Often he kept to his house and to his
painting for days together, and then perhaps some evening I would find
him lounging on the pier, always alone, and every time we met thus the
repulsion and interest grew, for every time he seemed to have gone
farther along a path of secret knowledge towards some evil shrine
where complete initiation awaited him.... And then suddenly the end
came. I had met him thus one evening on the cliffs while the October sunset
still burned in the sky, but over it with amazing rapidity there spread
from the west a great blackness of cloud such as I have never seen for
denseness. The light was sucked from the sky, the dusk fell in ever
thicker layers. He suddenly became conscious of this. “I must get back as quick as I can,” he said. “It will be dark in a few
minutes, and my servant is out. The lamps will not be lit.”

He stepped out with extraordinary briskness for one who shambled and
could scarcely lift his feet, and soon broke out into a stumbling run. In the gathering darkness I could see that his face was moist with the
dew of some unspoken terror. “You must come with me,” he panted, “for so we shall get the lights
burning the sooner. I cannot do without light.”

I had to exert myself to the full to keep up with him, for terror
winged him, and even so I fell behind, so that when I came to the
garden gate, he was already half-way up the path to the house. I saw
him enter, leaving the door wide, and found him fumbling with matches. But his hand so trembled that he could not transfer the light to the
wick of the lamp. “But what’s the hurry about?” I asked. Suddenly his eyes focused themselves on the open door behind me, and he
jumped from his seat beside the table which had once been the altar of
God, with a gasp and a scream. “No, no!” he cried. “Keep it off!...”

I turned and saw what he had seen. The Thing had entered and now was
swiftly sliding across the floor towards him, like some gigantic
caterpillar. A stale phosphorescent light came from it, for though the
dusk had grown to blackness outside, I could see it quite distinctly in
the awful light of its own presence. From it too there came an odour
of corruption and decay, as from slime that has long lain below water. It seemed to have no head, but on the front of it was an orifice of
puckered skin which opened and shut and slavered at the edges. It was
hairless, and slug-like in shape and in texture. As it advanced its
fore-part reared itself from the ground, like a snake about to strike,
and it fastened on him....

At that sight, and with the yells of his agony in my ears, the panic
which had struck me relaxed into a hopeless courage, and with palsied,
impotent hands I tried to lay hold of the Thing. But I could not:
though something material was there, it was impossible to grasp it;
my hands sunk in it as in thick mud. It was like wrestling with a
nightmare. I think that but a few seconds elapsed before all was over. The screams
of the wretched man sank to moans and mutterings as the Thing fell
on him: he panted once or twice and was still. For a moment longer
there came gurglings and sucking noises, and then it slid out even as
it had entered. I lit the lamp which he had fumbled with, and there
on the floor he lay, no more than a rind of skin in loose folds over
projecting bones. At the Farmhouse




At the Farmhouse


The dusk of a November day was falling fast when John Aylsford came
out of his lodging in the cobbled street and started to walk briskly
along the road which led eastwards by the shore of the bay. He had been
at work while the daylight served him, and now, when the gathering
darkness weaned him from his easel, he was accustomed to go out for air
and exercise and cover half a dozen miles before he returned to his
solitary supper. To-night there were but few folk abroad, and those scudded along before
the strong south-westerly gale which had roared and raged all day, or,
leaning forward, beat their way against it. No fishing-boats had put
forth on that maddened sea, but had lain moored behind the quay-wall,
tossing uneasily with the backwash of the great breakers that swept
by the pier-head. The tide was low now, and they rested on the sandy
beach, black blots against the smooth wet surface which sombrely
reflected the last flames in the west. The sun had gone down in a wrack
of broken and flying clouds, angry and menacing with promise of a wild
night to come. For many days past, at this hour John Aylsford had started eastwards
for his tramp along the rough coast road by the bay. The last high
tide had swept shingle and sand over sections of it, and fragments of
seaweed, driven by the wind, bowled along the ruts. The heavy boom of
the breakers sounded sullenly in the dusk, and white towers of foam
appearing and disappearing showed how high they leaped over the reefs
of rock beyond the headland. For half a mile or so, slanting himself
against the gale he pursued this road, then turned up a narrow muddy
lane sunk deep between the banks on either side of it. It ran steeply
uphill, dipped down again, and joined the main road inland. Having
arrived at the junction, John Aylsford went eastwards no more, but
turned his steps to the west, arriving, half an hour after he had set
out, on the top of the hill above the village he had quitted, though
five minutes’ ascent would have taken him from his lodgings to the spot
where he now stood looking down on the scattered lights below him. The
wind had blown all wayfarers indoors, and now in front of him the road
that crossed this high and desolate table-land, sprinkled here and
there with lonely cottages and solitary farms, lay empty and greyly
glimmering in the wind-swept darkness, not more than faintly visible. Many times during this past month had John Aylsford made this long
detour, starting eastwards from the village and coming back by a wide
circuit, and now, as on these other occasions, he paused in the black
shelter of the hedge through which the wind hissed and whistled,
crouching there in the shadow as if to make sure that none had followed
him, and that the road in front lay void of passengers, for he had no
mind to be observed by any on these journeyings. And as he paused he
let his hate blaze up, warming him for the work the accomplishment of
which alone could enable him to recapture any peace or profit from
life. To-night he was determined to release himself from the millstone
which for so many years had hung round his neck, drowning him in bitter
waters. From long brooding over the idea of the deed, he had quite
ceased to feel any horror of it. The death of that drunken slut was not
a matter for qualms or uneasiness; the world would be well rid of her,
and he more than well. No spark of tenderness for the handsome fisher-girl who once had been
his model and for twenty years had been his wife pierced the blackness
of his purpose.