Horrible beyond conception was the change
which had taken
place in my best friend,
Crawford Tillinghast.
I had not seen him since that day,
two months and a half before,
when he told me toward what goal his physical
and metaphysical
researches were leading;
when he had answered my awed and almost frightened
remonstrances by driving me from his laboratory
and his house
in a burst of fanatical rage.
I had known that he now remained mostly shut
in the attic
laboratory with that accursed electrical machine,
eating little and excluding even the servants,
but I had not thought that a brief period
of ten weeks could
so alter and disfigure any human creature.
It is not pleasant to see a stout man suddenly
grown thin,
and it is even worse when the baggy skin becomes
yellowed or
grayed,
the eyes sunken,
circled,
and uncannily glowing,
the forehead veined and corrugated,
and the hands tremulous and twitching.
And if added to this there be a repellent
unkemptness,
a wild disorder of dress,
a bushiness of dark hair white at the roots,
and an unchecked growth of white beard on
a face once
clean-shaven,
the cumulative effect is quite shocking.
But such was the aspect of Crawford Tilllinghast
on the night
his half coherent message brought me to his
door after my
weeks of exile;
such was the specter that trembled as it admitted
me,
candle in hand,
and glanced furtively over its shoulder as
if fearful of
unseen things in the ancient,
lonely house set back from Benevolent Street.
That Crawford Tillinghast should ever have
studied science and
philosophy was a mistake.
These things should be left to the frigid
and impersonal
investigator for they offer two equally tragic
alternatives to
the man of feeling and action;
despair,
if he fail in his quest,
and terrors unutterable and unimaginable if
he succeed.
Tillinghast had once been the prey of failure,
solitary and melancholy;
but now I knew,
with nauseating fears of my own,
that he was the prey of success.
I had indeed warned him ten weeks before,
when he burst forth with his tale of what
he felt himself
about to discover.
He had been flushed and excited then,
talking in a high and unnatural,
though always pedantic,
voice.
"What do we know," he had said,
"of the world and the universe about us?
Our means of
receiving impressions are absurdly few,
and our notions of surrounding objects infinitely
narrow.
We see things only as we are constructed to
see them,
and can gain no idea of their absolute nature.
With five feeble senses we pretend to comprehend
the
boundlessly complex cosmos,
yet other beings with wider,
stronger,
or different range of senses might not only
see very
differently the things we see,
but might see and study whole worlds of matter,
energy,
and life which lie close at hand yet can never
be detected
with the senses we have.
I have always believed that such strange,
inaccessible worlds exist at our very elbows,
and now I believe I have found a way to break
down the barriers.
I am not joking.
Within twenty-four hours that machine near
the table will
generate waves acting on unrecognized sense
organs that exist
in us as atrophied or rudimentary vestiges.
Those waves will open up to us many vistas
unknown to man and
several unknown to anything we consider organic
life.
We shall see that at which dogs howl in the
dark,
and that at which cats prick up their ears
after midnight.
We shall see these things,
and other things which no breathing creature
has yet seen.
We shall overleap time,
space,
and dimensions,
and without bodily motion peer to the bottom
of creation."
When Tillinghast said these things I remonstrated,
for I knew him well enough to be frightened
rather than amused;
but he was a fanatic,
and drove me from the house.
Now he was no less a fanatic,
but his desire to speak had conquered his
resentment,
and he had written me imperatively in a hand
I could scarcely
recognize.
As I entered the abode of the friend so suddenly
metamorphosed
to a shivering gargoyle,
I became infected with the terror which seemed
stalking in all
the shadows.
The words and beliefs expressed ten weeks
before seemed bodied
forth in the darkness beyond the small circle
of candle light,
and I sickened at the hollow,
altered voice of my host.
I wished the servants were about,
and did not like it when he said they had
all left three days
previously.
It seemed strange that old Gregory,
at least,
should desert his master without telling as
tried a friend as I.
It was he who had given me all the information
I had of
Tillinghast after I was repulsed in rage.
Yet I soon subordinated all my fears to my
growing curiosity
and fascination.
Just what Crawford Tillinghast now wished
of me I could only
guess,
but that he had some stupendous secret or
discovery to impart,
I could not doubt.
Before I had protested at his unnatural pryings
into the
unthinkable;
now that he had evidently succeeded to some
degree I almost
shared his spirit,
terrible though the cost of victory appeared.
Up through the dark emptiness of the house
I followed the
bobbing candle in the hand of this shaking
parody of man.
The electricity seemed to be turned off,
and when I asked my guide he said it was for
a definite reason.
"It would be too much...
I would not dare," he continued to mutter.
I especially noted his new habit of muttering,
for it was not like him to talk to himself.
We entered the laboratory in the attic,
and I observed that detestable electrical
machine,
glowing with a sickly,
sinister violet luminosity.
It was connected with a powerful chemical
battery,
but seemed to be receiving no current;
for I recalled that in its experimental stage
it had sputtered
and purred when in action.
In reply to my question Tillinghast mumbled
that this
permanent glow was not electrical in any sense
that I could
understand.
He now seated me near the machine,
so that it was on my right,
and turned a switch somewhere below the crowning
cluster of
glass bulbs.
The usual sputtering began,
turned to a whine,
and terminated in a drone so soft as to suggest
a return to
silence.
Meanwhile the luminosity increased,
waned again,
then assumed a pale,
outrè colour or blend of colours which I
could neither place
nor describe.
Tillinghast had been watching me,
and noted my puzzled expression.
"Do you know what that is?" he whispered,
"That is ultra-violet."
He chuckled oddly at my surprise.
"You thought ultra-violet was invisible,
and so it is - but you can see that and many
other invisible
things now.
"Listen to me!
The waves from that thing are waking a thousand
sleeping senses in us;
senses which we inherit from aeons of evolution
from the state
of detached electrons to the state of organic
humanity.
I have seen the truth,
and I intend to show it to you.
Do you wonder how it will seem?
I will tell you."
Here
Tillinghast seated himself directly opposite
me,
blowing out his candle and staring hideously
into my eyes.
"Your existing sense-organs - ears first,
I think - will pick up many of the impressions,
for they are closely connected with the dormant
organs.
Then there will be others.
You have heard of the pineal gland?
I laugh at the shallow
endocrinologist,
fellow-dupe and fellow-parvenu of the Freudian.
That gland is the great sense organ of organs
- I have found
out.
It is like sight in the end,
and transmits visual pictures to the brain.
If you are normal,
that is the way you ought to get most of it...
I mean get most of the evidence from beyond."
I looked about the immense attic room with
the sloping south
wall,
dimly lit by rays which the every day eye
cannot see.
The far corners were all shadows and the whole
place took on a
hazy unreality which obscured its nature and
invited the
imagination to symbolism and phantasm.
During the interval that Tillinghast was long
silent I fancied
myself in some vast incredible temple of long-dead
gods;
some vague edifice of innumerable black stone
columns reaching
up from a floor of damp slabs to a cloudy
height beyond the
range of my vision.
The picture was very vivid for a while,
but gradually gave way to a more horrible
conception;
that of utter,
absolute solitude in infinite,
sightless,
soundless space.
There seemed to be a void,
and nothing more,
and I felt a childish fear which prompted
me to draw from my
hip pocket the revolver I carried after dark
since the night I
was held up in East Providence.
Then from the farthermost regions of remoteness,
the sound softly glided into existence.
It was infinitely faint,
subtly vibrant,
and unmistakably musical,
but held a quality of surpassing wildness
which made its
impact feel like a delicate torture of my
whole body.
I felt sensations like those one feels when
accidentally
scratching ground glass.
Simultaneously there developed something like
a cold draught,
which apparently swept past me from the direction
of the
distant sound.
As I waited breathlessly I perceived that
both sound and wind
were increasing;
the effect being to give me an odd notion
of myself as tied to
a pair of rails in the path of a gigantic
approaching
locomotive.
I began to speak to Tillinghast,
and as I did so all the unusual impressions
abruptly vanished.
I saw only the man,
the glowing machines,
and the dim apartment.
Tillinghast was grinning repulsively at the
revolver which I
had almost unconsciously drawn,
but from his expression I was sure he had
seen and heard as
much as I,
if not a great deal more.
I whispered what I had experienced and he
bade me to remain as
quiet and receptive as possible.
"Don't move," he cautioned,
"for in these rays we are able to be seen
as well as to see.
I told you the servants left,
but I didn't tell you how.
It was that thick-witted house-keeper - she
turned on the
lights downstairs after I had warned her not
to,
and the wires picked up sympathetic vibrations.
It must have been frightful - I could hear
the screams up here
in spite of all I was seeing and hearing from
another direction,
and later it was rather awful to find those
empty heaps of
clothes around the house.
Mrs.
Updike's clothes were close to the front hall
switch - that's
how I know she did it.
It got them all.
But so long as we don't move we're fairly
safe.
Remember we're dealing with a hideous world
in which we are
practically helpless...
Keep still!"
The combined shock of the revelation and of
the abrupt command
gave me a kind of paralysis,
and in my terror my mind again opened to the
impressions
coming from what Tillinghast called "beyond."
I was now in a
vortex of sound and motion,
with confused pictures before my eyes.
I saw the blurred outlines of the room,
but from some point in space there seemed
to be pouring a
seething column of unrecognizable shapes or
clouds,
penetrating the solid roof at a point ahead
and to the right
of me.
Then I glimpsed the temple - like effect again,
but this time the pillars reached up into
an aerial ocean of
light,
which sent down one blinding beam along the
path of the cloudy
column I had seen before.
After that the scene was almost wholly kaleidoscopic,
and in the jumble of sights,
sounds,
and unidentified sense-impressions I felt
that I was about to
dissolve or in some way lose the solid form.
One definite flash I shall always remember.
I seemed for an instant to behold a patch
of strange night sky
filled with shining,
revolving spheres,
and as it receded I saw that the glowing suns
formed a
constellation or galaxy of settled shape;
this shape being the distorted face of Crawford
Tillinghast.
At another time I felt the huge animate things
brushing past
me and occasionally walking or drifting through
my supposedly
solid body,
and thought I saw Tillinghast look at them
as though his
better trained senses could catch them visually.
I recalled what he had said of the pineal
gland,
and wondered what he saw with this preternatural
eye.
Suddenly I myself became possessed of a kind
of augmented sight.
Over and above the luminous and shadowy chaos
arose a picture
which,
though vague,
held the elements of consistency and permanence.
It was indeed somewhat familiar,
for the unusual part was superimposed upon
the usual
terrestrial scene much as a cinema view may
be thrown upon the
painted curtain of a theater.
I saw the attic laboratory,
the electrical machine,
and the unsightly form of Tillinghast opposite
me;
but of all the space unoccupied by familiar
objects not one
particle was vacant.
Indescribable shapes both alive and otherwise
were mixed in
disgusting disarray,
and close to every known thing were whole
worlds of alien,
unknown entities.
It likewise seemed that all the known things
entered into the
composition of other unknown things and vice
versa.
Foremost among the living objects were inky,
jellyfish monstrosities which flabbily quivered
in harmony
with the vibrations from the machine.
They were present in loathsome profusion,
and I saw to my horror that they overlapped;
that they were semi-fluid and capable of passing
through one
another and through what we know as solids.
These things were never still,
but seemed ever floating about with some malignant
purpose.
Sometimes they appeared to devour one another,
the attacker launching itself at its victim
and
instantaneously obliterating the latter from
sight.
Shudderingly I felt that I knew what had obliterated
the
unfortunate servants,
and could not exclude the thing from my mind
as I strove to
observe other properties of the newly visible
world that lies
unseen around us.
But Tillinghast had been watching me and was
speaking.
"You see them?
You see them?
You see the things that float and
flop about you and through you every moment
of your life?
You
see the creatures that form what men call
the pure air and the
blue sky?
Have I not succeeded in breaking down the
barrier;
have I not shown you worlds that no other
living men have
seen?"
I heard his scream through the horrible chaos,
and looked at the wild face thrust so offensively
close to mine.
His eyes were pits of flame,
and they glared at me with what I now saw
was overwhelming
hatred.
The machine droned detestably.
"You think those floundering things wiped
out the servants?
Fool,
they are harmless!
But the servants are gone,
aren't they?
You tried to stop me;
you discouraged me when I needed every drop
of encouragement I
could get;
you were afraid of the cosmic truth,
you damned coward,
but now I've got you!
What swept up the servants?
What made
them scream so loud?...
Don't know,
eh!
You'll know soon enough.
Look at me - listen to what I say - do you
suppose there are
really any such things as time and magnitude?
Do you fancy
there are such things as form or matter?
I tell you,
I have struck depths that your little brain
can't picture.
I have seen beyond the bounds of infinity
and drawn down
demons from the stars...
I have harnessed the shadows that stride from
world to world
to sow death and madness...
Space belongs to me,
do you hear?
Things are hunting me now - the things that
devour and dissolve - but I know how to elude
them.
It is you they will get,
as they got the servants...
Stirring,
dear sir?
I told you it was dangerous to move,
I have saved you so far by telling you to
keep still - saved
you to see more sights and to listen to me.
If you had moved,
they would have been at you long ago.
Don't worry,
they won't hurt you.
They didn't hurt the servants - it was the
seeing that made
the poor devils scream so.
My pets are not pretty,
for they come out of places where aesthetic
standards are -
very different.
Disintegration is quite painless,
I assure you -- but I want you to see them.
I almost saw them,
but I knew how to stop.
You are curious?
I always knew you were no scientist.
Trembling,
eh.
Trembling with anxiety to see the ultimate
things I have
discovered.
Why don't you move,
then?
Tired?
Well,
don't worry,
my friend,
for they are coming...
Look,
look,
curse you,
look...
it's just over your left shoulder..."
What remains to be told is very brief,
and may be familiar to you from the newspaper
accounts.
The police heard a shot in the old Tillinghast
house and found
us there - Tillinghast dead and me unconscious.
They arrested me because the revolver was
in my hand,
but released me in three hours,
after they found it was apoplexy which had
finished
Tillinghast and saw that my shot had been
directed at the
noxious machine which now lay hopelessly shattered
on the
laboratory floor.
I did not tell very much of what I had seen,
for I feared the coroner would be skeptical;
but from the evasive outline I did give,
the doctor told me that I had undoubtedly
been hypnotized by
the vindictive and homicidal madman.
I wish I could believe that doctor.
It would help my shaky nerves if I could dismiss
what I now
have to think of the air and the sky about
and above me.
I never feel alone or comfortable,
and a hideous sense of pursuit sometimes comes
chillingly on
me when I am weary.
What prevents me from believing the doctor
is one simple fact
- that the police never found the bodies of
those servants
whom they say Crawford Tillinghast murdered.
