object:1f.lovecraft - The Evil Clergyman
author class:H P Lovecraft
subject class:Fiction
genre class:Horror
class:chapter
I was shewn into the attic chamber by a grave, intelligent-looking man
with quiet clothes and an iron-grey beard, who spoke to me in this
fashion:
“Yes, he lived here—but I don’t advise your doing anything. Your
curiosity makes you irresponsible. We never come here at night, and
it’s only because of his will that we keep it this way. You know what
he did. That abominable society took charge at last, and we don’t know
where he is buried. There was no way the law or anything else could
reach the society.
“I hope you won’t stay till after dark. And I beg of you to let that
thing on the table—the thing that looks like a match box—alone. We
don’t know what it is, but we suspect it has something to do with what
he did. We even avoid looking at it very steadily.”
After a time the man left me alone in the attic room. It was very dingy
and dusty, and only primitively furnished, but it had a neatness which
shewed it was not a slum-denizen’s quarters. There were shelves full of
theological and classical books, and another bookcase containing
treatises on magic—Paracelsus, Albertus Magnus, Trithemius, Hermes
Trismegistus, Borellus, and others in strange alphabets whose titles I
could not decipher. The furniture was very plain. There was a door, but
it led only into a closet. The only egress was the aperture in the
floor up to which the crude, steep staircase led. The windows were of
bull’s-eye pattern, and the black oak beams bespoke unbelievable
antiquity. Plainly, this house was of the old world. I seemed to know
where I was, but cannot recall what I then knew. Certainly the town was
not London. My impression is of a small seaport.
The small object on the table fascinated me intensely. I seemed to know
what to do with it, for I drew a pocket electric light—or what looked
like one—out of my pocket and nervously tested its flashes. The light
was not white but violet, and seemed less like true light than like
some radio-active bombardment. I recall that I did not regard it as a
common flashlight—indeed, I had a common flashlight in another pocket.
It was getting dark, and the ancient roofs and chimney-pots outside
looked very queer through the bull’s-eye window-panes. Finally I
summoned up courage and propped the small object up on the table
against a book—then turned the rays of the peculiar violet light upon
it. The light seemed now to be more like a rain or hail of small violet
particles than like a continuous beam. As the particles struck the
glassy surface at the centre of the strange device, they seemed to
produce a crackling noise like the sputtering of a vacuum tube through
which sparks are passed. The dark glassy surface displayed a pinkish
glow, and a vague white shape seemed to be taking form at its centre.
Then I noticed that I was not alone in the room—and put the
ray-projector back in my pocket.
But the newcomer did not speak—nor did I hear any sound whatever during
all the immediately following moments. Everything was shadowy
pantomime, as if seen at a vast distance through some intervening
haze—although on the other hand the newcomer and all subsequent comers
loomed large and close, as if both near and distant, according to some
abnormal geometry.
The newcomer was a thin, dark man of medium height attired in the
clerical garb of the Anglican church. He was apparently about thirty
years old, with a sallow, olive complexion and fairly good features,
but an abnormally high forehead. His black hair was well cut and neatly
brushed, and he was clean-shaven though blue-chinned with a heavy
growth of beard. He wore rimless spectacles with steel bows. His build
and lower facial features were like other clergymen I had seen, but he
had a vastly higher forehead, and was darker and more
intelligent-looking—also more subtly and concealedly evil-looking. At
the present moment—having just lighted a faint oil lamp—he looked
nervous, and before I knew it he was casting all his magical books into
a fireplace on the window side of the room (where the wall slanted
sharply) which I had not noticed before. The flames devoured the
volumes greedily—leaping up in strange colours and emitting
indescribably hideous odours as the strangely hieroglyphed leaves and
wormy bindings succumbed to the devastating element. All at once I saw
there were others in the room—grave-looking men in clerical costume,
one of whom wore the bands and knee-breeches of a bishop. Though I
could hear nothing, I could see that they were bringing a decision of
vast import to the first-comer. They seemed to hate and fear him at the
same time, and he seemed to return these sentiments. His face set
itself into a grim expression, but I could see his right hand shaking
as he tried to grip the back of a chair. The bishop pointed to the
empty case and to the fireplace (where the flames had died down amidst
a charred, non-committal mass), and seemed filled with a peculiar
loathing. The first-comer then gave a wry smile and reached out with
his left hand toward the small object on the table. Everyone then
seemed frightened. The procession of clerics began filing down the
steep stairs through the trap-door in the floor, turning and making
menacing gestures as they left. The bishop was last to go.
The first-comer now went to a cupboard on the inner side of the room
and extracted a coil of rope. Mounting a chair, he attached one end of
the rope to a hook in the great exposed central beam of black oak, and
began making a noose with the other end. Realising he was about to hang
himself, I started forward to dissuade or save him. He saw me and
ceased his preparations, looking at me with a kind of triumph which
puzzled and disturbed me. He slowly stepped down from the chair and
began gliding toward me with a positively wolfish grin on his dark,
thin-lipped face.
I felt somehow in deadly peril, and drew out the peculiar ray-projector
as a weapon of defence. Why I thought it could help me, I do not know.
I turned it on—full in his face, and saw the sallow features glow first
with violet and then with pinkish light. His expression of wolfish
exultation began to be crowded aside by a look of profound fear—which
did not, however, wholly displace the exultation. He stopped in his
tracks—then, flailing his arms wildly in the air, began to stagger
backward. I saw he was edging toward the open stair-well in the floor,
and tried to shout a warning, but he did not hear me. In another
instant he had lurched backward through the opening and was lost to
view.
I found difficulty in moving toward the stair-well, but when I did get
there I found no crushed body on the floor below. Instead there was a
clatter of people coming up with lanterns, for the spell of phantasmal
silence had broken, and I once more heard sounds and saw figures as
normally tri-dimensional. Something had evidently drawn a crowd to this
place. Had there been a noise I had not heard? Presently the two people
(simply villagers, apparently) farthest in the lead saw me—and stood
paralysed. One of them shrieked loudly and reverberently:
“Ahrrh! . . . It be ’ee, zur? Again?”
Then they all turned and fled frantically. All, that is, but one. When
the crowd was gone I saw the grave-bearded man who had brought me to
this place—standing alone with a lantern. He was gazing at me gaspingly
and fascinatedly, but did not seem afraid. Then he began to ascend the
stairs, and joined me in the attic. He spoke:
“So you didn’t let it alone! I’m sorry. I know what has happened. It
happened once before, but the man got frightened and shot himself. You
ought not to have made him come back. You know what he wants. But you
mustn’t get frightened like the other man he got. Something very
strange and terrible has happened to you, but it didn’t get far enough
to hurt your mind and personality. If you’ll keep cool, and accept the
need for making certain radical readjustments in your life, you can
keep right on enjoying the world, and the fruits of your scholarship.
But you can’t live here—and I don’t think you’ll wish to go back to
London. I’d advise America.
“You mustn’t try anything more with that—thing. Nothing can be put back
now. It would only make matters worse to do—or summon—anything. You are
not as badly off as you might be—but you must get out of here at once
and stay away. You’d better thank heaven it didn’t go further. . . .
“I’m going to prepare you as bluntly as I can. There’s been a certain
change—in your personal appearance. He always causes that. But in a new
country you can get used to it. There’s a mirror up at the other end of
the room, and I’m going to take you to it. You’ll get a shock—though
you will see nothing repulsive.”
I was now shaking with a deadly fear, and the bearded man almost had to
hold me up as he walked me across the room to the mirror, the faint
lamp (i.e., that formerly on the table, not the still fainter lantern
he had brought) in his free hand. This is what I saw in the glass:
A thin, dark man of medium stature attired in the clerical garb of the
Anglican church, apparently about thirty, and with rimless, steel-bowed
glasses glistening beneath a sallow, olive forehead of abnormal height.
It was the silent first-comer who had burned his books.
For all the rest of my life, in outward form, I was to be that man!
Return to “The Evil Clergyman”
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