H.P. Lovecraft - Cool Air

H.P. LOVECRAFT

COOL AIR

Written in March 1926
First published in Tales of Magic and Mystery, March 1928

COOL AIR

You ask me to explain why I am afraid of a draught of cool air; why I shiver
more than others upon entering a cold room, and seem nauseated and repelled
when the chill of evening creeps through the heat of a mild autumn day. There
are those who say I respond to cold as others do to a bad odor, and I am the
last to deny the impression. What I will do is to relate the most horrible
circumstance I ever encountered, and leave it to you to judge whether or not
this forms a suitable explanation of my peculiarity.

It is a mistake to fancy that horror is associated inextricably with darkness,
silence, and solitude. I found it in the glare of mid-afternoon, in the clangor
of a metropolis, and in the teeming midst of a shabby and commonplace rooming-
house with a prosaic landlady and two stalwart men by my side. In the spring of
1923 I had secured some dreary and unprofitable magazine work in the city of
New York; and being unable to pay any substantial rent, began drifting from one
cheap boarding establishment to another in search of a room which might combine
the qualities of decent cleanliness, endurable furnishings, and very reasonable
price. It soon developed that I had only a choice between different evils, but
after a time I came upon a house in West Fourteenth Street which disgusted me
much less than the others I had sampled.

The place was a four-story mansion of brownstone, dating apparently from the
late forties, and fitted with woodwork and marble whose stained and sullied
splendor argued a descent from high levels of tasteful opulence. In the rooms,
large and lofty, and decorated with impossible paper and ridiculously ornate
stucco cornices, there lingered a depressing mustiness and hint of obscure
cookery; but the floors were clean, the linen tolerably regular, and the hot
water not too often cold or turned off, so that I came to regard it as at least
a bearable place to hibernate till one might really live again. The landlady, a
slatternly, almost bearded Spanish woman named Herrero, did not annoy me with
gossip or with criticisms of the late-burning electric light in my third-floor
front hall room; and my fellow-lodgers were as quiet and uncommunicative as one
might desire, being mostly Spaniards a little above the coarsest and crudest
grade. Only the din of street cars in the thoroughfare below proved a serious
annoyance.

I had been there about three weeks when the first odd incident occurred. One
evening at about eight I heard a spattering on the floor and became suddenly
aware that I had been smelling the pungent odor of ammonia for some time.
Looking about, I saw that the ceiling was wet and dripping; the soaking
apparently proceeding from a corner on the side toward the street. Anxious to
stop the matter at its source, I hastened to the basement to tell the landlady;
and was assured by her that the trouble would quickly be set right.

"Doctair Mu�oz," she cried as she rushed upstairs ahead of me, "he have speel
hees chemicals. He ees too seeck for doctair heemself� seecker and seecker all
the time�but he weel not have no othair for help. He ees vairy queer in hees
seeckness�all day he take funnee- smelling baths, and he cannot get excite or
warm. All hees own housework he do �hees leetle room are full of bottles and
machines, and he do not work as doctair. But he was great once�my fathair in
Barcelona have hear of heem�and only joost now he feex a arm of the plumber
that get hurt of sudden. He nevair go out, only on roof, and my boy Esteban he
breeng heem hees food and laundry and mediceens and chemicals. My Gawd, the sal-
ammoniac that man use for keep heem cool!"

Mrs. Herrero disappeared up the staircase to the fourth floor, and I returned
to my room. The ammonia ceased to drip, and as I cleaned up what had spilled
and opened the window for air, I heard the landlady's heavy footsteps above me.
Dr. Mu�oz I had never heard, save for certain sounds as of some gasoline-driven
mechanism; since his step was soft and gentle. I wondered for a moment what the
strange affliction of this man might be, and whether his obstinate refusal of
outside aid were not the result of a rather baseless eccentricity. There is, I
reflected tritely, an infinite deal of pathos in the state of an eminent person
who has come down in the world.

I might never have known Dr. Mu�oz had it not been for the heart attack that
suddenly seized me one forenoon as I sat writing in my room. Physicians had
told me of the danger of those spells, and I knew there was no time to be lost;
so remembering what the landlady had said about the invalid's help of the
injured workman, I dragged myself upstairs and knocked feebly at the door above
mine. My knock was answered in good English by a curious voice some distance to
the right, asking my name and business; and these things being stated, there
came an opening of the door next to the one I had sought.

A rush of cool air greeted me; and though the day was one of the hottest of
late June, I shivered as I crossed the threshold into a large apartment whose
rich and tasteful decoration surprised me in this nest of squalor and
seediness. A folding couch now filled its diurnal role of sofa, and the
mahogany furniture, sumptuous hangings, old paintings, and mellow bookshelves
all bespoke a gentleman's study rather than a boarding-house bedroom. I now saw
that the hall room above mine�the "leetle room" of bottles and machines which
Mrs. Herrero had mentioned�was merely the laboratory of the doctor; and that
his main living quarters lay in the spacious adjoining room whose convenient
alcoves and large contiguous bathroom permitted him to hide all dressers and
obtrusively utilitarian devices. Dr. Mu�oz, most certainly, was a man of birth,
cultivation, and discrimination.

The figure before me was short but exquisitely proportioned, and clad in
somewhat formal dress of perfect cut and fit. A high-bred face of masterful
though not arrogant expression was adorned by a short iron-grey full beard, and
an old-fashioned pince-nez shielded the full, dark eyes and surmounted an
aquiline nose which gave a Moorish touch to a physiognomy otherwise dominantly
Celtiberian. Thick, well-trimmed hair that argued the punctual calls of a
barber was parted gracefully above a high forehead; and the whole picture was
one of striking intelligence and superior blood and breeding.

Nevertheless, as I saw Dr. Mu�oz in that blast of cool air, I felt a
repugnance which nothing in his aspect could justify. Only his lividly inclined
complexion and coldness of touch could have afforded a physical basis for this
feeling, and even these things should have been excusable considering the man's
known invalidism. It might, too, have been the singular cold that alienated me;
for such chilliness was abnormal on so hot a day, and the abnormal always
excites aversion, distrust, and fear.

But repugnance was soon forgotten in admiration, for the strange physician's
extreme skill at once became manifest despite the ice-coldness and shakiness of
his bloodless-looking hands. He clearly understood my needs at a glance, and
ministered to them with a master's deftness; the while reassuring me in a
finely modulated though oddly hollow and timbreless voice that he was the
bitterest of sworn enemies to death, and had sunk his fortune and lost all his
friends in a lifetime of bizarre experiment devoted to its bafflement and
extirpation. Something of the benevolent fanatic seemed to reside in him, and
he rambled on almost garrulously as he sounded my chest and mixed a suitable
draught of drugs fetched from the smaller laboratory room. Evidently he found
the society of a well-born man a rare novelty in this dingy environment, and
was moved to unaccustomed speech as memories of better days surged over him.

His voice, if queer, was at least soothing; and I could not even perceive that
he breathed as the fluent sentences rolled urbanely out. He sought to distract
my mind from my own seizure by speaking of his theories and experiments; and I
remember his tactfully consoling me about my weak heart by insisting that will
and consciousness are stronger than organic life itself, so that if a bodily
frame be but originally healthy and carefully preserved, it may through a
scientific enhancement of these qualities retain a kind of nervous animation
despite the most serious impairments, defects, or even absences in the battery
of specific organs. He might, he half jestingly said, some day teach me to
live�or at least to possess some kind of conscious existence�without any heart
at all! For his part, he was afflicted with a complication of maladies
requiring a very exact regimen which included constant cold. Any marked rise in
temperature might, if prolonged, affect him fatally; and the frigidity of his
habitation�some 55 or 56 degrees Fahrenheit�was maintained by an absorption
system of ammonia cooling, the gasoline engine of whose pumps I had often heard
in my own room below.

Relieved of my seizure in a marvelously short while, I left the shivery place
a disciple and devotee of the gifted recluse. After that I paid him frequent
overcoated calls; listening while he told of secret researches and almost
ghastly results, and trembling a bit when I examined the unconventional and
astonishingly ancient volumes on his shelves. I was eventually, I may add,
almost cured of my disease for all time by his skillful ministrations. It seems
that he did not scorn the incantations of the medievalists, since he believed
these cryptic formulae to contain rare psychological stimuli which might
conceivably have singular effects on the substance of a nervous system from
which organic pulsations had fled. I was touched by his account of the aged Dr.
Torres of Valencia, who had shared his earlier experiments and nursed him
through the great illness of eighteen years before, whence his present
disorders proceeded. No sooner had the venerable practitioner saved his
colleague than he himself succumbed to the grim enemy he had fought. Perhaps
the strain had been too great; for Dr. Mu�oz made it whisperingly clear �though
not in detail�that the methods of healing had been most extraordinary,
involving scenes and processes not welcomed by elderly and conservative Galens.

As the weeks passed, I observed with regret that my new friend was indeed
slowly but unmistakably losing ground physically, as Mrs. Herrero had
suggested. The livid aspect of his countenance was intensified, his voice
became more hollow and indistinct, his muscular motions were less perfectly
coordinated, and his mind and will displayed less resilience and initiative. Of
this sad change he seemed by no means unaware, and little by little his
expression and conversation both took on a gruesome irony which restored in me
something of the subtle repulsion I had originally felt.

He developed strange caprices, acquiring a fondness for exotic spices and
Egyptian incense till his room smelled like a vault of a sepulchred Pharaoh in
the Valley of Kings. At the same time his demands for cold air increased, and
with my aid he amplified the ammonia piping of his room and modified the pumps
and feed of his refrigerating machine till he could keep the temperature as low
as 34 degrees or 40 degrees, and finally even 28 degrees; the bathroom and
laboratory, of course, being less chilled, in order that water might not
freeze, and that chemical processes might not be impeded. The tenant adjoining
him complained of the icy air from around the connecting door, so I helped him
fit heavy hangings to obviate the difficulty. A kind of growing horror, of
outr� and morbid cast, seemed to possess him. He talked of death incessantly,
but laughed hollowly when such things as burial or funeral arrangements were
gently suggested.

All in all, he became a disconcerting and even gruesome companion; yet in my
gratitude for his healing I could not well abandon him to the strangers around
him, and was careful to dust his room and attend to his needs each day, muffled
in a heavy ulster which I bought especially for the purpose. I likewise did
much of his shopping, and gasped in bafflement at some of the chemicals he
ordered from druggists and laboratory supply houses.

An increasing and unexplained atmosphere of panic seemed to rise around his
apartment. The whole house, as I have said, had a musty odor; but the smell in
his room was worse�and in spite of all the spices and incense, and the pungent
chemicals of the now incessant baths which he insisted on taking unaided. I
perceived that it must be connected with his ailment, and shuddered when I
reflected on what that ailment might be. Mrs. Herrero crossed herself when she
looked at him, and gave him up unreservedly to me; not even letting her son
Esteban continue to run errands for him. When I suggested other physicians, the
sufferer would fly into as much of a rage as he seemed to dare to entertain. He
evidently feared the physical effect of violent emotion, yet his will and
driving force waxed rather than waned, and he refused to be confined to his
bed. The lassitude of his earlier ill days gave place to a return of his fiery
purpose, so that he seemed about to hurl defiance at the death-daemon even as
that ancient enemy seized him. The pretense of eating, always curiously like a
formality with him, he virtually abandoned; and mental power alone appeared to
keep him from total collapse.

He acquired a habit of writing long documents of some sort, which he carefully
sealed and filled with injunctions that I transmit them after his death to
certain persons whom he named�for the most part lettered East Indians, but
including a once celebrated French physician now generally thought dead, and
about whom the most inconceivable things had been whispered. As it happened, I
burned all these papers undelivered and unopened. His aspect and voice became
utterly frightful, and his presence almost unbearable. One September day an
unexpected glimpse of him induced an epileptic fit in a man who had come to
repair his electric desk lamp; a fit for which he prescribed effectively whilst
keeping himself well out of sight. That man, oddly enough, had been through the
terrors of the Great War without having incurred any fright so thorough.

Then, in the middle of October, the horror of horrors came with stupefying
suddenness. One night about eleven the pump of the refrigerating machine broke
down, so that within three hours the process of ammonia cooling became
impossible. Dr. Mu�oz summoned me by thumping on the floor, and I worked
desperately to repair the injury while my host cursed in a tone whose lifeless,
rattling hollowness surpassed description. My amateur efforts, however, proved
of no use; and when I had brought in a mechanic from a neighboring all-night
garage, we learned that nothing could be done till morning, when a new piston
would have to be obtained. The moribund hermit's rage and fear, swelling to
grotesque proportions, seemed likely to shatter what remained of his failing
physique, and once a spasm caused him to clap his hands to his eyes and rush
into the bathroom. He groped his way out with face tightly bandaged, and I
never saw his eyes again.

The frigidity of the apartment was now sensibly diminishing, and at about 5
a.m. the doctor retired to the bathroom, commanding me to keep him supplied
with all the ice I could obtain at all-night drug stores and cafeterias. As I
would return from my sometimes discouraging trips and lay my spoils before the
closed bathroom door, I could hear a restless splashing within, and a thick
voice croaking out the order for "More�more!" At length a warm day broke, and
the shops opened one by one. I asked Esteban either to help with the ice-
fetching whilst I obtained the pump piston, or to order the piston while I
continued with the ice; but instructed by his mother, he absolutely refused.

Finally I hired a seedy-looking loafer whom I encountered on the corner of
Eighth Avenue to keep the patient supplied with ice from a little shop where I
introduced him, and applied myself diligently to the task of finding a pump
piston and engaging workmen competent to install it. The task seemed
interminable, and I raged almost as violently as the hermit when I saw the
hours slipping by in a breathless, foodless round of vain telephoning, and a
hectic quest from place to place, hither and thither by subway and surface car.
About noon I encountered a suitable supply house far downtown, and at
approximately 1:30 p.m. arrived at my boarding-place with the necessary
paraphernalia and two sturdy and intelligent mechanics. I had done all I could,
and hoped I was in time.

Black terror, however, had preceded me. The house was in utter turmoil, and
above the chatter of awed voices I heard a man praying in a deep basso.
Fiendish things were in the air, and lodgers told over the beads of their
rosaries as they caught the odor from beneath the doctor's closed door. The
lounger I had hired, it seems, had fled screaming and mad-eyed not long after
his second delivery of ice; perhaps as a result of excessive curiosity. He
could not, of course, have locked the door behind him; yet it was now fastened,
presumably from the inside. There was no sound within save a nameless sort of
slow, thick dripping.

Briefly consulting with Mrs. Herrero and the workmen despite a fear that
gnawed my inmost soul, I advised the breaking down of the door; but the
landlady found a way to turn the key from the outside with some wire device. We
had previously opened the doors of all the other rooms on that hall, and flung
all the windows to the very top. Now, noses protected by handkerchiefs, we
tremblingly invaded the accursed south room which blazed with the warm sun of
early afternoon.

A kind of dark, slimy trail led from the open bathroom door to the hall door,
and thence to the desk, where a terrible little pool had accumulated. Something
was scrawled there in pencil in an awful, blind hand on a piece of paper
hideously smeared as though by the very claws that traced the hurried last
words. Then the trail led to the couch and ended unutterably.

What was, or had been, on the couch I cannot and dare not say here. But this
is what I shiveringly puzzled out on the stickily smeared paper before I drew a
match and burned it to a crisp; what I puzzled out in terror as the landlady
and two mechanics rushed frantically from that hellish place to babble their
incoherent stories at the nearest police station. The nauseous words seemed
well-nigh incredible in that yellow sunlight, with the clatter of cars and
motor trucks ascending clamorously from crowded Fourteenth Street, yet I
confess that I believed them then. Whether I believe them now I honestly do not
know. There are things about which it is better not to speculate, and all that
I can say is that I hate the smell of ammonia, and grow faint at a draught of
unusually cool air.

"The end," ran that noisome scrawl, "is here. No more ice�the man looked and
ran away. Warmer every minute, and the tissues can't last. I fancy you
know�what I said about the will and the nerves and the preserved body after the
organs ceased to work. It was good theory, but couldn't keep up indefinitely.
There was a gradual deterioration I had not foreseen. Dr. Torres knew, but the
shock killed him. He couldn't stand what he had to do�he had to get me in a
strange, dark place when he minded my letter and nursed me back. And the organs
never would work again. It had to be done my way� preservation�for you see I
died that time eighteen years ago."

THE END