object:1f.lovecraft - Beyond the Wall of Sleep
author class:H P Lovecraft
subject class:Fiction
genre class:Horror
class:chapter
“I have an exposition of sleep come upon me.”
—Shakespeare.
I have frequently wondered if the majority of mankind ever pause to
reflect upon the occasionally titanic significance of dreams, and of
the obscure world to which they belong. Whilst the greater number of
our nocturnal visions are perhaps no more than faint and fantastic
reflections of our waking experiences—Freud to the contrary with his
puerile symbolism—there are still a certain remainder whose immundane
and ethereal character permits of no ordinary interpretation, and whose
vaguely exciting and disquieting effect suggests possible minute
glimpses into a sphere of mental existence no less important than
physical life, yet separated from that life by an all but impassable
barrier. From my experience I cannot doubt but that man, when lost to
terrestrial consciousness, is indeed sojourning in another and
uncorporeal life of far different nature from the life we know; and of
which only the slightest and most indistinct memories linger after
waking. From those blurred and fragmentary memories we may infer much,
yet prove little. We may guess that in dreams life, matter, and
vitality, as the earth knows such things, are not necessarily constant;
and that time and space do not exist as our waking selves comprehend
them. Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer
life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is itself the
secondary or merely virtual phenomenon.
It was from a youthful reverie filled with speculations of this sort
that I arose one afternoon in the winter of 1900–1901, when to the
state psychopathic institution in which I served as an interne was
brought the man whose case has ever since haunted me so unceasingly.
His name, as given on the records, was Joe Slater, or Slaader, and his
appearance was that of the typical denizen of the Catskill Mountain
region; one of those strange, repellent scions of a primitive colonial
peasant stock whose isolation for nearly three centuries in the hilly
fastnesses of a little-travelled countryside has caused them to sink to
a kind of barbaric degeneracy, rather than advance with their more
fortunately placed brethren of the thickly settled districts. Among
these odd folk, who correspond exactly to the decadent element of
“white trash” in the South, law and morals are non-existent; and their
general mental status is probably below that of any other section of
the native American people.
Joe Slater, who came to the institution in the vigilant custody of four
state policemen, and who was described as a highly dangerous character,
certainly presented no evidence of his perilous disposition when first
I beheld him. Though well above the middle stature, and of somewhat
brawny frame, he was given an absurd appearance of harmless stupidity
by the pale, sleepy blueness of his small watery eyes, the scantiness
of his neglected and never-shaven growth of yellow beard, and the
listless drooping of his heavy nether lip. His age was unknown, since
among his kind neither family records nor permanent family ties exist;
but from the baldness of his head in front, and from the decayed
condition of his teeth, the head surgeon wrote him down as a man of
about forty.
From the medical and court documents we learned all that could be
gathered of his case. This man, a vagabond, hunter, and trapper, had
always been strange in the eyes of his primitive associates. He had
habitually slept at night beyond the ordinary time, and upon waking
would often talk of unknown things in a manner so bizarre as to inspire
fear even in the hearts of an unimaginative populace. Not that his form
of language was at all unusual, for he never spoke save in the debased
patois of his environment; but the tone and tenor of his utterances
were of such mysterious wildness, that none might listen without
apprehension. He himself was generally as terrified and baffled as his
auditors, and within an hour after awakening would forget all that he
had said, or at least all that had caused him to say what he did;
relapsing into a bovine, half-amiable normality like that of the other
hill-dwellers.
As Slater grew older, it appeared, his matutinal aberrations had
gradually increased in frequency and violence; till about a month
before his arrival at the institution had occurred the shocking tragedy
which caused his arrest by the authorities. One day near noon, after a
profound sleep begun in a whiskey debauch at about five of the previous
afternoon, the man had roused himself most suddenly; with ululations so
horrible and unearthly that they brought several neighbours to his
cabin—a filthy sty where he dwelt with a family as indescribable as
himself. Rushing out into the snow, he had flung his arms aloft and
commenced a series of leaps directly upward in the air; the while
shouting his determination to reach some ‘big, big cabin with
brightness in the roof and walls and floor, and the loud queer music
far away’. As two men of moderate size sought to restrain him, he had
struggled with maniacal force and fury, screaming of his desire and
need to find and kill a certain ‘thing that shines and shakes and
laughs’. At length, after temporarily felling one of his detainers with
a sudden blow, he had flung himself upon the other in a daemoniac
ecstasy of bloodthirstiness, shrieking fiendishly that he would ‘jump
high in the air and burn his way through anything that stopped him’.
Family and neighbours had now fled in a panic, and when the more
courageous of them returned, Slater was gone, leaving behind an
unrecognisable pulp-like thing that had been a living man but an hour
before. None of the mountaineers had dared to pursue him, and it is
likely that they would have welcomed his death from the cold; but when
several mornings later they heard his screams from a distant ravine,
they realised that he had somehow managed to survive, and that his
removal in one way or another would be necessary. Then had followed an
armed searching party, whose purpose (whatever it may have been
originally) became that of a sheriff’s posse after one of the seldom
popular state troopers had by accident observed, then questioned, and
finally joined the seekers.
On the third day Slater was found unconscious in the hollow of a tree,
and taken to the nearest gaol; where alienists from Albany examined him
as soon as his senses returned. To them he told a simple story. He had,
he said, gone to sleep one afternoon about sundown after drinking much
liquor. He had awaked to find himself standing bloody-handed in the
snow before his cabin, the mangled corpse of his neighbour Peter Slader
at his feet. Horrified, he had taken to the woods in a vague effort to
escape from the scene of what must have been his crime. Beyond these
things he seemed to know nothing, nor could the expert questioning of
his interrogators bring out a single additional fact. That night Slater
slept quietly, and the next morning he wakened with no singular feature
save a certain alteration of expression. Dr. Barnard, who had been
watching the patient, thought he noticed in the pale blue eyes a
certain gleam of peculiar quality; and in the flaccid lips an all but
imperceptible tightening, as if of intelligent determination. But when
questioned, Slater relapsed into the habitual vacancy of the
mountaineer, and only reiterated what he had said on the preceding day.
On the third morning occurred the first of the man’s mental attacks.
After some show of uneasiness in sleep, he burst forth into a frenzy so
powerful that the combined efforts of four men were needed to bind him
in a strait-jacket. The alienists listened with keen attention to his
words, since their curiosity had been aroused to a high pitch by the
suggestive yet mostly conflicting and incoherent stories of his family
and neighbours. Slater raved for upward of fifteen minutes, babbling in
his backwoods dialect of great edifices of light, oceans of space,
strange music, and shadowy mountains and valleys. But most of all did
he dwell upon some mysterious blazing entity that shook and laughed and
mocked at him. This vast, vague personality seemed to have done him a
terrible wrong, and to kill it in triumphant revenge was his paramount
desire. In order to reach it, he said, he would soar through abysses of
emptiness, burning every obstacle that stood in his way. Thus ran his
discourse, until with the greatest suddenness he ceased. The fire of
madness died from his eyes, and in dull wonder he looked at his
questioners and asked why he was bound. Dr. Barnard unbuckled the
leathern harness and did not restore it till night, when he succeeded
in persuading Slater to don it of his own volition, for his own good.
The man had now admitted that he sometimes talked queerly, though he
knew not why.
Within a week two more attacks appeared, but from them the doctors
learned little. On the source of Slater’s visions they speculated at
length, for since he could neither read nor write, and had apparently
never heard a legend or fairy tale, his gorgeous imagery was quite
inexplicable. That it could not come from any known myth or romance was
made especially clear by the fact that the unfortunate lunatic
expressed himself only in his own simple manner. He raved of things he
did not understand and could not interpret; things which he claimed to
have experienced, but which he could not have learned through any
normal or connected narration. The alienists soon agreed that abnormal
dreams were the foundation of the trouble; dreams whose vividness could
for a time completely dominate the waking mind of this basically
inferior man. With due formality Slater was tried for murder, acquitted
on the ground of insanity, and committed to the institution wherein I
held so humble a post.
I have said that I am a constant speculator concerning dream life, and
from this you may judge of the eagerness with which I applied myself to
the study of the new patient as soon as I had fully ascertained the
facts of his case. He seemed to sense a certain friendliness in me;
born no doubt of the interest I could not conceal, and the gentle
manner in which I questioned him. Not that he ever recognised me during
his attacks, when I hung breathlessly upon his chaotic but cosmic
word-pictures; but he knew me in his quiet hours, when he would sit by
his barred window weaving baskets of straw and willow, and perhaps
pining for the mountain freedom he could never enjoy again. His family
never called to see him; probably it had found another temporary head,
after the manner of decadent mountain folk.
By degrees I commenced to feel an overwhelming wonder at the mad and
fantastic conceptions of Joe Slater. The man himself was pitiably
inferior in mentality and language alike; but his glowing, titanic
visions, though described in a barbarous and disjointed jargon, were
assuredly things which only a superior or even exceptional brain could
conceive. How, I often asked myself, could the stolid imagination of a
Catskill degenerate conjure up sights whose very possession argued a
lurking spark of genius? How could any backwoods dullard have gained so
much as an idea of those glittering realms of supernal radiance and
space about which Slater ranted in his furious delirium? More and more
I inclined to the belief that in the pitiful personality who cringed
before me lay the disordered nucleus of something beyond my
comprehension; something infinitely beyond the comprehension of my more
experienced but less imaginative medical and scientific colleagues.
And yet I could extract nothing definite from the man. The sum of all
my investigation was, that in a kind of semi-uncorporeal dream life
Slater wandered or floated through resplendent and prodigious valleys,
meadows, gardens, cities, and palaces of light; in a region unbounded
and unknown to man. That there he was no peasant or degenerate, but a
creature of importance and vivid life; moving proudly and dominantly,
and checked only by a certain deadly enemy, who seemed to be a being of
visible yet ethereal structure, and who did not appear to be of human
shape, since Slater never referred to it as a man, or as aught save a
thing. This thing had done Slater some hideous but unnamed wrong, which
the maniac (if maniac he were) yearned to avenge. From the manner in
which Slater alluded to their dealings, I judged that he and the
luminous thing had met on equal terms; that in his dream existence the
man was himself a luminous thing of the same race as his enemy. This
impression was sustained by his frequent references to flying through
space and burning all that impeded his progress. Yet these conceptions
were formulated in rustic words wholly inadequate to convey them, a
circumstance which drove me to the conclusion that if a true
dream-world indeed existed, oral language was not its medium for the
transmission of thought. Could it be that the dream-soul inhabiting
this inferior body was desperately struggling to speak things which the
simple and halting tongue of dulness could not utter? Could it be that
I was face to face with intellectual emanations which would explain the
mystery if I could but learn to discover and read them? I did not tell
the older physicians of these things, for middle age is sceptical,
cynical, and disinclined to accept new ideas. Besides, the head of the
institution had but lately warned me in his paternal way that I was
overworking; that my mind needed a rest.
It had long been my belief that human thought consists basically of
atomic or molecular motion, convertible into ether waves of radiant
energy like heat, light, and electricity. This belief had early led me
to contemplate the possibility of telepathy or mental communication by
means of suitable apparatus, and I had in my college days prepared a
set of transmitting and receiving instruments somewhat similar to the
cumbrous devices employed in wireless telegraphy at that crude,
pre-radio period. These I had tested with a fellow-student; but
achieving no result, had soon packed them away with other scientific
odds and ends for possible future use. Now, in my intense desire to
probe into the dream life of Joe Slater, I sought these instruments
again; and spent several days in repairing them for action. When they
were complete once more I missed no opportunity for their trial. At
each outburst of Slater’s violence, I would fit the transmitter to his
forehead and the receiver to my own; constantly making delicate
adjustments for various hypothetical wave-lengths of intellectual
energy. I had but little notion of how the thought-impressions would,
if successfully conveyed, arouse an intelligent response in my brain;
but I felt certain that I could detect and interpret them. Accordingly
I continued my experiments, though informing no one of their nature.
It was on the twenty-first of February, 1901, that the thing finally
occurred. As I look back across the years I realise how unreal it
seems; and sometimes half wonder if old Dr. Fenton was not right when
he charged it all to my excited imagination. I recall that he listened
with great kindness and patience when I told him, but afterward gave me
a nerve-powder and arranged for the half-year’s vacation on which I
departed the next week. That fateful night I was wildly agitated and
perturbed, for despite the excellent care he had received, Joe Slater
was unmistakably dying. Perhaps it was his mountain freedom that he
missed, or perhaps the turmoil in his brain had grown too acute for his
rather sluggish physique; but at all events the flame of vitality
flickered low in the decadent body. He was drowsy near the end, and as
darkness fell he dropped off into a troubled sleep. I did not strap on
the strait-jacket as was customary when he slept, since I saw that he
was too feeble to be dangerous, even if he woke in mental disorder once
more before passing away. But I did place upon his head and mine the
two ends of my cosmic “radio”; hoping against hope for a first and last
message from the dream-world in the brief time remaining. In the cell
with us was one nurse, a mediocre fellow who did not understand the
purpose of the apparatus, or think to inquire into my course. As the
hours wore on I saw his head droop awkwardly in sleep, but I did not
disturb him. I myself, lulled by the rhythmical breathing of the
healthy and the dying man, must have nodded a little later.
The sound of weird lyric melody was what aroused me. Chords,
vibrations, and harmonic ecstasies echoed passionately on every hand;
while on my ravished sight burst the stupendous spectacle of ultimate
beauty. Walls, columns, and architraves of living fire blazed
effulgently around the spot where I seemed to float in air; extending
upward to an infinitely high vaulted dome of indescribable splendour.
Blending with this display of palatial magnificence, or rather,
supplanting it at times in kaleidoscopic rotation, were glimpses of
wide plains and graceful valleys, high mountains and inviting grottoes;
covered with every lovely attribute of scenery which my delighted eye
could conceive of, yet formed wholly of some glowing, ethereal, plastic
entity, which in consistency partook as much of spirit as of matter. As
I gazed, I perceived that my own brain held the key to these enchanting
metamorphoses; for each vista which appeared to me, was the one my
changing mind most wished to behold. Amidst this elysian realm I dwelt
not as a stranger, for each sight and sound was familiar to me; just as
it had been for uncounted aeons of eternity before, and would be for
like eternities to come.
Then the resplendent aura of my brother of light drew near and held
colloquy with me, soul to soul, with silent and perfect interchange of
thought. The hour was one of approaching triumph, for was not my
fellow-being escaping at last from a degrading periodic bondage;
escaping forever, and preparing to follow the accursed oppressor even
unto the uttermost fields of ether, that upon it might be wrought a
flaming cosmic vengeance which would shake the spheres? We floated thus
for a little time, when I perceived a slight blurring and fading of the
objects around us, as though some force were recalling me to
earth—where I least wished to go. The form near me seemed to feel a
change also, for it gradually brought its discourse toward a
conclusion, and itself prepared to quit the scene; fading from my sight
at a rate somewhat less rapid than that of the other objects. A few
more thoughts were exchanged, and I knew that the luminous one and I
were being recalled to bondage, though for my brother of light it would
be the last time. The sorry planet-shell being well-nigh spent, in less
than an hour my fellow would be free to pursue the oppressor along the
Milky Way and past the hither stars to the very confines of infinity.
A well-defined shock separates my final impression of the fading scene
of light from my sudden and somewhat shamefaced awakening and
straightening up in my chair as I saw the dying figure on the couch
move hesitantly. Joe Slater was indeed awaking, though probably for the
last time. As I looked more closely, I saw that in the sallow cheeks
shone spots of colour which had never before been present. The lips,
too, seemed unusual; being tightly compressed, as if by the force of a
stronger character than had been Slater’s. The whole face finally began
to grow tense, and the head turned restlessly with closed eyes. I did
not arouse the sleeping nurse, but readjusted the slightly disarranged
head-bands of my telepathic “radio”, intent to catch any parting
message the dreamer might have to deliver. All at once the head turned
sharply in my direction and the eyes fell open, causing me to stare in
blank amazement at what I beheld. The man who had been Joe Slater, the
Catskill decadent, was now gazing at me with a pair of luminous,
expanded eyes whose blue seemed subtly to have deepened. Neither mania
nor degeneracy was visible in that gaze, and I felt beyond a doubt that
I was viewing a face behind which lay an active mind of high order.
At this juncture my brain became aware of a steady external influence
operating upon it. I closed my eyes to concentrate my thoughts more
profoundly, and was rewarded by the positive knowledge that my
long-sought mental message had come at last. Each transmitted idea
formed rapidly in my mind, and though no actual language was employed,
my habitual association of conception and expression was so great that
I seemed to be receiving the message in ordinary English.
“Joe Slater is dead,” came the soul-petrifying voice or agency from
beyond the wall of sleep. My opened eyes sought the couch of pain in
curious horror, but the blue eyes were still calmly gazing, and the
countenance was still intelligently animated. “He is better dead, for
he was unfit to bear the active intellect of cosmic entity. His gross
body could not undergo the needed adjustments between ethereal life and
planet life. He was too much of an animal, too little a man; yet it is
through his deficiency that you have come to discover me, for the
cosmic and planet souls rightly should never meet. He has been my
torment and diurnal prison for forty-two of your terrestrial years. I
am an entity like that which you yourself become in the freedom of
dreamless sleep. I am your brother of light, and have floated with you
in the effulgent valleys. It is not permitted me to tell your waking
earth-self of your real self, but we are all roamers of vast spaces and
travellers in many ages. Next year I may be dwelling in the dark Egypt
which you call ancient, or in the cruel empire of Tsan-Chan which is to
come three thousand years hence. You and I have drifted to the worlds
that reel about the red Arcturus, and dwelt in the bodies of the
insect-philosophers that crawl proudly over the fourth moon of Jupiter.
How little does the earth-self know of life and its extent! How little,
indeed, ought it to know for its own tranquillity! Of the oppressor I
cannot speak. You on earth have unwittingly felt its distant
presence—you who without knowing idly gave to its blinking beacon the
name of Algol, the Daemon-Star. It is to meet and conquer the oppressor
that I have vainly striven for aeons, held back by bodily encumbrances.
Tonight I go as a Nemesis bearing just and blazingly cataclysmic
vengeance. Watch me in the sky close by the Daemon-Star. I cannot speak
longer, for the body of Joe Slater grows cold and rigid, and the coarse
brains are ceasing to vibrate as I wish. You have been my friend in the
cosmos; you have been my only friend on this planet—the only soul to
sense and seek for me within the repellent form which lies on this
couch. We shall meet again—perhaps in the shining mists of Orion’s
Sword, perhaps on a bleak plateau in prehistoric Asia. Perhaps in
unremembered dreams tonight; perhaps in some other form an aeon hence,
when the solar system shall have been swept away.”
At this point the thought-waves abruptly ceased, and the pale eyes of
the dreamer—or can I say dead man?—commenced to glaze fishily. In a
half-stupor I crossed over to the couch and felt of his wrist, but
found it cold, stiff, and pulseless. The sallow cheeks paled again, and
the thick lips fell open, disclosing the repulsively rotten fangs of
the degenerate Joe Slater. I shivered, pulled a blanket over the
hideous face, and awakened the nurse. Then I left the cell and went
silently to my room. I had an insistent and unaccountable craving for a
sleep whose dreams I should not remember.
The climax? What plain tale of science can boast of such a rhetorical
effect? I have merely set down certain things appealing to me as facts,
allowing you to construe them as you will. As I have already admitted,
my superior, old Dr. Fenton, denies the reality of everything I have
related. He vows that I was broken down with nervous strain, and badly
in need of the long vacation on full pay which he so generously gave
me. He assures me on his professional honour that Joe Slater was but a
low-grade paranoiac, whose fantastic notions must have come from the
crude hereditary folk-tales which circulate in even the most decadent
of communities. All this he tells me—yet I cannot forget what I saw in
the sky on the night after Slater died. Lest you think me a biassed
witness, another’s pen must add this final testimony, which may perhaps
supply the climax you expect. I will quote the following account of the
star Nova Persei verbatim from the pages of that eminent astronomical
authority, Prof. Garrett P. Serviss:
“On February 22, 1901, a marvellous new star was discovered by Dr.
Anderson, of Edinburgh, not very far from Algol. No star had been
visible at that point before. Within twenty-four hours the stranger
had become so bright that it outshone Capella. In a week or two it
had visibly faded, and in the course of a few months it was hardly
discernible with the naked eye.”
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