Collected Stories – Part 2 – Day 233 of 274

IV

Derby had been married more than three years on that August day when I got that telegram from Maine. I had not seen him for two months, but had heard he was away “on business.”Asenath was supposed to be with him, though watchful gossip declared there was someone upstairs in the house behind the doubly curtained windows. They had watched the purchases made by the servants. And now the town marshal of Chesuncook had wired of the draggled madman who stumbled out of the woods with delirious ravings and screamed to me for protection. It was Edward–and he had been just able to recall his own name and address.

Chesuncook is close to the wildest, deepest, and least explored forest belt in Maine, and it took a whole day of feverish jolting through fantastic and forbidding scenery to get there in a car. I found Derby in a cell at the town farm, vacillating between frenzy and apathy. He knew me at once, and began pouring out a meaningless, half-incoherent torrent of words in my direction.

“Dan, for God’s sake! The pit of the shoggoths! Down the six thousand steps…the abomination of abominations…I never would let her take me, and then I found myself there–Ia! Shub-Niggurath!–The shape rose up from the altar, and there were five hundred that howled–The Hooded Thing bleated ‘Kamog! Kamog!’–that was old Ephraim’s secret name in the coven–I was there, where she promised she wouldn’t take me–A minute before I was locked in the library, and then I was there where she had gone with my body–in the place of utter blasphemy, the unholy pit where the black realm begins and the watcher guards the gate–I saw a shoggoth–it changed shape–I can’t stand it–I’ll kill her if she ever sends me there again–I’ll kill that entity–her, him, it–I’ll kill it! I’ll kill it with my own hands!”

It took me an hour to quiet him, but he subsided at last. The next day I got him decent clothes in the village, and set out with him for Arkham. His fury of hysteria was spent, and he was inclined to be silent, though he began muttering darkly to himself when the car passed through Augusta–as if the sight of a city aroused unpleasant memories. It was clear that he did not wish to go home; and considering the fantastic delusions he seemed to have about his wife–delusions undoubtedly springing from some actual hypnotic ordeal to which he had been subjected–I thought it would be better if he did not. I would, I resolved, put him up myself for a time; no matter what unpleasantness it would make with Asenath. Later I would help him get a divorce, for most assuredly there were mental factors which made this marriage suicidal for him. When we struck open country again Derby’s muttering faded away, and I let him nod and drowse on the seat beside me as I drove.

During our sunset dash through Portland the muttering commenced again, more distinctly than before, and as I listened I caught a stream of utterly insane drivel about Asenath. The extent to which she had preyed on Edward’s nerves was plain, for he had woven a whole set of hallucinations around her. His present predicament, he mumbled furtively, was only one of a long series. She was getting hold of him, and he knew that some day she would never let go. Even now she probably let him go only when she had to, because she couldn’t hold on long at a time. She constantly took his body and went to nameless places for nameless rites, leaving him in her body and locking him upstairs–but sometimes she couldn’t hold on, and he would find himself suddenly in his own body again in some far-off, horrible, and perhaps unknown place. Sometimes she’d get hold of him again and sometimes she couldn’t. Often he was left stranded somewhere as I had found him–time and again he had to find his way home from frightful distances, getting somebody to drive the car after he found it.

The worst thing was that she was holding on to him longer and longer at a time. She wanted to be a man–to be fully human–that was why she got hold of him. She had sensed the mixture of fine-wrought brain and weak will in him. Some day she would crowd him out and disappear with his body–disappear to become a great magician like her father and leave him marooned in that female shell that wasn’t even quite human. Yes, he knew about the Innsmouth blood now. There had been traffick with things from the sea–it was horrible…And old Ephraim–he had known the secret, and when he grew old did a hideous thing to keep alive–he wanted to live forever–Asenath would succeed–one successful demonstration had taken place already.

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