By the second day of the search the affair was fully treated by the
newspapers, whose reporters overran Tempest Mountain. They described
it in much detail, and with many interviews to elucidate the horror's
history as told by local grandams. I followed the accounts languidly
at first, for I am a connoisseur in horrors; but after a week I
detected an atmosphere which stirred me oddly, so that on August
5th, 1921, I registered among the reporters who crowded the hotel at
Lefferts Corners, nearest village to Tempest Mountain and acknowledged
headquarters of the searchers. Three weeks more, and the dispersal of
the reporters left me free to begin a terrible exploration based on the
minute inquiries and surveying with which I had meanwhile busied myself. So on this summer night, while distant thunder rumbled, I left a silent
motor-car and tramped with two armed companions up the mound-covered
reaches of Tempest Mountain, casting the beams of an electric torch on
the spectral gray walls that began to appear through the giant oaks
ahead. In this morbid night solitude and feeble shifting illumination,
the vast boxlike pile displayed obscure hints of terror which day could
not uncover; yet I did not hesitate, since I had come with fierce
resolution to test an idea. I believed that the thunder called the
death-demon out of some fearsome secret place; and be that demon solid
entity or vaporous pestilence, I meant to see it. *       *       *       *       *

I had thoroughly searched the ruin before, hence knew my plan well;
choosing as the seat of my vigil the old room of Jan Martense, whose
murder looms so great in the rural legends. I felt subtly that the
apartment of this ancient victim was best for my purposes. The chamber,
measuring about twenty feet square, contained like the other rooms some
rubbish which had once been furniture. It lay on the second story, on
the southeast corner of the house, and had an immense east window and
narrow south window, both devoid of panes or shutters. Opposite the
large window was an enormous Dutch fireplace with scriptural tiles
representing the prodigal son, and opposite the narrow window was a
spacious bed built into the wall. As the tree-muffled thunder grew louder, I arranged my plan's details. First I fastened side by side on the ledge of the large window three
rope ladders which I had brought with me. I knew they reached a
suitable spot on the grass outside, for I had tested them. Then the
three of us dragged from another room a wide four-poster bedstead,
crowding it laterally against the window. Having strewn it with fir
boughs, all now rested on it with drawn automatics, two relaxing while
the third watched. From whatever direction the demon might come, our
potential escape was provided. If it came from within the house, we had
the window ladders; if from outside, the door and the stairs. We did
not think, judging from precedent, that it would pursue us far even at
worst. I watched from midnight to 1 o'clock, when in spite of the sinister
house, the unprotected window, and the approaching thunder and
lightning, I felt singularly drowsy. I was between my two companions. George Bennett being toward the window and William Tobey toward
the fireplace. Bennett was asleep, having apparently felt the same
anomalous drowsiness which affected me, so I designated Tobey for the
next watch although even he was nodding. It is curious how intently I
had been watching that fireplace. The increasing thunder must have affected my dreams, for in the brief
time I slept there came to me apocalyptic visions. Once I partly
awaked, probably because the sleeper toward the window had restlessly
flung an arm across my chest. I was not sufficiently awake to see
whether Tobey was attending to his duties as sentinel, but felt a
distinct anxiety on that score. Never before had the presence of evil
so poignantly oppressed me. Later I must have dropped asleep again, for
it was out of a phantasmal chaos that my mind leaped when the night
grew hideous with shrieks beyond anything in my former experience or
imagination. In that shrieking the inmost soul of human fear and agony clawed
hopelessly and insanely at the ebony gates of oblivion. I awoke to
red madness and the mockery of diabolism, as farther and farther down
inconceivable vistas that phobic and crystalline anguish retreated and
reverberated. There was no light, but I knew from the empty space at
my right that Tobey was gone, God alone knew whither. Across my chest
still lay the heavy arm of the sleeper at my left. Then came the devastating stroke of lightning which shook the whole
mountain, lit the darkest crypts of the hoary grove, and splintered
the patriarch of the twisted trees. In the demon flash of a monstrous
fireball the sleeper started up suddenly while the glare from beyond
the window threw his shadow vividly upon the chimney above the
fireplace from which my eyes had never strayed. That I am still alive
and sane, is a marvel I can not fathom. I can not fathom it, for the
shadow on that chimney was not that of George Bennett or of any other
human creature; but a blasphemous abnormality from hell's nethermost
craters; a nameless, shapeless abomination which no mind could fully
grasp and no pen even partly describe. In another second I was alone
in the accursed mansion, shivering and gibbering. George Bennett and
William Tobey had left no trace, not even of a struggle. They were
never heard of again. _2. A Passer in the Storm_


For days after that hideous experience in the forest-swathed mansion
I lay nervously exhausted in my hotel room at Lefferts Corners. I do
not remember exactly how I managed to reach the motor-car, start it,
and slip unobserved back to the village; for I retain no distinct
impression save of wild-armed titan trees, demoniac mutterings of
thunder, and Charonian shadows athwart the low mounds that dotted and
streaked the region. As I shivered and brooded on the casting of that brain-blasting shadow,
I knew that I had at last pried out one of earth's supreme horrors--one
of those nameless blights of outer voids whose faint demon scratchings
we sometimes hear on the farthest rim of space, yet from which our own
finite vision has given us a merciful immunity. The shadow I had seen,
I hardly dared to analyze or identify. Something had lain between me
and the window that night, but I shuddered whenever I could not cast
off the instinct to classify it. If it had only snarled, or bayed,
or laughed titteringly--even that would have relieved the abysmal
hideousness. But it was so silent. It had rested a heavy arm or foreleg
on my chest.... Obviously it was organic, or had once been organic....
Jan Martense, whose room I had invaded, was buried in the graveyard
near the mansion.... I must find Bennett and Tobey, if they lived ...
why had it picked them, and left me for the last?... Drowsiness is so
stifling, and dreams are so horrible....