Kitabı oku: «The Color out of Space and Other Mystery Stories / «Цвет из иных миров» и другие мистические истории»

© Шитова А. В., адаптация, сокращение, словарь, 2020

© ООО «ИД «Антология», 2020

Cool air

So you want to know why I am afraid of draughts of cool air, why I shiver more than others in a cold room, and why I faint when I suddenly feel the evening chill of a mild autumn day. Some people say I react to cold as others react to a bad smell, and maybe it is true. I will tell you about the most horrible thing that has ever happened to me, and you will see for yourselves if it explains my fear.

It is a mistake to think that horror is hidden only in the darkness, silence, and loneliness. I found it in the middle of the day, in the center of a big city, in a shabby boarding house¹, with a typical landlady and two workmen by my side.

In the spring of 1923, I had found some hard and low-paid job in the city of New York. I could not pay any big rent, so I began moving from one cheap boarding house to another, looking for a room which would be clean, furnished, and would have a very low price. I soon learned that I had almost no choice, but after some time I finally found a house in West Fourteenth Street which I disliked much less than the others I had seen.

The place was a four-story mansion of brownstone², with too much woodwork and marble. The large rooms, decorated with impossible wallpaper and moldings on the ceilings, were depressingly musty and smelled of cookery. But the floors and the linen were clean, and the hot water was not too often cold or turned off. So I thought it was a bearable place to stay at – at least for a while. The landlady, a Spanish woman named Herrero, did not annoy me with gossip or criticisms of the burning electric light late at night in my third-floor room. My neighbors, mostly Spaniards, too, were quiet and uncommunicative. Only the noise from the cars in the street below was a bit annoying.

I had been there for three weeks when the first strange incident happened. One evening, at about eight, I heard something dripping onto the floor and suddenly realized that I had been smelling the stench of ammonia for some time. I looked around and saw that in one corner, on the side toward the street, my ceiling was wet. To find the source of the trouble and stop it, I ran downstairs to inform the landlady, and she told me that the problem would be solved quickly.

“Doctor Muñoz,” she cried as she rushed upstairs with me. “I think he has spilled his chemicals again. He is too sick to take care of himself, getting sicker and sicker all the time, but he will not ask any other doctor for help. He has a very strange sickness: all day he takes bad-smelling baths, and he should never get warm. His little room is full of bottles and machines. He does not work as a doctor now, but he was great once. Even my father in Barcelona heard of him. He never goes out, only on the roof, and my boy Esteban brings him food, and laundry, and medicines, and chemicals – the ammonia that man uses for keeping himself cool!”

Mrs. Herrero went up the stairs to the fourth floor, and I returned to my room. The ammonia stopped dripping, and as I cleaned it up and opened the window for air, I heard the landlady’s heavy footsteps above me. I had never heard Dr. Muñoz himself, only some sounds of a mechanism. I wondered for a moment what the strange illness of this man might be and why he did not want to get the outside help.

I might have never met Dr. Muñoz, but one morning, as I sat writing in my room, I suddenly had a heart attack³. Doctors had warned me about the danger of those attacks before, and I knew there was no time to lose. So, remembering what the landlady had said about the genius doctor, I managed to walk upstairs and knock at his door. My knock was answered in good English by a strange voice coming from the right, asking my name and business⁴. I explained my situation and the door next to the one I had knocked at opened.

I was greeted by a rush of cool air, and although the day was one of the hottest days in June, I shivered as I stepped into a large apartment. Its rich decoration surprised me: mahogany furniture, old paintings, and many bookshelves. It all looked more like a gentleman’s study than a boarding house bedroom. I now saw that his hall room which was above mine – the “little room full of bottles and machines” which Mrs. Herrero had told me about – was the laboratory of the doctor, and that his main living-room with a large bathroom was in the spacious next room.

The man I saw in front of me was short, but well-built and well-dressed. His noble face, which spoke of intelligence, had a short gray beard, and I could see his dark eyes behind an old-fashioned pince-nez⁵ on his nose. Thick, well-cut hair, which meant regular visit of a barber, was parted above his high forehead, and the whole picture of him was of superior blood and breeding⁶.

But as I saw Dr. Muñoz in that rush of cool air, I felt an unexplainable dislike for that man. Maybe it was his pale and gray complexion or coldness of touch that was the reason for this feeling, but probably these things were due to the man’s unknown serious illness. Or maybe it was just that cold which was so strange to feel on such a hot summer day.

However, my dislike was soon forgotten in admiration because the strange doctor was extremely skillful despite the ice-coldness and shakiness of his pale hands. He examined me and clearly understood my needs. Then in his weak voice he told me that he was the worst of enemies to death, but, unfortunately, lost all his friends in a lifetime battle with it, using unusual experiments. He was something of a fanatic, and he talked and talked about it while mixing drugs which he brought from the smaller laboratory room.

His voice was queer but soothing. I could not even hear his breathing as he talked so fast. He tried to distract my mind from my own problems by speaking of his theories and experiments. I remember him telling me about my weak heart, and that a man’s will and consciousness can be stronger than organic life itself. If a body is healthy and carefully preserved, it may keep its functions despite the most serious problems, defects, or even the absence of some organs. He might, he said, some day teach me to live without any heart at all! About his own illness he said that it needed constant cold. Any rise in temperature could actually kill him, and so the temperature was kept at some 55° or 56° Fahrenheit⁷ by a system of ammonia cooling and the engine whose noise I had often heard in my own room below.

Feeling much better in a very short time, I left the cold place as a true admirer and follower of the genius doctor. After that I visited him quite often, listening to him while he told me of secret researches and terrible results. I shivered a bit when I examined the strange and shockingly ancient books on his shelves. By then I was almost cured of my heart problems by his skillful manipulations. He told me he preferred using rare medieval methods. Those methods had the power to affect the nervous system from which organic impulses had gone. He also told me about his older friend, Dr. Torres, who had a great illness, and how he had done his earlier experiments with him eighteen years before. The methods of healing he used had been most extraordinary, and its processes were not welcomed by older and more conservative colleagues. Unfortunately, soon after Dr. Muñoz had saved his colleague, he himself fell victim⁸to the enemy he had fought.

As the weeks passed, I was sorry to see that my new friend was slowly getting physically weaker and weaker, as Mrs. Herrero had said. His complexion was grayer than usual, his voice became hollow, his movements were slow, and his mind was blurred. He did not seem to notice this sad change, and little by little my conversations with him started bringing back that slight dislike I had felt at first.

He had also developed strange whims, for example, he started using exotic spices and Egyptian incense till his room smelled like a tomb of a pharaoh. At the same time, he demanded even colder air, and with my help he increased the ammonia in his refrigerating machine till he could keep the temperature as low as 40° or 34° and finally even 28°⁹. The bathroom and laboratory, of course, were less chilly, or all the water there would have frozen and the chemical processes would have stopped. Yet, a kind of growing horror seemed to possess the doctor. He now talked of death all the time, but laughed bitterly when things such as burial or funeral were mentioned.

All in all, he became a sad and even depressing companion, but I was grateful to him for helping me, and I could not leave him to the strangers around him. I carefully dusted his room every day and did much of his shopping, though some chemicals he ordered from druggists puzzled me.

There seemed to be an unexplained atmosphere of panic around his apartment. The whole house, as I have said, had a musty smell, but the smell in his room was the worst, despite all the spices and incense he used. The stench of chemical baths which he was constantly taking was unbearable. I thought that it must be connected with his illness and often wondered what that illness might be. The appearance and the voice of the doctor became frightful, so even Mrs. Herrero crossed herself when she looked at the doctor and left him all to me, not letting her son Esteban do chores for him anymore. When I suggested bringing in other doctors, Dr. Muñoz became furious. Although he avoided any emotions, he strongly refused to stay in his bed. He seemed determined to defy the death demon – his ancient enemy. He then stopped eating anything and lived on his mental power¹⁰ alone.

He started writing some long documents, which he carefully sealed, and instructed me to send them after his death to certain people whom he named. As it happened, I burned all these papers unopened.

Then, in the middle of October, suddenly came the horror of horrors. One night, at about eleven, the pump of the refrigerating machine broke down, so that in three hours the process of ammonia cooling became impossible. Dr. Muñoz called me, and I tried to repair the engine, but my efforts were useless. When I had brought in a mechanic from an all-night garage, we learned that nothing could be done till morning because a new spare part was needed. The doctor’s rage and fear ruined the last of his poor health. A spasm made him cover his eyes with his hands and rush into the bathroom. He later came out with his face bandaged, and I never saw his eyes again.

The apartment was now getting warmer and warmer, and at about 5 a. m. the doctor went to the bathroom, ordering me to bring him all the ice I could get at the all-night drugstores and cafeterias. As I returned from my trips and lay the ice before the closed bathroom door, I could hear the doctor shouting, “More, more!”

Then another warm day came, and the shops opened one by one. I asked Esteban to help the doctor with the ice while I would go and find the pump spare parts and the workmen, but instructed by his mother, he absolutely refused.

Finally, I hired a man whom I met in the street to keep bringing the ice from a little shop. The hours went by in vain as I was telephoning different companies and running from place to place to find the right spare part. Finally, at about 1:30 p. m., I returned to my boarding house with the necessary equipment and two intelligent mechanics. I had done all I could, and hoped I was in time.

But the house was in black terror. Unthinkable stench was coming from under the doctor’s closed door. The man I had hired, it seemed, had run away screaming soon after his second delivery of ice. The doctor’s door was locked from the inside, and there was no sound except of slow dripping.

I spoke with Mrs. Herrero and the workmen, and at first, despite our fear, we decided to break down the door, but the landlady found a way to turn the key from the outside with some wire. We had opened the doors and windows of all the other rooms, and now, with our noses covered by handkerchiefs, we entered the doctor’s room.

A kind of dark, slimy trail led from the open bathroom door to the hall, and then to the desk, where there was a terrible little pool. Something was written there in pencil on a piece of paper – the doctor’s last words. Then the trail led to the couch and ended unspeakably.

What was, or had been, on the couch – I cannot describe. But here is what I saw on that paper before I burned it while the landlady and two mechanics rushed from that hellish place to the nearest police station. The sickening words seemed unbelievable, yet I confess that I believed them then. I honestly do not know if I believe them now. There are things about which it is better not to talk, and all I can say is that now I hate the smell of ammonia and can faint at a draught of unusually cool air.

“The end,” it was written on the paper, “is here. No more ice – the man saw me and ran away. Warmer every minute, and the tissues can’t last. I think you understood what I said about the will and the nerves, and the preserved body after the organs stopped working. It was a good idea, but it couldn’t last forever. I didn’t realize it. Dr. Torres had understood it, but the shock killed him. He couldn’t stand what he had to do when he got my letter. He had put me in a strange, dark place and nursed me back, but the organs would never work again. So it had to be done my way – artificial preservation – because, you see, I died that time, eighteen years ago.”

The tree on the hill

1

Southeast of Hampden, near the Salmon River, there is a range of rocky hills on which no one lives. The canyons are too deep and the slopes are too steep for anyone except the cows and sheep. The last time I visited Hampden, the region known as Hell’s Acres was part of the Blue Mountain Forest Reserve. There are no roads linking this place with the outside world, and the local people will tell you that it is indeed an evil spot. There is a local superstition that the area is haunted, but by what or by whom no one seems to know. Natives do not go walking in those hills because they believe the stories told by the Nez Perce Indians, who have avoided the region for generations, because, according to them, it is a playground of devils from the Outside. These tales made me very curious.

My first visit – and my last, thank God! – to those hills was while Theunis and I were living in Hampden the summer of 1938. He was writing an article on Egyptian mythology, and I was walking alone much of the time. We lived in a small house on Beacon Street.

On the morning of June 23rd, I was walking in those strangely shaped hills, which at first had seemed very ordinary. I must have been about seven miles south of Hampden before I noticed anything unusual. I was climbing a grassy slope of a deep canyon when I saw an area totally without any vegetation. It went southward over many hills and valleys. At first I thought the spot had been burned in the previous fall, but after examining the ground, I found no signs of a fire. The nearby slopes and ravines looked terribly scarred as if some gigantic torch had blasted them, burning all vegetation. And yet there was no sign of a fire…

I moved on over rich, black soil in which no grass grew. As I went for the center of this deserted area, I began to notice a strange silence. There were no birds, no rabbits, and even the insects seemed to have left the place. I stood on a little hill and tried to guess at the size of that strange region. Then I saw the lone tree.

It stood on a hill, which was higher than the other hills, and attracted the attention because it was so unexpected. I had seen no trees for miles: many bushes grew in the ravines, but there had been no big trees. It was strange to find one standing on that hill.

I crossed two canyons before I came to it, and a surprise waited for me. It was not a pine tree, nor a fir tree, nor an ash tree. I had never, in all my life, seen a tree which I could compare with it – for which I am thankful!

More than anything it looked like an oak. It had a huge, twisted trunk, a yard in diameter, and the large branches began spreading about seven feet from the ground. The leaves were round and strangely alike in size and design. It might have been a tree from a painting, but I swear to God it was real. I will always know that it was real, despite what Theunis said later.

I remember that I looked at the sun and thought it was about ten o’clock in the morning, but I did not look at my watch. The day was getting warm, and I sat for a while in the welcome shade of the huge tree. Then I noticed the grass that grew under it – another strange phenomenon when I remembered the deserted area through which I had passed. A wild maze of hills and ravines surrounded me on all sides, although the hill on which I sat was rather higher than any other within miles. I looked far to the east and I jumped to my feet, startled and amazed. Through a blue haze in the distance I could see the Bitterroot Mountains! There is no other range of snow-capped peaks¹¹ within three hundred miles of Hampden, and I knew that I shouldn’t be seeing them at all from this hill. For several minutes I looked at the peaks, and then I became sleepy. I lay in the grass under the tree. I put down my camera, took off my hat, and relaxed, staring at the sky through the green leaves. Finally, I closed my eyes.

Then a curious thing happened to me: I saw a cloudy vision of something unfamiliar. I thought I saw a great temple by a sea where three suns shone in the pale red sky. The temple, or a vast tomb, was of a strange color – a nameless blue-violet shade. Large beasts flew in the cloudy sky, and I seemed to hear the flapping of their heavy wings. I went nearer the stone temple, and a huge doorway appeared in front of me. Within that doorway were shadows that seemed to try to suck me inside that awful darkness. I thought I saw three burning eyes in the void of the doorway, and I screamed with mortal fear. In that depth, I knew, was a living hell even worse than death. I screamed again. The vision faded.

I saw the round leaves and the blue sky again. Trembling and covered in cold sweat, I tried to get up. I wanted to run away, to run from that evil tree on the hill, but then I calmed down and thought it was absurd. Never had I dreamed anything so realistic, so horrifying. What had caused the vision? I had been reading several of Theunis’ books on ancient Egypt… I wiped my forehead and decided that it was time for lunch.

Then I had an idea. I would take a few photos of the tree, for Theunis. They might interest him. Perhaps I would tell him about the dream… Opening my camera, I took some shots of the tree and the landscape seen from the tree, including the peaks.

Putting the camera away, I looked at my cushion of soft grass. Had that spot under the tree some enchantment? I did not want to leave it.

I looked up at the curious round leaves. I closed my eyes. A breeze stirred the branches, and their soft music made me sleepy again. And suddenly I saw the pale red sky and the three suns. The land of three shadows! Again there was the great temple. I seemed to be floating on the air, exploring the wonders of another world! The temple frightened me, and I knew that no man on earth had ever seen this place in his wildest dreams.

Again the vast doorway opened before me, and I was sucked into that black cloud. I seemed to be staring at a void I cannot describe: a dark, bottomless gulf with nameless shapes and creatures.

I was terribly afraid. I screamed and screamed, and felt that I would soon go mad. Then in my dream I ran and ran in terror, but I did not know what I was running from. I left that horrible temple and that hellish void because I knew I had to return…

At last my eyes opened. I was not under the tree. I was lying on a rocky slope, my clothes torn, my hands bleeding. I stood up in pain and recognized the spot – it was the slope from where I had first seen the blasted area! I must have walked miles – unconscious! I could not see the tree, and I was glad.

I looked at the sun. Late afternoon! Where had I been? I took out my watch. It had stopped at 10:34…

2

“So you have the shots?” Theunis asked, looking at me across the breakfast table. Three days had passed by since my return from Hell’s Acres. I had told him about the dream under the tree, and he had laughed.

“Yes,” I said. “They came last night. Haven’t had a chance to open them yet. Study them. Perhaps you’ll change your mind.”

Theunis smiled, drinking his coffee. I gave him the unopened envelope, and he quickly took out the pictures. He looked at the first one, and the smile faded from his face.

“My God, man! Look at this!”

I took the glossy picture. There was nothing special on it, so I could not understand what made Theunis so excited. It was the first picture of the tree. There it was, standing on the hill, with the jungle of grass where I had lain below it. In the distance were the snow-capped mountains.

“Here it is,” I said. “The proof of my story.”

“Look at it!” Theunis cried. “The shadows – there are three for every rock, bush, and tree!”

He was right. Below the tree lay three shadows. Suddenly, I realized that there was an abnormal element the picture. The leaves on the thing were too lush, while the trunk was twisted in the most unusual shapes. Theunis put the picture on the table.

“There is something wrong,” I muttered. “The tree I saw didn’t look like that…”

“Are you sure?” Theunis asked. “The fact is, you may have seen many things not recorded on this film.”

“It shows more than I saw!”

“That’s right. There is something terribly wrong with this landscape. Something I can’t understand. The tree seems to be too unreal to be natural!” He took the other pictures and looked through them.

I took the picture again and felt some uncertainty and strangeness. The flowers and grass grew in different directions. The tree seemed too clouded, but I noticed the huge branches that were ready to fall over, yet did not fall. And also many overlapping shadows… They were very queer shadows – too long or short when compared to the plants they fell below. The landscape hadn’t shocked me the day of my visit… But now there was an abnormal dark suggestion in it, something distant like the stars beyond the galaxy.

“Did you say you saw three suns in your dream?” Theunis asked.

I nodded, puzzled. Then it dawned on me¹². My fingers trembled slightly as I stared at the picture again. My dream! Of course!

“The others are just like it,” Theunis said. “That same suggestion. I should be able to catch it, to see it in its real light, but it is too… Perhaps later I will figure it out, if I look at it long enough.”

We sat in silence for some time. A thought came to me suddenly: I should visit the tree again. “Let’s take a trip. I think I can take you there in half a day.”

“You’d better stay away,” said Theunis, thoughtfully. “I doubt if you could find the place again even if you wanted to.”

“Nonsense!” I cried. “Surely, with these photos…”

“Did you see any familiar landmarks in them?”

He was right. After looking through the shots carefully, I had to admit that there were none.

“A perfectly normal picture of a spot from nowhere. Seeing mountains from this low place is impossible, but wait!” Theunis muttered. He got off the chair and ran out of the room. I could hear him moving in our library, cursing loudly. Soon he came back with an old book. He opened it and looked at the odd characters.

“What is that?” I asked.

“This is an early English translation of the Chronicle of Nath, written by Rudolf Yergler, a German mystic and alchemist who borrowed some of his lore from Hermes Trismegistus, the ancient Egyptian sorcerer. There is a passage here that might interest you and help you understand why this tree is even further from the natural than you suspect. Listen.”

“So in the year of the Black Goat there came to Nath a shadow that should not be on Earth, and that had no form known to the eyes of Earth. And it fed on the souls of men. These poor men were blinded with dreams till the horror and the endless night lay upon them. They could not see what that Shadow was because the Shadow took false shapes that men know or dream of, and freedom seemed waiting only in the Land of the Three Suns. But it was told by priests of the Old Book that he who could see the Shadow’s true shape and live after seeing it might be able to send it back to the starless void. This could be done only through the Gem which Ka-Nefer, the High-Priest, kept sacred in the temple, but it was lost with Phrenes. Yet, at last, the hungry Shadow left Nath – only to come back again in the next year of the Black Goat.”

Theunis paused while I stared at him. Finally he spoke. “Now, I think you can guess how it all links up. According to the old legends, this is the so-called ‘Year of the Black Goat’ when certain horrors from the Outside are supposed to visit the earth and do harm. We don’t know what they are like, but they could be like strange mirages and hallucinations. I don’t like your story or the pictures. It may be pretty bad, and I warn you to be careful. But first I must try to do what old Yergler says. Fortunately, the old Gem he mentions has been found, and I know where I can get it. We must use it on the photographs and see what we see, and maybe make sketches. The Gem is more or less like a lens or prism, though one can’t take photographs with it. There’s a bit of danger, and the looker’s sanity might be harmed because the real shape of the shadow isn’t pleasant and doesn’t belong on this earth. But it would be a lot more dangerous not to do anything about it. So if you value your life and sanity, stay away from that hill and from the thing you think is a tree on it.”

I was more scared than ever. “How can there be someone from the Outside here?” I cried. “How do we know that such things exist?”

“You think in terms of¹³ this small planet Earth,” Theunis said. “Surely it cannot measure the whole universe. There may be invisible creatures we have never dreamed of right under our noses. Modern science is studying the unknown and proving that the mystics were not so wrong.”

Suddenly I knew that I did not want to look at the picture again; I wanted to destroy it. I wanted to run from it. Theunis was suggesting something beyond… A trembling, cosmic fear gripped me and drew me away from the hideous picture because I was afraid I would recognize some object in it…

I looked at my friend. He was reading the ancient book with a strange expression on his face. Then he sat up straight. “Enough for today. I’m tired of this endless guessing and wondering. I must try to get the gem from the museum where it is and do what is to be done.”

“Will you have to go to Croydon?” I asked.

He nodded.

3

In the next two weeks I wanted to return to the tree of dreams and freedom and at the same time I feared the thing and all connected with it. Meanwhile, Theunis was busy with some investigation of the strangest nature, something which involved a mysterious trip and a return in greatest secrecy. On the telephone he told me that he had somewhere found the object mentioned in the ancient book as “The Gem,” and that he was trying to use it on the photographs I had left with him. He spoke of “refraction,” “polarization,” “unknown angles of space and time” and of building a special box.

Sixteen days later I got the shocking message from the hospital in Croydon. Theunis was there and wanted to see me at once. He had some strange seizure. He was found unconscious by friends who had come into his house after hearing cries of mortal fear. Though still weak, he wanted to tell me something. The hospital told me this much over the phone, and in half an hour I was at my friend’s bed. He first asked the nurses to leave in order to speak with me in private¹⁴.

“I saw it!” he said. “You must destroy them all – those pictures. I sent it back by seeing it. That tree will never be seen on the hill again – at least for thousands of years till the next

Year of the Black Goat. You are safe now, and the mankind is safe.”

He paused, then continued.

“But you need to do something. Take the Gem out of the black box and put it in the safe. It must go back where it came from because there’s a time when it may be needed to save the world. They won’t let me leave yet, but I can rest if I know it’s safe. Don’t look through the Gem because it can do the same thing to you as it did to me. And burn those damned photographs!”

In another half an hour I was at his house and looking at the black box on the library table. And next to the box I saw the envelope of pictures I had taken. It did not take me long to examine the box with my earliest picture of the tree at one end and a strange amber-colored crystal at the other. I felt a mixture of emotions. Even after I had put the picture in the envelope with the rest of the photos, I had a wish to save it, and look at it, and run up the hill toward its original again. But the picture also scared me, so I quickly burned the envelope with all the photographs in the fireplace.

Strangely, I never wanted to look through the box before taking out the gem and the photograph. What was shown in the picture by the antique crystal’s lens was not – I was sure of it – what a normal brain could take. Whatever it was, I had been close to it, had been under its spell on that distant hill in the form of a tree and an unfamiliar landscape. And to sleep better at night, I did not wish to know what it had been.

Unfortunately, something had caught my eye¹⁵ before I left the room. It was a paper lying among other papers on the table beside the black box. All papers were blank, but that one had a drawing in pencil. Suddenly I remembered what Theunis had once said about sketching the horror seen through the gem. Out of curiosity, I looked at the drawing and straight into the dark and forbidden design – and fainted.