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object:1f.lovecraft - The Picture in the House
author class:H P Lovecraft
subject class:Fiction
genre class:Horror
class:chapter


Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places. For them are the
catacombs of Ptolemais, and the carven mausolea of the nightmare
countries. They climb to the moonlit towers of ruined Rhine castles,
and falter down black cobwebbed steps beneath the scattered stones of
forgotten cities in Asia. The haunted wood and the desolate mountain
are their shrines, and they linger around the sinister monoliths on
uninhabited islands. But the true epicure in the terrible, to whom a
new thrill of unutterable ghastliness is the chief end and
justification of existence, esteems most of all the ancient, lonely
farmhouses of backwoods New England; for there the dark elements of
strength, solitude, grotesqueness, and ignorance combine to form the
perfection of the hideous.
Most horrible of all sights are the little unpainted wooden houses
remote from travelled ways, usually squatted upon some damp, grassy
slope or leaning against some gigantic outcropping of rock. Two hundred
years and more they have leaned or squatted there, while the vines have
crawled and the trees have swelled and spread. They are almost hidden
now in lawless luxuriances of green and guardian shrouds of shadow; but
the small-paned windows still stare shockingly, as if blinking through
a lethal stupor which wards off madness by dulling the memory of
unutterable things.
In such houses have dwelt generations of strange people, whose like the
world has never seen. Seized with a gloomy and fanatical belief which
exiled them from their kind, their ancestors sought the wilderness for
freedom. There the scions of a conquering race indeed flourished free
from the restrictions of their fellows, but cowered in an appalling
slavery to the dismal phantasms of their own minds. Divorced from the
enlightenment of civilisation, the strength of these Puritans turned
into singular channels; and in their isolation, morbid self-repression,
and struggle for life with relentless Nature, there came to them dark
furtive traits from the prehistoric depths of their cold Northern
heritage. By necessity practical and by philosophy stern, these folk
were not beautiful in their sins. Erring as all mortals must, they were
forced by their rigid code to seek concealment above all else; so that
they came to use less and less taste in what they concealed. Only the
silent, sleepy, staring houses in the backwoods can tell all that has
lain hidden since the early days; and they are not communicative, being
loath to shake off the drowsiness which helps them forget. Sometimes
one feels that it would be merciful to tear down these houses, for they
must often dream.
It was to a time-battered edifice of this description that I was driven
one afternoon in November, 1896, by a rain of such chilling copiousness
that any shelter was preferable to exposure. I had been travelling for
some time amongst the people of the Miskatonic Valley in quest of
certain genealogical data; and from the remote, devious, and
problematical nature of my course, had deemed it convenient to employ a
bicycle despite the lateness of the season. Now I found myself upon an
apparently abandoned road which I had chosen as the shortest cut to
Arkham; overtaken by the storm at a point far from any town, and
confronted with no refuge save the antique and repellent wooden
building which blinked with bleared windows from between two huge
leafless elms near the foot of a rocky hill. Distant though it was from
the remnant of a road, the house none the less impressed me
unfavourably the very moment I espied it. Honest, wholesome structures
do not stare at travellers so slyly and hauntingly, and in my
genealogical researches I had encountered legends of a century before
which biassed me against places of this kind. Yet the force of the
elements was such as to overcome my scruples, and I did not hesitate to
wheel my machine up the weedy rise to the closed door which seemed at
once so suggestive and secretive.
I had somehow taken it for granted that the house was abandoned, yet as
I approached it I was not so sure; for though the walks were indeed
overgrown with weeds, they seemed to retain their nature a little too
well to argue complete desertion. Therefore instead of trying the door
I knocked, feeling as I did so a trepidation I could scarcely explain.
As I waited on the rough, mossy rock which served as a doorstep, I
glanced at the neighbouring windows and the panes of the transom above
me, and noticed that although old, rattling, and almost opaque with
dirt, they were not broken. The building, then, must still be
inhabited, despite its isolation and general neglect. However, my
rapping evoked no response, so after repeating the summons I tried the
rusty latch and found the door unfastened. Inside was a little
vestibule with walls from which the plaster was falling, and through
the doorway came a faint but peculiarly hateful odour. I entered,
carrying my bicycle, and closed the door behind me. Ahead rose a narrow
staircase, flanked by a small door probably leading to the cellar,
while to the left and right were closed doors leading to rooms on the
ground floor.
Leaning my cycle against the wall I opened the door at the left, and
crossed into a small low-ceiled chamber but dimly lighted by its two
dusty windows and furnished in the barest and most primitive possible
way. It appeared to be a kind of sitting-room, for it had a table and
several chairs, and an immense fireplace above which ticked an antique
clock on a mantel. Books and papers were very few, and in the
prevailing gloom I could not readily discern the titles. What
interested me was the uniform air of archaism as displayed in every
visible detail. Most of the houses in this region I had found rich in
relics of the past, but here the antiquity was curiously complete; for
in all the room I could not discover a single article of definitely
post-revolutionary date. Had the furnishings been less humble, the
place would have been a collector’s paradise.
As I surveyed this quaint apartment, I felt an increase in that
aversion first excited by the bleak exterior of the house. Just what it
was that I feared or loathed, I could by no means define; but something
in the whole atmosphere seemed redolent of unhallowed age, of
unpleasant crudeness, and of secrets which should be forgotten. I felt
disinclined to sit down, and wandered about examining the various
articles which I had noticed. The first object of my curiosity was a
book of medium size lying upon the table and presenting such an
antediluvian aspect that I marvelled at beholding it outside a museum
or library. It was bound in leather with metal fittings, and was in an
excellent state of preservation; being altogether an unusual sort of
volume to encounter in an abode so lowly. When I opened it to the title
page my wonder grew even greater, for it proved to be nothing less rare
than Pigafetta’s account of the Congo region, written in Latin from the
notes of the sailor Lopez and printed at Frankfort in 1598. I had often
heard of this work, with its curious illustrations by the brothers De
Bry, hence for a moment forgot my uneasiness in my desire to turn the
pages before me. The engravings were indeed interesting, drawn wholly
from imagination and careless descriptions, and represented negroes
with white skins and Caucasian features; nor would I soon have closed
the book had not an exceedingly trivial circumstance upset my tired
nerves and revived my sensation of disquiet. What annoyed me was merely
the persistent way in which the volume tended to fall open of itself at
Plate XII, which represented in gruesome detail a butcher’s shop of the
cannibal Anziques. I experienced some shame at my susceptibility to so
slight a thing, but the drawing nevertheless disturbed me, especially
in connexion with some adjacent passages descriptive of Anzique
gastronomy.
I had turned to a neighbouring shelf and was examining its meagre
literary contents—an eighteenth-century Bible, a Pilgrim’s Progress of
like period, illustrated with grotesque woodcuts and printed by the
almanack-maker Isaiah Thomas, the rotting bulk of Cotton Mather’s
Magnalia Christi Americana, and a few other books of evidently equal
age—when my attention was aroused by the unmistakable sound of walking
in the room overhead. At first astonished and startled, considering the
lack of response to my recent knocking at the door, I immediately
afterward concluded that the walker had just awakened from a sound
sleep; and listened with less surprise as the footsteps sounded on the
creaking stairs. The tread was heavy, yet seemed to contain a curious
quality of cautiousness; a quality which I disliked the more because
the tread was heavy. When I had entered the room I had shut the door
behind me. Now, after a moment of silence during which the walker may
have been inspecting my bicycle in the hall, I heard a fumbling at the
latch and saw the panelled portal swing open again.
In the doorway stood a person of such singular appearance that I should
have exclaimed aloud but for the restraints of good breeding. Old,
white-bearded, and ragged, my host possessed a countenance and physique
which inspired equal wonder and respect. His height could not have been
less than six feet, and despite a general air of age and poverty he was
stout and powerful in proportion. His face, almost hidden by a long
beard which grew high on the cheeks, seemed abnormally ruddy and less
wrinkled than one might expect; while over a high forehead fell a shock
of white hair little thinned by the years. His blue eyes, though a
trifle bloodshot, seemed inexplicably keen and burning. But for his
horrible unkemptness the man would have been as distinguished-looking
as he was impressive. This unkemptness, however, made him offensive
despite his face and figure. Of what his clothing consisted I could
hardly tell, for it seemed to me no more than a mass of tatters
surmounting a pair of high, heavy boots; and his lack of cleanliness
surpassed description.
The appearance of this man, and the instinctive fear he inspired,
prepared me for something like enmity; so that I almost shuddered
through surprise and a sense of uncanny incongruity when he motioned me
to a chair and addressed me in a thin, weak voice full of fawning
respect and ingratiating hospitality. His speech was very curious, an
extreme form of Yankee dialect I had thought long extinct; and I
studied it closely as he sat down opposite me for conversation.
“Ketched in the rain, be ye?” he greeted. “Glad ye was nigh the haouse
en’ hed the sense ta come right in. I calc’late I was asleep, else I’d
a heerd ye—I ain’t as young as I uster be, an’ I need a paowerful sight
o’ naps naowadays. Trav’lin’ fur? I hain’t seed many folks ’long this
rud sence they tuk off the Arkham stage.”
I replied that I was going to Arkham, and apologised for my rude entry
into his domicile, whereupon he continued.
“Glad ta see ye, young Sir—new faces is scurce arount here, an’ I
hain’t got much ta cheer me up these days. Guess yew hail from Bosting,
don’t ye? I never ben thar, but I kin tell a taown man when I see
’im—we hed one fer deestrick schoolmaster in ’eighty-four, but he quit
suddent an’ no one never heerd on ’im sence—” Here the old man lapsed
into a kind of chuckle, and made no explanation when I questioned him.
He seemed to be in an aboundingly good humour, yet to possess those
eccentricities which one might guess from his grooming. For some time
he rambled on with an almost feverish geniality, when it struck me to
ask him how he came by so rare a book as Pigafetta’s Regnum Congo. The
effect of this volume had not left me, and I felt a certain hesitancy
in speaking of it; but curiosity overmastered all the vague fears which
had steadily accumulated since my first glimpse of the house. To my
relief, the question did not seem an awkward one; for the old man
answered freely and volubly.
“Oh, thet Afriky book? Cap’n Ebenezer Holt traded me thet in
’sixty-eight—him as was kilt in the war.” Something about the name of
Ebenezer Holt caused me to look up sharply. I had encountered it in my
genealogical work, but not in any record since the Revolution. I
wondered if my host could help me in the task at which I was labouring,
and resolved to ask him about it later on. He continued.
“Ebenezer was on a Salem merchantman for years, an’ picked up a sight
o’ queer stuff in every port. He got this in London, I guess—he uster
like ter buy things at the shops. I was up ta his haouse onct, on the
hill, tradin’ hosses, when I see this book. I relished the picters, so
he give it in on a swap. ’Tis a queer book—here, leave me git on my
spectacles—” The old man fumbled among his rags, producing a pair of
dirty and amazingly antique glasses with small octagonal lenses and
steel bows. Donning these, he reached for the volume on the table and
turned the pages lovingly.
“Ebenezer cud read a leetle o’ this—’tis Latin—but I can’t. I hed two
er three schoolmasters read me a bit, and Passon Clark, him they say
got draownded in the pond—kin yew make anything outen it?” I told him
that I could, and translated for his benefit a paragraph near the
beginning. If I erred, he was not scholar enough to correct me; for he
seemed childishly pleased at my English version. His proximity was
becoming rather obnoxious, yet I saw no way to escape without offending
him. I was amused at the childish fondness of this ignorant old man for
the pictures in a book he could not read, and wondered how much better
he could read the few books in English which adorned the room. This
revelation of simplicity removed much of the ill-defined apprehension I
had felt, and I smiled as my host rambled on:
“Queer haow picters kin set a body thinkin’. Take this un here near the
front. Hev yew ever seed trees like thet, with big leaves a-floppin’
over an’ daown? And them men—them can’t be niggers—they dew beat all.
Kinder like Injuns, I guess, even ef they be in Afriky. Some o’ these
here critters looks like monkeys, or half monkeys an’ half men, but I
never heerd o’ nothing like this un.” Here he pointed to a fabulous
creature of the artist, which one might describe as a sort of dragon
with the head of an alligator.
“But naow I’ll shew ye the best un—over here nigh the middle—” The old
man’s speech grew a trifle thicker and his eyes assumed a brighter
glow; but his fumbling hands, though seemingly clumsier than before,
were entirely adequate to their mission. The book fell open, almost of
its own accord and as if from frequent consultation at this place, to
the repellent twelfth plate shewing a butcher’s shop amongst the
Anzique cannibals. My sense of restlessness returned, though I did not
exhibit it. The especially bizarre thing was that the artist had made
his Africans look like white men—the limbs and quarters hanging about
the walls of the shop were ghastly, while the butcher with his axe was
hideously incongruous. But my host seemed to relish the view as much as
I disliked it.
“What d’ye think o’ this—ain’t never see the like hereabouts, eh? When
I see this I telled Eb Holt, ‘That’s suthin’ ta stir ye up an’ make yer
blood tickle!’ When I read in Scripter about slayin’—like them
Midianites was slew—I kinder think things, but I ain’t got no picter of
it. Here a body kin see all they is to it—I s’pose ’tis sinful, but
ain’t we all born an’ livin’ in sin?—Thet feller bein’ chopped up gives
me a tickle every time I look at ’im—I hev ta keep lookin’ at ’im—see
whar the butcher cut off his feet? Thar’s his head on thet bench, with
one arm side of it, an’ t’other arm’s on the graound side o’ the meat
block.”
As the man mumbled on in his shocking ecstasy the expression on his
hairy, spectacled face became indescribable, but his voice sank rather
than mounted. My own sensations can scarcely be recorded. All the
terror I had dimly felt before rushed upon me actively and vividly, and
I knew that I loathed the ancient and abhorrent creature so near me
with an infinite intensity. His madness, or at least his partial
perversion, seemed beyond dispute. He was almost whispering now, with a
huskiness more terrible than a scream, and I trembled as I listened.
“As I says, ’tis queer haow picters sets ye thinkin’. D’ye know, young
Sir, I’m right sot on this un here. Arter I got the book off Eb I uster
look at it a lot, especial when I’d heerd Passon Clark rant o’ Sundays
in his big wig. Onct I tried suthin’ funny—here, young Sir, don’t git
skeert—all I done was ter look at the picter afore I kilt the sheep for
market—killin’ sheep was kinder more fun arter lookin’ at it—” The tone
of the old man now sank very low, sometimes becoming so faint that his
words were hardly audible. I listened to the rain, and to the rattling
of the bleared, small-paned windows, and marked a rumbling of
approaching thunder quite unusual for the season. Once a terrific flash
and peal shook the frail house to its foundations, but the whisperer
seemed not to notice it.
“Killin’ sheep was kinder more fun—but d’ye know, ’twan’t quite
satisfyin’. Queer haow a cravin’ gits a holt on ye— As ye love the
Almighty, young man, don’t tell nobody, but I swar ter Gawd thet picter
begun ta make me hungry fer victuals I couldn’t raise nor buy—here, set
still, what’s ailin’ ye?—I didn’t do nothin’, only I wondered haow
’twud be ef I did— They say meat makes blood an’ flesh, an’ gives ye
new life, so I wondered ef ’twudn’t make a man live longer an’ longer
ef ’twas more the same—” But the whisperer never continued. The
interruption was not produced by my fright, nor by the rapidly
increasing storm amidst whose fury I was presently to open my eyes on a
smoky solitude of blackened ruins. It was produced by a very simple
though somewhat unusual happening.
The open book lay flat between us, with the picture staring repulsively
upward. As the old man whispered the words “more the same” a tiny
spattering impact was heard, and something shewed on the yellowed paper
of the upturned volume. I thought of the rain and of a leaky roof, but
rain is not red. On the butcher’s shop of the Anzique cannibals a small
red spattering glistened picturesquely, lending vividness to the horror
of the engraving. The old man saw it, and stopped whispering even
before my expression of horror made it necessary; saw it and glanced
quickly toward the floor of the room he had left an hour before. I
followed his glance, and beheld just above us on the loose plaster of
the ancient ceiling a large irregular spot of wet crimson which seemed
to spread even as I viewed it. I did not shriek or move, but merely
shut my eyes. A moment later came the titanic thunderbolt of
thunderbolts; blasting that accursed house of unutterable secrets and
bringing the oblivion which alone saved my mind.
Return to “The Picture in the House”


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