I KNOW NOW THAT THE strange and terrible happenings at Sandwin House had their beginnings much farther back than any of us then imagined, certainly farther back than Eldon or I thought at that time. Manifestly, there was no reason to suppose in those early weeks during which Asa Sandwins time was running out that his trouble grew out of something in a past so remote as to be beyond our comprehension. It was only towards the end of the affair at Sandwin House that terrible glimpses were afforded us, hints of something frightful and awful behind the commonplace events of everyday life broke through to the surface, and ultimately we were enabled to grasp briefly the heart of what lay beneath.
Sandwin House had originally been called Sandwin-by-the-Sea, but its later appellation had soon come to be far more convenient in use. It was an old-fashioned house, old as such houses were old in New England, standing along the Innsmouth road not too far from Arkham: of two stories and an attic, with a deep basement. The roof was many-gabled, with dormer windows rising from the attic. Before the house old elms and maples stood; behind, only a hedge of lilac separated the lawns from the sharp descent to the sea, for the house stood on a high point of land somewhat removed from the highway itself. In appearance it might have seemed a little cold to the casual passerby, but to me it had always been coloured by memories of childhood vacations spent there with my cousin Eldon; it represented relief from Boston, escape from the crowded city. Until the curious happenings that began in the late winter of 1938, I retained my early impression of Sandwin House; even so, it was not until after that strange winter s end that I became aware of how subtly but certainly Sandwin House had changed from the haven of childhood summers to a malign harbour for incredible evil.
My introduction to those curiously disturbing events was prosaic enough; it came in the shape of a telephone call from Eldon as I was about to sit down to supper with my fellow librarians of Arkhams Miskatonic University in the small club of which we were members. I took the call in the club s lounging room.
"Dave? This is Eldon. I want you to run up for a few days.”
"Too busy, I'm afraid," I replied. "I'll try to make it next week.”
"No, no—now. Dave—the owls are hooting.”
That was all; there was nothing more. I returned to the heated discus- sion in which I had been engaged when I was summoned to the telephone and had actually picked up the threads of that discussion once more when what my cousin had said effected the necessary bridge into the years past, and instantly I excused myself and left for my rooms to prepare for the journey to Sandwin House. Long ago, almost three decades ago, in those carefree days of childhood play, there had been established between us a certain agreement; if ever one of us uttered a certain cryptic sentence, it was to be interpreted as a cry for assistance. To this we pledged ourselves. That cryptic sentence was: The owls are hooting! And my cousin Eldon had spoken it.
Within an hour I had arranged for a substitute to take my place in the library of Miskatonic and was on my way to Sandwin House, driving faster than the law permitted. Candidly, I was half amused, half frightened; the pledge as we had made it in those days was serious enough, but it was, after all, a fancy of childhood; that Eldon had seen fit to utter now that cryptic sentence seemed to me evidence of something seriously disturbing in his existence; it seemed to me now rather the last appeal of dire distress than any casual harking back to childhood.
The night descended before I reached Sandwin House; a chill night with frost. A light snow still covered the ground, but the highway was clear. The last few miles to Sandwin House lay along the ocean, so that the drive was singularly beautiful: the moonlight making a wide path of yellow on the sea, and the wind rippling the water so that the entire bosom of the sea sparkled and gleamed as with some inner light. Trees, buildings, hill-slopes broke into the eastern horizon line from time to time, but lessened the seas beauty not at all. And presently the large ungainly structure that was Sandwin House broke into the skyline.
Sandwin House was dark save for a thin line of light well towards the rear. Here Eldon lived alone with his father and an old servant, though a country woman or two came regularly to clean the place once or twice a week. I drove the car around to one side where an old barn served as a garage, put the car away, took my bag and made my way to the house.
Eldon had heard me. I encountered him in the darkness just beyond the door, his long face touched a little with moonlight, his dressing-gown held closely to his thin body.
"I knew I could count on you, Dave," he said, taking my bag.
"Whats up, Eldon?”
"Oh, dont say anything," he said nervously, as if someone might hear. "Wait. I'll tell you in time. And be quiet; let's not disturb father for the time Being."
He led the way into the house, going with extreme care down the wide hall towards the stairs, behind which his own rooms were. I could not help noticing the unnatural quiet of the house and the sound of the sea beyond; it struck me then that the atmosphere was faintly eerie, but I shrugged away this feeling.
In the light of his room, I saw that my cousin was seriously upset, despite a false air of healthy welcome; my coming was clearly not an end, but only an incident. He was haggard, his eyes were dark and red-rimmed, as if he had not slept for some days, and his hands moved constantly in that excess of nervousness so common to neurotics.
"Now then, sit down; make yourself at home. You've had supper, eh?"
"Enough," I assured him, and waited for him to unburden himself.
He took a turn or two about the room, opened the door cautiously and looked out, before he came back to sit down beside me. "Well, it's about father," he began without preamble. "You know how we have always lived without any visible income, and yet always seemed to have money. That's been for several generations in the Sandwin line, and Ive never bothered my head about it. Last fall, however, money was running very low. Father said he needed to go on a journey, and he went. Father seldom travels, but I remembered then that the last time he travelled, almost ten years ago, we were also in dire straits. But when he came back, there seemed again to be plenty of money. I never saw my father leave the house, and I never saw him come back; one day he was gone; another, he was back. It happened the same way this time—and after he was back, there seemed again to be plenty of money available for our use." He shook his head, perplexed. "I confess to you that for some time thereafter I looked through the Transcript with utmost care on the lookout for some notice of robbery; but there was none."
"Some business, perhaps," I murmured.
He shook his head. "But that isn't what worries me now. I could forget that if it weren't for the fact that it seems to have some connections with father's present condition."
"Is he ill, then?”
"Why—yes and no. He isn't himself.”
"What do you mean?”
"He isn't the father I knew. I can hardly explain myself, and, naturally, I'm upset. I was aware of this for the first time when I learned he had returned and, pausing outside the door of his rooms, heard him talking to himself in a low, guttural voice. I've tricked them,' he said to himself several times. There was more, of course, but at the moment I did not listen. I knocked on the door, whereupon he called out harshly and ordered me to return to my quarters until the following day. Since that time he has been behaving with increasing queerness, and of late he has seemed to me definitely afraid of something or someone—I don't know which. And some unusual things have begun to take place."
"What things?" I asked bluntly.
"Well, to begin with—the wet door-knobs.”
"Wet door-knobs!" I exclaimed.
He nodded gravely. “The first time father saw them, he had old Am- brose and me on the carpet demanding to know which of us had gone through the house with wet hands. Of course neither of us had; he dismissed us abruptly, and there was an end to that. But from time to time a door-knob or two would show up wet, and father began to be afraid of finding them so, developing a kind of apprehension I couldn't mistake for something else."
"Go on.”
"Then there are, of course, the footsteps and the music. They seem to sound from the air, or from the earth—frankly, I dont know which. But there is something here I dont understand, and something of which father is frankly afraid; so that he keeps more and more to his rooms; he doesnt come out sometimes for days, and when he does, walks with the air of a man momentarily expecting some enemy to pounce upon him, with his eyes for every stray shadow and movement, and no great concern for Ambrose or me or the women who come to clean—though he has not permitted any of these women in his rooms, preferring to keep them clean himself."
What my cousin had said distressed me not so much for my uncle's sake as for his own; indeed, at the conclusion of his narrative, he was almost painfully upset, and I could neither treat what he had told me with the levity I had the impulse to do, nor with the gravity he seemed to think it merited. I preserved, accordingly, an interested impartiality.
"I suppose Uncle Asa is still up," I said. "He'll be surprised to find me here, and you wont want him to know youve sent for me. So I rather think we'd better go on up now."
My Uncle Asa was in every respect his son's opposite; while Eldon tended to be tall and thin, Asa was squat and heavy, not so much fat as muscular, with a short, thick neck, and a curiously repellant face. He had scarcely any forehead; thick, black hair grew only an inch above his bushy eyebrows, and a fringe of beard ran along his jaw from one ear to the other, though he wore no moustache. His nose was small, almost non-existent, in contrast to eyes so abnormally large that a first glance from them invariably startled any beholder. In addition to the unnatural size of his eyes, their prominence was augmented by thick-lensed spectacles which he wore, for in later years his eyes had grown progressively weaker and he found it necessary to consult an oculist every six months. His mouth, finally, was singularly wide and thin; it was not gross or thick-lipped, as one might have supposed it would be in one so squat and heavy, but its width was astonishing, for it was no less than five inches across, so that, what with the thick shortness of his neck and his deceptive fringe of beard, it was as if the line of the mouth divided his head from his torso. He had a strangely batrachian appearance and already in our childhood we had nicknamed him The Frog, because at that time he bore a facial resemblance to the creatures Eldon and I often caught in the meadows and swamp across the highway inland from Sandwin House.
At the moment of our entrance to his upstairs study, Uncle Asa was bent over his desk, hunched in that aspect so natural to see. He turned at once, his eyes narrowed, his mouth partly opened; but almost instantly the aspect of sudden fear was gone, he smiled affably, and shuffled away from his desk towards me, one hand outstretched.
"Ah, good evening, David. I had thought to see you before Easter.”
"I found I could get away," I replied. "So I came. Besides, I hear little from you and Eldon.”
The old man flashed a quick glance at Eldon, and I could not help thinking that while my cousin looked older than he was, my uncle certainly looked less than the sixty-odd years that were his. He put out chairs for us and immediately engaged me in conversation about foreign affairs, a subject upon which I found him astonishingly well informed. The easy informality of his manner did much to offset the impression I had received from Eldon; indeed, I was well on the way to thinking that some grave mental illness had taken possession of Eldon, when I received confirmation of my cousins suspicions. In the middle of a sentence about the problem of European minorities, my uncle suddenly broke off with his head cocked a little to one side, as if he were listening for something, and an expression of mingled fear and defiance crossed his face. He seemed to have forgotten about us entirely, so complete was his absorption.
For almost three minutes he sat in this manner, while neither Eldon nor I made any move whatever beyond turning our heads a little in an effort to hear what he heard. At the moment, however, there was no telling to what he listened; the wind outside had risen, and the voice of the sea murmured and thundered along the shore; beyond this rose the sound of some nocturnal bird, an uncanny ululation with which I was not familiar; and above us, in the attic of the old house, a kind of rustling was constant, as if the wind were crying through an aperture somewhere into the room.
For the duration of those three minutes, then, no one of us made a move, no one spoke; then abruptly my uncle s face was contorted with rage; he leaped to his feet and ran to the one open window on the east, closing the window with such violence that I thought the glass must surely break. But it did not. For a moment he stood there mumbling to himself; then he turned and hurried back to us, his features as calm and affable as ever.
"Well, goodnight, my boy. I have much work to do. Make yourself at home here, as always."
He shook hands again, a little ceremoniously, and we were dismissed.
Eldon said nothing until we reached his own rooms once more. Then I saw that he was trembling. He sat down weakly and held his head in his hands, murmuring, "You see! I told you how it was. And thats nothing."
"Well, I dont think you need worry about it," I assured him. "In the first place, I am familiar with any number of people who continue to work in their minds while carrying on conversations, and suddenly cease talking when ideas hit them with force. As to the episode of the window—I confess
I cannot attempt to explain it, but—"
"Oh, it wasn't my father," said Eldon suddenly. "It was the cry, the call from outside, that ululation.”
"I thought—a bird," I answered lamely.
"There's no bird that makes a sound like that; and the migration hasn't begun except for robins and bluebirds and killdeers. It was that; I tell you, Dave—whatever it is that makes that sound speaks to father!"
For a few moments I was too surprised to answer, not alone because of my cousin's sincerity, but because I could not deny that Uncle Asa had indeed conducted himself as if someone had spoken to him. I got up and took a turn about the room, glancing at Eldon from time to time; but it was evident that my cousin needed no belief of mine to confirm his own; so I sat down near him again.
"If we assume that such is the case, Eldon, what is it that talks to your father?"
"I don't know. I heard it first about a month ago. That time father seemed very frightened; not long after, I heard it again. I tried to find out where it came from, but I could learn nothing; that second time it seemed to come from the sea, as it did tonight; subsequently I was positive it came from above the house, and once I could take oath it came from beneath the building. Shortly after that first time, I heard music—weird music, beautiful, but evil. I thought I had dreamed it, because it induced in me strange, fantastic dreams—dreams of some place far from earth and yet linked to earth by some demonic chain—I cant describe them with any degree of justice at all. At about the same time I was conscious of the sound of footsteps, and I swear to you that they came from somewhere in the air, though on a similar occasion I felt them beneath—not a mans steps, but something larger making them. It is at approximately these times that we find wet doorknobs, and the whole house gives off a strange fish-like odour that seems strongest just outside my fathers rooms."
In any ordinary case, I would have dismissed what Eldon had said as the result of some illness unknown to him as well as to me, but to tell the truth, one or two things he had said stirred to life chords of memory which had only begun to bridge the abyss between the prosaic present and that past time in which I had become familiar with certain aspects of life on the dark side, so to speak. So I said nothing, trying to think of what it might be I sought in the channels of my memory, but failing, though I recognized the connection between Eldon's narrative and certain ghastly and forbidden accounts hidden in the library at Miskatonic University.
"You dont believe me," he accused suddenly.
"I neither believe nor disbelieve for the present," I replied quietly. "Lets sleep upon it.”
"But you must believe me, Dave! The only alternative I have is my own madness.”
"It isn't so much a matter of belief as it is some reason for the existence of these things. We shall see. Before we go to bed, tell me one thing: do you know whether you alone are affected by these things, or does Ambrose experience them, too?"
Eldon nodded quickly. "Of course he does; he's wanted to leave, but we've been able to dissuade him so far."
"Then you needn't fear for your sanity," I assured him. "Now, then, for bed."
My room, as always when I stayed in the house, adjoined Eldon's. I bade my cousin goodnight and walked down the hall in the darkness, entering my room with some anxiety about Eldon occupying my thoughts. It was this anxiety which accounted for my slow reaction to the fact that my hand was wet; I noticed this at the moment I reached up to take off my coat. I stood for a moment staring at my gleaming hand before I remembered Eldon's story; then I went at once to the door and opened it. Yes, the outer door knob was wet; not only was it wet but it gave off a strong smell of aquatic life, that same fish-like odour of which Eldon had only just a few moments past spoken. I closed the door and wiped my hand, puzzled. Could it be that someone in the house was deliberately plotting against Eldons sanity? Surely not, for Ambrose had nothing to gain by such a course, and so far as I had been able to ascertain over the years, there was no animosity whatever between my Uncle Asa and Eldon. There was no one else who might be guilty of such a campaign of fright.
I got into bed, troubled still, and trying to bridge the distance between the past and present. What was it happened at Innsmouth almost ten years ago now? What was it lay in those shunned manuscripts and books in Miskatonic University? That I must see them, I knew; so I resolved to return to Arkham as soon as possible. Still trying to search my memory for some clue to the solution of the nights events, I fell asleep.
I hesitate to chronicle what took place shortly after I slept. The human mind is unreliable enough at best, let alone in sleep or just after, when the mental processes are clogged by sluggishness resulting from sleep. But in the light of subsequent events, the dream of that night takes on a clarity and reality which I would have thought possible of nothing in the strange halfworld of sleep. For I dreamed; I dreamed almost immediately of a great vast plateau in a strange, sandy world, which bore some resemblance to the high plateaux of Tibet or the Honan country I had once visited. In this place the wind blew eternally, and singularly beautiful music fell upon my ears. And yet that music was not pure, not free of evil, for always there was an undercurrent of sinister notes, like a tangible warning of tribulation to come, like the grim fate notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. The music emanated from a group of buildings on an island in a black lake. There all was still; figures stood unmoving, strange-faced beings in the guise of men, some curious hybrid Chinese standing as if On guard.
Throughout this dream it seemed as if I moved with the wind high above, a wind that never ceased. How long I was there, I could not say, for I dreamed endlessly; presently I was away from this place, I looked down from high above the sea upon another island where stood great buildings and idols, where again were strange beings, few of them in the guise of men, and again that deathless music sounded. But here also was something more: the voice of that thing which had but recently in time talked to my Uncle Asa— that same weird ululation emanating from deep within a squat building whose cellars must certainly have been inundated by the sea. For only a brief time I looked upon this island, while from somewhere within me I knew its modern name: Easter Island—then I was gone, held above the frozen fastnesses of the far north, looking down upon a secret Indian village where natives worshipped before idols of snow. Everywhere was wind, everywhere music and the sound of that whistling voice like a prologue to terror, a warning of incredible and awful evil soon to flower, everywhere the voice of primeval horror shrouded and hidden beneath beautiful unearthly music.
I woke soon after, unbearably tired, and lay with eyes open staring into the darkness. Slowly I emerged from somnolence, and slowly I became conscious that the air in my room was heavy, laden with the fish-like odour of which Eldon had spoken; and at the same time I was aware of two other things—the sound of retreating footsteps, and the fading ululation I had heard not only in my dreams but in my uncle s rooms only a few hours ago. I jumped from bed and ran to the window, looking eastward; but there was nothing to be known save that the sounds seemed certainly to emanate from the vast ocean beyond. I crossed my room again and went out into the hall; where the smell of aquatic life was much stronger than it was in my room. I knocked gently on Eldons door and, receiving no answer, entered the room.
He lay on his back, his arms flung out and his fingers working. That he still slept was evident, though at first I was deceived by the whispered words coming from his lips. In the act of awaking him, I paused, hand outstretched, and listened. His voice was for the most part too low in pitch to carry well, but I did catch several words spoken apparently with greater effort to be clear: Lloigor—Ithaqua—Cthulhu; these words were repeated several times before I caught hold of Eldons shoulders and shook him. His awakening was not swift, as it should have been, but sluggish, uncertain; only after a full minute did he become aware of me, but from the moment of that recognition he was his usual self, he sat up, conscious at the same time of the odour in the room, and the sounds beyond.
"Ah—you see!" he said gravely, as if this were all the confirmation I now needed.
He got out of bed and went over to the windows, standing there to look out.
"Did you dream?" I asked.
"Yes, and you?”
We had had substantially the same dreams. Throughout his narrative about his dreams, I became conscious of movement on the floor above: furtive, sluggish movement, carrying with it sounds as of something wet sloshing across the floor. At the same time the ululation beyond the house faded away, and the sound of footsteps, too, came to a stop. But there was now present in the atmosphere of the old house such an air of menace and horror, that the cessation of these sounds contributed little to our peace of mind.
"Lets go up and talk to your father," I suggested abruptly.
His eyes widened. "Oh, no—we wont dare disturb him; he's given or– ders.”
But I was not to be daunted; I turned alone and went up the stairs, where I paused to knock peremptorily on Uncle Asa's door. There was no reply. I came to my knees and looked into the room through the keyhole, but I could see nothing; all was dark. But someone was there, for voices came out occasionally; the one was clearly Uncle Asas—but strangely guttural and rasping, as if it had undergone some vital change; the other was like nothing I had ever heard before or since—a deep, throaty sound, a croaking, harsh voice, sombre with menace. And while my uncle spoke in intelligible English, his visitor quite evidently did not. I set myself to listen, and heard first my uncle's voice.
"I will not!”
The unreal accents of the thing in the rooms with him sounded be– yond the door. "Ia! Ia! Shub-Niggurath!" There followed a succession of rapid mouthings, as if in violent anger.
"Cthulhu will not take me into the sea; I have closed the passage.”
Violence again answered my uncle, who seemed, however, to remain un– afraid, despite the significant change in the calibre of his voice.
"Nor Ithaqua come in the wind: I can foil him, too.”
My uncle's visitor spat a single word: "Lloigor!" and there was no reply from my uncle.
I was conscious of a subtle undercurrent of terror, quite apart from the atmosphere of menace that pervaded the old house; this was because I had recognized in my uncle's speech the same words spoken but a few moments ago by Eldon in his sleep, and understood that some malign influence was at work in the house. Moreover, there began to drift back into my mind certain memories of strange narratives brought back across the years from a time when I had delved into the forbidden texts at Miskatonic University: weird, incredible tales of Ancient Gods, of evil beings older than man; I began to dwell upon the terrible secrets concealed in the Pnakotic Manuscripts, in the Riyeh Text, those vague, suggestive stories of creatures too horrible to contemplate in the prosaic existence of today. I attempted to shake myself free of the cloud of fear that insidiously overcame me, but there was that in the atmosphere of the house to make this impossible. Fortunately, the arrival of my cousin Eldon did what I myself could not do.
He had crept up the stairs behind me and now stood waiting for some move on my part. I motioned him forward and told him what I had heard. Then we bent to listen together. There was no longer the sound of conversation, but only a sullen, unintelligible muttering accompanied by the growing sound of footsteps, or rather, of sounds which, by their spacing, might have been footsteps, but were made not by any creature familiar to my ears by its sound, but by something which seemed at every step to be walking into a bog; now there was, too, a faint inner trembling in the old house, a strange, unnatural shuddering, which neither decreased nor increased, but continued until the sound of footsteps ceased, fading into the distance.
During all this time no sound had escaped us, but when the footsteps crossed the room behind the door and went on into space beyond the house; Eldon caught his breath and held it until I could hear the blood pounding in his temples bent close to mine.
"Good God!" he burst out at last. "What is it?”
I did not trust myself to answer, but had begun to turn slightly to make some kind of reply, when the door opened with a suddenness that left us both speechless.
My Uncle Asa stood there; from behind him on all sides came an overpowering smell, as of fish or frogs, a thick miasmic odour of stagnant water so powerful that it brought me close to nausea.
"I heard you," my uncle said slowly. "Come in.”
He stepped aside, and we entered his room, Eldon still somewhat re- luctant. The windows in the opposite wall were wide open. At first the dim light disclosed nothing, for it was itself as if shrouded in fog, but presently it was evident that something wet had been in the room, something that gave off a heavy vapour, for walls, floors, furniture—all were covered with a heavy dew, and here and there on the floor stood pools of water. My uncle did not appear to notice, or, accustomed to it, had forgotten about it; he sat down in his arm-chair and looked at us, motioning us to seats before him. The vapour had begun almost imperceptibly to lift and Uncle Asa's face grew clearer to my eyes—his squat head even deeper in his body now, his forehead gone entirely, his eyes half closed, so that his resemblance to the frogs of our childhood days was marked: a grotesque caricature, horrible in its implications. With only the slightest hesitation, we sat down.
"Did you hear anything?" he asked. But without waiting for an answer, he went on. "I suppose you did. I have thought for some time I must tell you, and now—there may be little enough time left.
"But I may deceive them yet, I