For a minute I kept sight
 of the glow of his lantern,
and heard the rustle of the wire
 as he laid it down after him;
but the glow soon disappeared abruptly, 
as if a turn in the stone staircase had been encountered,
and the sound died away almost as quickly.
I was alone, yet bound to the unknown depths
by those magic strands
whose insulated surface lay green
 beneath the struggling beams of that waning crescent moon.
I constantly consulted my watch
 by the light of my electric lantern,
and listened with feverish anxiety
 at the receiver of the telephone;
but for more than a quarter of an hour heard nothing.
Then a faint clicking came from the instrument,
and I called down to my friend in a tense voice.
Apprehensive as I was,
 I was nevertheless unprepared
for the words which came up from that uncanny vault
 in accents more alarmed and quivering
than any I had heard before from Harley Warren.
He who had so calmly left me a little while previously,
now called from below in a shaky whisper more
portentous than the loudest shriek:
"God!
If you could see what I am seeing!"
I could not answer. 
Speechless, I could only wait.
Then came the frenzied tones again:
"Carter,
it's terrible—
monstrous—
unbelievable!"
This time my voice did not fail me,
 and I poured into the transmitter a flood of excited questions.
Terrified, I continued to repeat,
"Warren, what is it?
What is it?"
Once more came the voice of my friend,
 still hoarse with fear,
and now apparently tinged with despair:
"I can't tell you, Carter!
 It's too utterly beyond thought—
I dare not tell you—
no man could know it and live—
Good God!
I never dreamed of this!"
Stillness again, save for my now incoherent
torrent of shuddering inquiry.
Then the voice of Warren in a pitch of wilder consternation:
"Carter!
For the love of God, put back the
slab and get out of this if you can!
Quick!—
leave everything else and make for the outside—
it's your only chance! 
Do as I say,
and don't ask me to explain!"
I heard, yet was able only
 to repeat my frantic questions.
Around me were the tombs and the darkness and the shadows;
below me, some peril beyond
 the radius of the human imagination.
But my friend was in greater danger than I,
and through my fear I felt a vague resentment
that he should deem me capable of deserting
him under such circumstances.
More clicking, and after a pause
 a piteous cry from Warren:
"Beat it!
For God's sake, put back the slab
and beat it, Carter!"
Something in the boyish slang of my evidently
stricken companion unleashed my faculties.
I formed and shouted a resolution,
"Warren, brace up! I'm coming down!"
But at this offer the tone of my auditor
 changed to a scream of utter despair:
"Don't!
You can't understand! It's too late—
and my own fault.
Put back the slab and run—
there's nothing else you or anyone can do now!"
The tone changed again, this time acquiring
a softer quality, as of hopeless resignation.
Yet it remained tense
 through anxiety for me.
"Quick—before it's too late!"
I tried not to heed him;
tried to break through the paralysis which held me,
and to fulfill my vow to rush down to his aid.
But his next whisper found me still held inert
 in the chains of stark horror.
"Carter—
hurry!
It's no use—you must go—
better one than two—
the slab—"
A pause, more clicking,
 then the faint voice of Warren:
"Nearly over now—
don't make it harder—
cover up those damned steps and run for your life—
you're losing time—
so long, Carter—
won't see you again."
Here Warren's whisper swelled into a cry;
a cry that gradually rose to a shriek 
fraught with all the horror of the ages—
"Curse these hellish things—
legions—My God!
Beat it!
Beat it!
BEAT IT!"
After that was silence.
I know not how many interminable eons
 I sat stupefied;
whispering, muttering, calling, screaming into that telephone.
Over and over again through those eons
  I whispered and muttered, called, shouted, and screamed,
"Warren!
Warren! Answer me—are you there?"
And then there came to me
the crowning horror of all—
the unbelievable, unthinkable, almost unmentionable thing.
I have said that eons seemed to have elapsed
 after Warren shrieked forth his last despairing warning,
and that only my own cries now broke the hideous silence.
But after a while there was a further clicking
in the receiver, and I strained my ears to listen.
Again I called down,
 "Warren, are you there?"
and in answer heard the thing
 which has brought this cloud over my mind.
I do not try, gentlemen, to account for that thing—
that voice—
nor can I venture to describe it in detail,
since the first words took away my consciousness
 and created a mental blank
which reaches to the time of my awakening in the hospital.
Shall I say that the voice was deep;
 hollow; gelatinous; remote; unearthly;
inhuman; disembodied?
What shall I say?
It was the end of my experience,
and is the end of my story.
I heard it, and knew no more—
heard it and as I sat petrified
 in that unknown cemetery in the hollow,
amidst the crumbling stones
and the falling tombs,
the rank vegetation and the miasmal vapors—
heard it well up from the innermost depths
of that damnable open sepulcher
as I watched amorphous, necrophagous
shadows danced beneath an accursed waning moon.
And this is what it said:
"You fool,
Warren is DEAD!"
