object:1f.lovecraft - The Disinterment
author class:H P Lovecraft
subject class:Fiction
genre class:Horror
class:chapter
By Duane W. Rimel
and H. P. Lovecraft
I awoke abruptly from a horrible dream and stared wildly about. Then,
seeing the high, arched ceiling and the narrow stained windows of my
friend’s room, a flood of uneasy revelation coursed over me; and I knew
that all of Andrew’s hopes had been realized. I lay supine in a large
bed, the posts of which reared upward in dizzy perspective; while on
vast shelves about the chamber were the familiar books and antiques I
was accustomed to seeing in that secluded corner of the crumbling and
ancient mansion which had formed our joint home for many years. On a
table by the wall stood a huge candelabrum of early workmanship and
design, and the usual light window-curtains had been replaced by
hangings of somber black, which took on a faint, ghostly luster in the
dying light.
I recalled forcibly the events preceding my confinement and seclusion
in this veritable medieval fortress. They were not pleasant, and I
shuddered anew when I remembered the couch that had held me before my
tenancy of the present one—the couch that everyone supposed would be my
last. Memory burned afresh regarding those hideous circumstances which
had compelled me to choose between a true death and a hypothetical
one—with a later re-animation by therapeutic methods known only to my
comrade, Marshall Andrews. The whole thing had begun when I returned
from the Orient a year before and discovered, to my utter horror, that
I had contracted leprosy while abroad. I had known that I was taking
grave chances in caring for my stricken brother in the Philippines, but
no hint of my own affliction appeared until I returned to my native
land. Andrews himself had made the discovery, and kept it from me as
long as possible; but our close acquaintance soon disclosed the awful
truth.
At once I was quartered in our ancient abode atop the crags overlooking
crumbling Hampden, from whose musty halls and quaint, arched doorways I
was never permitted to go forth. It was a terrible existence, with the
yellow shadow hanging constantly over me; yet my friend never faltered
in his faith, taking care not to contract the dread scourge, but
meanwhile making life as pleasant and comfortable as possible. His
widespread though somewhat sinister fame as a surgeon prevented any
authority from discovering my plight and shipping me away.
It was after nearly a year of this seclusion—late in August—that
Andrews decided on a trip to the West Indies—to study “native” medical
methods, he said. I was left in care of venerable Simes, the household
factotum. So far no outward signs of the disease had developed, and I
enjoyed a tolerable though almost completely private existence during
my colleague’s absence. It was during this time that I read many of the
tomes Andrews had acquired in the course of his twenty years as a
surgeon, and learned why his reputation, though locally of the highest,
was just a bit shady. For the volumes included any number of fanciful
subjects hardly related to modern medical knowledge: treatises and
unauthoritative articles on monstrous experiments in surgery; accounts
of the bizarre effects of glandular transplantation and rejuvenation in
animals and men alike; brochures on attempted brain transference, and a
host of other fanatical speculations not countenanced by orthodox
physicians. It appeared, too, that Andrews was an authority on obscure
medicaments; some of the few books I waded through revealing that he
had spent much time in chemistry and in the search for new drugs which
might be used as aids in surgery. Looking back at those studies now, I
find them hellishly suggestive when associated with his later
experiments.
Andrews was gone longer than I expected, returning early in November,
almost four months later; and when he did arrive, I was quite anxious
to see him, since my condition was at last on the brink of becoming
noticeable. I had reached a point where I must seek absolute privacy to
keep from being discovered. But my anxiety was slight as compared with
his exuberance over a certain new plan he had hatched while in the
Indies—a plan to be carried out with the aid of a curious drug he had
learned of from a native “doctor” in Haiti. When he explained that his
idea concerned me, I became somewhat alarmed; though in my position
there could be little to make my plight worse. I had, indeed,
considered more than once the oblivion that would come with a revolver
or a plunge from the roof to the jagged rocks below.
On the day after his arrival, in the seclusion of the dimly lit study,
he outlined the whole grisly scheme. He had found in Haiti a drug, the
formula for which he would develop later, which induced a state of
profound sleep in anyone taking it; a trance so deep that death was
closely counterfeited—with all muscular reflexes, even the respiration
and heart-beat, completely stilled for the time being. Andrews had, he
said, seen it demonstrated on natives many times. Some of them remained
somnolent for days at a time, wholly immobile and as much like death as
death itself. This suspended animation, he explained further, would
even pass the closest examination of any medical man. He himself,
according to all known laws, would have to report as dead a man under
the influence of such a drug. He stated, too, that the subject’s body
assumed the precise appearance of a corpse—even a slight rigor mortis
developing in prolonged cases.
For some time his purpose did not seem wholly clear, but when the full
import of his words became apparent I felt weak and nauseated. Yet in
another way I was relieved; for the thing meant at least a partial
escape from my curse, an escape from the banishment and shame of an
ordinary death of the dread leprosy. Briefly, his plan was to
administer a strong dose of the drug to me and call the local
authorities, who would immediately pronounce me dead, and see that I
was buried within a very short while. He felt assured that with their
careless examination they would fail to notice my leprosy symptoms,
which in truth had hardly appeared. Only a trifle over fifteen months
had passed since I had caught the disease, whereas the corruption takes
seven years to run its entire course.
Later, he said, would come resurrection. After my interment in the
family graveyard—beside my centuried dwelling and barely a quarter-mile
from his own ancient pile—the appropriate steps would be taken.
Finally, when my estate was settled and my decease widely known, he
would secretly open the tomb and bring me to his own abode again, still
alive and none the worse for my adventure. It seemed a ghastly and
daring plan, but to me it offered the only hope for even a partial
freedom; so I accepted his proposition, but not without a myriad of
misgivings. What if the effect of the drug should wear off while I was
in my tomb? What if the coroner should discover the awful ruse, and
fail to inter me? These were some of the hideous doubts which assailed
me before the experiment. Though death would have been a release from
my curse, I feared it even worse than the yellow scourge; feared it
even when I could see its black wings constantly hovering over me.
Fortunately I was spared the horror of viewing my own funeral and
burial rites. They must, however, have gone just as Andrews had
planned, even to the subsequent disinterment; for after the initial
dose of the poison from Haiti I lapsed into a semi-paralytic state and
from that to a profound, night-black sleep. The drug had been
administered in my room, and Andrews had told me before giving it that
he would recommend to the coroner a verdict of heart failure due to
nerve strain. Of course, there was no embalming—Andrews saw to that—and
the whole procedure, leading up to my secret transportation from the
graveyard to his crumbling manor, covered a period of three days.
Having been buried late in the afternoon of the third day, my body was
secured by Andrews that very night. He had replaced the fresh sod just
as it had been when the workmen left. Old Simes, sworn to secrecy, had
helped Andrews in his ghoulish task.
Later I had lain for over a week in my old familiar bed. Owing to some
unexpected effect of the drug, my whole body was completely paralyzed,
so that I could move my head only slightly. All my senses, however,
were fully alert, and by another week’s time I was able to take
nourishment in good quantities. Andrews explained that my body would
gradually regain its former sensibilities; though owing to the presence
of the leprosy it might take considerable time. He seemed greatly
interested in analyzing my daily symptoms, and always asked if there
was any feeling present in my body.
Many days passed before I was able to control any part of my anatomy,
and much longer before the paralysis crept from my enfeebled limbs so
that I could feel the ordinary bodily reactions. Lying and staring at
my numb hulk was like having it injected with a perpetual anesthetic.
There was a total alienation I could not understand, considering that
my head and neck were quite alive and in good health.
Andrews explained that he had revived my upper half first and could not
account for the complete bodily paralysis; though my condition seemed
to trouble him little considering the damnably intent interest he
centered upon my reactions and stimuli from the very beginning. Many
times during lulls in our conversation I would catch a strange gleam in
his eyes as he viewed me on the couch—a glint of victorious exultation
which, queerly enough, he never voiced aloud; though he seemed to be
quite glad that I had run the gauntlet of death and had come through
alive. Still, there was that horror I was to meet in less than six
years, which added to my desolation and melancholy during the tedious
days in which I awaited the return of normal bodily functions. But I
would be up and about, he assured me, before very long, enjoying an
existence few men had ever experienced. The words did not, however,
impress me with their true and ghastly meaning until many days later.
During that awful siege in bed Andrews and I became somewhat estranged.
He no longer treated me so much like a friend as like an implement in
his skilled and greedy fingers. I found him possessed of unexpected
traits—little examples of baseness and cruelty, apparent even to the
hardened Simes, which disturbed me in a most unusual manner. Often he
would display extraordinary cruelty to live specimens in his
laboratory, for he was constantly carrying on various hidden projects
in glandular and muscular transplantation on guinea-pigs and rabbits.
He had also been employing his newly discovered sleeping-potion in
curious experiments with suspended animation. But of these things he
told me very little; though old Simes often let slip chance comments
which shed some light on the proceedings. I was not certain how much
the old servant knew, but he had surely learned considerable, being a
constant companion to both Andrews and myself.
With the passage of time, a slow but consistent feeling began creeping
into my disabled body; and at the reviving symptoms Andrews took a
fanatical interest in my case. He still seemed more coldly analytical
than sympathetic toward me, taking my pulse and heart-beat with more
than usual zeal. Occasionally, in his fevered examinations, I saw his
hands tremble slightly—an uncommon sight with so skilled a surgeon—but
he seemed oblivious of my scrutiny. I was never allowed even a
momentary glimpse of my full body, but with the feeble return of the
sense of touch, I was aware of a bulk and heaviness which at first
seemed awkward and unfamiliar.
Gradually I regained the use of my hands and arms; and with the passing
of the paralysis came a new and terrible sensation of physical
estrangement. My limbs had difficulty in following the commands of my
mind, and every movement was jerky and uncertain. So clumsy were my
hands, that I had to become accustomed to them all over again. This
must, I thought, be due to my disease and the advance of the contagion
in my system. Being unaware of how the early symptoms affected the
victim (my brother’s being a more advanced case), I had no means of
judging; and since Andrews shunned the subject, I deemed it better to
remain silent.
One day I asked Andrews—I no longer considered him a friend—if I might
try rising and sitting up in bed. At first he objected strenuously, but
later, after cautioning me to keep the blankets well up around my chin
so that I would not be chilled, he permitted it. This seemed strange,
in view of the comfortable temperature. Now that late autumn was slowly
turning into winter, the room was always well heated. A growing
chilliness at night, and occasional glimpses of a leaden sky through
the window, had told me of the changing season; for no calendar was
ever in sight upon the dingy walls. With the gentle help of Simes I was
eased to a sitting position, Andrews coldly watching from the door to
the laboratory. At my success a slow smile spread across his leering
features, and he turned to disappear from the darkened doorway. His
mood did nothing to improve my condition. Old Simes, usually so regular
and consistent, was now often late in his duties, sometimes leaving me
alone for hours at a time.
The terrible sense of alienation was heightened by my new position. It
seemed that the legs and arms inside my gown were hardly able to follow
the summoning of my mind, and it became mentally exhausting to continue
movement for any length of time. My fingers, woefully clumsy, were
wholly unfamiliar to my inner sense of touch, and I wondered vaguely if
I were to be accursed the rest of my days with an awkwardness induced
by my dread malady.
It was on the evening following my half-recovery that the dreams began.
I was tormented not only at night but during the day as well. I would
awaken, screaming horribly, from some frightful nightmare I dared not
think about outside the realm of sleep. These dreams consisted mainly
of ghoulish things; graveyards at night, stalking corpses, and lost
souls amid a chaos of blinding light and shadow. The terrible reality
of the visions disturbed me most of all: it seemed that some inside
influence was inducing the grisly vistas of moonlit tombstones and
endless catacombs of the restless dead. I could not place their source;
and at the end of a week I was quite frantic with abominable thoughts
which seemed to obtrude themselves upon my unwelcome consciousness.
By that time a slow plan was forming whereby I might escape the living
hell into which I had been propelled. Andrews cared less and less about
me, seeming intent only on my progress and growth and recovery of
normal muscular reactions. I was becoming every day more convinced of
the nefarious doings going on in that laboratory across the
threshold—the animal cries were shocking, and rasped hideously on my
overwrought nerves. And I was gradually beginning to think that Andrews
had not saved me from deportation solely for my own benefit, but for
some accursed reason of his own. Simes’s attention was slowly becoming
slighter and slighter, and I was convinced that the aged servitor had a
hand in the deviltry somewhere. Andrews no longer eyed me as a friend,
but as an object of experimentation; nor did I like the way he fingered
his scalpel when he stood in the narrow doorway and stared at me with
crafty alertness. I had never before seen such a transformation come
over any man. His ordinarily handsome features were now lined and
whisker-grown, and his eyes gleamed as if some imp of Satan were
staring from them. His cold, calculating gaze made me shudder horribly,
and gave me a fresh determination to free myself from his bondage as
soon as possible.
I had lost track of time during my dream-orgy, and had no way of
knowing how fast the days were passing. The curtains were often drawn
in the daytime, the room being lit by waxen cylinders in the large
candelabrum. It was a nightmare of living horror and unreality; though
through it all I was gradually becoming stronger. I always gave careful
responses to Andrews’ inquiries concerning my returning physical
control, concealing the fact that a new life was vibrating through me
with every passing day—an altogether strange sort of strength, but one
which I was counting on to serve me in the coming crisis.
Finally, one chilly evening when the candles had been extinguished, and
a pale shaft of moonlight fell through the dark curtains upon my bed, I
determined to rise and carry out my plan of action. There had been no
movement from either of my captors for several hours, and I was
confident that both were asleep in adjoining bedchambers. Shifting my
cumbersome weight carefully, I rose to a sitting position and crawled
cautiously out of bed, down upon the floor. A vertigo gripped me
momentarily, and a wave of weakness flooded my entire being. But
finally strength returned, and by clutching at a bed-post I was able to
stand upon my feet for the first time in many months. Gradually a new
strength coursed through me, and I donned the dark robe which I had
seen hanging on a nearby chair. It was quite long, but served as a
cloak over my nightdress. Again came that feeling of awful
unfamiliarity which I had experienced in bed; that sense of alienation,
and of difficulty in making my limbs perform as they should. But there
was need for haste before my feeble strength might give out. As a last
precaution in dressing, I slipped some old shoes over my feet; but
though I could have sworn they were my own, they seemed abnormally
loose, so that I decided they must belong to the aged Simes.
Seeing no other heavy objects in the room, I seized from the table the
huge candelabrum, upon which the moon shone with a pallid glow, and
proceeded very quietly toward the laboratory door.
My first steps came jerkily and with much difficulty, and in the
semi-darkness I was unable to make my way very rapidly. When I reached
the threshold, a glance within revealed my former friend seated in a
large overstuffed chair; while beside him was a smoking-stand upon
which were assorted bottles and a glass. He reclined half-way in the
moonlight through the large window, and his greasy features were
creased in a drunken smirk. An opened book lay in his lap—one of the
hideous tomes from his private library.
For a long moment I gloated over the prospect before me, and then,
stepping forward suddenly, I brought the heavy weapon down upon his
unprotected head. The dull crunch was followed by a spurt of blood, and
the fiend crumpled to the floor, his head laid half open. I felt no
contrition at taking the man’s life in such a manner. In the hideous,
half-visible specimens of his surgical wizardry scattered about the
room in various stages of completion and preservation, I felt there was
enough evidence to blast his soul without my aid. Andrews had gone too
far in his practices to continue living, and as one of his monstrous
specimens—of that I was now hideously certain—it was my duty to
exterminate him.
Simes, I realized, would be no such easy matter; indeed, only unusual
good fortune had caused me to find Andrews unconscious. When I finally
reeled up to the servant’s bedchamber door, faint from exhaustion, I
knew it would take all my remaining strength to complete the ordeal.
The old man’s room was in utmost darkness, being on the north side of
the structure, but he must have seen me silhouetted in the doorway as I
came in. He screamed hoarsely, and I aimed the candelabrum at him from
the threshold. It struck something soft, making a sloughing sound in
the darkness; but the screaming continued. From that time on events
became hazy and jumbled together, but I remember grappling with the man
and choking the life from him little by little. He gibbered a host of
awful things before I could lay hands on him—cried and begged for mercy
from my clutching fingers. I hardly realized my own strength in that
mad moment which left Andrews’ associate in a condition like his own.
Retreating from the darkened chamber, I stumbled for the stairway door,
sagged through it, and somehow reached the landing below. No lamps were
burning, and my only light was a filtering of moonbeams coming from the
narrow windows in the hall. But I made my jerky way over the cold, damp
slabs of stone, reeling from the terrible weakness of my exertion, and
reached the front door after ages of fumbling and crawling about in the
darkness.
Vague memories and haunting shadows came to taunt me in that ancient
hallway; shadows once friendly and understandable, but now grown alien
and unrecognizable, so that I stumbled down the worn steps in a frenzy
of something more than fear. For a moment I stood in the shadow of the
giant stone manor, viewing the moonlit trail down which I must go to
reach the home of my forefathers, only a quarter of a mile distant. But
the way seemed long, and for a while I despaired of ever traversing the
whole of it.
At last I grasped a piece of dead wood as a cane and set out down the
winding road. Ahead, seemingly only a few rods away in the moonlight,
stood the venerable mansion where my ancestors had lived and died. Its
turrets rose spectrally in the shimmering radiance, and the black
shadow cast on the beetling hillside appeared to shift and waver, as if
belonging to a castle of unreal substance. There stood the monument of
half a century; a haven for all my family old and young, which I had
deserted many years ago to live with the fanatical Andrews. It stood
empty on that fateful night, and I hope that it may always remain so.
In some manner I reached the aged place; though I do not remember the
last half of the journey at all. It was enough to be near the family
cemetery, among whose moss-covered and crumbling stones I would seek
the oblivion I had desired. As I approached the moonlit spot the old
familiarity—so absent during my abnormal existence—returned to plague
me in a wholly unexpected way. I drew close to my own tombstone, and
the feeling of homecoming grew stronger; with it came a fresh flood of
that awful sense of alienation and disembodiment which I knew so well.
I was satisfied that the end was drawing near; nor did I stop to
analyze emotions till a little later, when the full horror of my
position burst upon me.
Intuitively I knew my own tombstone; for the grass had scarcely begun
to grow between the pieces of sod. With feverish haste I began clawing
at the mound, and scraping the wet earth from the hole left by the
removal of the grass and roots. How long I worked in the nitrous soil
before my fingers struck the coffin-lid, I can never say; but sweat was
pouring from me and my nails were but useless, bleeding hooks.
At last I threw out the last bit of loose earth, and with trembling
fingers tugged on the heavy lid. It gave a trifle; and I was prepared
to lift it completely open when a fetid and nauseous odor assailed my
nostrils. I started erect, horrified. Had some idiot placed my
tombstone on the wrong grave, causing me to unearth another body? For
surely there could be no mistaking that awful stench. Gradually a
hideous uncertainty came over me and I scrambled from the hole. One
look at the newly made headpiece was enough. This was indeed my own
grave . . . but what fool had buried within it another corpse?
All at once a bit of the unspeakable truth propelled itself upon my
brain. The odor, in spite of its putrescence, seemed somehow
familiar—horribly familiar. . . . Yet I could not credit my senses with
such an idea. Reeling and cursing, I fell into the black cavity once
more, and by the aid of a hastily lit match, lifted the long lid
completely open. Then the light went out, as if extinguished by a
malignant hand, and I clawed my way out of that accursed pit, screaming
in a frenzy of fear and loathing.
When I regained consciousness I was lying before the door of my own
ancient manor, where I must have crawled after that hideous rendezvous
in the family cemetery. I realized that dawn was close at hand, and
rose feebly, opening the aged portal before me and entering the place
which had known no footsteps for over a decade. A fever was ravaging my
weakened body, so that I was hardly able to stand, but I made my way
slowly through the musty, dimly lit chambers and staggered into my own
study—the study I had deserted so many years before.
When the sun has risen, I shall go to the ancient well beneath the old
willow tree by the cemetery and cast my deformed self into it. No other
man shall ever view this blasphemy which has survived life longer than
it should have. I do not know what people will say when they see my
disordered grave, but this will not trouble me if I can find oblivion
from that which I beheld amidst the crumbling, moss-crusted stones of
the hideous place.
I know now why Andrews was so secretive in his actions; so damnably
gloating in his attitude toward me after my artificial death. He had
meant me for a specimen all the time—a specimen of his greatest feat of
surgery, his masterpiece of unclean witchery . . . an example of
perverted artistry for him alone to see. Where Andrews obtained that
other with which I lay accursed in his moldering mansion I shall
probably never know; but I am afraid that it was brought from Haiti
along with his fiendish medicine. At least these long hairy arms and
horrible short legs are alien to me . . . alien to all natural and sane
laws of mankind. The thought that I shall be tortured with that other
during the rest of my brief existence is another hell.
Now I can but wish for that which once was mine; that which every man
blessed of God ought to have at death; that which I saw in that awful
moment in the ancient burial ground when I raised the lid on the
coffin—my own shrunken, decayed, and headless body.
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