object:1f.lovecraft - In the Vault
author class:H P Lovecraft
subject class:Fiction
genre class:Horror
class:chapter
Dedicated to C. W. Smith,
from whose suggestion the central situation is taken.
There is nothing more absurd, as I view it, than that conventional
association of the homely and the wholesome which seems to pervade the
psychology of the multitude. Mention a bucolic Yankee setting, a
bungling and thick-fibred village undertaker, and a careless mishap in
a tomb, and no average reader can be brought to expect more than a
hearty albeit grotesque phase of comedy. God knows, though, that the
prosy tale which George Birch’s death permits me to tell has in it
aspects beside which some of our darkest tragedies are light.
Birch acquired a limitation and changed his business in 1881, yet never
discussed the case when he could avoid it. Neither did his old
physician Dr. Davis, who died years ago. It was generally stated that
the affliction and shock were results of an unlucky slip whereby Birch
had locked himself for nine hours in the receiving tomb of Peck Valley
Cemetery, escaping only by crude and disastrous mechanical means; but
while this much was undoubtedly true, there were other and blacker
things which the man used to whisper to me in his drunken delirium
toward the last. He confided in me because I was his doctor, and
because he probably felt the need of confiding in someone else after
Davis died. He was a bachelor, wholly without relatives.
Birch, before 1881, had been the village undertaker of Peck Valley; and
was a very calloused and primitive specimen even as such specimens go.
The practices I heard attributed to him would be unbelievable today, at
least in a city; and even Peck Valley would have shuddered a bit had it
known the easy ethics of its mortuary artist in such debatable matters
as the ownership of costly “laying-out” apparel invisible beneath the
casket’s lid, and the degree of dignity to be maintained in posing and
adapting the unseen members of lifeless tenants to containers not
always calculated with sublimest accuracy. Most distinctly Birch was
lax, insensitive, and professionally undesirable; yet I still think he
was not an evil man. He was merely crass of fibre and
function—thoughtless, careless, and liquorish, as his easily avoidable
accident proves, and without that modicum of imagination which holds
the average citizen within certain limits fixed by taste.
Just where to begin Birch’s story I can hardly decide, since I am no
practiced teller of tales. I suppose one should start in the cold
December of 1880, when the ground froze and the cemetery delvers found
they could dig no more graves till spring. Fortunately the village was
small and the death rate low, so that it was possible to give all of
Birch’s inanimate charges a temporary haven in the single antiquated
receiving tomb. The undertaker grew doubly lethargic in the bitter
weather, and seemed to outdo even himself in carelessness. Never did he
knock together flimsier and ungainlier caskets, or disregard more
flagrantly the needs of the rusty lock on the tomb door which he
slammed open and shut with such nonchalant abandon.
At last the spring thaw came, and graves were laboriously prepared for
the nine silent harvests of the grim reaper which waited in the tomb.
Birch, though dreading the bother of removal and interment, began his
task of transference one disagreeable April morning, but ceased before
noon because of a heavy rain that seemed to irritate his horse, after
having laid but one mortal tenement to its permanent rest. That was
Darius Peck, the nonagenarian, whose grave was not far from the tomb.
Birch decided that he would begin the next day with little old Matthew
Fenner, whose grave was also near by; but actually postponed the matter
for three days, not getting to work till Good Friday, the 15th. Being
without superstition, he did not heed the day at all; though ever
afterward he refused to do anything of importance on that fateful sixth
day of the week. Certainly, the events of that evening greatly changed
George Birch.
On the afternoon of Friday, April 15th, then, Birch set out for the
tomb with horse and wagon to transfer the body of Matthew Fenner. That
he was not perfectly sober, he subsequently admitted; though he had not
then taken to the wholesale drinking by which he later tried to forget
certain things. He was just dizzy and careless enough to annoy his
sensitive horse, which as he drew it viciously up at the tomb neighed
and pawed and tossed its head, much as on that former occasion when the
rain had vexed it. The day was clear, but a high wind had sprung up;
and Birch was glad to get to shelter as he unlocked the iron door and
entered the side-hill vault. Another might not have relished the damp,
odorous chamber with the eight carelessly placed coffins; but Birch in
those days was insensitive, and was concerned only in getting the right
coffin for the right grave. He had not forgotten the criticism aroused
when Hannah Bixby’s relatives, wishing to transport her body to the
cemetery in the city whither they had moved, found the casket of Judge
Capwell beneath her headstone.
The light was dim, but Birch’s sight was good, and he did not get Asaph
Sawyer’s coffin by mistake, although it was very similar. He had,
indeed, made that coffin for Matthew Fenner; but had cast it aside at
last as too awkward and flimsy, in a fit of curious sentimentality
aroused by recalling how kindly and generous the little old man had
been to him during his bankruptcy five years before. He gave old Matt
the very best his skill could produce, but was thrifty enough to save
the rejected specimen, and to use it when Asaph Sawyer died of a
malignant fever. Sawyer was not a lovable man, and many stories were
told of his almost inhuman vindictiveness and tenacious memory for
wrongs real or fancied. To him Birch had felt no compunction in
assigning the carelessly made coffin which he now pushed out of the way
in his quest for the Fenner casket.
It was just as he had recognised old Matt’s coffin that the door
slammed to in the wind, leaving him in a dusk even deeper than before.
The narrow transom admitted only the feeblest of rays, and the overhead
ventilation funnel virtually none at all; so that he was reduced to a
profane fumbling as he made his halting way among the long boxes toward
the latch. In this funereal twilight he rattled the rusty handles,
pushed at the iron panels, and wondered why the massive portal had
grown so suddenly recalcitrant. In this twilight, too, he began to
realise the truth and to shout loudly as if his horse outside could do
more than neigh an unsympathetic reply. For the long-neglected latch
was obviously broken, leaving the careless undertaker trapped in the
vault, a victim of his own oversight.
The thing must have happened at about three-thirty in the afternoon.
Birch, being by temperament phlegmatic and practical, did not shout
long; but proceeded to grope about for some tools which he recalled
seeing in a corner of the tomb. It is doubtful whether he was touched
at all by the horror and exquisite weirdness of his position, but the
bald fact of imprisonment so far from the daily paths of men was enough
to exasperate him thoroughly. His day’s work was sadly interrupted, and
unless chance presently brought some rambler hither, he might have to
remain all night or longer. The pile of tools soon reached, and a
hammer and chisel selected, Birch returned over the coffins to the
door. The air had begun to be exceedingly unwholesome; but to this
detail he paid no attention as he toiled, half by feeling, at the heavy
and corroded metal of the latch. He would have given much for a lantern
or bit of candle; but lacking these, bungled semi-sightlessly as best
he might.
When he perceived that the latch was hopelessly unyielding, at least to
such meagre tools and under such tenebrous conditions as these, Birch
glanced about for other possible points of escape. The vault had been
dug from a hillside, so that the narrow ventilation funnel in the top
ran through several feet of earth, making this direction utterly
useless to consider. Over the door, however, the high, slit-like
transom in the brick facade gave promise of possible enlargement to a
diligent worker; hence upon this his eyes long rested as he racked his
brains for means to reach it. There was nothing like a ladder in the
tomb, and the coffin niches on the sides and rear—which Birch seldom
took the trouble to use—afforded no ascent to the space above the door.
Only the coffins themselves remained as potential stepping-stones, and
as he considered these he speculated on the best mode of arranging
them. Three coffin-heights, he reckoned, would permit him to reach the
transom; but he could do better with four. The boxes were fairly even,
and could be piled up like blocks; so he began to compute how he might
most stably use the eight to rear a scalable platform four deep. As he
planned, he could not but wish that the units of his contemplated
staircase had been more securely made. Whether he had imagination
enough to wish they were empty, is strongly to be doubted.
Finally he decided to lay a base of three parallel with the wall, to
place upon this two layers of two each, and upon these a single box to
serve as the platform. This arrangement could be ascended with a
minimum of awkwardness, and would furnish the desired height. Better
still, though, he would utilise only two boxes of the base to support
the superstructure, leaving one free to be piled on top in case the
actual feat of escape required an even greater altitude. And so the
prisoner toiled in the twilight, heaving the unresponsive remnants of
mortality with little ceremony as his miniature Tower of Babel rose
course by course. Several of the coffins began to split under the
stress of handling, and he planned to save the stoutly built casket of
little Matthew Fenner for the top, in order that his feet might have as
certain a surface as possible. In the semi-gloom he trusted mostly to
touch to select the right one, and indeed came upon it almost by
accident, since it tumbled into his hands as if through some odd
volition after he had unwittingly placed it beside another on the third
layer.
The tower at length finished, and his aching arms rested by a pause
during which he sat on the bottom step of his grim device, Birch
cautiously ascended with his tools and stood abreast of the narrow
transom. The borders of the space were entirely of brick, and there
seemed little doubt but that he could shortly chisel away enough to
allow his body to pass. As his hammer blows began to fall, the horse
outside whinnied in a tone which may have been encouraging and may have
been mocking. In either case it would have been appropriate; for the
unexpected tenacity of the easy-looking brickwork was surely a sardonic
commentary on the vanity of mortal hopes, and the source of a task
whose performance deserved every possible stimulus.
Dusk fell and found Birch still toiling. He worked largely by feeling
now, since newly gathered clouds hid the moon; and though progress was
still slow, he felt heartened at the extent of his encroachments on the
top and bottom of the aperture. He could, he was sure, get out by
midnight—though it is characteristic of him that this thought was
untinged with eerie implications. Undisturbed by oppressive reflections
on the time, the place, and the company beneath his feet, he
philosophically chipped away the stony brickwork; cursing when a
fragment hit him in the face, and laughing when one struck the
increasingly excited horse that pawed near the cypress tree. In time
the hole grew so large that he ventured to try his body in it now and
then, shifting about so that the coffins beneath him rocked and
creaked. He would not, he found, have to pile another on his platform
to make the proper height; for the hole was on exactly the right level
to use as soon as its size might permit.
It must have been midnight at least when Birch decided he could get
through the transom. Tired and perspiring despite many rests, he
descended to the floor and sat a while on the bottom box to gather
strength for the final wriggle and leap to the ground outside. The
hungry horse was neighing repeatedly and almost uncannily, and he
vaguely wished it would stop. He was curiously unelated over his
impending escape, and almost dreaded the exertion, for his form had the
indolent stoutness of early middle age. As he remounted the splitting
coffins he felt his weight very poignantly; especially when, upon
reaching the topmost one, he heard that aggravated crackle which
bespeaks the wholesale rending of wood. He had, it seems, planned in
vain when choosing the stoutest coffin for the platform; for no sooner
was his full bulk again upon it than the rotting lid gave way, jouncing
him two feet down on a surface which even he did not care to imagine.
Maddened by the sound, or by the stench which billowed forth even to
the open air, the waiting horse gave a scream that was too frantic for
a neigh, and plunged madly off through the night, the wagon rattling
crazily behind it.
Birch, in his ghastly situation, was now too low for an easy scramble
out of the enlarged transom; but gathered his energies for a determined
try. Clutching the edges of the aperture, he sought to pull himself up,
when he noticed a queer retardation in the form of an apparent drag on
both his ankles. In another moment he knew fear for the first time that
night; for struggle as he would, he could not shake clear of the
unknown grasp which held his feet in relentless captivity. Horrible
pains, as of savage wounds, shot through his calves; and in his mind
was a vortex of fright mixed with an unquenchable materialism that
suggested splinters, loose nails, or some other attribute of a breaking
wooden box. Perhaps he screamed. At any rate he kicked and squirmed
frantically and automatically whilst his consciousness was almost
eclipsed in a half-swoon.
Instinct guided him in his wriggle through the transom, and in the
crawl which followed his jarring thud on the damp ground. He could not
walk, it appeared, and the emerging moon must have witnessed a horrible
sight as he dragged his bleeding ankles toward the cemetery lodge; his
fingers clawing the black mould in brainless haste, and his body
responding with that maddening slowness from which one suffers when
chased by the phantoms of nightmare. There was evidently, however, no
pursuer; for he was alone and alive when Armington, the lodge-keeper,
answered his feeble clawing at the door.
Armington helped Birch to the outside of a spare bed and sent his
little son Edwin for Dr. Davis. The afflicted man was fully conscious,
but would say nothing of any consequence; merely muttering such things
as “oh, my ankles!”, “let go!”, or “shut in the tomb”. Then the doctor
came with his medicine-case and asked crisp questions, and removed the
patient’s outer clothing, shoes, and socks. The wounds—for both ankles
were frightfully lacerated about the Achilles’ tendons—seemed to puzzle
the old physician greatly, and finally almost to frighten him. His
questioning grew more than medically tense, and his hands shook as he
dressed the mangled members; binding them as if he wished to get the
wounds out of sight as quickly as possible.
For an impersonal doctor, Davis’ ominous and awestruck
cross-examination became very strange indeed as he sought to drain from
the weakened undertaker every least detail of his horrible experience.
He was oddly anxious to know if Birch were sure—absolutely sure—of the
identity of that top coffin of the pile; how he had chosen it, how he
had been certain of it as the Fenner coffin in the dusk, and how he had
distinguished it from the inferior duplicate coffin of vicious Asaph
Sawyer. Would the firm Fenner casket have caved in so readily? Davis,
an old-time village practitioner, had of course seen both at the
respective funerals, as indeed he had attended both Fenner and Sawyer
in their last illnesses. He had even wondered, at Sawyer’s funeral, how
the vindictive farmer had managed to lie straight in a box so closely
akin to that of the diminutive Fenner.
After a full two hours Dr. Davis left, urging Birch to insist at all
times that his wounds were caused entirely by loose nails and
splintering wood. What else, he added, could ever in any case be proved
or believed? But it would be well to say as little as could be said,
and to let no other doctor treat the wounds. Birch heeded this advice
all the rest of his life till he told me his story; and when I saw the
scars—ancient and whitened as they then were—I agreed that he was wise
in so doing. He always remained lame, for the great tendons had been
severed; but I think the greatest lameness was in his soul. His
thinking processes, once so phlegmatic and logical, had become
ineffaceably scarred; and it was pitiful to note his response to
certain chance allusions such as “Friday”, “tomb”, “coffin”, and words
of less obvious concatenation. His frightened horse had gone home, but
his frightened wits never quite did that. He changed his business, but
something always preyed upon him. It may have been just fear, and it
may have been fear mixed with a queer belated sort of remorse for
bygone crudities. His drinking, of course, only aggravated what it was
meant to alleviate.
When Dr. Davis left Birch that night he had taken a lantern and gone to
the old receiving tomb. The moon was shining on the scattered brick
fragments and marred facade, and the latch of the great door yielded
readily to a touch from the outside. Steeled by old ordeals in
dissecting rooms, the doctor entered and looked about, stifling the
nausea of mind and body that everything in sight and smell induced. He
cried aloud once, and a little later gave a gasp that was more terrible
than a cry. Then he fled back to the lodge and broke all the rules of
his calling by rousing and shaking his patient, and hurling at him a
succession of shuddering whispers that seared into the bewildered ears
like the hissing of vitriol.
“It was Asaph’s coffin, Birch, just as I thought! I knew his teeth,
with the front ones missing on the upper jaw—never, for God’s sake,
shew those wounds! The body was pretty badly gone, but if ever I saw
vindictiveness on any face—or former face. . . . You know what a fiend
he was for revenge—how he ruined old Raymond thirty years after their
boundary suit, and how he stepped on the puppy that snapped at him a
year ago last August. . . . He was the devil incarnate, Birch, and I
believe his eye-for-an-eye fury could beat old Father Death himself.
God, what a rage! I’d hate to have it aimed at me!
“Why did you do it, Birch? He was a scoundrel, and I don’t blame you
for giving him a cast-aside coffin, but you always did go too damned
far! Well enough to skimp on the thing some way, but you knew what a
little man old Fenner was.
“I’ll never get the picture out of my head as long as I live. You
kicked hard, for Asaph’s coffin was on the floor. His head was broken
in, and everything was tumbled about. I’ve seen sights before, but
there was one thing too much here. An eye for an eye! Great heavens,
Birch, but you got what you deserved. The skull turned my stomach, but
the other was worse—those ankles cut neatly off to fit Matt Fenner’s
cast-aside coffin!”
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