The Shadow Out of Time | Page 3

speech seemed to excite vague fears and aversions in every
one I met, as if I were a being infinitely removed from all that is normal
and healthful. This idea of a black, hidden horror connected with
incalculable gulfs of some sort of distance was oddly widespread and

persistent.
My own family formed no exception. From the moment of my strange
waking my wife had regarded me with extreme horror and loathing,
vowing that I was some utter alien usurping the body of her husband. In
1910 she obtained a legal divorce, nor would she ever consent to see
me even after my return to normality in 1913. These feelings were
shared by my elder son and my small daughter, neither of whom I have
ever seen since.
Only my second son, Wingate, seemed able to conquer the terror and
repulsion which my change aroused. He indeed felt that I was a
stranger, but though only eight years old held fast to a faith that my
proper self would return. When it did return he sought me out, and the
courts gave me his custody. In succeeding years he helped me with the
studies to which I was driven, and today, at thirty-five, he is a professor
of psychology at Miskatonic.
But I do not wonder at the horror caused--for certainly, the mind, voice,
and facial expression of the being that awakened on l5 May 1908, were
not those of Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee.
I will not attempt to tell much of my life from 1908 to 1913, since
readers may glean the outward essentials--as I largely had to do--from
files of old newspapers and scientific journals.
I was given charge of my funds, and spent them slowly and on the
whole wisely, in travel and in study at various centres of learning. My
travels, however, were singular in the extreme, involving long visits to
remote and desolate places.
In 1909 I spent a month in the Himalayas, and in 1911 roused much
attention through a camel trip into the unknown deserts of Arabia.
What happened on those journeys I have never been able to learn.
During the summer of 19l2 I chartered a ship and sailed in the Arctic,
north of Spitzbergen, afterward showing signs of disappointment.

Later in that year I spent weeks--alone beyond the limits of previous or
subsequent exploration in the vast limestone cavern systems of western
Virginia--black labyrinths so complex that no retracing of my steps
could even be considered.
My sojourns at the universities were marked by abnormally rapid
assimilation, as if the secondary personality had an intelligence
enormously superior to my own. I have found, also, that my rate of
reading and solitary study was phenomenal. I could master every detail
of a book merely by glancing over it as fast as I could turn the leaves;
while my skill at interpreting complex figures in an instant was
veritably awesome.
At times there appeared almost ugly reports of my power to influence
the thoughts and acts of others, though I seemed to have taken care to
minimize displays of this faculty.
Other ugly reports concerned my intimacy with leaders of occultist
groups, and scholars suspected of connection with nameless bands of
abhorrent elder-world hierophants. These rumours, though never
proved at the time, were doubtless stimulated by the known tenor of
some of my reading--for the consultation of rare books at libraries
cannot be effected secretly.
There is tangible proof--in the form of marginal notes--that I went
minutely through such things as the Comte d'Erlette's Cultes des
Goules, Ludvig Prinn's De Vermis Mysteriis, the Unaussprechlichen
Kulten of von Junzt, the surviving fragments of the puzzling Book of
Eibon, and the dreaded Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul
Alhazred. Then, too, it is undeniable that a fresh and evil wave of
underground cult activity set in about the time of my odd mutation.
In the summer of 1913 I began to display signs of ennui and flagging
interest, and to hint to various associates that a change might soon be
expected in me. I spoke of returning memories of my earlier
life--though most auditors judged me insincere, since all the
recollections I gave were casual, and such as might have been learned
from my old private papers.

About the middle of August I returned to Arkham and re-opened my
long-closed house in Crane Street. Here I installed a mechanism of the
most curious aspect, constructed piecemeal by different makers of
scientific apparatus in Europe and America, and guarded carefully from
the sight of any one intelligent enough to analyse it.
Those who did see it--a workman, a servant, and the new
housekeeper--say that it was a queer mixture of rods, wheels, and
mirros, though only about two feet tall, one foot wide, and one foot
thick. The central mirror