H.P. Lovecraft - The Outsider

H.P. LOVECRAFT

THE OUTSIDER

Written in 1921
First published in Weird Tales, Vol. 7, No. 4, April 1926

THE OUTSIDER

Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness.
Wretched is he who looks back upon lone hours in vast and dismal chambers with
brown hangings and maddening rows of antique books, or upon awed watches in
twilight groves of grotesque, gigantic, and vine-encumbered trees that silently
wave twisted branches far aloft. Such a lot the gods gave to me —to me, the
dazed, the disappointed; the barren, the broken. And yet I am strangely content
and cling desperately to those sere memories, when my mind momentarily
threatens to reach beyond to the other.

I know not where I was born, save that the castle was infinitely old and
infinitely horrible, full of dark passages and having high ceilings where the
eye could find only cobwebs and shadows. The stones in the crumbling corridors
seemed always hideously damp, and there was an accursed smell everywhere, as of
the piled-up corpses of dead generations. It was never light, so that I used
sometimes to light candles and gaze steadily at them for relief, nor was there
any sun outdoors, since the terrible trees grew high above the topmost
accessible tower. There was one black tower which reached above the trees into
the unknown outer sky, but that was partly ruined and could not be ascended
save by a well-nigh impossible climb up the sheer wall, stone by stone.

I must have lived years in this place, but I cannot measure the time. Beings
must have cared for my needs, yet I cannot recall any person except myself, or
anything alive but the noiseless rats and bats and spiders. I think that
whoever nursed me must have been shockingly aged, since my first conception of
a living person was that of somebody mockingly like myself, yet distorted,
shrivelled, and decaying like the castle. To me there was nothing grotesque in
the bones and skeletons that strewed some of the stone crypts deep down among
the foundations. I fantastically associated these things with everyday events,
and thought them more natural than the colored pictures of living beings which
I found in many of the mouldy books. From such books I learned all that I know.
No teacher urged or guided me, and I do not recall hearing any human voice in
all those years—not even my own; for although I had read of speech, I had never
thought to try to speak aloud. My aspect was a matter equally unthought of, for
there were no mirrors in the castle, and I merely regarded myself by instinct
as akin to the youthful figures I saw drawn and painted in the books. I felt
conscious of youth because I remembered so little.

Outside, across the putrid moat and under the dark mute trees, I would often
lie and dream for hours about what I read in the books; and would longingly
picture myself amidst gay crowds in the sunny world beyond the endless forests.
Once I tried to escape from the forest, but as I went farther from the castle
the shade grew denser and the air more filled with brooding fear; so that I ran
frantically back lest I lose my way in a labyrinth of nighted silence.

So through endless twilights I dreamed and waited, though I knew not what I
waited for. Then in the shadowy solitude my longing for light grew so frantic
that I could rest no more, and I lifted entreating hands to the single black
ruined tower that reached above the forest into the unknown outer sky. And at
last I resolved to scale that tower, fall though I might; since it were better
to glimpse the sky and perish, than to live without ever beholding day.

In the dank twilight I climbed the worn and aged stone stairs till I reached
the level where they ceased, and thereafter clung perilously to small footholds
leading upward. Ghastly and terrible was that dead, stairless cylinder of rock;
black, ruined, and deserted, and sinister with startled bats whose wings made
no noise. But more ghastly and terrible still was the slowness of my progress;
for climb as I might, the darkness overhead grew no thinner, and a new chill as
of haunted and venerable mould assailed me. I shivered as I wondered why I did
not reach the light, and would have looked down had I dared. I fancied that
night had come suddenly upon me, and vainly groped with one free hand for a
window embrasure, that I might peer out and above, and try to judge the height
I had once attained.

All at once, after an infinity of awesome, sightless, crawling up that concave
and desperate precipice, I felt my head touch a solid thing, and I knew I must
have gained the roof, or at least some kind of floor. In the darkness I raised
my free hand and tested the barrier, finding it stone and immovable. Then came
a deadly circuit of the tower, clinging to whatever holds the slimy wall could
give; till finally my testing hand found the barrier yielding, and I turned
upward again, pushing the slab or door with my head as I used both hands in my
fearful ascent. There was no light revealed above, and as my hands went higher
I knew that my climb was for the nonce ended; since the slab was the trapdoor
of an aperture leading to a level stone surface of greater circumference than
the lower tower, no doubt the floor of some lofty and capacious observation
chamber. I crawled through carefully, and tried to prevent the heavy slab from
falling back into place, but failed in the latter attempt. As I lay exhausted
on the stone floor I heard the eerie echoes of its fall, hoped when necessary
to pry it up again.

Believing I was now at prodigious height, far above the accursed branches of
the wood, I dragged myself up from the floor and fumbled about for windows,
that I might look for the first time upon the sky, and the moon and stars of
which I had read. But on every hand I was disappointed; since all that I found
were vast shelves of marble, bearing odious oblong boxes of disturbing size.
More and more I reflected, and wondered what hoary secrets might abide in this
high apartment so many aeons cut off from the castle below. Then unexpectedly
my hands came upon a doorway, where hung a portal of stone, rough with strange
chiseling. Trying it, I found it locked; but with a supreme burst of strength I
overcame all obstacles and dragged it open inward. As I did so there came to me
the purest ecstasy I have ever known; for shining tranquilly through an ornate
grating of iron, and down a short stone passageway of steps that ascended from
the newly found doorway, was the radiant full moon, which I had never before
seen save in dreams and in vague visions I dared not call memories.

Fancying now that I had attained the very pinnacle of the castle, I commenced
to rush up the few steps beyond the door; but the sudden veiling of the moon by
a cloud caused me to stumble, and I felt my way more slowly in the dark. It was
still very dark when I reached the grating—which I tried carefully and found
unlocked, but which I did not open for fear of falling from the amazing height
to which I had climbed. Then the moon came out.

Most demoniacal of all shocks is that of the abysmally unexpected and
grotesquely unbelievable. Nothing I had before undergone could compare in
terror with what I now saw; with the bizarre marvels that sight implied. The
sight itself was as simple as it was stupefying, for it was merely this:
instead of a dizzying prospect of treetops seen from a lofty eminence, there
stretched around me on the level through the grating nothing less than the
solid ground, decked and diversified by marble slabs and columns, and
overshadowed by an ancient stone church, whose ruined spire gleamed spectrally
in the moonlight.

Half unconscious, I opened the grating and staggered out upon the white gravel
path that stretched away in two directions. My mind, stunned and chaotic as it
was, still held the frantic craving for light; and not even the fantastic
wonder which had happened could stay my course. I neither knew nor cared
whether my experience was insanity, dreaming, or magic; but was determined to
gaze on brilliance and gaiety at any cost. I knew not who I was or what I was,
or what my surroundings might be; though as I continued to stumble along I
became conscious of a kind of fearsome latent memory that made my progress not
wholly fortuitous. I passed under an arch out of that region of slabs and
columns, and wandered through the open country; sometimes following the visible
road, but sometimes leaving it curiously to tread across meadows where only
occasional ruins bespoke the ancient presence of a forgotten road. Once I swam
across a swift river where crumbling, mossy masonry told of a bridge long
vanished.

Over two hours must have passed before I reached what seemed to be my goal, a
venerable ivied castle in a thickly wooded park, maddeningly familiar, yet full
of perplexing strangeness to me. I saw that the moat was filled in, and that
some of the well-known towers were demolished, whilst new wings existed to
confuse the beholder. But what I observed with chief interest and delight were
the open windows—gorgeously ablaze with light and sending forth sound of the
gayest revelry. Advancing to one of these I looked in and saw an oddly dressed
company indeed; making merry, and speaking brightly to one another. I had
never, seemingly, heard human speech before and could guess only vaguely what
was said. Some of the faces seemed to hold expressions that brought up
incredibly remote recollections, others were utterly alien.

I now stepped through the low window into the brilliantly lighted room,
stepping as I did so from my single bright moment of hope to my blackest
convulsion of despair and realization. The nightmare was quick to come, for as
I entered, there occurred immediately one of the most terrifying demonstrations
I had ever conceived. Scarcely had I crossed the sill when there descended upon
the whole company a sudden and unheralded fear of hideous intensity, distorting
every face and evoking the most horrible screams from nearly every throat.
Flight was universal, and in the clamor and panic several fell in a swoon and
were dragged away by their madly fleeing companions. Many covered their eyes
with their hands, and plunged blindly and awkwardly in their race to escape,
overturning furniture and stumbling against the walls before they managed to
reach one of the many doors.

The cries were shocking; and as I stood in the brilliant apartment alone and
dazed, listening to their vanishing echoes, I trembled at the thought of what
might be lurking near me unseen. At a casual inspection the room seemed
deserted, but when I moved towards one of the alcoves I thought I detected a
presence there—a hint of motion beyond the golden-arched doorway leading to
another and somewhat similar room. As I approached the arch I began to perceive
the presence more clearly; and then, with the first and last sound I ever
uttered—a ghastly ululation that revolted me almost as poignantly as its
noxious cause—I beheld in full, frightful vividness the inconceivable,
indescribable, and unmentionable monstrosity which had by its simple appearance
changed a merry company to a herd of delirious fugitives.

I cannot even hint what it was like, for it was a compound of all that is
unclean, uncanny, unwelcome, abnormal, and detestable. It was the ghoulish
shade of decay, antiquity, and dissolution; the putrid, dripping eidolon of
unwholesome revelation, the awful baring of that which the merciful earth
should always hide. God knows it was not of this world—or no longer of this
world—yet to my horror I saw in its eaten-away and bone-revealing outlines a
leering, abhorrent travesty on the human shape; and in its mouldy,
disintegrating apparel an unspeakable quality that chilled me even more.

I was almost paralyzed, but not too much so to make a feeble effort towards
flight; a backward stumble which failed to break the spell in which the
nameless, voiceless monster held me. My eyes bewitched by the glassy orbs which
stared loathsomely into them, refused to close; though they were mercifully
blurred, and showed the terrible object but indistinctly after the first shock.
I tried to raise my hand to shut out the sight, yet so stunned were my nerves
that my arm could not fully obey my will. The attempt, however, was enough to
disturb my balance; so that I had to stagger forward several steps to avoid
falling. As I did so I became suddenly and agonizingly aware of the nearness of
the carrion thing, whose hideous hollow breathing I half fancied I could hear.
Nearly mad, I found myself yet able to throw out a hand to ward off the fetid
apparition which pressed so close; when in one cataclysmic second of cosmic
nightmarishness and hellish accident my fingers touched the rotting
outstretched paw of the monster beneath the golden arch.

I did not shriek, but all the fiendish ghouls that ride the night-wind
shrieked for me as in that same second there crashed down upon my mind a single
fleeting avalanche of soul-annihilating memory. I knew in that second all that
had been; I remembered beyond the frightful castle and the trees, and
recognized the altered edifice in which I now stood; I recognized, most
terrible of all, the unholy abomination that stood leering before me as I
withdrew my sullied fingers from its own.

But in the cosmos there is balm as well as bitterness, and that balm is
nepenthe. In the supreme horror of that second I forgot what had horrified me,
and the burst of black memory vanished in a chaos of echoing images. In a dream
I fled from that haunted and accursed pile, and ran swiftly and silently in the
moonlight. When I returned to the churchyard place of marble and went down the
steps I found the stone trap-door immovable; but I was not sorry, for I had
hated the antique castle and the trees. Now I ride with the mocking and
friendly ghouls on the night-wind, and play by day amongst the catacombs of
Nephren-Ka in the sealed and unknown valley of Hadoth by the Nile. I know that
light is not for me, save that of the moon over the rock tombs of Neb, nor any
gaiety save the unnamed feasts of Nitocris beneath the Great Pyramid; yet in my
new wildness and freedom I almost welcome the bitterness of alienage.

For although nepenthe has calmed me, I know always that I am an outsider; a
stranger in this century and among those who are still men. This I have known
ever since I stretched out my fingers to the abomination within that great
gilded frame; stretched out my fingers and touched a cold and unyielding
surface of polished glass.

THE END