When he had slumped down into a stupor I propped him with pillows and let normal sleep overtake him. I did not call a doctor, for I knew what would be said of his sanity, and wished to give nature a chance if I possibly could. He waked at midnight, and I put him to bed upstairs, but he was gone by morning. He had let himself quietly out of the house—and his butler, when called on the wire, said he was at home pacing restlessly[178] about the library.[179]
Edward went to pieces rapidly after that. He did not call again, but I went daily to see him. He would always be sitting in his library, staring at nothing and having an air of abnormal listening. Sometimes he talked rationally, but always on trivial topics. Any mention of his trouble, of future plans, or of Asenath would send him into a frenzy. His butler said he had frightful seizures at night, during which he might eventually do himself harm.
I had a long talk with his doctor, banker, and lawyer, and finally took the physician with two specialist colleagues to visit him. The spasms that resulted from the first questions were violent and pitiable—and that evening a closed car took his poor struggling body to the Arkham Sanitarium. I was made his guardian and called on him twice weekly—almost weeping to hear his wild shrieks, awesome whispers, and dreadful, droning repetitions of such phrases as “I had to do it—I had to do it . . .[180] it’ll get me . . .[181] it’ll get me . . .[182] down there . . .[183] down there in the dark. . . .[184] Mother, mother![185] Dan! Save me . . .[186] save me. . . .”[187]
How much hope of recovery there was, no one could say;[188] but I tried my best to be optimistic. Edward must have a home if he emerged, so I transferred his servants to the Derby mansion, which would surely be his sane choice. What to do about the Crowninshield place with its complex arrangements and collections of utterly inexplicable objects I could not decide, so left it momentarily untouched—telling the Derby housemaid[189] to go over and dust the chief rooms once a week, and ordering the furnace man to have a fire on those days.
The final nightmare came before Candlemas—heralded, in cruel irony, by a false gleam of hope. One morning late in January the sanitarium telephoned to report that Edward’s reason had suddenly come back. His continuous memory, they said, was badly impaired; but sanity itself was certain. Of course he must remain some time for observation, but there could be little doubt of the outcome. All going well, he would surely be free in a week.
I hastened over in a flood of delight, but stood bewildered when a nurse took me to Edward’s room. The patient rose to greet me, extending his hand with a polite smile; but I saw in an instant that he bore the strangely energised[190] personality which had seemed so foreign to his own nature—the competent personality I had found so vaguely horrible, and which Edward himself had once vowed was the intruding soul of his wife. There was the same blazing vision—so like Asenath’s and old Ephraim’s—and the same firm mouth;[191] and when he spoke I could sense the same grim, pervasive irony in his voice—the deep irony so redolent of potential evil. This was the person who had driven my car through the night five months before—the person I had not seen since that brief call when he had forgotten the old-time doorbell[192] signal and stirred such nebulous fears in me—and now he filled me with the same dim feeling of blasphemous alienage and ineffable cosmic hideousness.
He spoke affably of arrangements for release—and there was nothing for me to do but assent, despite some remarkable gaps in his recent memories. Yet I felt that something was terribly, inexplicably wrong and abnormal. There were horrors in this thing that I could not reach. This was a sane person—but was it indeed the Edward Derby I had known? If not, who or what was it—and where was Edward?[193] Ought it to be free or confined . . .[194] or ought it to be extirpated from the face of the earth? There was a hint of the abysmally sardonic in everything the creature said—the Asenath-like eyes lent a special and baffling mockery to certain words about the ‘early liberty earned by an especially close confinement’.[195] I must have behaved very awkwardly, and was glad to beat a retreat.
All that day and the next I racked my brain over the problem. What had happened? What sort of mind looked out through those alien eyes in Edward’s face? I could think of nothing but this dimly terrible enigma, and gave up all efforts to perform my usual work. The second morning the hospital called up to say that the recovered patient was unchanged, and by evening I was close to a nervous collapse—a state I admit, though others will vow it coloured[196] my subsequent vision. I have nothing to say on this point except that no madness of mine could account for all the evidence.
VII.[197]
It was in the night—after that second evening—that stark, utter horror burst over me and weighted my spirit with a black, clutching panic from which it can never shake free. It began with a telephone call just before midnight. I was the only one up, and sleepily took down the receiver in the library. No one seemed to be on the wire, and I was about to hang up and go to bed when my ear caught a very faint suspicion of sound at the other end. Was someone trying under great difficulties to talk? As I listened I thought I heard a sort of half-liquid bubbling noise—“glub . . . glub . . . glub” [198]—which had an odd suggestion of inarticulate, unintelligible word and syllable divisions. I called,[199] “Who is it?” But the only answer was “glub-glub . . . glub-glub”.[200] I could only assume that the noise was mechanical; but fancying that it might be a case of a broken instrument able to receive but not to send, I added, “I can’t hear you. Better hang up and try Information.”[201] Immediately I heard the receiver go on the hook at the other end.
This, I say, was just before[202] midnight. When that[203] call was traced afterward it was found to come from the old Crowninshield house, though it was fully half a week from the housemaid’s day to be there. I shall only hint what was found at that house—the upheaval in a remote cellar storeroom, the tracks, the dirt, the hastily rifled wardrobe, the baffling marks on the telephone, the clumsily used stationery, and the detestable stench lingering over everything. The police, poor fools, have their smug little theories, and are still searching for those sinister discharged servants—who have dropped out of sight amidst the present furore.[204] They speak of a ghoulish revenge for things that were done, and say I was included because I was Edward’s best friend and adviser.
Idiots!—do[205] they fancy those brutish clowns could have forged that handwriting? Do they fancy they could have brought what later came? Are they blind to the changes in that body that was Edward’s? As for me, I now believe all that Edward Derby ever told me. There are horrors beyond life’s edge that we do not suspect, and once in a while man’s evil prying calls them just within our range. Ephraim—Asenath—that devil called them in, and they engulfed Edward as they are engulfing me.
Can I be sure that I am safe? Those powers survive the life of the physical form. The next day—in the afternoon, when I pulled out of my prostration and was able to walk and talk coherently—I went to the madhouse[206] and shot him dead for Edward’s and the world’s sake, but can I be sure till he is cremated? They are keeping the body for some silly autopsies by different doctors—but I say he must be cremated. He must be cremated—he who was not Edward Derby when I shot him. I shall go mad if he is not, for I may be the next. But my will is not weak—and I shall not let it be undermined by the terrors I know are seething around it. One life—Ephraim, Asenath, and Edward—who now? I will not be driven out of my body . . . I will not change souls with that bullet-ridden lich in the madhouse!
But let me try to tell coherently of that final horror. I will not speak of what the police persistently ignored—the tales of that dwarfed, grotesque, malodorous thing met by at least three wayfarers in High St.[207] just before two o’clock, and the nature of the single footprints in certain places. I will say only that just about two the doorbell and knocker waked me—doorbell[208] and knocker both, plied alternately and uncertainly in a kind of weak desperation, and each trying to keep to Edward’s old signal of three-and-two strokes.
Roused from soun
d sleep, my mind leaped into a turmoil. Derby at the door—and remembering the old code! That new personality had not remembered it . . . was Edward suddenly back in his rightful state? Why was he here in such evident stress and haste? Had he been released ahead of time, or had he escaped? Perhaps, I thought as I flung on a robe and bounded downstairs, his return to his own self had brought raving and violence, revoking his discharge and driving him to a desperate dash for freedom. Whatever had happened, he was good old Edward again, and I would help him!
When I opened the door into the elm-arched blackness a gust of insufferably foetid[209] wind almost flung me prostrate. I choked in nausea, and for a second scarcely saw the dwarfed, humped figure on the steps. The summons had been Edward’s, but who was this foul, stunted parody? Where had Edward had time to go? His ring had sounded only a second before the door opened.
The caller had on one of Edward’s overcoats—its bottom almost touching the ground, and its sleeves rolled back yet still covering the hands. On the head was a slouch hat pulled low, while a black silk muffler concealed the face. As I stepped unsteadily forward, the figure made a semi-liquid sound like that I had heard over the telephone—“glub . . . glub . . .” [210]—and thrust at me a large, closely written paper impaled on the end of a long pencil. Still reeling from the morbid and unaccountable foetor,[211] I seized this[212] paper and tried to read it in the light from the doorway.
Beyond question, it was in Edward’s script. But why had he written when he was close enough to ring—and why was the script so awkward, coarse,[213] and shaky? I could make out nothing in the dim half light,[214] so edged back into the hall, the dwarf figure clumping mechanically after but pausing on the inner door’s threshold. The odour[215] of this singular messenger was really appalling, and I hoped (not in vain, thank God!) that my wife would not wake and confront it.
Then, as I read the paper, I felt my knees give under me and my vision go black. I was lying on the floor when I came to, that accursed sheet still clutched in my fear-rigid hand. This is what it said.[216]
“Dan—go to the sanitarium and kill it. Exterminate it. It isn’t Edward Derby any more. She got me—it’s Asenath—and she has been dead three months and a half. I lied when I said she had gone away. I killed her. I had to. It was sudden, but we were alone and I was in my right body. I saw a candlestick and smashed her head in. She would have got me for good at Hallowmass.
“I buried her in the farther cellar storeroom under some old boxes and cleaned up all the traces. The servants suspected next morning, but they have such secrets that they dare not tell the police. I sent them off, but God knows what they—and others of the cult—will do.
“I thought for a while I was all right, and then I felt the tugging at my brain. I knew what it was—I ought to have remembered. A soul like hers—or Ephraim’s—is half detached, and keeps right on after death as long as the body lasts. She was getting me—making me change bodies with her—seizing my body and putting me in that corpse of hers buried in the cellar.
“I knew what was coming—that’s why I snapped and had to go to[217] the asylum. Then it came—I found myself choked in the dark—in Asenath’s rotting carcass down there in the cellar under the boxes where I put it. And I knew she must be in my body at the sanitarium—permanently,[218] for it was after Hallowmass, and the sacrifice would work even without her being there—sane, and ready for release as a menace to the world. I was desperate, and in spite of everything I clawed my way out.
“I’m too far gone to talk—I couldn’t manage to telephone—but I can still write. I’ll get fixed up somehow and bring you[219] this last word and warning. Kill that fiend if you value the peace and comfort of the world. See that it is cremated. If you don’t, it will live on and on, body to body for ever,[220] and I can’t tell you what it will do. Keep clear of black magic, Dan,[221] it’s the devil’s business. Goodbye[222]—you’ve been a great friend. Tell the police whatever they’ll believe—and I’m damnably sorry to drag all this on you. I’ll be at peace before long—this thing won’t hold together much more. Hope you can read this. And kill that thing—kill it.
Yours—Ed.”[223]
It was only afterward that I read the last half of this paper, for I had fainted at the end of the third paragraph. I fainted again when I saw and smelled what cluttered up the threshold where the warm air had struck it. The messenger would not move or have consciousness any more.
The butler, tougher-fibred[224] than I, did not faint at what met him in the hall in the morning. Instead, he telephoned the police. When they came I had been taken upstairs to bed, but the—other mass—lay where it had collapsed in the night. The men put handkerchiefs to their noses.
What they finally found inside Edward’s oddly assorted[225] clothes was mostly liquescent horror. There were bones, too—and a crushed-in skull. Some dental work positively identified the skull as Asenath’s.
Notes
Editor’s Note: The surviving A.Ms. is HPL’s original draft, written in pencil. The T.Ms. (by an unknown hand: HPL remarked that he had a “delinquent [revision] client [Hazel Heald?]” [SL 4.310] type the text) is none too accurate, and HPL failed to proofread the text adequately (he has made only a single correction in the text). Among the errors in the T.Ms. are extensive alterations of HPL’s punctuation (especially as regards ellipses), the omission of words and phrases, and an erroneous rendering of HPL’s chapter divisions of the story. The typist has left out section breaks and numbers for chapters 5 and 6. The Weird Tales appearance (January 1937) luckily hit upon the correct division for chapter 5 but chose an erroneous one for section 6. The Arkham House texts, deriving from the T.Ms., simply renumber chapter 7 as chapter 5. The Arkham House editions make numerous errors of their own beyond those in the T.Ms.
Texts: A = A.Ms. (JHL); B = T.Ms. (JHL); Bc = HPL’s correction in T.Ms.; C = Weird Tales 29, No. 1 (January 1937): 52–70 (as “The Thing on the Door-Step”); D = The Dunwich Horror and Others (Arkham House, 1963), 281–307. Copy-text: A.
1. I.] om. A, B, C, D
2. shew] show B, C, D
3. as] om. D
4. doorstep.] door-step. C
5. servants,] servants; C
6. I] I was D
7. sombre,] somber, C
8. strange,] strange B, C, D
9. mouldering,] moldering, C
10. daemoniac] demoniac A, B, C, D
11. “Azathoth . . . Horrors”.] Azathoth . . . Horrors. A, B, C, D
12. “The . . . Monolith”] The . . . Monolith A, B, C, D
13. overcareful] over-careful A, B, C, D
14. parents;] parents, B, C, D
15. travelled] traveled C
16. child;] child, C
17. moustache] mustache C
18. pampered,] om. B, C, D
19. bookishness.] bookishness. By the time he was 25 Derby was a fairly well-known minor poet and fantaisiste, though his lack of contacts & experience had slowed down his literary growth by making his products derivative & over-bookish. I was perhaps his closest friend, seeing him A [excised]
20. half-aroused] half aroused C
21. him.] him. ¶ C
22. practice] practise B, C, D
23. St.,] St. A; Street B, D; Street, C
24. doorbell] door-bell C
25. Arkham,] Arkham A, B, D
26. meaninglessly] meaningless D
27. “Book of Eibon”,] Book of Eibon, A, B [revised by HPL to Book of Eibon,], Book of Eibon, C, D
28. “Unaussprechlichen Kulten”] Unaussprechlichen Kulten A, B, C, D
29. “Necronomicon”] Necronomicon A, B, C, D
30. twenty] 20 A
31. fantaisiste,] fantaisiste, C
32. overbookish.] over-bookish. A, B, C, D
33. inertia,] inertia C
34. rumours] rumors C, D
35. thirty-eight . . . twenty-three] 38 . . . 23 A
36. overprotuberant] over-/protuberant A; over-protuberant B, C, D
&
nbsp; 37. fishing port] fishing-port C
38. iron-grey] iron-gray C
39. and] om. D
40. crow’s feet] crow’s-feet C
41. exercise] exercises D
42. untangling.] untangling. This rather disturbed me, for the Derbys are old Essex County stock & I did not wish to see any incongruous element enter in. Not only did my daughter’s recollections influence me, but I had heard from others that Asenath was in every way an “uninhibited young modern” of the sort that good old families cannot well assimilate. A [excised]
43. friendship,] friendship C
44. boy”.] boy.” D
45. later—by . . . peace,] later by . . . peace A, Bc, C
46. opposition;] opposition, B, C, D
47. son,] son C
48. “sophisticates”,] “sophisticates,” D
49. moustache,] mustache, C
50. Certainly,] Certainly B, C, D
51. neutralisation,] neutralization, C
52. in—that] —in that D
53. disquieting] disgusting B, C, D
54. surprising] surprizing C
55. odour] odor C
56. fish.] fish. ¶ My first call at Derby’s new home was by no means unpleasant. The servants—especially the flat-nosed wench who opened the door—distinctly repelled me; and my wife, who was with me, thought Asenath’s expression was vaguely sardonic. Of the conversation I recall only a queer outburst from our hostess, who repeated vehemently that wish to be a man which had so impressed my daughter at school. This was fixed in my mind because of an even queerer and surprisingly tasteless rejoinder of Edward’s—a rejoinder which had the aspect of a sly “dig”, and which was cut off by a crushing glance from Asenath. He had murmured ‘that some people would give a good deal to be wholly human’—no doubt referring to the anile whispers of grandams about Innsmouth folk. A [excised]
57. destinations.] destinations. [Three lines erased and written over with the following:] which professional ethics ought to have held back. He had been summoned one Candlemas to the lonely Crowninshield place; and could not feel easy after what he had seen. Fortunately, it was dead. He had known monstrous births before—but when monstrosity takes certain directions, there are questions one has to ask oneself . . . questions about people, and about the universe itself. Candlemas is nine months after the Witches’ Sabbat, and country legend has much to say about it. Were not Innsmouth folk said to keep the Sabbat? Where were the Derbys last May-Eve? Dr. Hathorne allowed that if he were Edward Derby he would leave Asenath while the leaving was good. He was never quite specific, though, until that night at the last when the horror came to my doorstep. Now he will back me up in trying to do what must be done. A [excised]