The Thing on the Doorstep | Page 7

about the Innsmouth blood now. There had
been traffick with things from the sea - it was horrible... And old
Ephraim - he had known the secret, and when he grew old did a
hideous thing to keep alive - he wanted to live forever - Asenath would
succeed - one successful demonstration had taken place already.
As Derby muttered on I turned to look at him closely, verifying the
impression of change which an earlier scrutiny had given me.
Paradoxically, he seemed in better shape than usual - harder, more
normally developed, and without the trace of sickly flabbiness caused
by his indolent habits. It was as if he had been really active and
properly exercised for the first time in his coddled life, and I judged
that Asenath's force must have pushed him into unwonted channels of
motion and alertness. But just now his mind was in a pitiable state; for
he was mumbling wild extravagances about his wife, about black
magic, about old Ephraim, and about some revelation which would
convince even me. He repeated names which I recognized from bygone
browsings in forbidden volumes, and at times made me shudder with a
certain thread of mythological consistency - or convincing coherence -
which ran through his maundering. Again and again he would pause, as
if to gather courage for some final and terrible disclosure.
"Dan, Dan, don't you remember him - wild eyes and the unkempt beard

that never turned white? He glared at me once, and I never forgot it.
Now she glares that way. And I know why! He found it in the
Necronomicon - the formula. I don't dare tell you the page yet, but
when I do you can read and understand. Then you will know what has
engulfed me. On, on, on, on - body to body to body - he means never to
die. The life-glow - he knows how to break the link... it can flicker on a
while even when the body is dead. I'll give you hints and maybe you'll
guess. Listen, Dan - do you know why my wife always takes such pains
with that silly backhand writing? Have you ever seen a manuscript of
old Ephraim's? Do you want to know why I shivered when I saw some
hasty notes Asenath had jotted down?
"Asenath - is there such a person? Why did they half-think there was
poison in old Ephraim's stomach? Why do the Gilmans whisper about
the way he shrieked - like a frightened child - when he went mad and
Asenath locked him up in the padded attic room where - the other - had
been? Was it old Ephraim's soul that was locked in? Who locked in
whom? Why had he been looking for months for someone with a fine
mind and a weak will? - Why did he curse that his daughter wasn't a
son? Tell me? Daniel Upton - what devilish exchange was perpetrated
in the house of horror where that blasphemous monster had his trusting,
weak-willed half-human child at his mercy? Didn't he make it
permanent - as she'll do in the end with me? Tell me why that thing that
calls itself Asenath writes differently off guard, so that you can't tell its
script from - "
Then the thing happened. Derby's voice was rising to a thin treble
scream as he raved, when suddenly it was shut off with an almost
mechanical click. I thought of those other occasions at my home when
his confidences had abruptly ceased - when I had half-fancied that
some obscure telepathic wave of Asenath's mental force was
intervening to keep him silent. This, though, was something altogether
different - and, I felt, infinitely more horrible. The face beside me was
twisted almost unrecognizably for a moment, while through the whole
body there passed a shivering motion - as if all the bones, organs,
muscles, nerves, and glands were adjusting themselves to a radically
different posture, set of stresses, and general personality.

Just where the supreme horror lay, I could not for my life tell; yet there
swept over me such a swamping wave of sickness and repulsion - such
a freezing, petrifying sense of utter alienage and abnormality - that my
grasp of the wheel grew feeble and uncertain. The figure beside me
seemed less like a lifelong friend than like some monstrous intrusion
from outer space - some damnable, utterly accursed focus of unknown
and malign cosmic forces.
I had faltered only a moment, but before another moment was over my
companion had seized the wheel and forced me to change places with
him. The dusk was now very thick, and the lights of Portland far behind,
so I could not see much of his face. The blaze of his eyes,