IV. The Horror In The Eyes

There can be nothing normal in the mind of one who, knowing what I knew

of the horrors of Tempest Mountain, would seek alone for the fear that lurked

there. That at least two of the fear’s embodiments were destroyed, formed but

a slight guarantee of mental and physical safety in this Acheron of multiform

diabolism; yet I continued my quest with even greater zeal as events and

revelations became more monstrous. When, two days after my frightful crawl

through that crypt of the eyes and claw, I learned that a thing had malignly

hovered twenty miles away at the same instant the eyes were glaring at me, I

experienced virtual convulsions of fright. But that fright was so mixed with

wonder and alluring grotesqueness, that it was almost a pleasant sensation.

Sometimes, in the throes of a nightmare when unseen powers whirl one over

the roofs of strange dead cities toward the grinning chasm of Nis, it is a relief

and even a delight to shriek wildly and throw oneself voluntarily along with

the hideous vortex of dream-doom into whatever bottomless gulf may yawn.

And so it was with the walking nightmare of Tempest Mountain; the

discovery that two monsters had haunted the spot gave me ultimately a mad

craving to plunge into the very earth of the accursed region, and with bare

hands dig out the death that leered from every inch of the poisonous soil.

As soon as possible I visited the grave of Jan Martense and dug vainly where

I had dug before. Some extensive cave-in had obliterated all trace of the

underground passage, while the rain had washed so much earth back into the

excavation that I could not tell how deeply I had dug that other day. I likewise

made a difficult trip to the distant hamlet where the death-creature had been

burnt, and was little repaid for my trouble. In the ashes of the fateful cabin I

found several bones, but apparently none of the monster’s. The squatters said

the thing had had only one victim; but in this I judged them inaccurate, since

besides the complete skull of a human being, there was another bony fragment which seemed certainly to have belonged to a human skull at some

time. Though the rapid drop of the monster had been seen, no one could say

just what the creature was like; those who had glimpsed it called it simply a

devil. Examining the great tree where it had lurked, I could discern no

distinctive marks. I tried to find some trail into the black forest, but on this

occasion could not stand the sight of those morbidly large boles, or of those

vast serpent-like roots that twisted so malevolently before they sank into the

earth.

My next step was to reexamine with microscopic care the deserted hamlet

where death had come most abundantly, and where Arthur Munroe had seen

something he never lived to describe. Though my vain previous searches had

been exceedingly minute, I now had new data to test; for my horrible grave-

crawl convinced me that at least one of the phases of the monstrosity had

been an underground creature. This time, on the 14th of November, my quest

concerned itself mostly with the slopes of Cone Mountain and Maple Hill

where they overlook the unfortunate hamlet, and I gave particular attention to

the loose earth of the landslide region on the latter eminence.

The afternoon of my search brought nothing to light, and dusk came as I stood

on Maple Hill looking down at the hamlet and across the valley to Tempest

Mountain. There had been a gorgeous sunset, and now the moon came up,

nearly full and shedding a silver flood over the plain, the distant

mountainside, and the curious low mounds that rose here and there. It was a

peaceful Arcadian scene, but knowing what it hid I hated it. I hated the

mocking moon, the hypocritical plain, the festering mountain, and those

sinister mounds. Everything seemed to me tainted with a loathsome

contagion, and inspired by a noxious alliance with distorted hidden powers.

Presently, as I gazed abstractedly at the moonlit panorama, my eye became

attracted by something singular in the nature and arrangement of a certain

topographical element. Without having any exact knowledge of geology, I had

from the first been interested in the odd mounds and hummocks of the region.

I had noticed that they were pretty widely distributed around Tempest

Mountain, though less numerous on the plain than near the hilltop itself,

where prehistoric glaciation had doubtless found feebler opposition to its

striking and fantastic caprices. Now, in the light of that low moon which cast

long weird shadows, it struck me forcibly that the various points and lines of

the mound system had a peculiar relation to the summit of Tempest Mountain.

That summit was undeniably a centre from which the lines or rows of points

radiated indefinitely and irregularly, as if the unwholesome Martense mansion

had thrown visible tentacles of terror. The idea of such tentacles gave me an

unexplained thrill, and I stopped to analyse my reason for believing these mounds glacial phenomena.

The more I analysed the less I believed, and against my newly opened mind

there began to beat grotesque and horrible analogies based on superficial

aspects and upon my experience beneath the earth. Before I knew it I was

uttering frenzied and disjointed words to myself; “My God!… Molehills…

the damned place must be honeycombed… how many… that night at the

mansion… they took Bennett and Tobey first… on each side of us…” Then I

was digging frantically into the mound which had stretched nearest me;

digging desperately, shiveringly, but almost jubilantly; digging and at last

shrieking aloud with some unplaced emotion as I came upon a tunnel or

burrow just like the one through which I had crawled on the other demoniac

night.

After that I recall running, spade in hand; a hideous run across moon-litten,

mound-marked meadows and through diseased, precipitous abysses of

haunted hillside forest; leaping screaming, panting, bounding toward the

terrible Martense mansion. I recall digging unreasonably in all parts of the

brier-choked cellar; digging to find the core and centre of that malignant

universe of mounds. And then I recall how I laughed when I stumbled on the

passageway; the hole at the base of the old chimney, where the thick weeds

grew and cast queer shadows in the light of the lone candle I had happened to

have with me. What still remained down in that hell-hive, lurking and waiting

for the thunder to arouse it, I did not know. Two had been killed; perhaps that

had finished it. But still there remained that burning determination to reach

the innermost secret of the fear, which I had once more come to deem

definite, material, and organic.

My indecisive speculation whether to explore the passage alone and

immediately with my pocket-light or to try to assemble a band of squatters for

the quest, was interrupted after a time by a sudden rush of wind from the

outside which blew out the candle and left me in stark blackness. The moon

no longer shone through the chinks and apertures above me, and with a sense

of fateful alarm I heard the sinister and significant rumble of approaching

thunder. A confusion of associated ideas possessed my brain, leading me to

grope back toward the farthest corner of the cellar. My eyes, however, never

turned away from the horrible opening at the base of the chimney; and I

began to get glimpses of the crumbling bricks and unhealthy weeds as faint

glows of lightning penetrated the weeds outside and illumined the chinks in

the upper wall. Every second I was consumed with a mixture of fear and

curiosity. What would the storm call forth-or was there anything left for it to

call? Guided by a lightning flash I settled myself down behind a dense clump

of vegetation, through which I could see the opening without being seen.If heaven is merciful, it will some day efface from my consciousness the sight

that I saw, and let me live my last years in peace. I cannot sleep at night now,

and have to take opiates when it thunders. The thing came abruptly and

unannounced; a demon, ratlike scurrying from pits remote and unimaginable,

a hellish panting and stifled grunting, and then from that opening beneath the

chimney a burst of multitudinous and leprous life - a loathsome night-

spawned flood of organic corruption more devastatingly hideous than the

blackest conjurations of mortal madness and morbidity. Seething, stewing,

surging, bubbling like serpents’slime it rolled up and out of that yawning

hole, spreading like a septic contagion and streaming from the cellar at every

point of egress - streaming out to scatter through the accursed midnight

forests and strew fear, madness, and death.

God knows how many there were - there must have been thousands. To see

the stream of them in that faint intermittent lightning was shocking. When

they had thinned out enough to be glimpsed as separate organisms, I saw that

they were dwarfed, deformed hairy devils or apes-monstrous and diabolic

caricatures of the monkey tribe. They were so hideously silent; there was

hardly a squeal when one of the last stragglers turned with the skill of long

practice to make a meal in accustomed fashion on a weaker companion.

0thers snapped up what it left and ate with slavering relish. Then, in spite of

my daze of fright and disgust, my morbid curiosity triumphed; and as the last

of the monstrosities oozed up alone from that nether world of unknown

nightmare, I drew my automatic pistol and shot it under cover of the thunder.

Shrieking, slithering, torrential shadows of red viscous madness chasing one

another through endless, ensanguined condors of purple fulgurous sky…

formless phantasms and kaleidoscopic mutations of a ghoulish, remembered

scene; forests of monstrous over-nourished oaks with serpent roots twisting

and sucking unnamable juices from an earth verminous with millions of

cannibal devils; mound-like tentacles groping from underground nuclei of

polypous perversion… insane lightning over malignant ivied walls and demon

arcades choked with fungous vegetation… Heaven be thanked for the instinct

which led me unconscious to places where men dwell; to the peaceful village

that slept under the calm stars of clearing skies.

I had recovered enough in a week to send to Albany for a gang of men to

blow up the Martense mansion and the entire top of Tempest Mountain with

dynamite, stop up all the discoverable mound-burrows, and destroy certain

over-nourished trees whose very existence seemed an insult to sanity. I could

sleep a little after they had done this, but true rest will never come as long as I

remember that nameless secret of the lurking fear. The thing will haunt me,

for who can say the extermination is complete, and that analogous phenomena do not exist all over the world? Who can, with my knowledge, think of the

earth’s unknown caverns without a nightmare dread of future possibilities? I

cannot see a well or a subway entrance without shuddering… why cannot the

doctors give me something to make me sleep, or truly calm my brain when it

thunders?

What I saw in the glow of flashlight after I shot the unspeakable straggling

object was so simple that almost a minute elapsed before I understood and

went delirious. The object was nauseous; a filthy whitish gorilla thing with

sharp yellow fangs and matted fur. It was the ultimate product of mammalian

degeneration; the frightful outcome of isolated spawning, multiplication, and

cannibal nutrition above and below the ground; the embodiment of all the

snarling and chaos and grinning fear that lurk behind life. It had looked at me

as it died, and its eyes had the same odd quality that marked those other eyes

which had stared at me underground and excited cloudy recollections. One

eye was blue, the other brown. They were the dissimilar Martense eyes of the

old legends, and I knew in one inundating cataclysm of voiceless horror what

had become of that vanished family; the terrible and thunder-crazed house of

Martense.

꧁ 𝓣𝓗𝓔 𝓔𝓝𝓓꧂

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