I had a long talk with his doctor, banker, and lawyer, and finally took
the physician with two specialist colleagues to visit him. The spasms
that resulted from the first questions were violent and pitiable--and
that evening a closed car took his poor struggling body to the
Arkham Sanitarium. I was made his guardian and called on him twice
weekly--almost weeping to hear his wild shrieks, awesome whispers, and
dreadful, droning repetitions of such phrases as "I had to do it--I had
to do it--it'll get me--it'll get me--down there--down there in the
dark--Mother! Mother! Dan! Save me--save me----"

How much hope of recovery there was, no one could say, but I tried
my best to be optimistic. Edward must have a home if he emerged, so
I transferred his servants to the Derby mansion, which would surely
be his sane choice. What to do about the Crowninshield place with its
complex arrangements and collections of utterly inexplicable objects I
could not decide, so left it momentarily untouched--telling the Derby
household to go over and dust the chief rooms once a week, and ordering
the furnace man to have a fire on those days. The final nightmare came before Candlemas--heralded, in cruel irony,
by a false gleam of hope. One morning late in January the sanitarium
telephoned to report that Edward's reason had suddenly come back. His
continuous memory, they said, was badly impaired; but sanity itself was
certain. Of course he must remain some time for observation, but there
could be little doubt of the outcome. All going well, he would surely
be free in a week. I hastened over in a flood of delight, but stood bewildered when a
nurse took me to Edward's room. The patient rose to greet me, extending
his hand with a polite smile; but I saw in an instant that he bore the
strangely energized personality which had seemed so foreign to his own
nature--the competent personality I had found so vaguely horrible,
and which Edward himself had once vowed was the intruding soul of his
wife. There was the same blazing vision--so like Asenath's and old
Ephraim's--and the same firm mouth! and when he spoke I could sense the
same grim, pervasive irony in his voice--the deep irony so redolent of
potential evil. This was the person who had driven my car through the
night five months before--the person I had not seen since that brief
call when he had forgotten the old-time door-bell signal and stirred
such nebulous fears in me--and now he filled me with the same dim
feeling of blasphemous alienage and ineffable cosmic hideousness. He spoke affably of arrangements for release--and there was nothing
for me to do but assent, despite some remarkable gaps in his recent
memories. Yet I felt that something was terribly, inexplicably wrong
and abnormal. There were horrors in this thing that I could not reach. This was a sane person--but was it indeed the Edward Derby I had known? If not, who or what was it--and where was Edward? Ought it to be free
or confined--or ought it to be extirpated from the face of the earth? There was a hint of the abysmally sardonic in everything the creature
said--the Asenath-like eyes lent a special and baffling mockery to
certain words about the early liberty earned by an _especially close
confinement_! I must have behaved very awkwardly, and was glad to beat
a retreat. All that day and the next I racked my brain over the problem. What had
happened? What sort of mind looked out through those alien eyes in
Edward's face? I could think of nothing but this dimly terrible enigma,
and gave up all efforts to perform my usual work. The second morning
the hospital called up to say that the recovered patient was unchanged,
and by evening I was close to a nervous collapse--a state I admit,
though others will vow it colored my subsequent vision. I have nothing
to say on this point except that no madness of mine could account for
_all_ the evidence. 7


It was in the night--after that second evening--that stark, utter
horror burst over me and weighted my spirit with a black, clutching
panic from which it can never shake free. It began with a telephone
call just before midnight. I was the only one up, and sleepily took
down the receiver in the library. No one seemed to be on the wire,
and I was about to hang up and go to bed when my ear caught a very
faint suspicion of sound at the other end. Was someone trying under
great difficulties to talk? As I listened I thought I heard a sort
of half-liquid bubbling noise--"_glub ... glub ... glub_"--which
had an odd suggestion of inarticulate, unintelligible word and
syllable divisions. I called, "Who is it?" But the only answer was
"_glub-glub ... glub-glub_." I could only assume that the noise was
mechanical; but fancying that it might be a case of a broken instrument
able to receive but not to send, I added, "I can't hear you. Better
hang up and try Information." Immediately I heard the receiver go on
the hook at the other end. This, I say, was just before midnight. When that call was traced
afterward it was found to come from the old Crowninshield house, though
it was fully half a week from the housemaid's day to be there. I shall
only hint what was found at that house--the upheaval in a remote cellar
storeroom, the tracks, the dirt, the hastily rifled wardrobe, the
baffling marks on the telephone, the clumsily used stationery, and the
detestable stench lingering over everything. The police, poor fools,
have their smug little theories, and are still searching for those
sinister discharged servants--who have dropped out of sight amidst the
present furor. They speak of a ghoulish revenge for things that were
done, and say I was included because I was Edward's best friend and
adviser. Idiots! do they fancy those brutish clowns could have forged that
handwriting? Do they fancy they could have brought what later came? Are
they blind to the changes in that body that was Edward's? As for me,
_I now believe all that Edward Derby ever told me_. There are horrors
beyond life's edge that we do not suspect, and once in a while man's
evil prying calls them just within our range. Ephraim--Asenath--that
devil called them in, and they engulfed Edward as they are engulfing
me. Can I be sure that I am safe? Those powers survive the life of the
physical form. The next day--in the afternoon, when I pulled out of my
prostration and was able to walk and talk coherently--I went to the
madhouse and shot him dead for Edward's and the world's sake, but can I
be sure till he is cremated? They are keeping the body for some silly
autopsies by different doctors--but I say he must be cremated. _He must
be cremated--he who was not Edward Derby when I shot him._ I shall go
mad if he is not, for I may be the next. But my will is not weak--and
I shall not let it be undermined by the terrors I know are seething
around it. One life--Ephraim, Asenath, and Edward--who now? I _will
not_ be driven out of my body ... I _will not_ change souls with that
bullet-ridden lich in the madhouse!