The Statement of Randolph Carter / Оригинал текста
Написано 1919
Опубликовано в Мае 1920 в The Vagrant, No. 13, p. 41–48.
Again I say, I do not know what has become of Harley Warren, though I think — almost hope — that he is in peaceful oblivion, if there be anywhere so blessed a thing. It is true that I have for five years been his closest friend, and a partial sharer of his terrible researches into the unknown. I will not deny, though my memory is uncertain and indistinct, that this witness of yours may have seen us together as he says, on the Gainsville pike, walking toward Big Cypress Swamp, at half past 11 on that awful night. That we bore electric lanterns, spades, and a curious coil of wire with attached instruments, I will even affirm; for these things all played a part in the single hideous scene which remains burned into my shaken recollection. But of what followed, and of the reason I was found alone and dazed on the edge of the swamp next morning, I must insist that I know nothing save what I have told you over and over again. You say to me that there is nothing in the swamp or near it which could form the setting of that frightful episode. I reply that I knew nothing beyond what I saw. Vision or nightmare it may have been — vision or nightmare I fervently hope it was — yet it is all that my mind retains of what took place in those shocking hours after we left the sight of men. And why Harley Warren did not return, he or his shade — or some nameless thing I cannot describe — alone can tell.
As I have said before, the weird studies of Harley Warren were well known to me, and to some extent shared by me. Of his vast collection of strange, rare books on forbidden subjects I have read all that are written in the languages of which I am master; but these are few as compared with those in languages I cannot understand. Most, I believe, are in Arabic; and the fiend-inspired book which brought on the end — the book which he carried in his pocket out of the world — was written in characters whose like I never saw elsewhere. Warren would never tell me just what was in that book. As to the nature of our studies — must I say again that I no longer retain full comprehension? It seems to me rather merciful that I do not, for they were terrible studies, which I pursued more through reluctant fascination than through actual inclination. Warren always dominated me, and sometimes I feared him. I remember how I shuddered at his facial expression on the night before the awful happening, when he talked so incessantly of his theory, why certain corpses never decay, but rest firm and fat in their tombs for a thousand years. But I do not fear him now, for I suspect that he has known horrors beyond my ken. Now I fear for him.
Once more I say that I have no clear idea of our object on that night. Certainly, it had much to do with something in the book which Warren carried with him — that ancient book in undecipherable characters which had come to him from India a month before — but I swear I do not know what it was that we expected to find. Your witness says he saw us at half past 11 on the Gainsville pike, headed for Big Cypress Swamp. This is probably true, but I have no distinct memory of it. The picture seared into my soul is of one scene only, and the hour must have been long after midnight; for a waning crescent moon was high in the vaporous heavens.
The place was an ancient cemetery; so ancient that I trembled at the manifold signs of immemorial years. It was in a deep, damp hollow, overgrown with rank grass, moss, and curious creeping weeds, and filled with a vague stench which my idle fancy associated absurdly with rotting stone. On every hand were the signs of neglect and decrepitude, and I seemed haunted by the notion that Warren and I were the first living creatures to invade a lethal silence of centuries. Over the valley’s rim a wan, waning crescent moon peered through the noisome vapors that seemed to emanate from unheard of catacombs, and by its feeble, wavering beams I could distinguish a repellent array of antique slabs, urns, cenotaphs, and mausoleum facades; all crumbling, moss-grown, and moisture-stained, and partly concealed by the gross luxuriance of the unhealthy vegetation.
My first vivid impression of my own presence in this terrible necropolis concerns the act of pausing with Warren before a certain half- obliterated sepulcher and of throwing down some burdens which we seemed to have been carrying. I now observed that I had with me an electric lantern and two spades, whilst my companion was supplied with a similar lantern and a portable telephone outfit. No word was uttered, for the spot and the task seemed known to us; and without delay we seized our spades and commenced to clear away the grass, weeds, and drifted earth from the flat, archaic mortuary. After uncovering the entire surface, which consisted of three immense granite slabs, we stepped back some distance to survey the charnel scene; and Warren appeared to make some mental calculations. Then he returned to the sepulcher, and using his spade as a lever, sought to pry up the slab lying nearest to a stony ruin which may have been a monument in its day. He did not succeed, and motioned to me to come to his assistance. Finally our combined strength loosened the stone, which we raised and tipped to one side.
The removal of the slab revealed a black aperture, from which rushed an effluence of miasmal gases so nauseous that we started back in horror. After an interval, however, we approached the pit again, and found the exhalations less unbearable. Our lanterns disclosed the top of a flight of stone steps, dripping with some detestable ichor of the inner earth, and bordered by moist walls encrusted with niter. And now for the first time my memory records verbal discourse, Warren addressing me at length in his mellow tenor voice; a voice singularly unperturbed by our awesome surroundings.
“I’m sorry to have to ask you to stay on the surface,” he said, “but it would be a crime to let anyone with your frail nerves go down there. You can’t imagine, even from what you have read and from what I’ve told you, the things I shall have to see and do. It’s fiendish work, Carter, and I doubt if any man without ironclad sensibilities could ever see it through and come up alive and sane. I don’t wish to offend you, and Heaven knows I’d be glad enough to have you with me; but the responsibility is in a certain sense mine, and I couldn’t drag a bundle of nerves like you down to probable death or madness. I tell you, you can’t imagine what the thing is really like! But I promise to keep you informed over the telephone of every move — you see I’ve enough wire here to reach to the center of the earth and back!”
I can still hear, in memory, those coolly spoken words; and I can still remember my remonstrances. I seemed desperately anxious to accompany my friend into those sepulchral depths, yet he proved inflexibly obdurate. At one time he threatened to abandon the expedition if I remained insistent; a threat which proved effective, since he alone held the key to the thing. All this I can still remember, though I no longer know what manner of thing we sought. After he had obtained my reluctant acquiescence in his design, Warren picked up the reel of wire and adjusted the instruments. At his nod I took one of the latter and seated myself upon an aged, discolored gravestone close by the newly uncovered aperture. Then he shook my hand, shouldered the coil of wire, and disappeared within that indescribable ossuary.
For a minute I kept sight of the glow of his lantern, and heard the rustle of the wire as he laid it down after him; but the glow soon disappeared abruptly, as if a turn in the stone staircase had been encountered, and the sound died away almost as quickly. I was alone, yet bound to the unknown depths by those magic strands whose insulated surface lay green beneath the struggling beams of that waning crescent moon.
I constantly consulted my watch by the light of my electric lantern, and listened with feverish anxiety at the receiver of the telephone; but for more than a quarter of an hour heard nothing. Then a faint clicking came from the instrument, and I called down to my friend in a tense voice. Apprehensive as I was, I was nevertheless unprepared for the words which came up from that uncanny vault in accents more alarmed and quivering than any I had heard before from Harley Warren. He who had so calmly left me a little while previously, now called from below in a shaky whisper more portentous than the loudest shriek:
“God! If you could see what I am seeing!”
I could not answer. Speechless, I could only wait. Then came the frenzied tones again:
“Carter, it’s terrible — monstrous — unbelievable!”
This time my voice did not fail me, and I poured into the transmitter a flood of excited questions. Terrified, I continued to repeat, “Warren, what is it? What is it?”
Once more came the voice of my friend, still hoarse with fear, and now apparently tinged with despair:
“I can’t tell you, Carter! It’s too utterly beyond thought — I dare not tell you — no man could know it and live — Great God! I never dreamed of this!”
Stillness again, save for my now incoherent torrent of shuddering inquiry. Then the voice of Warren in a pitch of wilder consternation:
“Carter! for the love of God, put back the slab and get out of this if you can! Quick! — leave everything else and make for the outside — it’s your only chance! Do as I say, and don’t ask me to explain!”
I heard, yet was able only to repeat my frantic questions. Around me were the tombs and the darkness and the shadows; below me, some peril beyond the radius of the human imagination. But my friend was in greater danger than I, and through my fear I felt a vague resentment that he should deem me capable of deserting him under such circumstances. More clicking, and after a pause a piteous cry from Warren:
“Beat it! For God’s sake, put back the slab and beat it, Carter!”
Something in the boyish slang of my evidently stricken companion unleashed my faculties. I formed and shouted a resolution, “Warren, brace up! I’m coming down!” But at this offer the tone of my auditor changed to a scream of utter despair:
“Don’t! You can’t understand! It’s too late — and my own fault. Put back the slab and run — there’s nothing else you or anyone can do now!”
The tone changed again, this time acquiring a softer quality, as of hopeless resignation. Yet it remained tense through anxiety for me.
“Quick — before it’s too late!”
I tried not to heed him; tried to break through the paralysis which held me, and to fulfil my vow to rush down to his aid. But his next whisper found me still held inert in the chains of stark horror.
“Carter — hurry! It’s no use — you must go — better one than two — the slab — ”
A pause, more clicking, then the faint voice of Warren:
“Nearly over now — don’t make it harder — cover up those damned steps and run for your life — you’re losing time — so long, Carter — won’t see you again.”
Here Warren’s whisper swelled into a cry; a cry that gradually rose to a shriek fraught with all the horror of the ages -
“Curse these hellish things — legions — My God! Beat it! Beat it! BEAT IT!”
After that was silence. I know not how many interminable eons I sat stupefied; whispering, muttering, calling, screaming into that telephone. Over and over again through those eons I whispered and muttered, called, shouted, and screamed, “Warren! Warren! Answer me — are you there?”
And then there came to me the crowning horror of all — the unbelievable, unthinkable, almost unmentionable thing. I have said that eons seemed to elapse after Warren shrieked forth his last despairing warning, and that only my own cries now broke the hideous silence. But after a while there was a further clicking in the receiver, and I strained my ears to listen. Again I called down, “Warren, are you there?” and in answer heard the thing which has brought this cloud over my mind. I do not try, gentlemen, to account for that thing — that voice — nor can I venture to describe it in detail, since the first words took away my consciousness and created a mental blank which reaches to the time of my awakening in the hospital. Shall I say that the voice was deep; hollow; gelatinous; remote; unearthly; inhuman; disembodied? What shall I say? It was the end of my experience, and is the end of my story. I heard it, and knew no more — heard it as I sat petrified in that unknown cemetery in the hollow, amidst the crumbling stones and the falling tombs, the rank vegetation and the miasmal vapors — heard it well up from the innermost depths of that damnable open sepulcher as I watched amorphous, necrophagous shadows dance beneath an accursed waning moon.
And this is what it said:
“You fool, Warren is DEAD!”
Explanatory Notes:
“The Statement of Randolph Carter” was written in late December 1919 and first published in W Paul Cook’s Vagrant for May 1920 Its first professional magazine appearance was in Weird Tales for February 1925.
It is well known that this story is-or was claimed by Lovecraft to be-an almost literal transcript of a dream Lovecraft had, probably in early December 1919, in which he and Samuel Loveman (1887–1976) make a fateful trip to an ancient cemetery and Loveman suffers some horrible but mysterious fate after he descends alone into a crypt. The story purports to be a kind of affidavit given to the police by Randolph Carter (Lovecraft) concerning the disappearance of Harley Warren (Loveman).
The tale is manifestly based upon a letter to the Gallomo (a correspondence cycle among Alfred Galpin, Lovecraft, and Maurice W. Мое) of December 11, 1919, in which Lovecraft recounts the dream, it is evident that Lovecraft in the letter has already begun to fashion the dream creatively so that it results in an effective and suspenseful narrative.
by H. P. LovecraftDecember 11, 1919
Before quitting the subject of Loveman and horror stories, I must relate the frightful dream I had the night after I received S.L.‘s latest letter. We have lately been discussing weird tales at length, and he has recommended several hair-raising books to me; so that I was in the mood to connect him with any thought of hideousness or supernatural terror. I do not recall how this dream began, or what it was really all about. There remains in my mind only one damnably blood-curdling fragment whose ending haunts me yet. We were, for some terrible yet unknown reason, in a very strange and very ancient cemetery — which I could not identify. I suppose no Wisconsinite can picture such a thing — but we have them in New England; horrible old places where the slate stones are graven with odd letters and grotesque designs such as a skull and crossbones. In some of these places one can walk a long way without coming upon any grave less than an hundred and fifty years old. Some day, when Cook issues that promised MONADNOCK, you will see my tale “The Tomb”, which was inspired by one of these places. Such was the scene of my dream — a hideous hollow whose surface was covered with a coarse, repulsive sort of long grass, above which peeped the shocking stones and markers of decaying slate. In a hillside were several tombs whose facades were in the last stages of decrepitude. I had an odd idea that no living thing had trodden that ground for many centuries till Loveman and I arrived. It was very late in the night — probably in the small hours, since a waning crescent moon had attained considerable height in the east. Loveman carried, slung over his shoulder, a portable telephone outfit; whilst I bore two spades. We proceeded directly to a flat sepulchre near the centre of the horrible place, and began to clear away the moss-grown earth which had been washed down upon it by the rains of innumerable years. Loveman, in the dream, looked exactly like the snapshots of himself which he has sent me — a large, robust young man, not the least Semitic in features (albeit dark), and very handsome save for a pair of protruding ears. We did not speak as he laid down his telephone outfit, took a shovel, and helped me clear away the earth and weeds. We both seemed very much impressed with something — almost awestruck. At last we completed these preliminaries, and Loveman stepped back to survey the sepulchre. He seemed to know exactly what he was about to do, and I also had an idea — though I cannot now remember what it was! All I recall is that we were following up some idea which Loveman had gained as the result of extensive reading in some old rare books, of which he possessed the only existing copies. (Loveman, you may know, has a vast library of rare first editions and other treasures precious to the bibliophile’s heart.) After some mental estimates, Loveman took up his shovel again, and using it as a lever, sought to pry up a certain slab which formed the top of the sepulchre. He did not succeed, so I approached and helped him with my own shovel. Finally we loosened the stone, lifted it with our combined strength, and heaved it away. Beneath was a black passageway with a flight of stone steps; but so horrible were the miasmic vapours which poured up from the pit, that we stepped back for a while without making further observations. Then Loveman picked up the telephone output and began to uncoil the wire — speaking for the first time as he did so.
“I’m really sorry”, he said in a mellow, pleasant voice; cultivated, and not very deep, “to have to ask you to stay above ground, but I couldn’t answer for the consequences if you were to go down with me. Honestly, I doubt if anyone with a nervous system like yours could see it through. You can’t imagine what I shall have to see and do — not even from what the book said and from what I have told you — and I don’t think anyone without iron-clad nerves could ever go down and come out of that place alive and sane. At any rate, this is no place for anybody who can’t pass an army physical examination. I discovered this thing, and I am responsible in a way for anyone who goes with me — so I would not for a thousand dollars let you take the risk. But I’ll keep you informed of every move I make by the telephone — you see I’ve enough wire to reach to the centre of the earth and back!”
I argued with him, but he replied that if I did not agree, he would call the thing off and get another fellow-explorer — he mentioned a “Dr. Burke,” a name altogether unfamiliar to me. He added, that it would be of no use for me to descend alone, since he was sole possessor of the real key to the affair. Finally I assented, and seated myself upon a marble bench close by the open grave, telephone in hand. He produced an electric lantern, prepared the telephone wire for unreeling, and disappeared down the damp stone steps, the insulated wire rustling as it uncoiled. For a moment I kept track of the glow of his lantern, but suddenly it faded out, as if there were a turn in the stone staircase. Then all was still. After this came a period of dull fear and anxious waiting. The crescent moon climbed higher, and the mist or fog about the hollow seemed to thicken. Everything was horribly damp and bedewed, and I thought I saw an owl flitting somewhere in the shadows. Then a clicking sounded in the telephone receiver.
“Lovecraft — I think I’m finding it” — the words came in a tense, excited tone. Then a brief pause, followed by more words in atone of ineffable awe and horror.
“God, Lovecraft! If you could see what I am seeing!” I now asked in great excitement what had happened. Loveman answered in a trembling voice: “I can’t tell you — I don’t dare — I never dreamed of this — I can’t tell — It’s enough to unseat any mind — wait — what’s this?” Then a pause, a clicking in the receiver, and a sort of despairing groan. Speech again — “Lovecraft — for God’s sake — it’s all up — Beat it! Beat it! Don’t lose a second!” I was now thoroughly alarmed, and frantically asked Loveman to tell what the matter was. He replied only “Never mind! Hurry!” Then I felt a sort of offence through my fear — it irked me that anyone should assume that I would be willing to desert a companion in peril. I disregarded his advice and told him I was coming down to his aid. But he cried:
“Don’t be a fool — it’s too late — there’s no use — nothing you or anyone can do now.” He seemed calmer — with a terrible, resigned calm, as if he had met and recognised an inevitable, inescapable doom. Yet he was obviously anxious that I should escape some unknown peril.
“For God’s sake get out of this, if you can find the way! I’m not joking — So long, Lovecraft, won’t see you again — God! Beat it! Beat it!” As he shrieked out the last words, his tone was a frenzied crescendo. I have tried to recall the wording as nearly as possible, but I cannot reproduce the tone. There followed a long — hideously long — period of silence. I tried to move to assist Loveman, but was absolutely paralysed. The slightest motion was an impossibility. I could speak, however, and kept calling excitedly into the telephone — “Loveman! Loveman! What is it? What’s the trouble?” But he did not reply. And then came the unbelievably frightful thing — the awful, unexplainable, almost unmentionable thing. I have said that Loveman was now silent, but after a vast interval of terrified waiting another clicking came into the receiver. I called “Loveman — are you there?” And in reply came a voice — a thing which I cannot describe by any words I know. Shall I say that it was hollow — very deep — fluid — gelatinous — indefinitely distant — unearthly — guttural — thick? What shall I say? In that telephone I heard it; heard it as I sat on a marble bench in that very ancient unknown cemetery with the crumbling stones and tombs and long grass and dampness and the owl and the waning crescent moon. Up from the sepulchre it came, and this is what it said:
“YOU FOOL, LOVEMAN IS DEAD!”
Well, that’s the whole damn thing! I fainted in the dream, and the next I knew I was awake — and with a prize headache! I don’t know yet what it was all about — what on (or under) earth we were looking for, or what that hideous voice at the last was supposed to be. I have read of ghouls — mould shades — but hell — the headache I had was worse than the dream! Loveman will laugh when I tell him about that dream! In due time, I intend to weave this picture into a story, as I wove another dream-picture into “The Doom that Came to Sarnath”. I wonder, though, if I have a right to claim authorship of things I dream? I hate to take credit, when I did not really think out the picture with my own conscious wits. Yet if I do not take credit, who’n Heaven wilI I give credit tuh? Coleridge claimed “Kubla Khan”, so I guess I’ll claim the thing an’ let it go at that. But believe muh, that was some dream!
Aside from the obvious change of character names, there appears to be another significant change between the letter and the story — the locale Both the letter and the story are vague as to the actual location of the events of the narrative. In the letter Lovecraft suggests, but does not explicitly declare, that the dream occurred in some old New England cemetery writing to two Midwesterners, Lovecraft states, “I suppose no Wisconsinite can picture such a thing — but we have them in New England, horrible old places where the slate stones are graven with odd letters and grotesque designs such as a skull and crossbones”. In the story mention is made of the “Gainsville [sic] pike” and “Big Cypress Swamp”, these are the only topographical sites mentioned in the story. It appears that Lovecraft has misspelled the name of the well known city of Gainesville, Florida, moreover, cypress swamps are certainly more common in the South than in New England. If we may draw upon evidence of later stories, we can note that in “The Silver Key” (1926) Harley Warren is referred to as “a man in the South,” while in “Through the Gates of the Silver Key” (1932–33) he is mentioned as a “South Carolina mystic”. Loveman had for part of the war been stationed at Camp Gordon, Georgia, so perhaps he described certain features of the local terrain to Lovecraft in letters.
1. the illusion you call justice. A reflection of Lovecraft’s adoption of Nietzsche’s cynical view of abstract ethical precepts “As the savage progresses, he acquires experience and formulates codes of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ from his memories of those courses which have helped or hurt him Then out of the principle of barter comes the illusion of ‘justice’ …” (“In Defence of Dagon”). The view is derived from Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals (1887).
2. “Personally I should not care for immortality in the least There is nothing better than oblivion, since in oblivion there is no wish unfulfilled” (“In Defence of Dagon”) This is the burden of the prose-poem “Ex Oblivione” (1921).
3. The reading in Lovecraft’s typescript is “Gainsville”, but this is apparently an error, as he is presumably referring to the city in Florida (see introductory note)
4. This is one of the first instances of the “mythical book” topos in Lovecraft The book in question is clearly not the Necronomicon, since that book exists in Arabic, Greek, Latin, and English, and the narrator is clearly familiar with these languages. In the present instance, the conception (in the dream, at any rate) was apparently inspired by Samuel Loveman’s extensive collection of rare and obscure volumes “All that I recall is that we were following up some idea which Loveman had gained as the result of extensive reading in some rare old books, of which he possessed the only existing copies (Loveman, you may know, has a vast library of rare first editions and other treasures precious to the bibliophile’s heart)”.
5. At this point in the dream, Loveman says to Lovecraft “At any rate, this is no place for anybody who can’t pass an army physical examination” — a telling reference to Lovecraft’s rejection on physical grounds of his attempt to enlist in the Rhode Island National Guard (and, later, the U. S. Army) upon the United States’ declaration of war against Germany in May 1917.
6. In the dream Loveman threatened to “call the thing off and get another fellow-explorer-he mentioned a ‘Dr Burke,’ a name altogether unfa miliar to me”.
7. In the dream Loveman utters a prefatory remark “Lovecraft — I think I’m finding it -”.
8. In the dream Loveman says “I can’t tell you — I don’t dare — I never dreamed of this — I can’t tell — It’s enough to unseat any mind — wait What’s this!”.
