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The Color out of Space and Other Mystery Stories / «Цвет из иных миров» и другие мистические истории
Howard Phillips Lovecraft


Abridged & Adapted
Параллельные миры, неразгаданные семейные тайны, злые духи, инопланетные материи, колдовство и магия, проклятые места, неподвластные человеческому разуму видения – мир произведений Лавкрафта наполнен вовсе не одними мифами Ктулху. Его вселенную населяют и другие неизведанные и непостижимые существа, пришедшие из чащи лесов, непроходимых болот, глубоких пещер, таинственных подземелий и даже иных времён и измерений, в которые можно случайно попасть, открыв окно мансарды.

Одну из своих первых историй, «Зверь в пещере», Лавкрафт написал всего в 14 лет, а вошедшие в этот сборник рассказы «Музыка Эриха Цанна» и «Цвет из иных миров» автор считал своими лучшими произведениями. Оригинальные сюжеты мистических историй Лавкрафта легли в основу популярных песен, фильмов и компьютерных игр. По сей день знаменитый писатель Стивен Кинг считает Говарда Лавкрафта своим вдохновителем.

Текст сокращён и адаптирован. Уровень А2.





H.В P. Lovecraft

The Color out of Space and Other Mystery Stories





© Шитова А. В., адаптация, сокращение, словарь, 2020

В© РћРћРћ В«Р?Р” «Антология», 2020





Cool air


So you want to know why I am afraid of draughts of cool air, why I shiver more than others in a cold room, and why I faint when I suddenly feel the evening chill of a mild autumn day. Some people say I react to cold as others react to a bad smell, and maybe it is true. I will tell you about the most horrible thing that has ever happened to me, and you will see for yourselves if it explains my fear.

It is a mistake to think that horror is hidden only in the darkness, silence, and loneliness. I found it in the middle of the day, in the center of a big city, in a shabby boarding house[1 - зд. пансион; дом, в котором сдаются меблированные комнаты (прим. сост.)], with a typical landlady and two workmen by my side.

In the spring of 1923, I had found some hard and low-paid job in the city of New York. I could not pay any big rent, so I began moving from one cheap boarding house to another, looking for a room which would be clean, furnished, and would have a very low price. I soon learned that I had almost no choice, but after some time I finally found a house in West Fourteenth Street which I disliked much less than the others I had seen.

The place was a four-story mansion of brownstone[2 - особняк из песчаника; зажиточный, аристократический дом (прим. сост.)], with too much woodwork and marble. The large rooms, decorated with impossible wallpaper and moldings on the ceilings, were depressingly musty and smelled of cookery. But the floors and the linen were clean, and the hot water was not too often cold or turned off. So I thought it was a bearable place to stay at – at least for a while. The landlady, a Spanish woman named Herrero, did not annoy me with gossip or criticisms of the burning electric light late at night in my third-floor room. My neighbors, mostly Spaniards, too, were quiet and uncommunicative. Only the noise from the cars in the street below was a bit annoying.

I had been there for three weeks when the first strange incident happened. One evening, at about eight, I heard something dripping onto the floor and suddenly realized that I had been smelling the stench of ammonia for some time. I looked around and saw that in one corner, on the side toward the street, my ceiling was wet. To find the source of the trouble and stop it, I ran downstairs to inform the landlady, and she told me that the problem would be solved quickly.

“Doctor Muñoz,” she cried as she rushed upstairs with me. “I think he has spilled his chemicals again. He is too sick to take care of himself, getting sicker and sicker all the time, but he will not ask any other doctor for help. He has a very strange sickness: all day he takes bad-smelling baths, and he should never get warm. His little room is full of bottles and machines. He does not work as a doctor now, but he was great once. Even my father in Barcelona heard of him. He never goes out, only on the roof, and my boy Esteban brings him food, and laundry, and medicines, and chemicals – the ammonia that man uses for keeping himself cool!”

Mrs. Herrero went up the stairs to the fourth floor, and I returned to my room. The ammonia stopped dripping, and as I cleaned it up and opened the window for air, I heard the landlady’s heavy footsteps above me. I had never heard Dr. Muñoz himself, only some sounds of a mechanism. I wondered for a moment what the strange illness of this man might be and why he did not want to get the outside help.

I might have never met Dr. Muñoz, but one morning, as I sat writing in my room, I suddenly had a heart attack[3 - сердечный приступ]. Doctors had warned me about the danger of those attacks before, and I knew there was no time to lose. So, remembering what the landlady had said about the genius doctor, I managed to walk upstairs and knock at his door. My knock was answered in good English by a strange voice coming from the right, asking my name and business[4 - и по какому делу я пришёл]. I explained my situation and the door next to the one I had knocked at opened.

I was greeted by a rush of cool air, and although the day was one of the hottest days in June, I shivered as I stepped into a large apartment. Its rich decoration surprised me: mahogany furniture, old paintings, and many bookshelves. It all looked more like a gentleman’s study than a boarding house bedroom. I now saw that his hall room which was above mine – the “little room full of bottles and machines” which Mrs. Herrero had told me about – was the laboratory of the doctor, and that his main living-room with a large bathroom was in the spacious next room.

The man I saw in front of me was short, but well-built and well-dressed. His noble face, which spoke of intelligence, had a short gray beard, and I could see his dark eyes behind an old-fashioned pince-nez[5 - пенсне – очки без дужек, держащиеся на переносице (прим. сост.)] on his nose. Thick, well-cut hair, which meant regular visit of a barber, was parted above his high forehead, and the whole picture of him was of superior blood and breeding[6 - голубых кровей и благородного происхождения].

But as I saw Dr. Muñoz in that rush of cool air, I felt an unexplainable dislike for that man. Maybe it was his pale and gray complexion or coldness of touch that was the reason for this feeling, but probably these things were due to the man’s unknown serious illness. Or maybe it was just that cold which was so strange to feel on such a hot summer day.

However, my dislike was soon forgotten in admiration because the strange doctor was extremely skillful despite the ice-coldness and shakiness of his pale hands. He examined me and clearly understood my needs. Then in his weak voice he told me that he was the worst of enemies to death, but, unfortunately, lost all his friends in a lifetime battle with it, using unusual experiments. He was something of a fanatic, and he talked and talked about it while mixing drugs which he brought from the smaller laboratory room.

His voice was queer but soothing. I could not even hear his breathing as he talked so fast. He tried to distract my mind from my own problems by speaking of his theories and experiments. I remember him telling me about my weak heart, and that a man’s will and consciousness can be stronger than organic life itself. If a body is healthy and carefully preserved, it may keep its functions despite the most serious problems, defects, or even the absence of some organs. He might, he said, some day teach me to live without any heart at all! About his own illness he said that it needed constant cold. Any rise in temperature could actually kill him, and so the temperature was kept at some 55° or 56° Fahrenheit[7 - примерно +1 3 °C (прим. сост.)] by a system of ammonia cooling and the engine whose noise I had often heard in my own room below.

Feeling much better in a very short time, I left the cold place as a true admirer and follower of the genius doctor. After that I visited him quite often, listening to him while he told me of secret researches and terrible results. I shivered a bit when I examined the strange and shockingly ancient books on his shelves. By then I was almost cured of my heart problems by his skillful manipulations. He told me he preferred using rare medieval methods. Those methods had the power to affect the nervous system from which organic impulses had gone. He also told me about his older friend, Dr. Torres, who had a great illness, and how he had done his earlier experiments with him eighteen years before. The methods of healing he used had been most extraordinary, and its processes were not welcomed by older and more conservative colleagues. Unfortunately, soon after Dr. Muñoz had saved his colleague, he himself fell victim[8 - стал жертвой]to the enemy he had fought.

As the weeks passed, I was sorry to see that my new friend was slowly getting physically weaker and weaker, as Mrs. Herrero had said. His complexion was grayer than usual, his voice became hollow, his movements were slow, and his mind was blurred. He did not seem to notice this sad change, and little by little my conversations with him started bringing back that slight dislike I had felt at first.

He had also developed strange whims, for example, he started using exotic spices and Egyptian incense till his room smelled like a tomb of a pharaoh. At the same time, he demanded even colder air, and with my help he increased the ammonia in his refrigerating machine till he could keep the temperature as low as 40° or 34° and finally even 28°[9 - +4 °C, +1 °C и, под конец, даже -2 °C]. The bathroom and laboratory, of course, were less chilly, or all the water there would have frozen and the chemical processes would have stopped. Yet, a kind of growing horror seemed to possess the doctor. He now talked of death all the time, but laughed bitterly when things such as burial or funeral were mentioned.

All in all, he became a sad and even depressing companion, but I was grateful to him for helping me, and I could not leave him to the strangers around him. I carefully dusted his room every day and did much of his shopping, though some chemicals he ordered from druggists puzzled me.

There seemed to be an unexplained atmosphere of panic around his apartment. The whole house, as I have said, had a musty smell, but the smell in his room was the worst, despite all the spices and incense he used. The stench of chemical baths which he was constantly taking was unbearable. I thought that it must be connected with his illness and often wondered what that illness might be. The appearance and the voice of the doctor became frightful, so even Mrs. Herrero crossed herself when she looked at the doctor and left him all to me, not letting her son Esteban do chores for him anymore. When I suggested bringing in other doctors, Dr. Muñoz became furious. Although he avoided any emotions, he strongly refused to stay in his bed. He seemed determined to defy the death demon – his ancient enemy. He then stopped eating anything and lived on his mental power[10 - сила духа] alone.

He started writing some long documents, which he carefully sealed, and instructed me to send them after his death to certain people whom he named. As it happened, I burned all these papers unopened.

Then, in the middle of October, suddenly came the horror of horrors. One night, at about eleven, the pump of the refrigerating machine broke down, so that in three hours the process of ammonia cooling became impossible. Dr. Muñoz called me, and I tried to repair the engine, but my efforts were useless. When I had brought in a mechanic from an all-night garage, we learned that nothing could be done till morning because a new spare part was needed. The doctor’s rage and fear ruined the last of his poor health. A spasm made him cover his eyes with his hands and rush into the bathroom. He later came out with his face bandaged, and I never saw his eyes again.

The apartment was now getting warmer and warmer, and at about 5 a. m. the doctor went to the bathroom, ordering me to bring him all the ice I could get at the all-night drugstores and cafeterias. As I returned from my trips and lay the ice before the closed bathroom door, I could hear the doctor shouting, “More, more!”

Then another warm day came, and the shops opened one by one. I asked Esteban to help the doctor with the ice while I would go and find the pump spare parts and the workmen, but instructed by his mother, he absolutely refused.

Finally, I hired a man whom I met in the street to keep bringing the ice from a little shop. The hours went by in vain as I was telephoning different companies and running from place to place to find the right spare part. Finally, at about 1:30 p. m., I returned to my boarding house with the necessary equipment and two intelligent mechanics. I had done all I could, and hoped I was in time.

But the house was in black terror. Unthinkable stench was coming from under the doctor’s closed door. The man I had hired, it seemed, had run away screaming soon after his second delivery of ice. The doctor’s door was locked from the inside, and there was no sound except of slow dripping.

I spoke with Mrs. Herrero and the workmen, and at first, despite our fear, we decided to break down the door, but the landlady found a way to turn the key from the outside with some wire. We had opened the doors and windows of all the other rooms, and now, with our noses covered by handkerchiefs, we entered the doctor’s room.

A kind of dark, slimy trail led from the open bathroom door to the hall, and then to the desk, where there was a terrible little pool. Something was written there in pencil on a piece of paper – the doctor’s last words. Then the trail led to the couch and ended unspeakably.

What was, or had been, on the couch – I cannot describe. But here is what I saw on that paper before I burned it while the landlady and two mechanics rushed from that hellish place to the nearest police station. The sickening words seemed unbelievable, yet I confess that I believed them then. I honestly do not know if I believe them now. There are things about which it is better not to talk, and all I can say is that now I hate the smell of ammonia and can faint at a draught of unusually cool air.

“The end,” it was written on the paper, “is here. No more ice – the man saw me and ran away. Warmer every minute, and the tissues can’t last. I think you understood what I said about the will and the nerves, and the preserved body after the organs stopped working. It was a good idea, but it couldn’t last forever. I didn’t realize it. Dr. Torres had understood it, but the shock killed him. He couldn’t stand what he had to do when he got my letter. He had put me in a strange, dark place and nursed me back, but the organs would never work again. So it had to be done my way – artificial preservation – because, you see, I died that time, eighteen years ago.”




The tree on the hill



1

Southeast of Hampden, near the Salmon River, there is a range of rocky hills on which no one lives. The canyons are too deep and the slopes are too steep for anyone except the cows and sheep. The last time I visited Hampden, the region known as Hell’s Acres was part of the Blue Mountain Forest Reserve. There are no roads linking this place with the outside world, and the local people will tell you that it is indeed an evil spot. There is a local superstition that the area is haunted, but by what or by whom no one seems to know. Natives do not go walking in those hills because they believe the stories told by the Nez Perce Indians, who have avoided the region for generations, because, according to them, it is a playground of devils from the Outside. These tales made me very curious.

My first visit – and my last, thank God! – to those hills was while Theunis and I were living in Hampden the summer of 1938. He was writing an article on Egyptian mythology, and I was walking alone much of the time. We lived in a small house on Beacon Street.

On the morning of June 23rd, I was walking in those strangely shaped hills, which at first had seemed very ordinary. I must have been about seven miles south of Hampden before I noticed anything unusual. I was climbing a grassy slope of a deep canyon when I saw an area totally without any vegetation. It went southward over many hills and valleys. At first I thought the spot had been burned in the previous fall, but after examining the ground, I found no signs of a fire. The nearby slopes and ravines looked terribly scarred as if some gigantic torch had blasted them, burning all vegetation. And yet there was no sign of a fire…

I moved on over rich, black soil in which no grass grew. As I went for the center of this deserted area, I began to notice a strange silence. There were no birds, no rabbits, and even the insects seemed to have left the place. I stood on a little hill and tried to guess at the size of that strange region. Then I saw the lone tree.

It stood on a hill, which was higher than the other hills, and attracted the attention because it was so unexpected. I had seen no trees for miles: many bushes grew in the ravines, but there had been no big trees. It was strange to find one standing on that hill.

I crossed two canyons before I came to it, and a surprise waited for me. It was not a pine tree, nor a fir tree, nor an ash tree. I had never, in all my life, seen a tree which I could compare with it – for which I am thankful!

More than anything it looked like an oak. It had a huge, twisted trunk, a yard in diameter, and the large branches began spreading about seven feet from the ground. The leaves were round and strangely alike in size and design. It might have been a tree from a painting, but I swear to God it was real. I will always know that it was real, despite what Theunis said later.

I remember that I looked at the sun and thought it was about ten o’clock in the morning, but I did not look at my watch. The day was getting warm, and I sat for a while in the welcome shade of the huge tree. Then I noticed the grass that grew under it – another strange phenomenon when I remembered the deserted area through which I had passed. A wild maze of hills and ravines surrounded me on all sides, although the hill on which I sat was rather higher than any other within miles. I looked far to the east and I jumped to my feet, startled and amazed. Through a blue haze in the distance I could see the Bitterroot Mountains! There is no other range of snow-capped peaks[11 - снежные вершины] within three hundred miles of Hampden, and I knew that I shouldn’t be seeing them at all from this hill. For several minutes I looked at the peaks, and then I became sleepy. I lay in the grass under the tree. I put down my camera, took off my hat, and relaxed, staring at the sky through the green leaves. Finally, I closed my eyes.

Then a curious thing happened to me: I saw a cloudy vision of something unfamiliar. I thought I saw a great temple by a sea where three suns shone in the pale red sky. The temple, or a vast tomb, was of a strange color – a nameless blue-violet shade. Large beasts flew in the cloudy sky, and I seemed to hear the flapping of their heavy wings. I went nearer the stone temple, and a huge doorway appeared in front of me. Within that doorway were shadows that seemed to try to suck me inside that awful darkness. I thought I saw three burning eyes in the void of the doorway, and I screamed with mortal fear. In that depth, I knew, was a living hell even worse than death. I screamed again. The vision faded.

I saw the round leaves and the blue sky again. Trembling and covered in cold sweat, I tried to get up. I wanted to run away, to run from that evil tree on the hill, but then I calmed down and thought it was absurd. Never had I dreamed anything so realistic, so horrifying. What had caused the vision? I had been reading several of Theunis’ books on ancient Egypt… I wiped my forehead and decided that it was time for lunch.

Then I had an idea. I would take a few photos of the tree, for Theunis. They might interest him. Perhaps I would tell him about the dream… Opening my camera, I took some shots of the tree and the landscape seen from the tree, including the peaks.

Putting the camera away, I looked at my cushion of soft grass. Had that spot under the tree some enchantment? I did not want to leave it.

I looked up at the curious round leaves. I closed my eyes. A breeze stirred the branches, and their soft music made me sleepy again. And suddenly I saw the pale red sky and the three suns. The land of three shadows! Again there was the great temple. I seemed to be floating on the air, exploring the wonders of another world! The temple frightened me, and I knew that no man on earth had ever seen this place in his wildest dreams.

Again the vast doorway opened before me, and I was sucked into that black cloud. I seemed to be staring at a void I cannot describe: a dark, bottomless gulf with nameless shapes and creatures.

I was terribly afraid. I screamed and screamed, and felt that I would soon go mad. Then in my dream I ran and ran in terror, but I did not know what I was running from. I left that horrible temple and that hellish void because I knew I had to return…

At last my eyes opened. I was not under the tree. I was lying on a rocky slope, my clothes torn, my hands bleeding. I stood up in pain and recognized the spot – it was the slope from where I had first seen the blasted area! I must have walked miles – unconscious! I could not see the tree, and I was glad.

I looked at the sun. Late afternoon! Where had I been? I took out my watch. It had stopped at 10:34…


2

“So you have the shots?” Theunis asked, looking at me across the breakfast table. Three days had passed by since my return from Hell’s Acres. I had told him about the dream under the tree, and he had laughed.

“Yes,” I said. “They came last night. Haven’t had a chance to open them yet. Study them. Perhaps you’ll change your mind.”

Theunis smiled, drinking his coffee. I gave him the unopened envelope, and he quickly took out the pictures. He looked at the first one, and the smile faded from his face.

“My God, man! Look at this!”

I took the glossy picture. There was nothing special on it, so I could not understand what made Theunis so excited. It was the first picture of the tree. There it was, standing on the hill, with the jungle of grass where I had lain below it. In the distance were the snow-capped mountains.

“Here it is,” I said. “The proof of my story.”

“Look at it!” Theunis cried. “The shadows – there are three for every rock, bush, and tree!”

He was right. Below the tree lay three shadows. Suddenly, I realized that there was an abnormal element the picture. The leaves on the thing were too lush, while the trunk was twisted in the most unusual shapes. Theunis put the picture on the table.

“There is something wrong,” I muttered. “The tree I saw didn’t look like that…”

“Are you sure?” Theunis asked. “The fact is, you may have seen many things not recorded on this film.”

“It shows more than I saw!”

“That’s right. There is something terribly wrong with this landscape. Something I can’t understand. The tree seems to be too unreal to be natural!” He took the other pictures and looked through them.

I took the picture again and felt some uncertainty and strangeness. The flowers and grass grew in different directions. The tree seemed too clouded, but I noticed the huge branches that were ready to fall over, yet did not fall. And also many overlapping shadows… They were very queer shadows – too long or short when compared to the plants they fell below. The landscape hadn’t shocked me the day of my visit… But now there was an abnormal dark suggestion in it, something distant like the stars beyond the galaxy.

“Did you say you saw three suns in your dream?” Theunis asked.

I nodded, puzzled. Then it dawned on me[12 - Р? тут РґРѕ меня дошло.]. My fingers trembled slightly as I stared at the picture again. My dream! Of course!

“The others are just like it,” Theunis said. “That same suggestion. I should be able to catch it, to see it in its real light, but it is too… Perhaps later I will figure it out, if I look at it long enough.”

We sat in silence for some time. A thought came to me suddenly: I should visit the tree again. “Let’s take a trip. I think I can take you there in half a day.”

“You’d better stay away,” said Theunis, thoughtfully. “I doubt if you could find the place again even if you wanted to.”

“Nonsense!” I cried. “Surely, with these photos…”

“Did you see any familiar landmarks in them?”

He was right. After looking through the shots carefully, I had to admit that there were none.

“A perfectly normal picture of a spot from nowhere. Seeing mountains from this low place is impossible, but wait!” Theunis muttered. He got off the chair and ran out of the room. I could hear him moving in our library, cursing loudly. Soon he came back with an old book. He opened it and looked at the odd characters.

“What is that?” I asked.

“This is an early English translation of the Chronicle of Nath, written by Rudolf Yergler, a German mystic and alchemist who borrowed some of his lore from Hermes Trismegistus, the ancient Egyptian sorcerer. There is a passage here that might interest you and help you understand why this tree is even further from the natural than you suspect. Listen.”

“So in the year of the Black Goat there came to Nath a shadow that should not be on Earth, and that had no form known to the eyes of Earth. And it fed on the souls of men. These poor men were blinded with dreams till the horror and the endless night lay upon them. They could not see what that Shadow was because the Shadow took false shapes that men know or dream of, and freedom seemed waiting only in the Land of the Three Suns. But it was told by priests of the Old Book that he who could see the Shadow’s true shape and live after seeing it might be able to send it back to the starless void. This could be done only through the Gem which Ka-Nefer, the High-Priest, kept sacred in the temple, but it was lost with Phrenes. Yet, at last, the hungry Shadow left Nath – only to come back again in the next year of the Black Goat.”

Theunis paused while I stared at him. Finally he spoke. “Now, I think you can guess how it all links up. According to the old legends, this is the so-called �Year of the Black Goat’ when certain horrors from the Outside are supposed to visit the earth and do harm. We don’t know what they are like, but they could be like strange mirages and hallucinations. I don’t like your story or the pictures. It may be pretty bad, and I warn you to be careful. But first I must try to do what old Yergler says. Fortunately, the old Gem he mentions has been found, and I know where I can get it. We must use it on the photographs and see what we see, and maybe make sketches. The Gem is more or less like a lens or prism, though one can’t take photographs with it. There’s a bit of danger, and the looker’s sanity might be harmed because the real shape of the shadow isn’t pleasant and doesn’t belong on this earth. But it would be a lot more dangerous not to do anything about it. So if you value your life and sanity, stay away from that hill and from the thing you think is a tree on it.”

I was more scared than ever. “How can there be someone from the Outside here?” I cried. “How do we know that such things exist?”

“You think in terms of[13 - Ты мыслишь в категориях / в рамках] this small planet Earth,” Theunis said. “Surely it cannot measure the whole universe. There may be invisible creatures we have never dreamed of right under our noses. Modern science is studying the unknown and proving that the mystics were not so wrong.”

Suddenly I knew that I did not want to look at the picture again; I wanted to destroy it. I wanted to run from it. Theunis was suggesting something beyond… A trembling, cosmic fear gripped me and drew me away from the hideous picture because I was afraid I would recognize some object in it…

I looked at my friend. He was reading the ancient book with a strange expression on his face. Then he sat up straight. “Enough for today. I’m tired of this endless guessing and wondering. I must try to get the gem from the museum where it is and do what is to be done.”

“Will you have to go to Croydon?” I asked.

He nodded.


3

In the next two weeks I wanted to return to the tree of dreams and freedom and at the same time I feared the thing and all connected with it. Meanwhile, Theunis was busy with some investigation of the strangest nature, something which involved a mysterious trip and a return in greatest secrecy. On the telephone he told me that he had somewhere found the object mentioned in the ancient book as “The Gem,” and that he was trying to use it on the photographs I had left with him. He spoke of “refraction,” “polarization,” “unknown angles of space and time” and of building a special box.

Sixteen days later I got the shocking message from the hospital in Croydon. Theunis was there and wanted to see me at once. He had some strange seizure. He was found unconscious by friends who had come into his house after hearing cries of mortal fear. Though still weak, he wanted to tell me something. The hospital told me this much over the phone, and in half an hour I was at my friend’s bed. He first asked the nurses to leave in order to speak with me in private[14 - наедине].

“I saw it!” he said. “You must destroy them all – those pictures. I sent it back by seeing it. That tree will never be seen on the hill again – at least for thousands of years till the next

Year of the Black Goat. You are safe now, and the mankind is safe.”

He paused, then continued.

“But you need to do something. Take the Gem out of the black box and put it in the safe. It must go back where it came from because there’s a time when it may be needed to save the world. They won’t let me leave yet, but I can rest if I know it’s safe. Don’t look through the Gem because it can do the same thing to you as it did to me. And burn those damned photographs!”

In another half an hour I was at his house and looking at the black box on the library table. And next to the box I saw the envelope of pictures I had taken. It did not take me long to examine the box with my earliest picture of the tree at one end and a strange amber-colored crystal at the other. I felt a mixture of emotions. Even after I had put the picture in the envelope with the rest of the photos, I had a wish to save it, and look at it, and run up the hill toward its original again. But the picture also scared me, so I quickly burned the envelope with all the photographs in the fireplace.

Strangely, I never wanted to look through the box before taking out the gem and the photograph. What was shown in the picture by the antique crystal’s lens was not – I was sure of it – what a normal brain could take. Whatever it was, I had been close to it, had been under its spell on that distant hill in the form of a tree and an unfamiliar landscape. And to sleep better at night, I did not wish to know what it had been.

Unfortunately, something had caught my eye[15 - привлекло моё внимание / мой взгляд упал на] before I left the room. It was a paper lying among other papers on the table beside the black box. All papers were blank, but that one had a drawing in pencil. Suddenly I remembered what Theunis had once said about sketching the horror seen through the gem. Out of curiosity, I looked at the drawing and straight into the dark and forbidden design – and fainted.

Since then I have never been quite the same. I will never describe fully what I saw. After a while, I managed to get up and throw the drawing into the dying fire. Then I walked through the quiet streets to my home, thanking God I had not looked through the crystal at the photograph and praying to be able to forget the terrible drawing of Theunis.

Only a few basic elements of the landscape were in the thing. For the most part, the view was clouded by some kind of vapor. Every object that might have been familiar was a part of something vague and unknown – something alien and monstrous, and greater than any human eye could see.

In the landscape itself, where I had seen the twisted tree, there was only a terrible hand with fingers reaching for something on the ground. And right below it I thought I saw an outline in the grass where a man had lain. But the sketch was quick, and I could not be sure.




The beast in the cave


The horrible conclusion I had made was now an awful reality. I was lost, completely lost, in the vast maze of the Mammoth Cave. I turned left and right, but I could not see in any direction any guidepost to show me the way to the right path out of the cave. I thought I would never see the light of day, or the pleasant hills of the beautiful world outside.

The last hope had left me. Yet, I was an educated man, so I did not panic. I had often read of the poor victims who went immediately crazy and hysterical in such situations. I had none of this. I stood calm and quiet when I clearly realized that I had lost my way. I also suspected I had probably walked far beyond the limits of a usual search. If I must die, I decided, then this could be as good a place as any.

My disaster was the result of no one’s fault except my own. Without telling the guide, I had left the group of sightseers and wandered for over an hour in the forbidden parts of the cave. And now I could not find the way back to my companions.

The light of my torch had already begun to fade. Soon I would be surrounded by the total blackness of the earth. As I stood in the dying light, I wondered what exactly my end would be. Starving would kill me, I was sure of this. I remembered the stories which I had heard of the colony of people, who had gone to live in a gigantic cave to find health from the air of the underground world, with its steady temperature and peaceful quiet. Instead, they had found death in strange circumstances. I had seen the sad remains of their cottages as I passed them by with the other sightseers, and had wondered what unnatural effect this cave would have on me. Now, I told myself, I had a chance to find it out.

As the last light of my torch faded, I decided to make sure[16 - убедиться / удостовериться]I had done everything possible to escape. So I started shouting loudly in the vain hope of attracting the attention of the guide. Yet, as I called, I believed in my heart that my cries were useless, and that my voice, reflected by the black maze, could not be heard by anyone.

Suddenly, however, I was startled because I thought that I heard the sound of soft steps on the rocky floor of the cave. Would I be saved so soon? Was it the guide who had noticed my absence and was now looking for me in this limestone maze? The steps were coming closer. I was going to shout again when I froze and listened in horror. In the total silence of the cave these footsteps were not like those of any mortal man. The steps of the guide wearing boots would have sounded like blows. These ones were soft, as of the paws of a cat. Besides, at times, when I listened carefully, I seemed to hear four instead of two feet.

I was now sure that I had attracted some wild beast by my cries, maybe a mountain lion which had lived within the cave. Perhaps, I thought, God had chosen for me a quicker death than that of hunger. Yet the instinct of self-preservation[17 - инстинкт самосохранения] was waking up inside me, and I decided to fight for my life. So I became very quiet, in the hope that the unknown beast would lose its way[18 - потеряется / заблудится / собьётся со следа] and pass me by. But it was hopeless because the strange footsteps were coming closer. Perhaps the animal could smell me from a great distance.

I needed a weapon to protect myself against an unseen attack in the dark, so I picked two pieces of rock which were lying around me on the floor of the cave, and, holding one in each hand, I waited. Meanwhile, the paws came near. Certainly, the behavior of the creature was very strange. Most of the time, I heard four footsteps, yet sometimes I thought I could hear only two moving feet. I wondered what animal it was. I thought it could be some unfortunate beast who had also lost its way in that cave. It had been eating fish, bats, and rats of the cave. I tried to imagine the physical features of the beast. But then I remembered that even if I killed it, I would never be able to see it. My torch had long since died[19 - давно потух / погас], and I did not have any matches. Nearer, nearer, the dreadful footsteps came. I wanted to scream, but I could not. I was terrified and frozen to the spot. I doubted if my arm would throw the stone at the oncoming thing when the right moment came.

Now the steady pat, pat of the steps was close, very close. I could hear the heavy breathing of the animal and realized that it must have come from a great distance and was tired. Suddenly the spell broke. My right hand threw the piece of limestone toward that point in the darkness from which the heavy breathing came. I must have missed because I heard the thing jump at a distance away, where it seemed to pause.

Then I threw my second stone, this time quite successfully because I listened with joy as the creature fell down and never moved again. Relieved, I leaned against the wall. Then I heard heavy breathing in gasps and realized that I had just wounded the creature. I had no wish to examine the thing. I did not come near the body, nor did I throw more stones at it. Instead, I ran at full speed in what was, as far as I could guess, the direction from which I had come. Suddenly, I heard a sound, and then regular sounds. This time there was no doubt. It was the guide. And then I shouted, yelled, screamed with joy as I saw the faint light of a torch. I ran to meet him, and before I knew it, I was on the ground at the feet of the guide, babbling, telling my terrible story, and at the same time thanking God and my savior. Some time later I became my normal self. The guide had noticed my absence when the group returned to the entrance of the cave and started checking all the by-passages, looking for me for about four hours.

By the time he had told me this, I, brave in his company, told him about the strange beast which I had wounded. It was only a short distance back in the darkness, and I suggested that we go and see what kind of creature my victim was. So we went deeper into the cave, to the scene of my terrible experience. Soon we found a white object on the floor – an object even whiter than the limestone itself. The monster appeared to be a large ape. Its hair was snow-white, mostly on the head, where it was so long that it fell over the shoulders. The face was turned away from us, as the creature lay almost face down. The limbs looked strange, which explained why the beast used sometimes all four, and sometimes two for its movement. There were long claws on the tips of its fingers or toes. The hands or feet were crooked, probably due to living in the cave for so long. There seemed to be no tail.

The breathing had now become very feeble, and the guide had taken out his gun to shoot the creature, when a sudden sound made by the beast made him drop the weapon. The sound was difficult to describe. It was not like the normal note of any known species, and I wondered if this was the result of living in complete silence for so long. The sound continued, and then, all of a sudden, a spasm of energy seemed to pass through the body of the beast. With a jerk, the white body rolled over and turned its face to us. For a moment, I was so shocked that I did not see anything else except the eyes. They were black, deep black. As I looked more closely, I saw that they were set in a face differently than those of the average ape. The nose was quite big too. As we looked at it, the thick lips opened, and several sounds came out, after which the thing relaxed in death.

The guide was trembling so violently that the torch light shook, casting weird shadows[20 - отбрасывая странные тени] on the walls around us. I did not move, but stood still, my horrified eyes fixed on the floor.

Eventually, fear left, and then there was only wonder and awe because the sounds made by that figure that lay dead on the limestone had told us the terrible truth. The creature I had killed, the strange beast of the cave was, or had once been, a man!




The music of Erich Zann


Many times I looked carefully at the maps of the city, but I could never find the Rue d’Auseil on them again. I looked at the modern maps and also at the old maps because I know that street names change. I have personally explored the place – every street, every lane, with any name, which could possibly be the street I knew as the Rue d’Auseil. But, sadly, I still haven’t found the house, the street, or even the district, where during the last months of my life as a student at the university, I heard the music of Erich Zann.

My memory might be broken, I have to say, because back then, during my stay in the Rue d’Auseil, my health – both physical and mental – was quite poor. I remember that I never invited any of my friends there. But the fact that I cannot find the place again is very strange and puzzling because it was within a short walk of the university. There also were certain specific landmarks which could hardly be forgotten by anyone who had been there. Yet I have never met a person who has seen the Rue d’Auseil.

The Rue d’Auseil went across a dark river bordered by warehouses. There was a bridge of dark stone, and it was always shadowy along that river as if the smoke of the factories shut out the sun. The river had an evil stench which I have never smelled anywhere else, and which may some day help me to find it. I am sure I will recognize it at once. Beyond the bridge there were narrow cobbled streets which went up quite steeply right before the Rue d’Auseil.

I have never seen another street as narrow and steep as the Rue d’Auseil. It was closed to all transport because in several places it consisted of steps and ended at the top in a wall. It was mostly cobbled, but sometimes there was just bare earth. The houses were tall, very old, and crazily leaning in all directions. Sometimes two houses on the opposite sides lent forward almost like an arch. There also were a few overhead bridges from house to house across the street.

The people who lived on that street impressed me very much. At first I thought it was because they were all silent and shy, but later I decided it was because they were all very old. I don’t know how I came to live on such a street, but I was not myself when I moved there. I had been living in many poor places because I never had much money until at last I found that ancient house in the Rue d’Auseil, kept by the paralytic Blandot. It was the third house from the top of the street and the tallest of them all.

My room was on the fifth floor – the only inhabited room there because the house was almost empty. On the night I arrived I heard strange music from the attic above, and the next day asked old Blandot about it. He told me it was an old German viol-player, a strange dumb[21 - зд. немой] man who wrote his name as Erich Zann, and who played evenings in a cheap theatre orchestra. Blandot also added that Zann’s wish to play in the night after returning from the theatre was the reason he had chosen this isolated attic room whose single window was the only point on the street from which a person could look over the dead-end wall at the panorama beyond.

After that, I heard Zann every night. He kept me awake, but I was fascinated by the strangeness of his music. I knew little of this art myself, but I was sure that his music had no relation to music I had heard before. I thought he was a highly original composer, a genius. The longer I listened, the more I was fascinated. Then, one week later, I finally decided to meet with the old man.

One night, as Zann was returning from his work, I stopped him in the hallway and told him that I would like to know him and be with him while he played. He was a small, thin, bent person. He had shabby clothes and an ugly face, and his head was almost bald. At first, my words made him angry and frightened. But then my friendliness softened him, and he grudgingly showed to me to follow him up the dark and creaking attic stairs.

His room was on the west side of the attic. Its only curtained window was facing the high wall at the end of the street. The room was big in size, but mostly because it was almost empty. Of furniture there was only a narrow iron bed, a dirty washstand, a small table, a large bookcase, a music-rack, and three old chairs. Sheets of music were lying everywhere on the floor. The walls were bare, and dust and cobwebs made the place seem uninhabited. Clearly, Erich Zann’s world of beauty lay in some far cosmos of his imagination.

Showing me to sit down, the dumb man closed the door, locked it, and lighted a candle. He took his viol and sat in one of the chairs. He did not use the music-rack, but played from memory and enchanted me for more than an hour with tunes I had never heard before. It is impossible to describe them. But in them I didn’t hear any of the queer notes I had heard from my room below on other nights.

I had remembered those weird notes, and I had often hummed and whistled them to myself. So when the old man put down his bow, I asked him if he could play some of them. As I began saying that, the wrinkled face of the musician started showing the same strange mixture of anger and fright which I had noticed when I first met him. I was insistent and even tried to whistle a few of the tunes which I had listened to the night before. But in a moment, when the dumb musician recognized the notes I whistled, his face suddenly changed, and his long, cold, thin hand reached out to make me stop. As he did this, he glanced toward the window, as if he was afraid of someone. It was absurd because the attic was high above all the other roofs, and surely no one could ever get in through that window from which, as the concierge had told me, one could see over the wall at the end of the street.

The old man’s glance suddenly made me want to look out over the wide panorama of the roofs and city lights beyond, which only this old musician could see. I walked toward the window and wanted to draw the curtains aside, when the frightened old man stopped me again. This time he showed me toward the door and even tried to nervously drag me there with both hands. Furious, I ordered him to let go of me and told him that I would leave at once. He calmed down, but then, seeing my anger, he led me to a chair, this time in a friendly way. He went to the little table and wrote something with a pencil in the poor French of a foreigner.

The note which he finally gave me was an apology. Zann said that he was old, lonely, and had strange fears and nervousness, connected with his music and with other things. He had liked it when I was listening to his music and wanted me to come again. But he could not play to me his weird notes and could not stand hearing them from another person. Also he did not like it when other people touched things in his room. He had not known that I could hear his playing in my room and now asked me if I wanted to take another room where I would not hear him in the night. He would then, he wrote, help me with the rent.

As I sat reading the note and trying to understand his poor French, I felt more and more sorry for the old man. He was suff ering physically and mentally, just like I was, and my studies had taught me to be kind. In the silence of the room there came a slight sound from the window – it was probably just the wind moving the shutters – and for some reason I was so startled that I almost jumped, as did Erich Zann. So when I had finished reading, I shook the old man’s hand and left as a friend.

The next day Blandot gave me a more expensive room on the third floor. There was no one on the fourth floor.

Soon I found out that Zann’s wish for my company was not as great as it had seemed while he was telling me to move down from the fifth floor. He did not ask me to visit him, and, when I came, he looked annoyed and played very little. This was always at night because in the day he slept. I did not like him much, but the attic room and the weird music were still fascinating for me. I also wanted to look out that window, over the wall and down at the roofs which must be there. Once I even went up to the attic during theatre hours, when Zann was away, but the door was locked.

What I still could do was to listen to the old man playing at night. At first I tiptoed up to my old fifth floor, and then I even climbed the last creaking stairs to the attic door. There, in the narrow hallway, I often heard mysterious sounds which filled me with horror. The sounds were not horrible, no, but their vibrations were something not of this world, and sometimes it seemed to me they were produced by more than one player. Of course, Erich Zann was a genius. As the weeks passed, the playing became wilder and wilder, while the old musician looked more and more exhausted. He did not want me to visit him at any time now, and even ignored me when we met on the stairs.

Then one night, as I listened at the door, I heard the viol explode into a madness of sounds, and from behind that door came a horrible cry of the old man. I knocked at the door several times, but there was no answer. I waited and waited in the black hallway, shivering with cold and fear, until I heard the poor musician trying to get up from the floor with the help of a chair. I thought he had fainted, and so I started knocking and calling his name at the same time. Finally, I heard Zann walk to the window and close the shutters, then to the door which he unlocked to let me in. I could tell that this time he was really glad to see me.

Shaking violently, the old man led me to one chair, while he sat into another. His viol and bow lay on the floor. He sat for some time as if listening to something. Then, satisfied, he walked to the table and wrote a short note. He gave it to me and returned to the table where he began to write something very quickly. The note asked me in the name of God to wait there while he wrote in German about all the strange things happening to him. I waited as the dumb man was writing down his story.

About an hour later, while I still waited and while the old musician continued to write, I saw Zann suddenly startle as from a horrible shock. He was looking at the curtained window and listening carefully. Then I thought I heard a sound myself. It was not a horrible sound. It was a low and very distant musical note, as if the player was in one of the neighboring houses, or in some house beyond the wall over which I had never been able to look. The effect it produced on Zann was terrible. He dropped his pencil, got up, took his viol and began the wildest playing I had ever heard.

I cannot describe the playing of Erich Zann on that night. It was more horrible than anything I had ever heard. I could see the expression of his face, and this time it was just fear. He was trying to make a noise to ward something off or drown something out[22 - отвести от себя или заглушить нечто]. I could not understand what it was. The playing became fantastic, crazy, and hysterical, yet it was of supreme genius which this strange old man had.

Louder and louder, wilder and wilder the viol was screaming. The player was sweating and twisting like a monkey, always looking at the curtained window. And then I thought I heard another note, that was not from the viol, a mocking note from far away.

At this moment the shutters began to rattle in the nightwind. Zann’s screaming viol now produced sounds I had never thought a viol could produce. The shutters rattled more wildly, opened and started beating against the window. Then the glass broke, and the cold wind rushed in. The sheets of paper on the table where Zann had begun to write his horrible secret were flying all over the room. I looked at Zann and saw that he was unconscious now. His blue eyes were open and glassy, but he was still playing blindly and mechanically.

A sudden stronger gust of wind caught the papers and carried them toward the window. I chased the flying sheets, but they were gone before I reached the broken shutters. Then I remembered my wish to look out this window, the only window in the Rue d’Auseil from which one might see the roofs of the city beyond the wall. It was very dark, but the city’s lights always burned, and I expected to see them there in the rain and wind. Yet when I looked from that highest window, while the crazy viol was screaming with the night-wind, I saw no city below, and no lights in the streets, but only the blackness of space – infinite space, alive with motion and music that was unlike anything on earth. And as I stood there looking in terror, the wind blew out the candles in the attic, leaving me in darkness with madness before me and the madness of that viol behind me.

I stepped back in the dark, hitting the table, overturning a chair. The blackness around me was still screaming with shocking music. I thought I could at least try to save myself and Erich Zann, though I did not know what powers I was fighting with. At one moment some cold thing touched me, and I screamed, but my scream could not be heard above that viol.

Suddenly, out of the blackness, the bow struck me, and I knew I was close to the player. I felt and touched the back of Zann’s chair and then found and shook his shoulder, trying to bring him to his senses. There was no result. I felt his head and shouted in his ear that we must both run from the unknown things of the night. He did not answer, but continued playing his horrible music, while strange gusts of wind seemed to dance in the darkness of the attic. When my hand touched the old man’s face, I was startled because it was ice-cold and stiff. Then, by some miracle, I found the door and ran wildly away from that glassy-eyed thing in the dark and from that screaming viol.

Running, falling, flying down those endless stairs through the dark house and out into the narrow, steep, and ancient street, then down to the lower streets and the river, across the dark bridge to the broad streets – and I remember that I noticed then that there was no wind, and that the moon was out, and that all the lights of the city twinkled.

Later, I searched and searched, yet I have never been able to find the Rue d’Auseil again. But I am not sorry either for this or for the loss of the handwritten sheets which could have explained the mysterious music of Erich Zann.




The color out of space



1

West of Arkham the hills rise steeply, and there are valleys with deep, dark woods that no axe has ever cut. On the less steep hillsides there are ancient farms with empty, moss-covered cottages filled with old New England[23 - Новая Англия – регион на северо-востоке США, где находились одни из первых поселений (прим. сост.)] secrets. The old folk have gone away, and foreigners do not like to live there. They have come, and tried living there, and then left, and it is not because of anything that can be seen or heard or touched, but because of something that is imagined.

The place is not good for the imagination, and does not bring pleasant dreams at night. It must be the reason why the foreigners went away because old Ammi Pierce has never told them of anything he remembers from the strange days. Ammi, who has been a little strange in the head[24 - не всё в порядке с головой] for years, is the only one who still lives there or who ever talks of those strange days. He dares it only because his house is near the open fields and the main roads.




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notes


Примечания





1


зд. пансион; дом, в котором сдаются меблированные комнаты (прим. сост.)




2


особняк из песчаника; зажиточный, аристократический дом (прим. сост.)




3


сердечный приступ




4


и по какому делу я пришёл




5


пенсне – очки без дужек, держащиеся на переносице (прим. сост.)




6


голубых кровей и благородного происхождения




7


примерно +1 3 °C (прим. сост.)




8


стал жертвой




9


+4 °C, +1 °C и, под конец, даже -2 °C




10


сила духа




11


снежные вершины




12


Р? тут РґРѕ меня дошло.




13


Ты мыслишь в категориях / в рамках




14


наедине




15


привлекло моё внимание / мой взгляд упал на




16


убедиться / удостовериться




17


инстинкт самосохранения




18


потеряется / заблудится / собьётся со следа




19


давно потух / погас




20


отбрасывая странные тени




21


зд. немой




22


отвести от себя или заглушить нечто




23


Новая Англия – регион на северо-востоке США, где находились одни из первых поселений (прим. сост.)




24


не всё в порядке с головой



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