H.P. Lovecraft - The Evil Clergyman

H.P. LOVECRAFT

THE EVIL CLERGYMAN

Written in October 1933
First published in Weird Tales, Vol. 33, No. 4, April 1939

THE EVIL CLERGYMAN

I was shown into the attic chamber by a grave, intelligent-looking man with
quiet clothes and an iron-gray beard, who spoke to me in this fashion:

"Yes, he lived here—but I don't advise your doing anything. Your curiosity
makes you irresponsible. We never come here at night, and it's only because of
his will that we keep it this way. You know what he did. That abominable
society took charge at last, and we don't know where he is buried. There was no
way the law or anything else could reach the society.

"I hope you won't stay till after dark. And I beg of you to let that thing on
the table—the thing that looks like a match-box—alone. We don't know what it
is, but we suspect it has something to do with what he did. We even avoid
looking at it very steadily."

After a time the man left me alone in the attic room. It was very dingy and
dusty, and only primitively furnished, but it had a neatness which showed it
was not a slum-denizen's quarters. There were shelves full of theological and
classical books, and another bookcase containing treatises on magic—
Paracelsus, Albertus Magnus, Trithemius, Hermes Trismegistus, Borellus, and
others in a strange alphabet whose titles I could not decipher. The furniture
was very plain. There was a door, but it led only into a closet. The only
egress was the aperture in the floor up to which the crude, steep staircase
led. The windows were of bull's-eye pattern, and the black oak beams bespoke
unbelievable antiquity. Plainly, this house was of the Old World. I seemed to
know where I was, but cannot recall what I then knew. Certainly the town was
not London. My impression is of a small seaport.

The small object on the table fascinated me intensely. I seemed to know what
to do with it, for I drew a pocket electric light—or what looked like one—out
of my pocket and nervously tested its flashes. The light was not white but
violet, and seemed less like true light than like some radioactive bombardment.
I recall that I did not regard it as a common flashlight—indeed, I had a common
flashlight in another pocket.

It was getting dark, and the ancient roofs and chimney-pots outside looked
very queer through the bull's-eye window-panes. Finally I summoned up courage
and propped the small object up on the table against a book— then turned the
rays of the peculiar violet light upon it. The light seemed now to be more like
a rain of hail or small violet particles than like a continuous beam. As the
particles struck the glassy surface at the center of the strange device, they
seemed to produce a crackling noise like the sputtering of a vacuum tube
through which sparks are passed. The dark glassy surface displayed a pinkish
glow, and a vague white shape seemed to be taking form at its center. Then I
noticed that I was not alone in the room—and put the ray-projector back in my
pocket.

But the newcomer did not speak—nor did I hear any sound whatever during all
the immediately following moments. Everything was shadowy pantomime, as if seen
at a vast distance through some intervening haze—although on the other hand the
newcomer and all subsequent comers loomed large and close, as if both near and
distant, according to some abnormal geometry.

The newcomer was a thin, dark man of medium height attired in the clerical
garb of the Anglican church. He was apparently about thirty years old, with a
sallow, olive complexion and fairly good features, but an abnormally high
forehead. His black hair was well cut and neatly brushed, and he was clean-
shaven though blue-chinned with a heavy growth of beard. He wore rimless
spectacles with steel bows. His build and lower facial features were like other
clergymen I had seen, but he had a vastly higher forehead, and was darker and
more intelligent-looking—also more subtly and concealedly evil-looking. At the
present moment—having just lighted a faint oil lamp —he looked nervous, and
before I knew it he was casting all his magical books into a fireplace on the
window side of the room (where the wall slanted sharply) which I had not
noticed before. The flames devoured the volumes greedily—leaping up in strange
colors and emitting indescribably hideous odors as the strangely hieroglyphed
leaves and wormy bindings succumbed to the devastating element. All at once I
saw there were others in the room —grave-looking men in clerical costume, one
of whom wore the bands and knee-breeches of a bishop. Though I could hear
nothing, I could see that they were bringing a decision of vast import to the
first-comer. They seemed to hate and fear him at the same time, and he seemed
to return these sentiments. His face set itself into a grim expression, but I
could see his right hand shaking as he tried to grip the back of a chair. The
bishop pointed to the empty case and to the fireplace (where the flames had
died down amidst a charred, non-committal mass), and seemed filled with a
peculiar loathing. The first-comer then gave a wry smile and reached out with
his left hand toward the small object on the table. Everyone then seemed
frightened. The procession of clerics began filing down the steep stairs
through the trapdoor in the floor, turning and making menacing gestures as they
left. The bishop was last to go.

The first-comer now went to a cupboard on the inner side of the room and
extracted a coil of rope. Mounting a chair, he attached one end of the rope to
a hook in the great exposed central beam of black oak, and began making a noose
with the other end. Realizing he was about to hang himself, I started forward
to dissuade or save him. He saw me and ceased his preparations, looking at me
with a kind of triumph which puzzled and disturbed me. He slowly stepped down
from the chair and began gliding toward me with a positively wolfish grin on
his dark, thin-lipped face.

I felt somehow in deadly peril, and drew out the peculiar ray-projector as a
weapon of defense. Why I thought it could help me, I do not know. I turned it
on—full in his face, and saw the sallow features glow first with violet and
then with pinkish light. His expression of wolfish exultation began to be
crowded aside by a look of profound fear—which did not, however, wholly
displace the exultation. He stopped in his tracks—then, flailing his arms
wildly in the air, began to stagger backwards. I saw he was edging toward the
open stair-well in the floor, and tried to shout a warning, but he did not hear
me. In another instant he had lurched backward through the opening and was lost
to view.

I found difficulty in moving toward the stair-well, but when I did get there I
found no crushed body on the floor below. Instead there was a clatter of people
coming up with lanterns, for the spell of phantasmal silence had broken, and I
once more heard sounds and saw figures as normally tri- dimensional. Something
had evidently drawn a crowd to this place. Had there been a noise I had not
heard?

Presently the two people (simple villagers, apparently) farthest in the lead
saw me—and stood paralyzed. One of them shrieked loudly and reverberantly:

"Ahrrh!... It be'ee, zur? Again?"

Then they all turned and fled frantically. All, that is, but one. When the
crowd was gone I saw the grave-bearded man who had brought me to this place
—standing alone with a lantern. He was gazing at me gaspingly and fascinatedly,
but did not seem afraid. Then he began to ascend the stairs, and joined me in
the attic. He spoke:

"So you didn't let it alone! I'm sorry. I know what has happened. It happened
once before, but the man got frightened and shot himself. You ought not to have
made him come back. You know what he wants. But you mustn't get frightened like
the other man he got. Something very strange and terrible has happened to you,
but it didn't get far enough to hurt your mind and personality. If you'll keep
cool, and accept the need for making certain radical readjustments in your
life, you can keep right on enjoying the world, and the fruits of your
scholarship. But you can't live here—and I don't think you'll wish to go back
to London. I'd advise America.

"You mustn't try anything more with that—thing. Nothing can be put back now.
It would only make matters worse to do—or summon— anything. You are not as
badly off as you might be—but you must get out of here at once and stay away.
You'd better thank Heaven it didn't go further...

"I'm going to prepare you as bluntly as I can. There's been a certain
change—in your personal appearance. He always causes that. But in a new country
you can get used to it. There's a mirror up at the other end of the room, and
I'm going to take you to it. You'll get a shock—though you will see nothing
repulsive."

I was now shaking with a deadly fear, and the bearded man almost had to hold
me up as he walked me across the room to the mirror, the faint lamp (i.e., that
formerly on the table, not the still fainter lantern he had brought) in his
free hand. This is what I saw in the glass:

A thin, dark man of medium stature attired in the clerical garb of the
Anglican church, apparently about thirty, and with rimless, steel-bowed glasses
glistening beneath a sallow, olive forehead of abnormal height.

It was the silent first-comer who had burned his books.

For all the rest of my life, in outward form, I was to be that man!

THE END