The Lurking Fear | Page 3

if from outside the door and the stairs. We did not
think, judging from precedent, that it would pursue us far even at worst.
I watched from midnight to one o'clock, when in spite of the sinister
house, the unprotected window, and the approaching thunder and
lightning, I felt singularly drowsy. I was between my two companions,
George Bennett being toward the window and William Tobey toward
the fireplace. Bennett was asleep, having apparently felt the same
anomalous drowsiness which affected me, so I designated Tobey for
the next watch although even he was nodding. It is curious how intently
I had been watching the fireplace.
The increasing thunder must have affected my dreams, for in the brief
time I slept there came to me apocalyptic visions. Once I partly awaked,

probably because the sleeper toward the window had restlessly flung an
arm across my chest. I was not sufficiently awake to see whether Tobey
was attending to his duties as sentinel, but felt a distinct anxiety on that
score. Never before had the presence of evil so poignantly oppressed
me. Later I must have dropped asleep again, for it was out of a
phantasmal chaos that my mind leaped when the night grew hideous
with shrieks beyond anything in my former experience or imagination.
In that shrieking the inmost soul of human fear and agony clawed
hopelessly and insanely at the ebony gates of oblivion. I awoke to red
madness and the mockery of diabolism, as farther and farther down
inconceivable vistas that phobic and crystalline anguish retreated and
reverberated. There was no light, but I knew from the empty space at
my right that Tobey was gone, God alone knew whither. Across my
chest still lay the heavy arm of the sleeper at my left.
Then came the devastating stroke of lightning which shook the whole
mountain, lit the darkest crypts of the hoary grove, and splintered the
patriarch of the twisted trees. In the demon flash of a monstrous fireball
the sleeper started up suddenly while the glare from beyond the
window threw his shadow vividly upon the chimney above the
fireplace from which my eyes had never strayed. That I am still alive
and sane, is a marvel I cannot fathom. I cannot fathom it, for the
shadow on that chimney was not that of George Bennett or of any other
human creature, but a blasphemous abnormality from hell's nethermost
craters; a nameless, shapeless abomination which no mind could fully
grasp and no pen even partly describe. In another second I was alone in
the accursed mansion, shivering and gibbering. George Bennett and
William Tobey had left no trace, not even of a struggle. They were
never heard of again.

II. A Passer In The Storm
For days after that hideous experience in the forest-swathed mansion I
lay nervously exhausted in my hotel room at Lefferts Corners. I do not
remember exactly how I managed to reach the motor-car, start it, and

slip unobserved back to the village; for I retain no distinct impression
save of wild-armed titan trees, demoniac mutterings of thunder, and
Charonian shadows athwart the low mounds that dotted and streaked
the region.
As I shivered and brooded on the casting of that brain-blasting shadow,
I knew that I had at last pried out one of earth's supreme horrors - one
of those nameless blights of outer voids whose faint demon scratchings
we sometimes hear on the farthest rim of space, yet from which our
own finite vision has given us a merciful immunity. The shadow I had
seen, I hardly dared to analyse or identify. Something had lain between
me and the window that night, but I shuddered whenever I could not
cast off the instinct to classify it. If it had only snarled, or bayed, or
laughed titteringly-even that would have relieved the abysmal
hideousness. But it was so silent. It had rested a heavy arm or foreleg
on my chest...
Obviously it was organic, or had once been organic... Jan Martense,
whose room I had invaded, was buried in the grave-yard near the
mansion... I must find Bennett and Tobey, if they lived... why had it
picked them, and left me for the last?... Drowsiness is so stifling, and
dreams are so horrible...
In a short time I realised that I must tell my story to someone or break
down completely. I had already decided not to abandon the quest for
the lurking fear, for in my rash ignorance it seemed to me that
uncertainty was worse than enlightenment, however terrible the latter
might prove to be. Accordingly I resolved in my mind the best course
to pursue; whom to select for my confidences, and how to track down
the thing which had obliterated two men and cast a nightmare shadow.