From: Michael O'Neill <onq@indigo.ie>
Subject: "The Outsider" by H.P. Lovecraft
Date: 14. avgust 2000 01:11

"The Outsider" by H.P. Lovecraft

Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and
sadness. Wretched is he who looks back upon lone hours in vast and
dismal chambers with brown hangings and maddening rows of antique books,
or upon awed watches in twilight groves of grotesque, gigantic, and
vine-encumbered trees that silently wave twisted branches far aloft.
Such a lot the gods gave to me - to me, the dazed, the disappointed; the
barren, the broken. And yet I am strangely content and cling desperately
to those sere memories, when my mind momentarily threatens to reach
beyond to the other.

I know not where I was born, save that the castle was infinitely old and
infinitely horrible, full of dark passages and having high ceilings
where the eye could find only cobwebs and shadows. The stones in the
crumbling corridors seemed always hideously damp, and there was an
accursed smell everywhere, as of the piled-up corpses of dead
generations. It was never light, so that I used sometimes to light
candles and gaze steadily at them for relief, nor was there any sun
outdoors, since the terrible trees grew high above the topmost
accessible tower. There was one black tower which reached above the
trees into the unknown outer sky, but that was partly ruined and could
not be ascended save by a well-nigh impossible climb up the sheer wall,
stone by stone. 

I must have lived years in this place, but I cannot measure the time.
Beings must have cared for my needs, yet I cannot recall any person
except myself, or anything alive but the noiseless rats and bats and
spiders. I think that whoever nursed me must have been shockingly aged,
since my first conception of a living person was that of somebody
mockingly like myself, yet distorted, shrivelled, and decaying like the
castle. To me there was nothing grotesque in the bones and skeletons
that strewed some of the stone crypts deep down among the foundations. I
fantastically associated these things with everyday events, and thought
them more natural than the coloured pictures of living beings which I
found in many of the mouldy books. From such books I learned all that I
know. No teacher urged or guided me, and I do not recall hearing any
human voice in all those years - not even my own; for although I had
read of speech, I had never thought to try to speak aloud. My aspect was
a matter equally unthought of, for there were no mirrors in the castle,
and I merely regarded myself by instinct as akin to the youthful figures
I saw drawn and painted in the books. I felt conscious of youth because
I remembered so little. 

Outside, across the putrid moat and under the dark mute trees, I would
often lie and dream for hours about what I read in the books; and would
longingly picture myself amidst gay crowds in the sunny world beyond the
endless forests. Once I tried to escape from the forest, but as I went
farther from the castle the shade grew denser and the air more filled
with brooding fear; so that I ran frantically back lest I lose my way in
a labyrinth of nighted silence. 
So through endless twilights I dreamed and waited, though I knew not
what I waited for. Then in the shadowy solitude my longing for light
grew so frantic that I could rest no more, and I lifted entreating hands
to the single black ruined tower that reached above the forest into the
unknown outer sky. And at last I resolved to scale that tower, fall
though I might; since it were better to glimpse the sky and perish, than
to live without ever beholding day.  In the dank twilight I climbed the
worn and aged stone stairs till I reached the level where they ceased,
and thereafter clung perilously to small footholds leading upward.
Ghastly and terrible was that dead, stairless cylinder of rock; black,
ruined, and deserted, and sinister with startled bats whose wings made
no noise. But more ghastly and terrible still was the slowness of my
progress; for climb as I might, the darkness overhead grew no thinner,
and a new chill as of haunted and venerable mould assailed me. I
shivered as I wondered why I did not reach the light, and would have
looked down had I dared. I fancied that night had come suddenly upon me,
and vainly groped with one free hand for a window embrasure, that I
might peer out and above, and try to judge the height I had once
attained. 

All at once, after an infinity of awesome, sightless, crawling up that
concave and desperate precipice, I felt my head touch a solid thing, and
I knew I must have gained the roof, or at least some kind of floor. In
the darkness I raised my free hand and tested the barrier, finding it
stone and immovable. Then came a deadly circuit of the tower, clinging
to whatever holds the slimy wall could give; till finally my testing
hand found the barrier yielding, and I turned upward again, pushing the
slab or door with my head as I used both hands in my fearful ascent.
There was no light revealed above, and as my hands went higher I knew
that my climb was for the nonce ended; since the slab was the trapdoor
of an aperture leading to a level stone surface of greater circumference
than the lower tower, no doubt the floor of some lofty and capacious
observation chamber. I crawled through carefully, and tried to prevent
the heavy slab from falling back into place, but failed in the latter
attempt. As I lay exhausted on the stone floor I heard the eerie echoes
of its fall, hoped when necessary to pry it up again. 

Believing I was now at prodigious height, far above the accursed
branches of the wood, I dragged myself up from the floor and fumbled
about for windows, that I might look for the first time upon the sky,
and the moon and stars of which I had read. But on every hand I was
disappointed; since all that I found were vast shelves of marble,
bearing odious oblong boxes of disturbing size. More and more I
reflected, and wondered what hoary secrets might abide in this high
apartment so many aeons cut off from the castle below. Then unexpectedly
my hands came upon a doorway, where hung a portal of stone, rough with
strange chiselling. Trying it, I found it locked; but with a supreme
burst of strength I overcame all obstacles and dragged it open inward.
As I did so there came to me the purest ecstasy I have ever known; for
shining tranquilly through an ornate grating of iron, and down a short
stone passageway of steps that ascended from the newly found doorway,
was the radiant
full moon, which I had never before seen save in dreams and in vague
visions I dared not call memories.
 
Fancying now that I had attained the very pinnacle of the castle, I
commenced to rush up the few steps beyond the door; but the sudden
veiling of the moon by a cloud caused me to stumble, and I felt my way
more slowly in the dark. It was still very dark when I reached the
grating - which I tried carefully and found unlocked, but which I did
not open for fear of falling from the amazing height to which I had
climbed. Then the moon came out.  Most demoniacal of all shocks is that
of the abysmally unexpected and grotesquely unbelievable. Nothing I had
before undergone could compare in terror with what I now saw; with the
bizarre marvels that sight implied. The sight itself was as simple as it
was stupefying, for it was merely this: instead of a dizzying prospect
of treetops seen from a lofty eminence, there stretched around me on the
level through the grating nothing less than the solid ground, decked and
diversified by marble slabs and columns, and overshadowed by an ancient
stone church, whose ruined spire gleamed spectrally in the moonlight. 

Half unconscious, I opened the grating and staggered out upon the white
gravel path that stretched away in two directions. My mind, stunned and
chaotic as it was, still held the frantic craving for light; and not
even the fantastic wonder which had happened could stay my course. I
neither knew nor cared whether my experience was insanity, dreaming, or
magic; but was determined to gaze on brilliance and gaiety at any cost.
I knew not who I was or what I was, or what my surroundings might be;
though as I continued to stumble along I became conscious of a kind of
fearsome latent memory that made my progress not wholly fortuitous. I
passed under an arch out of that region of slabs and columns, and
wandered through the open country; sometimes following the visible road,
but sometimes leaving it curiously to tread across meadows where only
occasional ruins bespoke the ancient presence of a forgotten road. Once
I swam across a swift river where crumbling, mossy masonry told of a
bridge long vanished.  Over two hours must have passed before I reached
what seemed to be my goal, a venerable ivied castle in a thickly wooded
park, maddeningly familiar, yet full of perplexing strangeness to me. 

I saw that the moat was filled in, and that some of the well-known
towers were demolished, whilst new wings existed to confuse the
beholder. But what I observed with chief interest and delight were the
open windows - gorgeously ablaze with light and sending forth sound of
the gayest revelry. Advancing to one of these I looked in and saw an
oddly dressed company indeed; making merry, and speaking brightly to one
another. I had never, seemingly, heard human speech before and could
guess only vaguely what was said. Some of the faces seemed to hold
expressions that brought up incredibly remote recollections, others were
utterly alien. I now stepped through the low window into the brilliantly
lighted room, stepping as I did so from my single bright moment of
hope to my blackest convulsion of despair and realization. The nightmare
was quick to come, for as I entered, there occurred immediately one of
the most terrifying demonstrations I had ever conceived. Scarcely had I
crossed the sill when there descended upon the whole company a sudden
and unheralded fear of hideous intensity, distorting every face and
evoking the most horrible screams from nearly every throat. Flight was
universal, and in the clamour and panic several fell in a swoon and were
dragged away by their madly fleeing companions. Many covered their eyes
with their hands, and plunged blindly and awkwardly in their race to
escape, overturning furniture and stumbling against the walls before
they managed to reach one of
the many doors. 

The cries were shocking; and as I stood in the brilliant apartment alone
and dazed, listening to their vanishing echoes, I trembled at the
thought of what might be lurking near me unseen. At a casual inspection
the room seemed deserted, but when I moved towards one of the alcoves I
thought I detected a presence there - a hint of motion beyond the
golden-arched doorway leading to another and somewhat similar room. As I
approached the arch I began to perceive the presence more clearly; and
then, with the first and last sound I ever uttered - a ghastly ululation
that revolted me almost as poignantly as its noxious cause - I beheld in
full, frightful vividness the inconceivable, indescribable, and
unmentionable monstrosity which had by its simple appearance changed a
merry company to a herd of delirious fugitives.  I cannot even hint what
it was like, for it was a compound of all that is unclean, uncanny,
unwelcome, abnormal, and detestable. It was the ghoulish shade of decay,
antiquity, and dissolution; the putrid, dripping eidolon of unwholesome
revelation, the awful baring of that which the merciful earth should
always hide. God knows it was not of this world - or no longer of this
world - yet to my horror I saw in its eaten-away and bone-revealing
outlines a leering, abhorrent travesty on the human shape; and in its
mouldy, disintegrating apparel an unspeakable quality that chilled me
even more.  I was almost paralysed, but not too much so to make a feeble
effort towards flight; a backward stumble which failed to break the
spell in which the nameless, voiceless monster held me. 

My eyes bewitched by the glassy orbs which stared loathsomely into them,
refused to close; though they were mercifully blurred, and showed the
terrible object but indistinctly after the first shock. I tried to raise
my hand to shut out the sight, yet so stunned were my nerves that my arm
could not fully obey my will. The attempt, however, was enough to
disturb my balance; so that I had to stagger forward several steps to
avoid falling. As I
did so I became suddenly and agonizingly aware of the nearness of the
carrion thing, whose hideous hollow breathing I half fancied I could
hear. Nearly mad, I found myself yet able to throw out a hand to ward of
the foetid apparition which pressed so close; when in one cataclysmic
second of cosmic nightmarishness and hellish accident my fingers touched
the rotting outstretched paw of the monster beneath the golden arch. 
I did not shriek, but all the fiendish ghouls that ride the nightwind
shrieked for me as in that same second there crashed down upon my mind a
single fleeting avalanche of soul-annihilating memory. I knew in that
second all that had been; I remembered beyond the frightful castle and
the trees, and recognized the altered edifice in which I now stood; I
recognized, most terrible of all, the unholy abomination that stood
leering before me as I withdrew my sullied fingers from its own.

But in the cosmos there is balm as well as bitterness, and that balm is
nepenthe. In the supreme horror of that second I forgot what had
horrified me, and the burst of black memory vanished in a chaos of
echoing images. In a dream I fled from that haunted and accursed pile,
and ran swiftly and silently in the moonlight. When I returned to the
churchyard place of marble and went down the steps I found the stone
trap-door immovable; but I was not sorry, for I had hated the antique
castle and the trees. Now I ride with the mocking and friendly ghouls on
the night-wind, and play by day amongst the catacombs of Nephren-Ka in
the sealed and unknown valley of Hadoth by the Nile. I know that light
is not for me, save that of the moon over the rock tombs of Neb, nor any
gaiety save the unnamed feasts of Nitokris beneath the Great Pyramid;
yet in my new wildness and freedom I almost welcome the bitterness of
alienage.  For although nepenthe has calmed me, I know always that I am
an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still
men. This I have known ever since I stretched out my fingers to the
abomination within that great gilded frame; stretched out my fingers and
touched a cold and unyielding surface of polished glass.�