It was in going over the letters and pictures on the Orne side that I
began to acquire a kind of terror of my own ancestry. As I have said,
my grandmother and uncle Douglas had always disturbed me. Now, years
after their passing, I gazed at their pictured faces with a measurably
heightened feeling of repulsion and alienation. I could not at first
understand the change, but gradually a horrible sort of _comparison_
began to obtrude itself on my unconscious mind despite the steady
refusal of my consciousness to admit even the least suspicion of it. It was clear that the typical expression of these faces now suggested
something it had not suggested before--something which would bring
stark panic if too openly thought of. But the worst shock came when my uncle showed me the Orne jewelry in
a downtown safe-deposit vault. Some of the items were delicate and
inspiring enough, but there was one box of strange old pieces descended
from my mysterious great-grandmother which my uncle was almost
reluctant to produce. They were, he said, of very grotesque and almost
repulsive design. As my uncle began slowly and grudgingly to unwrap the things, he urged
me not to be shocked by the strangeness and frequent hideousness of
the designs. There were two armlets, a tiara, and a kind of pectoral;
the latter having in high relief certain figures of almost unbearable
extravagance. He seemed to expect some demonstration when the first piece--the
tiara--became visible, but I doubt if he expected quite what actually
happened. I did not expect it, either, for I thought I was thoroughly
forewarned regarding what the jewelry would turn out to be. What I did
was to faint silently away just as I had done in that brier-choked
railway cut a year before. From that day on my life has been a nightmare of brooding and
apprehension, nor do I know how much is hideous truth and how much
madness. My great-grandmother had been a Marsh of unknown source whose
husband lived in Arkham--and did not old Zadok say that the daughter of
Obed Marsh by a monstrous mother was married to an Arkham man through
a trick? What was it the ancient toper had muttered about the likeness
of my eyes to Captain Obed's? In Arkham, too, the curator had told me I
had the true Marsh eyes. Was Obed Marsh my own great-great-grandfather? Who--or _what_--then, was my great-great-grandmother? But perhaps
this was all madness. Those whitish-gold ornaments might easily
have been bought from some Innsmouth sailor by the father of my
great-grandmother, whoever he was. And that look in the staring-eyed
faces of my grandmother and self-slain uncle might be sheer fancy,
bolstered up by the Innsmouth shadow which had so darkly colored my
imagination. But why had my uncle killed himself after an ancestral
quest in New England? For more than two years I fought off these reflections with partial
success. My father secured me a place in an insurance office, and
I buried myself in routine as deeply as possible. In the winter of
1930-31, however, the dreams began. They were very sparse and insidious
at first, but increased in frequency and vividness as the weeks went
by. Great watery spaces opened out before me, and I seemed to wander
through titanic sunken porticos and labyrinths of weedy cyclopean walls
and grotesque fishes as my companions. Then the _other shapes_ began to
appear, filling me with nameless horror the moment I awoke. But during
the dreams they did not horrify me at all--I was one with them; wearing
their unhuman trappings, treading their aqueous ways, and praying
monstrously at their evil sea-bottom temples. There was much more than I could remember, but even what I did remember
each morning would be enough to stamp me as a madman or a genius if
ever I dared write it down. Some frightful influence, I felt, was
seeking gradually to drag me out of the sane world of wholesome life
into unnameable abysses of blackness and alienage; and the process
told heavily on me. My health and appearance grew steadily worse, till
finally I was forced to give up my position and adopt the static,
secluded life of an invalid. Some odd nervous affliction had me in its
grip, and I found myself at times almost unable to shut my eyes. It was then that I began to study the mirror with mounting alarm. The
slow ravages of disease are not pleasant to watch, but in my case there
was something subtler and more puzzling in the background. My father
seemed to notice it, too, for he began looking at me curiously and
almost affrightedly. What was taking place in me? Could it be that I
was coming to resemble my grandmother and uncle Douglas? One night I had a frightful dream in which I met my grandmother
under the sea. She lived in a phosphorescent palace of many
terraces, with gardens of strange leprous corals and grotesque
brachiate efflorescences, and welcomed me with a warmth that may
have been sardonic. She had changed--as those who take to the water
change--and told me she had never died. Instead, she had gone to a
spot her dead son had learned about, and had leaped to a realm whose
wonders--destined for him as well--he had spurned with a smoking
pistol. This was to be my realm, too--I could not escape it. I would
never die, but would live with those who had lived since before man
ever walked the earth. [Illustration: "One night, in a frightful dream, I met two Ancient Ones
under the sea in a phosphorescent, many terraced palace surrounded by
gardens of strange, leprous corals."] I met also that which had been her grandmother. For eighty thousand
years Pth'thya-l'yi had lived in Y'ha-nthlei, and thither she had gone
back after Obed Marsh was dead. Y'ha-nthlei was not destroyed when
the upper-earth men shot death into the sea. It was hurt, but not
destroyed. The Deep Ones could never be destroyed, even though the
palaeogean magic of the forgotten Old Ones might sometimes check them. For the present they would rest; but some day, if they remembered, they
would rise again for the tribute Great Cthulhu craved. It would be a
city greater than Innsmouth next time. They had planned to spread, and
had brought up that which would help them, but now they must wait once
more. For bringing the upper-earth men's death I must do a penance,
but that would not be heavy. This was the dream in which I saw a
_shoggoth_ for the first time, and the sight set me awake in a frenzy
of screaming. That morning the mirror definitely told me I had acquired
_the Innsmouth look_. So far I have not shot myself as my uncle Douglas did. I bought an
automatic and almost took the step, but certain dreams deterred me. The
tense extremes of horror are lessening, and I feel queerly drawn toward
the unknown sea-deeps instead of fearing them. I hear and do strange
things in sleep, and awake with a kind of exaltation instead of terror. I do not believe I need to wait for the full change as most have
waited. If I did, my father would probably shut me up in a sanitarium
as my poor little cousin is shut up.