The Picture in the House by H.P. Lovecraft

The Picture in the House
by H.P. Lovecraft


Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places. For them are the catacombs
of Ptolemais, and the carven mausolea of the nightmare countries. They climb to
the moonlit towers of ruined Rhine castles, and falter down black cobwebbed
steps beneath the scattered stones of forgotten cities in Asia. The haunted wood
and the desolate mountain are their shrines, and they linger around the sinister
monoliths on uninhabited islands. But the true epicure in the terrible, to whom
a new thrill of unutterable ghastliness is the chief end and justification of
existence, esteems most of all the ancient, lonely farmhouses of backwoods New
England; for there the dark elements of strength, solitude, grotesqueness and
ignorance combine to form the perfection of the hideous.
Most horrible of all sights are the little unpainted wooden houses remote
from travelled ways, usually squatted upon some damp grassy slope or leaning
against some gigantic 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 luxuriances of green
and guardian shrouds of shadow; but the small-paned windows still stare
shockingly, as if blinking through a lethal stupor which wards off madness by
dulling the memory of unutterable things.
In such houses have dwelt generations of strange people, whose like the
world has never seen. Seized with a gloomy and fanatical belief which exiled
them from their kind, their ancestors sought the wilderness for freedom. There
the scions 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. Divorced from the enlightenment of civilization, the strength
of these Puritans 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 their cold Northern
heritage. By necessity practical and by philosophy stern, these folks were not
beautiful in their sins. Erring as all mortals 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 backwoods can tell all that has lain hidden since the early days, and they
are not communicative, being loath to shake off the drowsiness 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-battered edifice of this description that I was driven one
afternoon in November, 1896, by a rain of such chilling copiousness that any
shelter was preferable to exposure. I had been travelling for some time amongst
the people of the Miskatonic Valley in quest of certain genealogical data; and
from the remote, devious, and problematical nature of my course, 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 shortest 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
bleared 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 none the less
impressed me unfavorably the very moment I espied it. Honest, wholesome
structures do not stare at travellers 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 weedy
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 overgrown with
weeds, they seemed to retain their nature a little tco well to argue complete
desertion. Therefore instead of trying the dcor I knocked, feeling as I did so a
trepidation I could scarcely explain. As I waited on the rough, mossy rock which
served as a dcor-step, I glanced at the neighboring windows and the panes of the
transom above me, and noticed that although old, rattling, and almost opaque
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 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. Ahead rose a narrow
staircase, flanked by a small door probably leading to the cellar, while to the
left and right were closed doors leading to 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 chamber 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 a mantel. Books and papers were
very few, and in the prevailing gloom I could not readily discern the titles.
What interested me was the uniform air of archaism 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 quaint apartment, I felt an increase in that aversion
first excited by the bleak exterior of the house. Just what it was that I feared
or loathed, 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
antediluvian aspect that I marvelled 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 1598. I had often heard of this work, with its curious
illustrations by the brothers De Bry, 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 white 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 XII, which represented in
gruesome detail a butcher's shop of the cannibal Anziques. I experienced some
shame at my susceptibility to so slight a thing, but the drawing nevertheless
disturbed me, especially in connection with some adjacent passages descriptive
of Anzique gastronomy.
I had turned to a neighboring shelf and was examining its meagre literary
contents - an eighteenth century Bible, a "Pilgrim's Progress" of like period,
illustrated with grotesque woodcuts and printed by the almanack-maker Isaiah
Thomas, the rotting bulk of Cotton Mather's "Magnalia Christi 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
cautiousness; a quality which I disliked the 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 may have been inspecting my bicycle in the
hall, I heard a fumbling at the latch and saw the paneled 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-bearded, and
ragged, my host possessed a countenance and physique 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 beard which grew high on the cheeks, seemed
abnormally ruddy and less wrinkled than one might expect; while over a high
forehead fell a shock of white hair little thinned by the years. His blue eyes,
though a trifle bloodshot, seemed inexplicably keen and burning. But for his
horrible unkemptness the man would have been as distinguished-looking as he was
impressive. This unkemptness, 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 fawning respect and ingratiating hospitality. His
speech was very curious, an extreme form of Yankee dialect I had thought long
extinct; and I studied it closely as he sat down opposite me for conversation.
"Ketched in the rain, be ye?" he greeted. "Glad ye was nigh the haouse en'
hed the sense ta come right in. I calc'late I was alseep, else I'd a heerd ye-I
ain't as young as I uster be, an' I need a paowerful sight o' naps naowadays.
Trav'lin fur? I hain't seed many folks 'long this rud sence they tuk off the
Arkham stage."
I replied that I was going to Arkham, and apologized for my rude entry into
his domicile, whereupon he continued.
"Glad ta see ye, young Sir - new faces is scurce arount here, an' I hain't
got much ta cheer me up these days. Guess yew hail from Bosting, don't ye? I
never ben thar, but I kin tell a taown man when I see 'im -  we hed one fer
deestrick schoolmaster in 'eighty-four, but he quit suddent an' no one never
heerd on 'im sence - " here the old man lapsed into a kind of chuckle, and made
no explanation when I questioned him. He seemed to be in an aboundingly good
humor, yet to possess those eccentricities which one might guess from his
grooming. For some time he rambled on with an almost feverish geniality, when it
struck me to ask him how he came by so rare a book as Pigafetta'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 vague fears
which had steadily accumulated since my first glimpse of the house. To my
relief, the question did not seem an awkward one, for the old man answered
freely and volubly.
"Oh, that Afriky book? Cap'n Ebenezer Holt traded me thet in 'sixty-eight -
him as was kilt in the war." Something about the name of Ebenezer Holt caused 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.
"Ebenezer was on a Salem merchantman for years, an' picked up a sight o'
queer stuff in every port. He got this in London, I guess  -  he uster like ter
buy things at the shops. I was up ta his haouse onct, on the hill, tradin'
hosses, when I see this book. I relished the picters, so he give it in on a
swap. 'Tis a queer book - here, leave me git 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 cud read a leetle o' this-'tis Latin - but I can't. I had two er
three schoolmasters read me a bit, and Passon Clark, him they say got draownded
in the pond - kin yew make anything outen it?" I told him that I could, and
translated for his benefit a paragraph near the beginning. If I erred, 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 haow picters kin set a body thinkin'. Take this un here near the
front. Hey yew ever seed trees like thet, with big leaves a floppin' over an'
daown? And them men - them can't be niggers - they dew beat all. Kinder like
Injuns, I guess, even ef they be in Afriky. Some o' these here critters looks
like monkeys, or half monkeys an' half men, but I never heerd o' nothin' like
this un." Here he pointed to a fabulous creature of the artist, which one might
describe as a sort of dragon with the head of an alligator.
"But naow I'll show ye the best un - over here nigh the middle - "The old
man's speech grew a 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, almost of its own accord and as if from
frequent consultation at this place, to the repellent twelfth plate showing a
butcher's shop amongst the Anzique cannibals. My sense of restlessness returned,
though I did not exhibit it. The especially bizarre thing was that the artist
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 d'ye think o' this - ain't never see the like hereabouts, eh? When I
see this I telled Eb Holt, 'That's suthin' ta stir ye up an' make yer blood
tickle.' When I read in Scripter about slayin' - like them Midianites was slew -
I kinder think things, but I ain't got no picter of it. Here a body kin see all
they is to it - I s'pose 'tis sinful, but ain't we all born an' livin' in sin? -
Thet feller bein' chopped up gives me a tickle every time I look at 'im - I hey
ta keep lookin' at 'im - see whar the butcher cut off his feet? Thar's his head
on thet bench, with one arm side of it, an' t'other arm's on the other side o'
the meat 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
abhorrent 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 huskiness more terrible than a scream, and I trembled as I listened.
"As I says, 'tis queer haow picters sets ye thinkin'. D'ye know, young Sir,
I'm right sot on this un here. Arter I got the book off Eb I uster look at it a
lot, especial when I'd heerd Passon Clark rant o' Sundays in his big wig. Onct I
tried suthin' funny - here, young Sir, don't git skeert - all I done was ter
look at the picter afore I kilt the sheep for market - killin' sheep was kinder
more fun arter lookin' 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 bleared, 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 whisperer
seemed not to notice it.
"Killin' sheep was kinder more fun - but d'ye know, 'twan't quite
satisfyin'. Queer haow a cravin' gits a holt on ye - As ye love the Almighty,
young man, don't tell nobody, but I swar ter Gawd thet picter begun to make me
hungry fer victuals I couldn't raise nor buy - here, set still, what's ailin'
ye? - I didn't do nothin', only I wondered haow 'twud be ef I did - They say
meat makes blood an' flesh, an' gives ye new life, so I wondered ef 'twudn't
make a man live longer an' longer ef '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 book lay flat between us, with the picture staring 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 Anzique cannibals a 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 toward 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 ceiling a large irregular spot of wet crimson which
seemed to spread even as I viewed it. I did not shriek or move, but merely shut
my eyes. A moment later came the titanic thunderbolt of thunderbolts; blasting
that accursed house of unutterable secrets and bringing the oblivion which alone
saved my mind.