She was nude except for
that hideous web of hair spun around her, and was half seated, half
reclining on a sort of bench or divan, carved in patterns unlike those
of any known decorative tradition. There was a monstrously shaped
goblet in one hand, from which was spilling fluid whose color I haven't
been able to place or classify to this day. "The figure and the divan were in the left-hand foreground of the
strangest sort of scene I ever saw in my life. I think there was a
faint suggestion of its all being a kind of emanation from the woman's
brain; yet there was also a directly opposite suggestion--as if she
were just an evil image or hallucination conjured up by the scene
itself. "I can't tell you now whether it's an exterior or an interior, whether
those hellish cyclopean vaultings are seen from the outside or the
inside, or whether they are indeed carven stone and not merely a morbid
fungous arborescence. The geometry of the whole thing is crazy--one
gets the acute and obtuse angles all mixed up. "And God! The shapes of nightmare that float around in that perpetual
demon twilight! The blasphemies that lurk and leer and hold a witches'
sabbat with that woman as a high priestess! The black shaggy entities
that are not quite goats--the crocodile-headed beast with three legs
and a dorsal row of tentacles--and the flat-nosed Ægipans dancing in a
pattern that Egypt's priests knew and called accursed! "But the scene wasn't Egypt--it was _behind_ Egypt; behind even
Atlantis; behind fabled Mu, and myth-whispered Lemuria. It was the
ultimate fountainhead of all horror on this earth, and the symbolism
showed only too clearly how integral a part of it Marceline was. I
think it must be the unmentionable R'lyeh, that was not built by any
creatures of our planet--the thing Marsh and Denis used to talk about
in the shadows with hushed voices. In the picture it appears that the
whole scene is deep under water, though everybody seems to be breathing
freely. *       *       *       *       *

"Well, I couldn't do anything but look and shudder, and finally I saw
that Marceline was watching me craftily out of those monstrous, dilated
eyes on the canvas. It was no mere superstition--Marsh had actually
caught something of her horrible vitality in his symphonies of line and
color; so that she still brooded and stared and hated, just as if most
of her weren't down in the cellar under quicklime. _And it was worst of
all when some of those Hecate-born snaky strands of hair began to lift
themselves up from the surface and grope out into the room toward me!_

"Then it was that I knew the last final horror, and realized I was a
guardian and a prisoner for ever. She was the thing from which the
first dim legends of Medusa and the Gorgons had sprung, and something
in my shaken will had been captured and turned to stone at last. Never again would I be safe from those coiling snaky strands--the
strands in the picture, and those that lay brooding under the lime
near the wine casks. All too late I recalled the tales of the virtual
indestructibility, even through centuries of burial, of the hair of the
dead. "My life since has been nothing but horror and slavery. Always there
has lurked the fear of what broods down in the cellar. In less than a
month the niggers began whispering about the great black snake that
crawled around near the wine casks after dark, and about the curious
way its trail would lead to another spot six feet away. Finally I had
to move everything to another part of the cellar, for not a darky could
be induced to go near the place where the snake was seen. "Then the field hands began talking about the black snake that visited
old Sophonisba's cabin every night after midnight. One of them showed
me its trail, and not long afterward I found out that Aunt Sophy
herself had begun to pay strange visits to the cellar of the big house,
lingering and muttering for hours in the very spot where none of the
other blacks would go. God, but I was glad when that old witch died! I
honestly believe she had been a priestess of some ancient and terrible
tradition back in Africa. She must have lived to be almost a hundred
and fifty years old. "Sometimes I think I hear something gliding around the house at night. There will be a queer noise on the stairs, where the boards are loose,
and the latch of my room will rattle as if with an inward pressure. I
always keep my door locked, of course. Then there are certain mornings
when I seem to catch a sickish musty odor in the corridors, and notice
a faint, ropy trail through the dust of the floors. I know I must
guard the hair in the picture, for if anything were to happen to it,
there are entities in this house which would take a sure and terrible
revenge. I don't even dare to die; for life and death are all one to
those in the clutch of what came out of R'lyeh. Something would be on
hand to punish my neglect. Medusa's coil has got me, and it will always
be the same. Never mix up with secret and ultimate horror, young man,
if you value your immortal soul." *       *       *       *       *

As the old man finished his story I saw that the small lamp had long
since burned dry, and that the large one was nearly empty. It must, I
knew, be near dawn; and my ears told me that the storm was over. The
tale had held me in a half-daze, and I almost feared to glance at the
door lest it reveal an inward pressure from some unnameable source. It
would be hard to say which had the greatest hold on me--stark horror,
incredulity, or a kind of morbid fantastic curiosity. I was wholly
beyond speech and had to wait for my strange host to break the spell. "Do you want to see--the thing?" His voice was very low and hesitant, and I saw he was tremendously in
earnest. Of my various emotions, curiosity gained the upper hand, and
I nodded silently. He rose, lighting a candle on a near-by table and
holding it high before him as he opened the door. "Come with me--upstairs." I dreaded to brave those musty corridors again, but fascination downed
all my qualms. The boards creaked beneath our feet, and I trembled once
when I thought I saw a faint, rope-like line traced in the dust near
the staircase. The steps of the attic were noisy and rickety, with several of the
treads missing. I was glad of the need of looking sharply to my
footing, for it gave me an excuse not to glance about. The attic
corridor was pitch-black and heavily cobwebbed, and inch-deep with dust
except where a beaten trail led to a door on the left at the farther
end. As I noticed the rotting remains of a thick carpet, I thought of
the other feet which had pressed it in bygone decades--of these, and of
one thing which did not have feet. The old man took me straight to the door at the end of the beaten path,
and fumbled a second with the rusty latch. I was acutely frightened now
that I knew the picture was so close, yet dared not retreat at this
stage. In another moment my host was ushering me into the deserted
studio.