BEING THE DEPOSITION OF ABEL KEANE
ABEL KEANE … Abel Keane … Abel Keane….”
Sometimes I am constrained to speak my name aloud, as if to reassure myself that all is as before, that indeed I am Abel Keane; and I find myself walking to the mirror and looking at myself, scrutinizing the familiar lineaments for any sign of change. As if there must be change! As if surely, some time, change must come, the change that marks the experiences of that week. Or was it but a week? Or less? I do not any longer have assurance of anything.
It is a terrible thing to lose faith in the world of daylight and the night of stars, to feel that at any time all the known laws of space and time may be abrogated, may be thrust aside as by some sorcery, by ancient evil known only to a few men, whose voices are indeed voices crying in the wilderness.
I have hesitated until now to tell what I know of the fire which destroyed a great portion of a certain seaport town on the Massachusetts coast, of the abnomination which existed there, but events have dictated that. I hesitate no longer. There are things men should not know, and it is always difficult for any one man to decide whether to make certain facts known, or to hold them in abeyance. There was a reason for the fire—a reason known only to two people, though surely there were others who suspected—but not outside that shunned town. It has been said that if any man had a vision of the incredible vastnesses of outer space and the knowledge of what exists there, that alone would drive him stark raving mad. But there are things that go on within the boundaries of our own small earth which are no less frightening, things that bind us to the entire cosmos, to colossi of time and space, to evil and horror so old, so ancient that the entire history of mankind is but a vapor in the air beside them.
Of such was the reason for that destructive fire, that fire which destroyed far more than it was meant to destroy, block after block of that loathed town across to the Manuxet on the one side and to the shore of the sea on another. They called it arson—but only for a little while. They found some of those little stones—but there was nothing but one mention in the papers of either arson or those peculiar stone pieces. The townspeople saw to that; they were quick to suppress it; their own fire examiners put out an entirely different story. They said that the man who was lost in the fire had fallen asleep beside his lamp and had knocked it over, and that that was the way the fire started. . .
.
But it was arson, technically speaking—justifiable arson. .. .
2
EVIL IS THE SPECIAL PROVINCE, surely, of the student of diVinity.
Such was I on that Summer night when I unlocked the door of my room at my lodging house, Number 17, Thoreau Drive, in the city of Boston, Massachusetts—and found lying on my bed a strange man, clad in alien garments, lying in a deep sleep from which I could not at first awaken him. Since my door was locked, he must have entered by way of the open window—but of how he had come, by what incredible passage, I was not immediately to know.
After my initial surprise had passed, I examined my visitor. He was a young man of approximately thirty years of age; he was clean-shaven, dark skinned, and lithe; he was clothed in loose-flowing robes of a material foreign to me, and he wore sandals made from the leather of some beast whose identity was unknown to me. Though it was evident that he carried various articles in the pockets of that strange clothing, I did not examine them. He was in a sleep so deep that it was impossible to awaken him, and evidence showed that he had virtually fallen across the bed and had gone instantly to sleep.
I discovered at once that there was something familiar about his features—familiar with that strange insistence so commonly associated with people whom one has known before, perhaps casually, but nevertheless has known. Either I had my visitors acquaintance, or I had seen his picture somewhere. It occurred to me at this point that I might well attempt to learn his identity while he slept, and accordingly I drew a chair up to the bed and sat down beside my visitor, intending to practise auto-suggestion, which I had learned from indulgence in my lesser professional existence—for, while working my way through divinity school, I appeared thrice weekly on public and occasionally on private stages as an amateur hypnotist, and some small study of the human mind had enabled me to accomplish various trivial successes in mind-reading and allied matters.
However, deep as his sleep was, he was aware.
I cannot explain this even now, but it was as if, though his body slept, his senses did not, for he spoke as I leaned above him, motivated by my intention; and he spoke out of a patent awareness which must be related to his strange way of life about which I learned later, a development from a supersensory existence.
"Wait," he said. And then, "Be patient, Abel Keane.”
And suddenly a most curious reaction was manifest within myself; it felt precisely as if someone or something had invaded me, as if my visitor spoke to me without words to tell me his name, for his lips did not appear to move, yet I was distinctly aware of the impression of words. "I am Andrew Phelan. I left this room two years ago; I have come back for a little while." Thus directly, thus simply, I knew; and I knew too that I had seen Andrew Phelan s likeness in the Boston papers at the time of his utterly outre disappearance from this very room two years previously, a disappearance never satisfactorily explained.
Excitement possessed me.
So strong was my impression of his awareness, despite his aspect of sleep, that I could not forebear asking him, "Where have you been?"
"Celaeno," came his prompt reply, but whether he actually spoke, or whether he merely communicated it to me without words, I cannot now say. And where was Celaeno? I wondered.
He woke at two o'clock in the morning. Tired myself, I had fallen into a light slumber, from which I was awakened by his hand on my shoulder. I was startled and gazed up to find his firm eyes looking steadily and appraisingly at me. He was still clad in his curious robe, but his first thought was for clothing.
"Have you an extra suit?”
"Yes.”
"I shall need to borrow it. We are not unlike in build, and I cannot go out like this. Will you mind?”
"No—by all means.”
"I am sorry to have deprived you of your bed, but my long journey tired me very much.”
"If I may ask, how did you get in?”
He gestured to the window.
"Why here?”
"Because this room was my point of contact," he answered enigmatically. He then looked at his watch. "The suit now, if you dont mind. My time is short."
I felt impelled to get the clothing he wished, and did so. When he disrobed, I saw that he was very strong, very muscular, and he moved with an agility that made me doubt my first guess as to his age. I said nothing as he dressed; he remarked casually on the good fit of the suit, which was not my best, though it was neat and clean and had just been pressed. I told him equally as casually that he was welcome to it for as long as he needed it.
"The landlady is still Mrs. Brier?" he asked then.
"Yes.”
"I hope you will say nothing to her of me; it would only trouble her.”
"To no one?”
"No one.”
He began to move to the door, and instantly I apprehended that he
meant to be gone. At the same time I was aware of not wanting him to leave without imparting to me more information about the mystery which had remained unsolved for two years. Rashly, I sprang up and threw myself between him and the door.
He looked at me with calm, amused eyes.
"Wait!" I cried. "You cant go like this! What is it you want? Let me get it for you.”
He smiled. "I seek evil, Mr. Keane—evil that is more terrible than anything taught in your school of divinity, believe me.”
"Evil is my field, Mr. Phelan.”
"I guarantee nothing," he replied. "The risks are too great for ordinary Men.”
An insane impulse took possession of me. I was seized with the urgent desire to accompany my visitor, even if it became necessary to hypnotize him. I fixed his strange eyes with mine, I reached out my hands—and then something happened to me. I found myself suddenly on another plane, in another dimension, as it were. I felt that I had taken Andrew Phelans place on the bed, and yet accompanied him in spirit. For instantly, soundlessly, painlessly, I was out of this world. Nothing else would describe the sensations I experienced for the remainder of that night.
I saw, I heard, I felt and tasted and smelled things utterly alien to my consciousness. He did not touch me; he only looked at me. Yet I apprehended instantly that I stood on the edge of an abyss of horror unimaginable! Whether he led me to the bed or whether I made my own way there I do not know; yet it was on the bed that I found myself in the morning after those memorable hours of the remainder of that night. Did I sleep and dream? Or did I lie in hypnosis and know because Phelan willed me to know all that took place? It was better for my sanity to believe that I dreamed.
And what dreams! What magnificent and yet terror-fraught images wrought by the sub-conscious! And Andrew Phelan was everywhere in those dreams. I saw him in that darkness making his way to a bus station, taking a bus; I saw him in the bus, as if I sat beside him; I saw him alight at ancient, legend-haunted, and shunned Innsmouth, after changing buses at Arkham. I was beside him when he prowled down along that wrecked waterfront with its sinister ruins—and I saw where he paused, before that disguised refinery, and later at that one-time Masonic hall which now bore over its doorway the curious legend: Esoteric Order of Dagon. And yet more—I witnessed the begining of that strange pursuit, when the first of those hideous batrachian men emerged from the shadows along the Manuxet River and took up the trail of Andrew Phelan, the uncanny silent followers after the seeker of evil, until Phelan turned his steps away from Innsmouth. . . .
All night long, hour after hour, until the sun rose, and dream and actuality became one, and I opened my eyes to look at Andrew Phelan entering my room. I pulled myself together, smiling sheepishly, and swung to the edge of the bed, where I sat looking at him.
"I think you owe me an explanation," I said.
"It is better not to know too much," he answered.
"One cannot fight evil without knowledge," I retorted.
He said nothing in reply, but I pressed him. He sat down somewhat wearily. Did he not think that some explanation ought to be given me? I demanded. He then countered with an enigmatic suggestion that there were certain age-old horrors which were better left unrevealed; this only excited my curiosity the more. Did it not occur to me, he wanted to know, that there might be certain dislocations in space and time infinitely more terrible than any known horror? Had I never thought that there might be other planes, other dimensions beyond the known planes and dimensions? Had I not considered that space might exist in conterminous folds, that time might be a dimension capable of being travelled backward as well as forward? He spoke to me thus in riddles, and carried on in this fashion despite all my attempts to question him.
"I am only trying to protect you, Keane," he said finally, still with infinite patience.
"Did you escape your pursuer in Innsmouth last night?”
He nodded.
"You knew of him, then?"
"Yes, or you would not have been aware of him, for in your—shall we say, hypnosis?—you could know only such things of which I was cognizant. I suggest to you, Keane, that hypnotism is a dangerous means; I thought it might serve as a warning if it were turned back upon you last night."
"That was not alone hypnotism."
"Perhaps not as you know it." He made a gesture of dismissal. "Would it be possible for me to rest here for a while today before pursuing my quest? I would not like to be discovered by Mrs. Brier."
Til see to it that you're not disturbed.”
Even as I spoke, I had made up my mind what to do; I was determined that Andrew Phelan would not put me off so easily, and there was one course left open to me—I could discover certain things for myself Despite his caution, my visitor had dropped hints and suggestions. Even beyond them, however, there was the mystery of Andrew Phelan itself; that had been extensively recorded in the daily papers of that time; certainly in those accounts I might expect to discover some clue. I adjured Phelan to make himself comfortable, and departed, ostensibly for the college; but instead, once outside, I telephoned to excuse myself from that day's study. Then, after a light breakfast, I took myself off to the Widener Library in Cambridge.
Andrew Phelan had said that he had come from Celaeno. This hint was too patent for me to overlook; so forthwith I set myself to track down Celaeno. I found it sooner than I had expected to find it—but it solved nothing. If anything, it served only to deepen the mystery of Andrew Phelan.
For Celaeno was one of the stars in the Pleiades cluster of Taurus!
I turned next to the files of the newspapers concerning Phelan's vanishing, early in September, 1938.1 hoped to discover in the accounts of this remarkable disappearance without trace from out the window of that same room to which he had now returned, something to lead me to some feasible explanation. But as I read the accounts, my perplexity deepened; there was a singularly complete puzzlement expressed in the newspapers. But there were certain dark hints, certain vague and ominous suggestions which fastened to my awareness. Phelan had been employed by Dr. Laban Shrewsbury of Arkham. Like Phelan, Dr. Shrewsbury had spent some years in a strange and never-explained absence from his home, to which he had returned as queerly as now Andrew Phelan had come back. Shortly before Phelan's disappearance, Dr. Shrewsbury's house, together with the doctor himself, had been destroyed by fire. Phelan's tasks had apparently been secretarial, but he had spent a good deal of his time in the library of Miskatonic University in Arkham.
So it seemed to me that the only definite clue offered to me at the Widener was in Arkham; for the records of the Miskatonic University Library should certainly reveal what books Phelan had consulted—presumably in the interests of the late Dr. Shrewsbury. Only an hour had now elapsed; there was ample time for me to pursue my search; so forthwith I took a bus out of Boston for Arkham, and, in a comparatively short time, I was put down not far from the institution within the walls of which I believed I would discover some further information about Andrew Phelans pursuits.
My inquiry about the records of books used by Andrew Phelan was met with a curious kind of reticence, and resulted in my being shown ultimately into the office of the director of the library, Dr. Llanfer, who wished to know why I sought to consult certain books always kept under lock and key by the express order of the library's directors. I explained that I had become interested in the disappearance of Andrew Phelan, and in the work he had been doing.
His eyes narrowed. "Are you a reporter?”
"I am a student, sir." Fortunately, I had with me my college credentials, and lost no time in showing them to him.
"Very well." He nodded and, however reluctantly, wrote out the desired permission on a slip of paper and handed it to me. "It is only fair to tell you, Mr. Keane, that of the several people who have consulted these books at length, few—if any—are alive to tell about it."
On this singularly sinister note I was shown out of his office, and presently found myself being conveyed to a little room that was hardly more than a cubicle, where I sat down while the attendant assigned to me placed before me certain books and papers. Chief among them, and obviously the most prized possession of the library, judging by the almost reverent way in which the attendant handled it, was an ancient volume entitled simply Necronomicon, by an Arab, Abdul Alhazred. The records showed that Phelan had consulted this volume on several occasions, but, much to my chagrin, it was clear that this volume was not for the uninitiated, for it contained references which for ambiguity were unexcelled. But of one thing I could be certain— the book pertained to evil and horror, to terror and fear of the unknown, to things that walk in the night, and not alone the little night of man, but that vaster, deeper, more mysterious night of the world—the dark side of existence.
I turned from this book in near despair, and found myself looking into a manuscript copy of a book by Professor Shrewsbury: Cthulhu in the Necronomicon. And in these pages, quite by accident—for this book, too, consiste of learned and scholarly paragraphs concerning the lore of the Arab, most of them utterly beyond my comprehension—I came upon a certain reference which imparted to me, in the light of what small experience I had already had, a frightening chill and a feeling of the utmost dread. For, as I scanned the pages with their enigmatic allusions to beings and places utterly alien to me, I found in the midst of a quotation purporting to be from another book entitled the R'lyeh Text, the following: "Great Cthulhu shall rise from R'lyeh} Hastur the Unspeakable shall return from the dark star which is in the Hyades near Aldebaran . . . Nyarlathotep shall howl forever in the darkness where he abideth} ShubNiggurath shall spawn his thousand young . . ."
I read—and read again. It was incredible, damnable—but for the second time within twenty-four hours, I had come upon reference to unbelievable spaces, and to stars—to a star in the Hyades, a star in Taurus—and surely it could be none other than Celaeno!
And, as if in mocking answer to the question which loomed so large before me, I turned over this manuscript, and found below it a portfolio labeled in a strong, if spidery hand: Celaeno Fragments! I drew it toward me, and found it sealed. At this, the aged attendant, who had been observing me closely, came over.
"It has never been opened," he said.
"Not even by Mr. Phelan?”
He shook his head. "Since it came by Mr. Phelan's hand, with Dr. Shrewsbury's seal on it, we do not believe he had access to it. We do not know."
I looked at my watch. Time was passing now, and I meant to go on to Innsmouth before I completed my day. Reluctantly, and yet with a strange sense of foreboding, I pushed away the manuscripts and books.
"I will come again," I promised. "I want to get to Innsmouth before too much of the day has gone."
The attendant favored me with a curious and reflective gaze. "Yes, it is better to visit Innsmouth by day," he said finally.
I pondered this while the old man gathered up the papers and books. Then I said, "That is surely a curious statement to make, Mr. Peabody. Is there anything wrong with Innsmouth?"
"Ah, do not ask me. I have never gone there. I have no desire to go there.
There are strange things enough in Arkham, without the need for going on to Innsmouth. But I have heard things—terrible things, Mr. Keane, such things that it may well be said of them that it is of no account whatever whether or not they are true, but of account only that they are being said. What they do say of the Marshes, who have the refinery there . . ."
"Refinery!" I cried, remembering my dream.
"Yes. It was old Obed Marsh first, old Captain Obed—they said—well, what does it matter? He is gone, and now it is Ahab who is there, Ahab Marsh—his great-grandson—and he is no longer young. But he is not old, either; they do not get very old in Innsmouth."
"What did they say of Obed Marsh?”
"It does not matter to tell it, I suppose. Perhaps it is an old wives' tale— that he was leagued with the devil and brought a great plague to Innsmouth in 1846, and that those who came after him were bound by compacts with unearthly beings from beyond that Devil Reef off Innsmouth Harbor, and brought about the destruction by dynamite of many old houses and the wharves along the seashore there during the winter of 'twenty-seven and 'eight. There are not many living there, and no one likes the Innsmouth people."
"Race prejudice?”
"It is something about them—they do not seem like people—that is, people like the rest of us. I saw one of them once—he made me think—you may think it an old man's aberration, but I assure you it is not; he made me think of a frog!"
I was shaken. The creature who had so shadowily crept after Andrew Phelan in my dream or vision of the night before had seemed bestially froglike. I was at the same time possessed of the urgent desire to go to Innsmouth and see for myself the places of my dream-haunted repose.
Yet when I stood before Hammond's Drug Store in Market Square, waiting for the ancient and shunned bus which carried venturesome travellers to Innsmouth and went on to Newburyport, I had a sense of impending danger so strong that I could not shake it off. Despite my insistent curiosity, I was sharply, keenly aware of a kind of sixth sense prompting me not to take the bus driven by that queer, sullen-visaged fellow, who brought the bus to a stop and came out to walk briefly, suggestively stooped, into Hammond's before setting forth on the journey to Innsmouth, the final object of my somewhat aimless search that day.
I did not yield to that prompting, but climbed into the bus, which I shared with but one other passenger, whom I knew instinctively to be an Innsmouth resident, for he, too, had a strange cast of features, with odd, deep creases in the sides of his neck, a narrow-headed fellow who could not have been more than forty, with the bulging, watery blue eyes and flat nose and curiously undeveloped ears which I was to find so shockingly common in that shunned seaport town toward which the bus soon began to roll. The driver, too, was manifestly an Innsmouth man, and I began to understand what Mr. Peabody had meant when he spoke of the Innsmouth people as seeming somehow "not like people." To the end of comparison with that following figure of my dream, I scrutinized both my fellow-passenger and the driver as closely, if furtively, as I could; and I was somewhat relieved to come to the conclusion that there was a subtle difference. I could not put my finger on it, but the follower of my dream seemed malign, in contrast to these people, who had merely that appearance so common to cretins and similar unfortunate individuals bearing the stigmata of lower intelligence in the realm of the sub-normal more especially than that of the abnormal.
I had never before been to Innsmouth. Having come down from New Hampshire to pursue my divinity studies, I had had no occasion to travel beyond Arkham. Therefore, the town as I saw it as the bus approached it down the slope of the coast-line there, had a most depressing effect on me, for it was strangely dense, and yet seemed devoid of life. No cars drove out to pass us coming in, and of the three steeples rising above the chimneypots and the crouching gambrel roofs and peaked gables, many of them sagging with decay, only one had any semblance whatsoever of use, for the others were weatherbeaten, with gaps in them where shingles had been torn away, and badly needed paint. For that matter, the entire town seemed to need paint—all, that is, save two buildings we passed, the two buildings of my dream, the refinery and that imposing pillared hall standing among the churches which clustered about the radial point of the towns streets, with its black and gold sign on the pediment, so vividly remembered from my experience of the previous night—the Esoteric Order of Dagon. This structure, like that of the Marsh Refining Company along the Manuxet River, seemed to have been given a coat of paint only recently. Apart from this, and a single store of the First National chain, all the buildings in what was apparently the business district of the town were repellantly old, with paint peeling from them, and their windows badly in need of washing. It was so, too, of the town generally, though the old residential streets of Broad, Washington, Lafayette, and Adams, where lived still those who were left of Innsmouth s old families—the Marshes, the Gilmans, the Eliots, and the Waites—were of a fresher appearance, not so much in obvious need of paint as of refurbishing, for the grounds grew wild and rank, and in many cases, fences—now overgrown with vines—had been constructed to make the casual view of passersby difficult.
Repelled as I was by the Innsmouth people, I stood for a few moments on the curb, after having left the bus and ascertained the hour when it would return to Arkham—at seven that evening—wondering just what course it would be best to follow. I had no desire to speak to the people of Innsmouth, for I had the strongest of forebodings that to do so was to court subtle and insidious danger; yet I continued to be impelled by the curiosity which had brought me here. It occurred to me, as I stood pondering, that the manager of the First National chain store might very well not be one of the Innsmouth people; it was the custom of the chain to move its managers around, and there was just a chance that the man in charge of this store was an outsider—for among these people, it was inevitable that anyone from beyond the immediate vicinity would be made to feel tangibly that he was an outsider. Accordingly, I made my way over to the corner where the store stood, and entered it.
Contrary to my expectations, there were no clerks, but only a man of middle age, who was at work on a prosaic display of canned goods as I entered and asked for the manager. But clearly, he was the manager; he did not bear any of those oddly shocking distinguishing marks so common to the people of Innsmouth; so he was, as I had guessed, an outsider. I observed with a faint sense of unpleasant distaste that he was startled to look at me, and seemed hesitant to speak, but I realized immediately that this was no doubt due to his isolation among these curiously decayed people. Having introduced myself, and observed aloud that I could recognize him for an outsider, like myself, I at once pursued my inquiry. What was it about these Innsmouth people? I wanted to know. What was the Esoteric Order of DagonP And what was being said about Ahab Marsh
His reaction was instantaneous. Nor was it entirely unexpected. He became agitated, he glanced fearfully toward the entrance to the store, and then came over to seize me almost roughly by the arm.
"We dont talk about such things here," he said in a harsh whisper. His nervous fear was only too manifest.
"I'm sorry if I distressed you," I went on, "but I'm only a casual traveller and I'm curious as to why such a potentially fine port should be all but abandoned. Indeed, it is virtually abandoned; the wharves have not been repaired, and many business places seem closed."
He shuddered. "Do they know you are asking questions?”
"You are the first person to whom I have spoken.”
"Thank God! Take my advice and leave town as soon as you can. You can take a bus . . .”
"I came in on the bus. I want to know something about the town.”
He looked at me indecisively, glanced once more toward the entrance, and then, turning abruptly and walking along a counter toward a curtained door which apparently shut off his own quarters, he said, "Come along with me, Mr. Keane."
In his own rooms at the rear of the store, he began, however reluctantly, to talk in harsh whispers, as if he feared the very walls might hear. What I wanted to know, he said, was impossible to tell, because there was no proof of it. All was talk, talk and the terrible decay of isolated families, intermarrying generation after generation. That accounted