The Lurking Fear | Page 9

I had happened to
have with me. What still remained down in that hell-hive, lurking and
waiting for the thunder to arouse it, I did not know. Two had been
killed; perhaps that had finished it. But still there remained that burning
determination to reach the innermost secret of the fear, which I had
once more come to deem definite, material, and organic.
My indecisive speculation whether to explore the passage alone and
immediately with my pocket-light or to try to assemble a band of
squatters for the quest, was interrupted after a time by a sudden rush of
wind from the outside which blew out the candle and left me in stark
blackness. The moon no longer shone through the chinks and apertures
above me, and with a sense of fateful alarm I heard the sinister and
significant rumble of approaching thunder. A confusion of associated
ideas possessed my brain, leading me to grope back toward the farthest
corner of the cellar. My eyes, however, never turned away from the
horrible opening at the base of the chimney; and I began to get
glimpses of the crumbling bricks and unhealthy weeds as faint glows of
lightning penetrated the weeds outside and illumined the chinks in the
upper wall. Every second I was consumed with a mixture of fear and
curiosity. What would the storm call forth-or was there anything left for
it to call? Guided by a lightning flash I settled myself down behind a
dense clump of vegetation, through which I could see the opening
without being seen.
If heaven is merciful, it will some day efface from my consciousness

the sight that I saw, and let me live my last years in peace. I cannot
sleep at night now, and have to take opiates when it thunders. The thing
came abruptly and unannounced; a demon, ratlike scurrying from pits
remote and unimaginable, a hellish panting and stifled grunting, and
then from that opening beneath the chimney a burst of multitudinous
and leprous life - a loathsome night-spawned flood of organic
corruption more devastatingly hideous than the blackest conjurations of
mortal madness and morbidity. Seething, stewing, surging, bubbling
like serpents' slime it rolled up and out of that yawning hole, spreading
like a septic contagion and streaming from the cellar at every point of
egress - streaming out to scatter through the accursed midnight forests
and strew fear, madness, and death.
God knows how many there were - there must have been thousands. To
see the stream of them in that faint intermittent lightning was shocking.
When they had thinned out enough to be glimpsed as separate
organisms, I saw that they were dwarfed, deformed hairy devils or
apes-monstrous and diabolic caricatures of the monkey tribe. They
were so hideously silent; there was hardly a squeal when one of the last
stragglers turned with the skill of long practice to make a meal in
accustomed fashion on a weaker companion. 0thers snapped up what it
left and ate with slavering relish. Then, in spite of my daze of fright and
disgust, my morbid curiosity triumphed; and as the last of the
monstrosities oozed up alone from that nether world of unknown
nightmare, I drew my automatic pistol and shot it under cover of the
thunder.
Shrieking, slithering, torrential shadows of red viscous madness
chasing one another through endless, ensanguined condors of purple
fulgurous sky... formless phantasms and kaleidoscopic mutations of a
ghoulish, remembered scene; forests of monstrous over-nourished oaks
with serpent roots twisting and sucking unnamable juices from an earth
verminous with millions of cannibal devils; mound-like tentacles
groping from underground nuclei of polypous perversion... insane
lightning over malignant ivied walls and demon arcades choked with
fungous vegetation... Heaven be thanked for the instinct which led me
unconscious to places where men dwell; to the peaceful village that

slept under the calm stars of clearing skies.
I had recovered enough in a week to send to Albany for a gang of men
to blow up the Martense mansion and the entire top of Tempest
Mountain with dynamite, stop up all the discoverable mound-burrows,
and destroy certain over-nourished trees whose very existence seemed
an insult to sanity. I could sleep a little after they had done this, but true
rest will never come as long as I remember that nameless secret of the
lurking fear. The thing will haunt me, for who can say the
extermination is complete, and that analogous phenomena do not exist
all over the world? Who can, with my knowledge, think of the earth's
unknown caverns without a nightmare dread of future possibilities? I
cannot see a well or a subway entrance without shuddering... why
cannot the doctors give me something to make me sleep, or truly calm
my brain when it thunders?
What I saw in