The Thing on the Doorstep | Page 6

August day
when I got that telegram from Maine. I had not seen him for two
months, but had heard he was away "on business." Asenath was
supposed to be with him, though watchful gossip declared there was
someone upstairs in the house behind the doubly curtained windows.
They had watched the purchases made by the servants. And now the
town marshal of Chesuncook had wired of the draggled madman who
stumbled out of the woods with delirious ravings and screamed to me
for protection. It was Edward - and he had been just able to recall his
own name and address.
Chesuncook is close to the wildest, deepest, and least explored forest
belt in Maine, and it took a whole day of feverish jolting through
fantastic and forbidding scenery to get there in a car. I found Derby in a
cell at the town farm, vacillating between frenzy and apathy. He knew
me at once, and began pouring out a meaningless, half-incoherent
torrent of words in my direction.

"Dan, for God's sake! The pit of the shoggoths! Down the six thousand
steps... the abomination of abominations... I never would let her take
me, and then I found myself there - Ia! Shub-Niggurath! - The shape
rose up from the altar, and there were five hundred that howled - The
Hooded Thing bleated 'Kamog! Kamog!' - that was old Ephraim's
secret name in the coven - I was there, where she promised she
wouldn't take me - A minute before I was locked in the library, and
then I was there where she had gone with my body - in the place of
utter blasphemy, the unholy pit where the black realm begins and the
watcher guards the gate - I saw a shoggoth - it changed shape - I can't
stand it - I'll kill her if she ever sends me there again - I'll kill that entity
- her, him, it - I'll kill it! I'll kill it with my own hands!"
It took me an hour to quiet him, but he subsided at last. The next day I
got him decent clothes in the village, and set out with him for Arkham.
His fury of hysteria was spent, and he was inclined to be silent, though
he began muttering darkly to himself when the car passed through
Augusta - as if the sight of a city aroused unpleasant memories. It was
clear that he did not wish to go home; and considering the fantastic
delusions he seemed to have about his wife - delusions undoubtedly
springing from some actual hypnotic ordeal to which he had been
subjected - I thought it would be better if he did not. I would, I resolved,
put him up myself for a time; no matter what unpleasantness it would
make with Asenath. Later I would help him get a divorce, for most
assuredly there were mental factors which made this marriage suicidal
for him. When we struck open country again Derby's muttering faded
away, and I let him nod and drowse on the seat beside me as I drove.
During our sunset dash through Portland the muttering commenced
again, more distinctly than before, and as I listened I caught a stream of
utterly insane drivel about Asenath. The extent to which she had preyed
on Edward's nerves was plain, for he had woven a whole set of
hallucinations around her. His present predicament, he mumbled
furtively, was only one of a long series. She was getting hold of him,
and he knew that some day she would never let go. Even now she
probably let him go only when she had to, because she couldn't hold on
long at a time. She constantly took his body and went to nameless

places for nameless rites, leaving him in her body and locking him
upstairs - but sometimes she couldn't hold on, and he would find
himself suddenly in his own body again in some far-off, horrible, and
perhaps unknown place. Sometimes she'd get hold of him again and
sometimes she couldn't. Often he was left stranded somewhere as I had
found him - time and again he had to find his way home from frightful
distances, getting somebody to drive the car after he found it.
The worst thing was that she was holding on to him longer and longer
at a time. She wanted to be a man - to be fully human - that was why
she got hold of him. She had sensed the mixture of fine-wrought brain
and weak will in him. Some day she would crowd him out and
disappear with his body - disappear to become a great magician like her
father and leave him marooned in that female shell that wasn't even
quite human. Yes, he knew