The House on the Borderland | Page 9

what sort of a place I had come. The arena, for so I have
termed it, appeared a perfect circle of about ten to twelve miles in
diameter, the House, as I have mentioned before, standing in the centre.
The surface of the place, like to that of the Plain, had a peculiar, misty
appearance, that was yet not mist.
"From a rapid survey, my glance passed quickly upwards, along the
slopes of the circling mountains. How silent they were. I think that this
same abominable stillness was more trying to me, than anything that I

had, so far, seen or imagined. I was looking up, now, at the great crags,
towering so loftily. Up there, the impalpable redness gave a blurred
appearance to everything.
"And then, as I peered, curiously, a new terror came to me; for, away
up among the dim peaks to my right, I had descried a vast shape of
blackness, giant-like. It grew upon my sight. It had an enormous equine
head, with gigantic ears, and seemed to peer stead-fastly down into the
arena. There was that about the pose, that gave me the impression of an
eternal watchfulness--of having warded that dismal place, through
unknown eternities. Slowly, the monster became plainer to me; and
then, suddenly, my gaze sprang from it to something further off and
higher among the crags. For a long minute, I gazed, fearfully. I was
strangely conscious of something not altogether unfamiliar--as though
something stirred in the back of my mind. The thing was black, and had
four grotesque arms. The features showed, indistinctly. Round the neck,
I made out several light-coloured objects. Slowly, the details came to
me, and I realised, coldly, that they were skulls. Further down the body
was another circling belt, showing less dark against the black trunk.
Then, even as I puzzled to know what the thing was, a memory slid into
my mind, and straightway, I knew that I was looking at a monstrous
representation of Kali, the Hindu goddess of death.
"Other remembrances of my old student days drifted into my thoughts.
My glance fell back upon the huge beast-headed Thing. Simultaneously,
I recognised it for the ancient Egyptian god Set, or Seth, the Destroyer
of Souls. With the knowledge, there came a great sweep of
questioning--'Two of the--!' I stopped, and endeavoured to think.
Things beyond my imagination, peered into my frightened mind. I saw,
obscurely. 'The old gods of mythology!' I tried to comprehend to what
it was all pointing. My gaze dwelt, flickeringly, between the two. 'If--'
"An idea came swiftly, and I turned, and glanced rapidly upwards,
searching the gloomy crags, away to my left. Something loomed out
under a great peak, a shape of greyness. I wondered I had not seen it
earlier, and then remembered I had not yet viewed that portion. I saw it
more plainly now. It was, as I have said, grey. It had a tremendous head;

but no eyes. That part of its face was blank.
"Now, I saw that there were other things up among the mountains.
Further off, reclining on a lofty ledge, I made out a livid mass, irregular
and ghoulish. It seemed without form, save for an unclean, half-animal
face, that looked out, vilely, from somewhere about its middle. And
then, I saw others--there were hundreds of them. They seemed to grow
out of the shadows. Several, I recognised, almost immediately, as
mythological deities; others were strange to me, utterly strange, beyond
the power of a human mind to conceive.
"On each side, I looked, and saw more, continually. The mountains
were full of strange things--Beast-gods, and Horrors, so atrocious and
bestial that possibility and decency deny any further attempt to describe
them. And I--I was filled with a terrible sense of overwhelming horror
and fear and repugnance; yet, spite of these, I wondered exceedingly.
Was there then, after all, something in the old heathen worship,
something more than the mere deifying of men, animals and elements?
The thought gripped me--was there?
"Later, a question repeated itself. What were they, those Beast-gods,
and the others? At first, they had appeared to me, just sculptured
Monsters, placed indiscriminately among the inaccessible peaks and
precipices of the surrounding mountains. Now, as I scrutinised them
with greater intentness, my mind began to reach out to fresh
conclusions. There was something about them, an indescribable sort of
silent vitality, that suggested, to my broadening consciousness, a state
of life-in-death--a something that was by no means life, as we
understand it; but rather an inhuman form of existence, that well might
be likened to a deathless trance--a condition in which it was possible to
imagine their continuing, eternally. 'Immortal!' the word rose in my
thoughts unbidden; and, straightway, I grew to wondering whether this
might be