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.
