The Picture in House - H.P. Lovecraft

The picture in the House by H. P. Lovecraft searches after horror hunt strange far places. For them are the catacombs of Ptolemais and the carven Mausolea of the Nightmare countries. They climb to the mooned towers of ruined rhine castles and falter down the black cobweb steps beneath the scattered stones of forgotten cities. In Asia, the haunted Wood and the desolate Mountain are the shrines, and they linger around the sinister monoliths on uninhabited islands. But the true epicure in the terrible, to whom a new thrill of on a terrible ghastliness is the chief vt and justification of existence, esteems most of all the ancient lonely farmhouses of Beckwoods, New England. For there the dark elements of strength, solitude, grottesqueness,

and ignorance combine to form the perfection of the ideas. Most horrible of all sides are the little, unpainted wooden houses, remote from traveled ways, usually squatted upon some damp, grassy slope or leaning against some giantic outcropping of rock. Two hundred years and more they have leaned or squatted there, while the vines have crawled and the trees have swelled and spread. They are almost hidden now in lawless luxurances of green and guardian shrouds of shadow. But the small paned windows still stares shockingly, as if blinking through a little stupper which was of madness. By dulling the memory of unaterrible things. In such houses have dwelt generations of strange people, whose like the world has never seen, sized

with a gloomy and fanatical belief which exiled them from their kind. Their ancestors sought the wilderness for freedom. There the science of a conquering race indeed flourished, free from the restrictions of their fellows, but cowered in an appalling slavery to the dismal phantasms of their own minds. Diversed from the enlightenment of civilization, the strength of the Spuritans turned into singular channels, and, in their isolation morbid self repression and struggle for life with relentless nature, there came to them dark furtive traits from the prehistoric depths of the cold northern heritage. By necessity, practical and by philosophy's turn, these folks were not beautiful in their sins, airing as

all morsels must, they were forced by their rigid code to seek concealment above all else, so that they came to use less and less taste in what they concealed. Only the silent, sleepy, staring houses in the goods can tell all that has lain hidden since the early days. And they are not communicative, being loth to shake off the drownsiness which helps them forget. Sometimes one feels that it would be merciful to tear down these houses, for they must often dream. It was to a time better tedifice of this description that I was driven one afternoon in November eighteen ninety six by a reign of such chilling coupuousness that any shelter was preferable to exposure. I had been traveling for some time amongst the people of

the Miscatholic Valley in quest of certain genealogical data, and from the remote, devious and problematical nature of my curse, had deemed it convenient to employ a bicycle, despite the lateness of the season. Now I found myself upon an apparently abandoned road, which I had chosen as the shot cut to Arkham. Overtaken by the storm at a point far from any town, and confronted with no refuge save the antique and repellent wooden building, which blinked with blurred windows from between two huge leafless elms, near the foot of a rocky hill. Distant though it is from the remnant of a road. This house nonetheless impressed me unfavorably.

At the very moment I expided, honest, wholesome structures do not stare at travelers so slyly and hauntingly. And in my genealogical researches I had encountered legends of a century before which biased me against places of this kind. Yet the force of the elements was such as to overcome my scruples, and I did not hesitate to wheel my machine up the withy rise to the closed door, which seemed at once so suggestive and secretive. I had somehow taken it for granted that the house was abandoned, Yet as I approached it, I was not so sure, For though the walks were indeed over ground with weeds, they seemed to retain their nature a little too well to argue complete desertion. Therefore, instead of trying the door, I knocked,

feeling as I did so at reputation I could scarcely explain. As I waited on the rough mossy rock which served as a door step, I glanced at the neighboring windows and the panes of the transom above me, and noticed that although all the rattling and almost op and with dirt, they were not broken. The building then must still be inhabited, despite its isolation and general neglect. However, my rapping evoked no response, so after repeating the summons, I tried the rusty latch and found the door unfastened. Inside it was a little vestibule with walls from which the plaster was falling, and through the doorway came a faint but peculiarly hateful odor.

I entered, carrying my bicycle and closed the door. Behind me. I head rose and narrow staircase flanked by a small door, probably leading to a cellar, while to the left and right were closed doors leaning two rooms on the ground floor. Leaning my cycle against the wall, I opened the door at the left and crossed into a small, low ceiled tumber, but dimly lighted by its two dusty windows and furnished in the barest and most primitive possible way. It appeared to be a kind of sitting room, for it had a table and several chairs, and an immense fireplace, above which ticked an antique clock on the mantel. Books and papers were very few, and in the prevailing gloom I could not readily descend the tie. What interested me was

the uniform air of archiasm, as displayed in every visible detail. Most of the houses in this region I had found rich in relics of the past, but here the antiquity was curiously complete, For in all the room I could not discover a single article of definitely post revolutionary date. Had the furnishings been less humble, the place would have been a collector's paradise. As I surveyed this quiet apartment, I felt an increase in the aversion first excited by the bleak exterior of the house. Just what it was that I feared or wroth, I could by no means define.

But something in the whole atmosphere seemed redolent of unhallowed age, of unpleasant crudeness, and of secrets which should be forgotten. I felt disinclined to sit down, and wandered about examining the various articles which I had noticed. The first object of my curiosity was a book of medium size, lying upon the table, and presenting such an antidiluvan aspect that I marveled at beholding it outside a museum or library.

It was bound in leather with metal fittings, and was in an excellent state of preservation, being altogether an unusual sort of volume to encounter in an abode so lowly. When I opened it to the title page, my wonder grew even greater, for it proved to be nothing less rare than Pigafetta's account of the Congo region, written in Latin from the notes of the sailor Lopex and printed at Frankfurt in fifteen ninety eight. I had often heard of this work, with its curious illustrations by the brothers Debry. Hence, for a moment forgot my uneasiness in my desire to turn the pages before me. The engravings were indeed interesting, drawn wholly from imagination and careless descriptions, and represented Negroes

with wide skins and Caucasian features. Nor would I soon have closed the book had not an exceedingly trivial circumstance upset my tired nerves and revived my sensation of disquiet. What annoyed me was merely the persistent way in which the volume tended to fall open of itself at plate twelve, which represented in gruesome detail a butcher's Shop of the Cannibal and six. I experienced some shame at my susceptibility to so slight a thing, But the drawing nevertheless disturbed me, especially in connection with some adjusting passages descriptive of unseixs Gastronomy.

I had turned to a neighboring shelf and was examining its minger literary contents, an eighteenth century Bible, a Pilgrim's Progress of like period, illustrated with grotesque woodcuts and printed by the almanac maker Isiah Thomas, the Rotting Bulk of Cotton, Mother's Magnalia, Christian Americana, and a few other books of evidently equal age. When my attention was aroused by the unmistakable sound of walking in the room overhead. At first astonished and startled considering the lack of response to my recent knocking at the door, I immediately afterward concluded that the walker had just awakened from a sound sleep, and listened with less surprise as the footsteps sounded on the creaking stairs. The tread was heavy, yet seemed to contain

a curious quality of consciousness, a quality which I disliked more because the tread was heavy. When I had entered the room, I had shut the door behind me. Now, after a moment of silence, during which the walker might have been inspecting my bicycle in the hall, I heard a fumbling at the latch, and saw the ponnelled portal swing open again. In the doorway stood a person of such singular appearance that I should have exclaimed aloud, but for the restraints of good breeding. Old white birded and ragged.

My host possessed a countenance and physic which inspired equal wonder and respect. His height could not have been less than six feet, and despite a general air of age and poverty, he was stout and powerful in proportion. His face, almost hidden by a long bird which grew high on the cheeks, seemed abnormally rudy and less wrinkled than one might expect, while over a high forehead fell a shock of white hair. Little fainted by the ears. His blue eyes, though waterreeful, bloodshot, seemed inexplicably keen and burning. But for his horrible uncompteness, the man would have been as distinguished looking as he was impressive. This uncompteness, however, made him offensive despite his face and figure. Of what his clothing

consisted I could hardly tell, for it seemed to me no more than a mass of tatters surmounting a pair of high, heavy boots, and his lack of cleanliness surpassed description. The appearance of this man and the instinctive fear he inspired, prepared me for something like enmity, so that I almost shuddered through surprise and a sense of uncanny incongruity. When he motioned me to a chair and addressed me in a thin, weak voice, full of faming respect and ingratiating hospitality.

His speech was very curious, an extreme form of Yankee dialect I had for long extinct, and I studied it closely. As he sat down opposite me for conversation ketch in the rain beer, he greeted glad he was nigh the house and had the sense to come right in. I calculated I was asleep, else I'd hear yer, I ain't as young, as I asked to be, and I need a powerful sight on aps nowadays traveling, for I hain't seed many folks long this route since they took off the Arkham stage. I replied that I was going to Kham and apologized for my rude entry into his domicile, whereupon he continued, glad to see you, young, sir. New faces is scarce around here, and I hain't got much to cheer me up these days. Guess you hail from busting,

don't ye? I never bender, but I can't tell a town man when I see him. We had one fair district schoolmaster in eighty four, but he quit sudden, and no one never heard on him. Since here, dear my laps into a kind of chuckle, and by no explanation when I questioned him, he seems to be in an abandingly good humor, yet to possess the eccentrics, which one might guess from his glooming For some time he rambled on with an almost feverish genality. When it struck me to ask him how he came by so rare a book.

I speak of fat Ta's Regnum Congo. The effect of this volume had not left me and I felt a certain hesitancy in speaking of it, But curiosity overmastered all the very fears which had steadily accumulated since my first glimpse of this house. To my relief, the question did not seem an awkward one, for the old man answered freely and volubly. Oh, that a freaky book. Captain abbanezer Holt treated me that in sixty eight him as was killed in the war. Something about the name of a Benezer Halt cost me to look up sharply. I had encountered it in my genealogical work, but not in any record since the Revolution. I wondered if my host could help me in the task at which I was laboring, and resolved to ask him about it later on. He continued,

A Beenezer was on Salem merchantmen for years and picked up a sight of queer stuff in every port. He got this in London, I guess he asked her like to buy things at the shops. I was up to his householdst on the hill treading horses. When I see this book. I relished their pictures, so he gave it in on a swap. This a queer book. Here, leave me get on my spectacles. The old man fumbled among his rags, producing a pair of dirty and amazingly antique glasses with small octagonal lenses and steel bows. Donning these, he reached for the volume on the table and turned the pages lovingly. Ebenezer could read a little, or this this Latin, but I can't. I had two or three schoolmasters read me a bit, and passing clark heimed. They said,

got drowned in the pond. Can you make anything out in it? I told him that I could, and translated for his benefit a paragraph near the beginning. If I erd, he was not scholar enough to correct me, for he seemed childishly pleased at my English version. His proximity was becoming rather obnoxious, yet I saw no way to escape without offending him. I was amused at the childish fondness of this ignorant old man for the pictures in a book he could not read, and wondered how much better he could read the few books in English which adorned the room. This revelation of simplicity removed much of the ill defined apprehension I had felt, and I smiled as my host rambled on queer how pictures can set up on the thinking. Take this on here near the front. Hey,

you ever see trees like that with big leaves a flopping over and down? And them men them can't be niggers. They do bit all kinder like injuns, I guess, even if they be in Afriki. Some of these here creatures looks like monkeys or half monkeys and half men. But I never heard on nothing like this on here. He pointed to a fable squitter of the artist, which one might describe as a sort of dragon with the head of an alligator. But now I'll show you the best un over here neither middle. The old man's speed grew out trifle thicker, and his eyes assumed a brighter glow, But his fumbling hands, though seemingly clumsier than before, were entirely adequate to their mission. The book fell open on most of its own occurred, and, as if from frequent

consultation at this place, to the Repellent's twelve plate showing a butcher's shop amongst the ansick cannibals, my sense of restlessness returned, though I did not exhibit it. The especially bizarre thing was that the artists had made his africans look like white men. The limbs and quarters hanging about the walls of the shop were ghastly, while the butcher with his axe was hideously incongruous. But my host seemed to relish the view as much as I disliked it.

What do you think of this? I never seen they like hereabouts? Eh. When I see this, I telled Epholt, that's something to steer ye up and make ye a blood tickle. When I read the scripture about slaying like the Midianists, was slu I kinder think things. But I ain't got no picture of it. Here A body can see all they is to see. I suppose it's sinful, but ain't we all born and living in sin? That feather being chopped up gives me a tickle every time I look at him. I hate I keep looking at him.

See where the butcher cut off his feet? Toss his head on that bench with one arm side of it, and tother arms on the other side or the mid block. As the man mumbled on in his shocking ecstasy, the expression on his hairy, spectacled face became indescribable, but his voice sank rather than mounted. My own sensations can scarcely be recorded. All the terror I had dimly felt before rushed upon me actively and vividly, and I knew that I loathed the ancient and abharent creature so near me with an infinite intensity. His madness, or at least his partial perversion, seemed beyond dispute. He was almost whispering now with a huskin small rible than a scream. And I trembled as I listened, as I says, tis queer? How

pictures set a thinking. Do you know, young sir, I'm right set on this on here Arter, I got the book of Ebb. I has to look at it a lot, especially when I heard passing clerk ran on Sundays in his big wig. Almost I tried something funny here, young said, don't get scared. All I done was to look at their picture afore I killed the ship for market. Killing sheep was kinder more fond Arthur looking at it. The tone of the old man now sank very low, sometimes becoming so faint that his words were hardly audible. I listened to the rain and to the rattling of the blurred small paned windows, and marked a rumbling of approaching thunder quite unusual for the season. Once, a terrific flash and peal shook the frail house to its foundations, but

the whisperers seemed not to notice it. Killing sheep was kinder, more fun. But you know twan't quite satisfying, queer how a craving gets a haltch on? Yet as ye loved the almighty young man. Don't tell nobody, but I swear to the AGOUTI a picture began to make me hungry for victuals. I couldn't rise nor by here sit still?

What's inning here? I didn't do nothing, Only I wondered how twould be if I did. They say it makes blood and flesh and gives ye new life. So I wondered if t wouldn't make a man live longer and longer if twas more the same? But the whisperer never continued. The interruption was not produced by my fright, nor by the rapidly increasing storm. Amidst whose fury I was presently to open my eyes on a smoky solitude of blackened ruins.

It was produced by a very simple, though somewhat unusual happening. The open bookok lay flat between us with the picture starring repulsively upward. As the old man whispered the words more the same, A tiny splattering impact was heard, and something showed on the yellowed paper of the upturned volume.

I thought of the rain, and of a leaky roof. But rain is not red on the butcher's shop of the unsick cannibals, as small red spattering glistened picturesquely, lending vividness to the horror of the engraving. The old man saw it and stopped whispering, even before my expression of horror made it necessary. Saw it and glanced quickly towards the floor of the room he had left an hour before.

I followed his glance, and beheld, just above us, on the loose plaster of the ancient sceinning a large, irregular spot of wet crimson, which seemed to spread even as I viewed it. I did not shriek or move, but merrily shut my eyes. A moment later came the Titanic thunderbolt of thunderbolts blasting at a cursed house of an a terrible secrets, and bringing the oblivion which alone saved my mind. And of the picture in the house

The Picture in House - H.P. Lovecraft

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