The Hound by H. P. Lovecraft. In my tortured ears, there
sounds unceasingly a nightmare, wearing and flapping, and a faint, distant baying,
as of some gigantic hound. It is not dream, It is not
I fear even madness, for too much has already happened to give me these
merciful doubts. Sinjin is a mangled corpse. I alone know why, and
such is my knowledge that I am about to blow out my brains for fear
I shall be mangled in the same way, down unlit and illimitable corridors of
eldritch fantasy sweeps the black, shapeless nemesis that drives me to self annihilation.
May Heaven forgive the folly and morbidity which led us both to so monstrous a
fate, wearied with the commonplaces of a prosaic world where even the joys of
romance and adventures soon grow stale. Sinjin and I had followed enthusiastically every esthetic
and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating on we. The enigmas of
the symbolists and the ecstasies of the pre Raphaelite all were ours in their time,
but each new mood was drained too soon of its diverting novelty and appeal.
Only the somber philosophy of the decadence could hold us, and this we
found potent only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our penetrations. Beaudelaire
and Heismans were soon exhausted of thrills, till finally there remained for us only
the more direct stimuli of unnatural personal experiences and adventures. It was this frightful
emotional need which led us eventually to that detestable course which even in my present
fear I mentioned with shame and timidity, that hideous extremity of human outrage,
the abhorred practice of grave robbing. I cannot reveal the details of our shocking
expeditions, or catalog even partly the worst of the trophies adorning the nameless museum
we prepared in the Great Stone House, where we jointly dwelt alone and servantless.
Our museum was a blasphemous, unthinkable place, where, with the satanic
taste of neurotic virtuosi, we had assembled a universe of terror and decay to
excite our jaded sensibilities. It was a secret room, far far underground,
where huge winged demons carven of basalt and onyx, vomited from wide grinning mouths.
Weird green and orange light, and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances
of death. The lines of red charnel things hand in hand, woven in
voluminous black hangings through these pipes came at will. The odours are moods most
craved, sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies, sometimes the narcotic incense of
imagined Eastern shrines of the kingly dead, and sometimes, how I shudder to
recall it, the frightful soul appeaving stenches of the uncovered grave. Round the
walls of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies, alternating with comely lifelike
bodies, perfectly stuffed and cured by the taxidermist's art, and with headstones snatched
from the oldest churchyards of the world. Niches. Here and there can skulls
of all shapes and heads, preserved in various stages of dissolution. There one
might find the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and the fresh and
radiantly golden heads of newly buried children, statues and paintings. There were all
of fiendish subjects, and some executed by Sinjin and myself. A locked portfolio
bound in tanned human skin held certain unknown and unnameable drawings, which it was
rumored Goya had perpetrated, but dared not acknowledge. There were nauseous musical instruments
stringed brass and woodwind on which Sinjoin and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity
and cacodmoniacal ghastliness, Whilst in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most
incredible and unimaginable variety of tomblut ever assembled by human madness and perversity. It
is of this slute, in particular, that I must not speak. Thank
God, I had the courage to destroy it long before I thought of destroying
myself off. The predatory excursions on which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always
artistically memorable events. We were no vulgar ghouls, but worked only under certain
conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season, and moonlight.
These pastimes were to us the most exquisite form of esthetic expression, and we
gave their details a fastidious technical care, an inappropriate hour, a jarring lighting
effect, or a clumsy manipulation of the damp sod would almost totally destroy for
us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some ominous, grinning secret of
the earth. Our quest for novel scenes and piquant conditions was feverish and insatiate.
St. John was always the leader, and it was he who led
the way at last to that mocking, that accursed spot which brought us our
hideous and inevitable doom. By what malign fatality were we lured to that terrible
Holland churchyard. I think it was the dark rumor and legendary the tales of
one buried for fire centuries, who had himself been a ghoul in his time,
and had stolen a potent thing from a mighty sepulcher. I can recall
the scene in these final moments, the pale autumnal moon over the graves,
casting long horrible shadows, the grotesque trees drooping sullenly to meet the neglected grass,
and the crumbling slabs, the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew
against the moon, The antique ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the
livid sky, the phosphorescent insects that danced like death fires under the ewes in
a distant corner, the odors of mold vegetation, and less explicable things that
mingled feebly with the night wind from over far swamps and seas. And worst
of all, the faint, deep toned baying of some gigantic hound, which
we could neither see nor definitely place. As we heard the suggestion of baying,
we shuddered, remembering the tails of the peasantry, for he whom we
sought had sentries before been found in this self same spot, torn and mangled
by the claws and teeth of some unspeakable beast. I remembered how we delved
in this ghoul's grave with our spades, and how we thrilled the picture of
ourselves. The grave, the pale watching moon, the horrible shadows, the
grotesque trees, the titanic bats, the antique church, the dancing death fires,
the sickening odors, the gently moaning night wind, and the strange,
half heard, directionless baying of whose objective existence, we could scarcely be sure.
Then we struck a substance harder than the damp mold, and beheld a
rotting, oblong box, crusted with mineral deposits from the long undisturbed ground.
It was incredibly tough and thick, but so old that we finally pried it
open and feasted our eyes on what it held. Much, amazingly much was
left of the object, despite the lapse of five hundred years. The skeleton,
though crushed in places by the jaws of the thing that had killed it,
held together with surprising firmness, and we gloated over the clean white skull
and its long, firm teeth, and its eyeless sockets that had once glowed
with a charnel fever like our own. In the coffin lay an amulet of
curious and exotic design which had apparently been worn around the sleeper's neck. It
was the oddly conventionalized figure of a crouching winged hound or sphinx with a semi
canine face, and was exquisitely carved in antique Oriental fashion from a small piece
of green jade. The expression on its features was repellent in the extreme savoring
at once of death, bestiality, and malevolence. Around the base was an
inscription in characters which neither Stingin nor I could identify, And on the bottom,
like a maker's seal, was grave in a grotesque and formidable skull.
Immediately upon beholding this amulet, we knew that we must possess it, that
this treasure alone was our logical palf from the sentried grave. Even had its
outlines been unfamiliar, we would have desired it. But as we looked more
closely, we saw that it was not wholly unfamiliar alien. It indeed was
to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know. But we recognized
it as the thing hinted of in the forbidden necronomicon of the mad Arab abdul
ahasred, the ghastly soul symbol of the corpse eating colt of inaccessible Lange in
Central Asia. All too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the
old Arab demonologist, lineaments he wrote drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the
souls of those who vexed and gnawed the dead. Seizing the green jade object,
we gave a last glance at the bleached and cavernized face of its owner,
and closed up the grave as we found it. As we hastened from
that abhorrent spot, the stolen amulet in StJohn's pocket, we thought we saw
the bats descend in a body to the earth we had so lately rifled,
as if seeking for some cursed and unholy nourishment. But the autumn moon shone
weak and pale, and we could not be sure. So too, as
we sailed the next day away from Holland to our home, we thought we
heard the faint, distant bang of some gigantic hound in the background, But
the autumn wind moaned sad and wan, and we could not be sure.
Less than a week after our return to England, strange things began to happen.
We lived as recluses, devoid of friends, alone and without servants,
in a few rooms of an ancient manor house on a bleak and unfrequented more
so that our doors were seldom disturbed by the knock of the visitor. Now,
however, we were troubled by what seemed to be frequent fumblings in the
night, not only around the doors, but around the windows, also upper
as well as lower. Once we fancied that a large opaque body darkened the
library window when the moon was shining against it, and another time we thought
we heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off. On each occasion,
investigation revealed nothing, and we began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination alone.
That same curiously disturbed imagination, which still prolonged in our ears. The faint
far bang we thought we had heard in the Holland churchyard. The jade amulet
now reposed in a niche in our museum, and sometimes we burned strangely scented
candles before it. We read much in al Hazard's and Necronomicon about its properties
and about the relation of Ghul's souls to the objects symbolized, and were disturbed
by what we read. Then terror came. On the night of September twenty
fourth, nineteen. I heard a knock at my chamber door. Fancying its
Sinjohns, I bade the knocker enter, but was answered only by a shrill
laugh. There was no one in the corridor. When I aroused Sinjhn from
his sleep, he professed entire ignorance of the event. And became as worried
as I. It was that night that the faint, distant baying over the
moor became to us a certain and dreaded reality. Four days later, whilst
we were both in the hidden museum, there came a low, cautious scratching
at the single door which led to the secret library staircase. Our alarm was
now divided, for, besides our fear of the unknown, we had always
entertained a dread that our grisly collection might be discovered. Extinguishing all lights,
we proceeded to the door and threw it suddenly open, whereupon we felt an
unaccountable rush of air, and heard, as if receding far away, a
queer combination of rustling, tittering, and articulate chatter. Whether we were mad,
dreaming, or in our senses, we did not try to determine.
We only realized with the blackest of apprehensions that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond
a doubt in the Dutch language. After that we lived in growing horror and
fascination. Mostly we held to the theory that we were jointly going mad from
our life of unnatural excitements, but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves
as the victim of some creeping and appalling doom. Bizarre manifestations were now too
frequent to count. Our lonely house was seemingly alive with the presence of some
malign being whose nature we could not guess, And every night that demoniac baying
rolled over, the wind swept more, always louder and louder. On October
twenty ninth, we found in the soft earth underneath the library window a series
of footprints, utterly impossible to describe. They were as baffling as the hordes
of giant bats which haunted the old manor House an unprecedented and increasing numbers.
The horror reached a culmination on November eighteenth, when Sinjohn, walking home after
dark from the distant railway station, was seized by some frightful, carnivorous thing
and torn to ribbons. His screams had reached the house, and I hastened
to the terrible scene in time to hear a whir of wings and see a
vague, black, cloudy thing silhouetted against the rising moon. My friend was
dying when I spoke to him, and he could not answer coherently. All
he could do was to whisper the amulet, that damned thing. Then he
collapsed, an inert mass of mangled flesh. I buried him the next midnight
in one of our neglected gardens, and mumbled over his body one of the
devilish rituals he had loved in life. And as I pronounced the last demoniac
sentence, I heard afar on the moor, the faint baying of some gigantic
hound. The moon was up, but I dared not look at it,
And when I saw in the dim litton more a wide, nebulous shadow sweeping
from mound to mound, I shut my eyes and threw myself face down upon
the ground. When I arose trembling, I know not how much later I
staggered into the house and made shocking obeiences before the enshrined amulet of green Jade.
Being now afraid to live alone in the ancient house on the moor,
I departed on the following day for London, taking with me the amulet,
after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the impious collection in the museum.
But after three nights I heard the baying again, and before a week
was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was dark. One evening,
as I strolled on Victoria Embankment for some needed air, I saw a black
shape obscure one of the reflections of the lamps in the water. A wind
stronger than the night wind rushed by, and I knew that what had befallen
sin John must soon befall me me. The next day, I carefully wrapped
the green jade amulet and sailed for Holland. What mercy I might gain by
returning the thing to its silent, sleeping owner, I knew not, but
I felt that I must at least try any step conceivably logical. What the
hound was and why it pursued me were questioned still vague, But I had
first heard the baying in that ancient churchyard, and every subsequent event, including
sin John's dying whisper, had served to connect the curse with the stealing of
the amulet. Accordingly, I sank into the nethermost abysses of despair, when
at an inn in Rotterdam, I discovered that thieves had despoiled me of this
sole means of salvation. The baying was loud that evening, and in the
morning I read of a nameless deed in the vilest quarter of the city.
The rabble were in terror, for upon an evil tenement had fallen, a
red death beyond the foulest previous crime of the neighborhood. In a squalid thieves
den, an entire family had been torn to shreds by an unknown thing which
left no trace, And those around had heard all night, above the usual
clamor of drunken voices, a faint, deep, insistent note as of a
gigantic hound. So at last I stood again in that unwholesome churchyard, where
a pale winter moon cast hideous shadows, and leafless trees drooped sullenly to meet
the withered, frosty grass and cracking slabs, and the ivied church pointed a
jeering finger at the unfriendly sky, and the night wind howled maniacally from over
frozen swamps and frigid seas. The baying was very faint now, and it
ceased altogether. As I approached the ancient grave I had once violated and frightened
away an abnormally large horde of bats which had been hovering curiously around it.
I know not why I went hither unless to pray or gibber out insane please
and apologies to the calm, white thing that lay within. But whatever my
reason, I attacked the half frozen sod with a desperation, partly mine and
partly that of a dominating will outside myself. Was much easier than I expected,
though at one point I encountered a queer interruption when a lean vulture darted
down out of the cold sky and pecked frantically at the grave earth until I
killed him with a blow of my spade. Finally I reached the rotting oblong
box and removed the damp, nitrous cover. This is the last rational act
I ever performed. For Crouched within that sentried coffin, embraced by a close
packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping bats, was the bony thing
my friend and I had robbed, not clean and placid as we had seen
it then, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and hair,
and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp and sanguine fangs,
yawning twistedly in mockery of my inevitable doom, and when it gave from those
grinning jaws a deep, sardonic bay, as of some gigantic hound, and
I saw that it held in its gory, filthy claw the lost and fateful
amulet of green Jade. I merely screamed and ran away idiotically, My screams,
soon dissolving into peals of hysterical laughter. Madness rides the star wind,
claws and teeth sharpened on sentries of corpses dripping death, astride a bacchanal of
bats from night black ruins, of buried temples of Bolile. Now, as
the baying of that dead, fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder, and the
stealthy whirring and flapping of those accursed web wings circles closer and closer, I
shall seek with my revolver the oblivion, which is my only refuge from the
unnamed and unnamable end of the hound,