[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

stout pillars supporting the arches of the roof.
After a time he reached a circle of pillars grouped like the monoliths of Stonehenge, with
a large carved altar on a base of three steps in the centre; and so curious were the carvings
on that altar that he approached to study them with his electric light. But when he saw
what they were he shrank away shuddering, and did not stop to investigate the dark stains
which discoloured the upper surface and had spread down the sides in occasional thin
lines. Instead, he found the distant wall and traced it as it swept round in a gigantic circle
perforated by occasional black doorways and indented by a myriad of shallow cells with
iron gratings and wrist and ankle bonds on chains fastened to the stone of the concave
rear masonry. These cells were empty, but still the horrible odour and the dismal moaning
continued, more insistent now than ever, and seemingly varied at time by a sort of
slippery thumping.
3
From that frightful smell and that uncanny noise Willett's attention could no longer be
diverted. Both were plainer and more hideous in the great pillared hall than anywhere
else, and carried a vague impression of being far below, even in this dark nether world of
subterrene mystery. Before trying any of the black archways for steps leading further
down, the doctor cast his beam of light about the stone-flagged floor. It was very loosely
paved, and at irregular intervals there would occur a slab curiously pierced by small holes
in no definite arrangement, while at one point there lay a very long ladder carelessly
flung down. To this ladder, singularly enough, appeared to cling a particularly large
amount of the frightful odour which encompassed everything. As he walked slowly about
it suddenly occurred to Willett that both the noise and the odour seemed strongest above
the oddly pierced slabs, as if they might be crude trap-doors leading down to some still
deeper region of horror. Kneeling by one, he worked at it with his hands, and found that
with extreme difficulty he could budge it. At his touch the moaning beneath ascended to a
louder key, and only with vast trepidation did he persevere in the lifting of the heavy
stone. A stench unnameable now rose up from below, and the doctor's head reeled dizzily
as he laid back the slab and turned his torch upon the exposed square yard of gaping
blackness.
If he had expected a flight of steps to some wide gulf of ultimate abomination, Willett
was destined to be disappointed; for amidst that foetor and cracked whining he discerned
only the brick-faced top of a cylindrical well perhaps a yard and a half in diameter and
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
devoid of any ladder or other means of descent. As the light shone down, the wailing
changed suddenly to a series of horrible yelps; in conjunction with which there came
again that sound of blind, futile scrambling and slippery thumping. The explorer
trembled, unwilling even to imagine what noxious thing might be lurking in that abyss,
but in a moment mustered up the courage to peer over the rough-hewn brink; lying at full
length and holding the torch downward at arm's length to see what might lie below. For a
second he could distinguish nothing but the slimy, moss-grown brick walls sinking
illimitably into that half-tangible miasma of murk and foulness and anguished frenzy; and
then he saw that something dark was leaping clumsily and frantically up and down at the
bottom of the narrow shaft, which must have been from twenty to twenty-five feet below
the stone floor where he lay. The torch shook in his hand, but he looked again to see what
manner of living creature might be immured there in the darkness of that unnatural well;
left starving by young Ward through all the long month since the doctors had taken him
away, and clearly only one of a vast number prisoned in the kindred wells whose pierced
stone covers so thickly studded the floor of the great vaulted cavern. Whatever the things
were, they could not lie down in their cramped spaces; but must have crouched and
whined and waited and feebly leaped all those hideous weeks since their master had
abandoned them unheeded.
But Marinus Bicknell Willett was sorry that he looked again; for surgeon and veteran of
the dissecting-room though he was, he has not been the same since. It is hard to explain
just how a single sight of a tangible object with measurable dimensions could so shake
and change a man; and we may only say that there is about certain outlines and entities a
power of symbolism and suggestion which acts frightfully on a sensitive thinker's
perspective and whispers terrible hints of obscure cosmic relationships and unnameable
realities behind the protective illusions of common vision. In that second look Willett saw
such an outline or entity, for during the next few instants he was undoubtedly as stark
raving mad as any inmate of Dr. Waite's private hospital. He dropped the electric torch
from a hand drained of muscular power or nervous coördination, nor heeded the sound of
crunching teeth which told of its fate at the bottom of the pit. He screamed and screamed
and screamed in a voice whose falsetto panic no acquaintance of his would ever have
recognised; and though he could not rise to his feet he crawled and rolled desperately
away from the damp pavement where dozens of Tartarean wells poured forth their
exhausted whining and yelping to answer his own insane cries. He tore his hands on the
rough, loose stones, and many times bruised his head against the frequent pillars, but still
he kept on. Then at last he slowly came to himself in the utter blackness and stench, and
stopped his ears against the droning wail into which the burst of yelping had subsided. He
was drenched with perspiration and without means of producing a light; stricken and
unnerved in the abysmal blackness and horror, and crushed with a memory he never
could efface. Beneath him dozens of those things still lived, and from one of those shafts
the cover was removed. He knew that what he had seen could never climb up the slippery
walls, yet shuddered at the thought that some obscure foot-hold might exist.
What the thing was, he would never tell. It was like some of the carvings on the hellish
altar, but it was alive. Nature had never made it in this form, for it was too palpably
unfinished. The deficiencies were of the most surprising sort, and the abnormalities of
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
proportion could not be described. Willett consents only to say that this type of thing
must have represented entities which Ward called up from imperfect salts, and which he
kept for servile or ritualistic purposes. If it had not had a certain significance, its image
would not have been carved on that damnable stone. It was not the worst thing depicted
on that stone - but Willett never opened the other pits. At the time, the first connected
idea in his mind was an idle paragraph from some of the old Curwen data he had digested
long before; a phrase used by Simon or Jedediah Orne in that portentous confiscated
letter to the bygone sorcerer: [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]