elder
mysteries;
and from the tales of marvelous ancient things
he related,
it must be guessed that the village folk were
right in
saying he had communed with the mists of the
sea and the
clouds of the sky ever since there was any
village to watch
his taciturn dwelling from the plain below.
And the day wore on,
and still Olney listened to rumors of old
times and far
places,
and heard how the kings of Atlantis fought
with the
slippery blasphemies that wriggled out of
rifts in ocean's
floor,
and how the pillared and weedy temple of Poseidon
is still
glimpsed at midnight by lost ships,
who knew by its sight that they are lost.
Years of the Titans were recalled,
but the host grew timid when he spoke of the
dim first age
of chaos before the gods or even the Elder
Ones were born,
and when the other gods came to dance on the
peak of
Hatheg-Kia in the stony desert near Ulthar,
beyond the River Skai.
It was at this point that there came a knocking
on the door;
that ancient door of nail-studded oak beyond
which lay only
the abyss of white cloud.
Olney started in fright,
but the bearded man motioned him to be still,
and tiptoed to the door to look out through
a very small
peephole.
What he saw he did not like,
so pressed his fingers to his lips and tiptoed
around to
shut and lock all the windows before returning
to the
ancient settle beside his guest.
Then Olney saw lingering against the translucent
squares of
each of the little dim windows in succession
a queer black
outline as the caller moved inquisitively
about before
leaving;
and he was glad his host had not answered
the knocking.
For there are strange objects in the great
abyss,
and the seeker of dreams must take care not
to stir up or
meet the wrong ones.
Then the shadows began to gather;
first little furtive ones under the table,
and then bolder ones in the dark panelled
corners.
And the bearded man made enigmatical gestures
of prayer,
and lit tall candles in curiously wrought
brass
candle-sticks.
Frequently he would glance at the door as
if he expected
some one,
and at length his glance seemed answered by
a singular
rapping which must have followed some very
ancient and
secret code.
This time he did not even glance tbrough the
peep-hole,
but swung the great oak bar and shot the bolt,
unlatching the heavy door and flinging it
wide to the stars
and the mist.
And then to the sound of obscure harmonies
there floated
into that room from the deep all the dreams
and memories of
earth's sunken Mighty Ones.
And golden flames played about weedy locks,
so that Olney was dazzled as he did them homage.
Trident-bearing Neptune was there,
and sportive tritons and fantastic nereids,
and upon dolphins' backs was balanced a vast
crenulate
shell wherein rode the gay and awful form
of primal Nodens,
Lord of the Great Abyss.
And the conchs of the tritons gave weird blasts,
and the nereids made strange sounds by striking
on the
grotesque resonant shells of unknown lurkers
in black
seacaves.
Then hoary Nodens reached forth a wizened
hand and helped
Olney and his host into the vast shell,
whereat the conchs and the gongs set up a
wild and awesome
clamor.
And out into the limitless aether reeled that
fabulous train,
the noise of whose shouting was lost in the
echoes of
thunder.
All night in Kingsport they watched that lofty
cliff when
the storm and the mists gave them glimpses
of it,
and when toward the small hours the little
dim windows went
dark they whispered of dread and disaster.
And Olney's children and stout wife prayed
to the bland
proper god of Baptists,
and hoped that the traveller would borrow
an umbrella and
rubbers unless the rain stopped by morning.
Then dawn swam dripping and mist-wreathed
out of the sea,
and the buoys tolled solemn in vortices of
white aether.
And at noon elfin horns rang over the ocean
as Olney,
dry and lightfooted,
climbed down from the cliffs to antique Kingsport
with the
look of far places in his eyes.
He could not recall what he had dreamed in
the skyperched
hut of that still nameless hermit,
or say how he had crept down that crag untraversed
by other
feet.
Nor could he talk of these matters at all
save with the
Terrible Old Man,
who afterward mumbled queer things in his
long white beard;
vowing that the man who came down from that
crag was not
wholly the man who went up,
and that somewhere under that gray peaked
roof,
or amidst inconceivable reaches of that sinister
white mist,
there lingered still the lost spirit of him
who was Thomas
Obey.
And ever since that hour,
through dull dragging years of grayness and
weariness,
the philosopher has labored and eaten and
slept and done
uncomplaining the suitable deeds of a citizen.
Not any more does he long for the magic of
farther hills,
or sigh for secrets that peer like green reefs
from a
bottomless sea.
The sameness of his days no longer gives him
sorrow and
well-disciplined thoughts have grown enough
for his
imagination.
His good wife waxes stouter and his children
older and
prosier and more useful,
and he never fails to smile correctly with
pride when the
occasion calls for it.
In his glance there is not any restless light,
and all he ever listens for solemn bells or
far elfin horns
it is only at night when old dreams are wandering.
He has never seen Kingsport again,
for his family disliked the funny old houses
and complained
that the drains were impossibly bad.
They have a trim bungalow now at Bristol Highlands,
where no tall crags tower,
and the neighbors are urban and modern.
But in Kingsport strange tales are abroad,
and even the Terrible Old Man admits a thing
untold by his
grandfather.
For now,
when the wind sweeps boisterous out of the
north past the
high ancient house that is one with the firmament,
there is broken at last that ominous,
brooding silence ever before the bane of Kingsport's
maritime cotters.
And old folk tell of pleasing voices heard
singing there,
and of laughter that swells with joys beyond
earth's joys;
and say that at evening the little low windows
are brighter
than formerly.
They say,
too,
that the fierce aurora comes oftener to that
spot,
shining blue in the north with visions of
frozen worlds
while the crag and the cottage hang black
and fantastic
against wild coruscations.
And the mists of the dawn are thicker,
and sailors are not quite so sure that all
the muffled
seaward ringing is that of the solemn buoys.
Worst of all,
though,
is the shrivelling of old fears in the hearts
of
Kingsport's young men,
who grow prone to listen at night to the north
wind's faint
distant sounds.
They swear no harm or pain can inhabit that
high peaked
cottage,
for in the new voices gladness beats,
and with them the tinkle of laughter and music.
What tales the sea-mists may bring to that
haunted and
northernmost pinnacle they do not know,
but they long to extract some hint of the
wonders that
knock at the cliff-yawning door when clouds
are thickest.
And patriarchs dread lest some day one by
one they seek out
that inaccessible peak in the sky,
and learn what centuried secrets hide beneath
the steep
shingled roof which is part of the rocks and
the stars and
the ancient fears of Kingsport.
That those venturesome youths will come back
they do not
doubt,
but they think a light may be gone from their
eyes,
and a will from their hearts.
And they do not wish quaint Kingsport with
its climbing
lanes and archaic gables to drag listless
down the years
while voice by voice the laughing chorus grows
stronger and
wilder in that unknown and terrible eyrie
where mists and
the dreams of mists stop to rest on their
way from the sea
to the skies.
They do not wish the souls of their young
men to leave the
pleasant hearths and gambrel-roofed taverns
of old Kingsport,
nor do they wish the laughter and song in
that high rocky
place to grow louder.
For as the voice which has come has brought
fresh mists
from the sea and from the north fresh lights,
so do they say that still other voices will
bring more
mists and more lights,
till perhaps the olden gods (whose existence
they hint only
in whispers for fear the Congregational parson
shall hear}
may come out of the deep and from unknown
Kadath in the
cold waste and make their dwelling on that
evilly
appropriate crag so close to the gentle hills
and valleys
of quiet,
simple fisher folk.
This they do not wish,
for to plain people things not of earth are
unwelcome;
and besides,
the Terrible Old Man often recalls what Olney
said about a
knock that the lone dweller feared,
and a shape seen black and inquisitive against
the mist
through those queer translucent windows of
leaded
bull's-eyes.
All these things,
however,
the Elder Ones only may decide;
and meanwhile the morning mist still comes
up by that
lovely vertiginous peak with the steep ancient
house,
that gray,
low-eaved house where none is seen but where
evening brings
furtive lights while the north wind tells
of strange revels.
white and feathery it comes from the deep
to its brothers
the clouds,
full of dreams of dank pastures and caves
of leviathan.
And when tales fly thick in the grottoes of
tritons,
and conchs in seaweed cities blow wild tunes
learned from
the Elder Ones,
then great eager vapors flock to heaven laden
with lore;
and Kingsport,
nestling uneasy in its lesser cliffs below
that awesome
hanging sentinel of rock,
sees oceanward only a mystic whiteness,
as if the cliff's rim were the rim of all
earth,
and the solemn bells of the buoys tolled free
in the aether
of faery.
