The Outsider

The Outsider
by HP Lovecraft
Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness.
Wretched is he who looks back upon lone hours in vast and dismal chambers
with brown hangings and maddening rows of antique books, or upon awed
watches in twilight groves of grotesque, gigantic, and vine-encumbered trees
that silently wave twisted branches far aloft. Such a lot the gods gave to
me - to me, the dazed, the disappointed; the barren, the broken. And yet I
am strangely content and cling desperately to those sere memories, when my
mind momentarily threatens to reach beyond to the other.

I know not where I was born, save that the castle was infinitely old and
infinitely horrible, full of dark passages and having high ceilings where
the eye could find only cobwebs and shadows. The stones in the crumbling
corridors seemed always hideously damp, and there was an accursed smell
everywhere, as of the piled-up corpses of dead generations. It was never
light, so that I used sometimes to light candles and gaze steadily at them
for relief, nor was there any sun outdoors, since the terrible trees grew
high above the topmost accessible tower. There was one black tower which
reached above the trees into the unknown outer sky, but that was partly
ruined and could not be ascended save by a well-nigh impossible climb up the
sheer wall, stone by stone.

I must have lived years in this place, but I cannot measure the time. Beings
must have cared for my needs, yet I cannot recall any person except myself,
or anything alive but the noiseless rats and bats and spiders. I think that
whoever nursed me must have been shockingly aged, since my first conception
of a living person was that of somebody mockingly like myself, yet
distorted, shrivelled, and decaying like the castle. To me there was nothing
grotesque in the bones and skeletons that strewed some of the stone crypts
deep down among the foundations. I fantastically associated these things
with everyday events, and thought them more natural than the coloured
pictures of living beings which I found in many of the mouldy books. From
such books I learned all that I know. No teacher urged or guided me, and I
do not recall hearing any human voice in all those years - not even my own;
for although I had read of speech, I had never thought to try to speak
aloud. My aspect was a matter equally unthought of, for there were no
mirrors in the castle, and I merely regarded myself by instinct as akin to
the youthful figures I saw drawn and painted in the books. I felt conscious
of youth because I remembered so little.

Outside, across the putrid moat and under the dark mute trees, I would often
lie and dream for hours about what I read in the books; and would longingly
picture myself amidst gay crowds in the sunny world beyond the endless
forests. Once I tried to escape from the forest, but as I went farther from
the castle the shade grew denser and the air more filled with brooding fear;
so that I ran frantically back lest I lose my way in a labyrinth of nighted
silence.

So through endless twilights I dreamed and waited, though I knew not what I
waited for. Then in the shadowy solitude my longing for light grew so
frantic that I could rest no more, and I lifted entreating hands to the
single black ruined tower that reached above the forest into the unknown
outer sky. And at last I resolved to scale that tower, fall though I might;
since it were better to glimpse the sky and perish, than to live without
ever beholding day.

In the dank twilight I climbed the worn and aged stone stairs till I reached
the level where they ceased, and thereafter clung perilously to small
footholds leading upward. Ghastly and terrible was that dead, stairless
cylinder of rock; black, ruined, and deserted, and sinister with startled
bats whose wings made no noise. But more ghastly and terrible still was the
slowness of my progress; for climb as I might, the darkness overhead grew no
thinner, and a new chill as of haunted and venerable mould assailed me. I
shivered as I wondered why I did not reach the light, and would have looked
down had I dared. I fancied that night had come suddenly upon me, and vainly
groped with one free hand for a window embrasure, that I might peer out and
above, and try to judge the height I had once attained.

All at once, after an infinity of awesome, sightless, crawling up that
concave and desperate precipice, I felt my head touch a solid thing, and I
knew I must have gained the roof, or at least some kind of floor. In the
darkness I raised my free hand and tested the barrier, finding it stone and
immovable. Then came a deadly circuit of the tower, clinging to whatever
holds the slimy wall could give; till finally my testing hand found the
barrier yielding, and I turned upward again, pushing the slab or door with
my head as I used both hands in my fearful ascent. There was no light
revealed above, and as my hands went higher I knew that my climb was for the
nonce ended; since the slab was the trapdoor of an aperture leading to a
level stone surface of greater circumference than the lower tower, no doubt
the floor of some lofty and capacious observation chamber. I crawled through
carefully, and tried to prevent the heavy slab from falling back into place,
but failed in the latter attempt. As I lay exhausted on the stone floor I
heard the eerie echoes of its fall, hoped when necessary to pry it up again.

Believing I was now at prodigious height, far above the accursed branches of
the wood, I dragged myself up from the floor and fumbled about for windows,
that I might look for the first time upon the sky, and the moon and stars of
which I had read. But on every hand I was disappointed; since all that I
found were vast shelves of marble, bearing odious oblong boxes of disturbing
size. More and more I reflected, and wondered what hoary secrets might abide
in this high apartment so many aeons cut off from the castle below. Then
unexpectedly my hands came upon a doorway, where hung a portal of stone,
rough with strange chiselling. Trying it, I found it locked; but with a
supreme burst of strength I overcame all obstacles and dragged it open
inward. As I did so there came to me the purest ecstasy I have ever known;
for shining tranquilly through an ornate grating of iron, and down a short
stone passageway of steps that ascended from the newly found doorway, was
the radiant full moon, which I had never before seen save in dreams and in
vague visions I dared not call memories.

Fancying now that I had attained the very pinnacle of the castle, I
commenced to rush up the few steps beyond the door; but the sudden veiling
of the moon by a cloud caused me to stumble, and I felt my way more slowly
in the dark. It was still very dark when I reached the grating - which I
tried carefully and found unlocked, but which I did not open for fear of
falling from the amazing height to which I had climbed. Then the moon came
out.

Most demoniacal of all shocks is that of the abysmally unexpected and
grotesquely unbelievable. Nothing I had before undergone could compare in
terror with what I snow saw; with the bizarre marvels that sight implied.
The sight itself was as simple as it was stupefying, for it was merely this:
instead of a dizzying prospect of treetops seen from a lofty eminence, there
stretched around me on the level through the grating nothing less than the
solid ground, decked and diversified by marble slabs and columns, and
overshadowed by an ancient stone church, whose ruined spire gleamed
spectrally in the moonlight.

Half unconscious, I opened the grating and staggered out upon the white
gravel path that stretched away in two directions. My mind, stunned and
chaotic as it was, still held the frantic craving for light; and not even
the fantastic wonder which had happened could stay my course. I neither knew
nor cared whether my experience was insanity, dreaming, or magic; but was
determined to gaze on brilliance and gaiety at any cost. I knew not who I
was or what I was, or what my surroundings might be; though as I continued
to stumble along I became conscious of a kind of fearsome latent memory that
made my progress not wholly fortuitous. I passed under an arch out of that
region of slabs and columns, and wandered through the open country;
sometimes following the visible road, but sometimes leaving it curiously to
tread across meadows where only occasional ruins bespoke the ancient
presence of a forgotten road. Once I swam across a swift river where
crumbling, mossy masonry told of a bridge long vanished.

Over two hours must have passed before I reached what seemed to be my goal,
a venerable ivied castle in a thickly wooded park, maddeningly familiar, yet
full of perplexing strangeness to me. I saw that the moat was filled in, and
that some of the well-known towers were demolished, whilst new wings existed
to confuse the beholder. But what I observed with chief interest and delight
were the open windows - gorgeously ablaze with light and sending forth sound
of the gayest revelry. Advancing to one of these I looked in and saw an
oddly dressed company indeed; making merry, and speaking brightly to one
another. I had never, seemingly, heard human speech before and could guess
only vaguely what was said. Some of the faces seemed to hold expressions
that brought up incredibly remote recollections, others were utterly alien.

I now stepped through the low window into the brilliantly lighted room,
stepping as I did so from my single bright moment of hope to my blackest
convulsion of despair and realization. The nightmare was quick to come, for
as I entered, there occurred immediately one of the most terrifying
demonstrations I had ever conceived. Scarcely had I crossed the sill when
there descended upon the whole company a sudden and unheralded fear of
hideous intensity, distorting every face and evoking the most horrible
screams from nearly every throat. Flight was universal, and in the clamour
and panic several fell in a swoon and were dragged away by their madly
fleeing companions. Many covered their eyes with their hands, and plunged
blindly and awkwardly in their race to escape, overturning furniture and
stumbling against the walls before they managed to reach one of the many
doors.

The cries were shocking; and as I stood in the brilliant apartment alone and
dazed, listening to their vanishing echoes, I trembled at the thought of
what might be lurking near me unseen. At a casual inspection the room seemed
deserted, but when I moved towards one of the alcoves I thought I detected a
presence there - a hint of motion beyond the golden-arched doorway leading
to another and somewhat similar room. As I approached the arch I began to
perceive the presence more clearly; and then, with the first and last sound
I ever uttered - a ghastly ululation that revolted me almost as poignantly
as its noxious cause - I beheld in full, frightful vividness the
inconceivable, indescribable, and unmentionable monstrosity which had by its
simple appearance changed a merry company to a herd of delirious fugitives.

I cannot even hint what it was like, for it was a compound of all that is
unclean, uncanny, unwelcome, abnormal, and detestable. It was the ghoulish
shade of decay, antiquity, and dissolution; the putrid, dripping eidolon of
unwholesome revelation, the awful baring of that which the merciful earth
should always hide. God knows it was not of this world - or no longer of
this world - yet to my horror I saw in its eaten-away and bone-revealing
outlines a leering, abhorrent travesty on the human shape; and in its
mouldy, disintegrating apparel an unspeakable quality that chilled me even
more.

I was almost paralysed, but not too much so to make a feeble effort towards
flight; a backward stumble which failed to break the spell in which the
nameless, voiceless monster held me. My eyes bewitched by the glassy orbs
which stared loathsomely into them, refused to close; though they were
mercifully blurred, and showed the terrible object but indistinctly after
the first shock. I tried to raise my hand to shut out the sight, yet so
stunned were my nerves that my arm could not fully obey my will. The
attempt, however, was enough to disturb my balance; so that I had to stagger
forward several steps to avoid falling. As I did so I became suddenly and
agonizingly aware of the nearness of the carrion thing, whose hideous hollow
breathing I half fancied I could hear. Nearly mad, I found myself yet able
to throw out a hand to ward of the foetid apparition which pressed so close;
when in one cataclysmic second of cosmic nightmarishness and hellish
accident my fingers touched the rotting outstretched paw of the monster
beneath the golden arch.

I did not shriek, but all the fiendish ghouls that ride the nightwind
shrieked for me as in that same second there crashed down upon my mind a
single fleeting avalanche of soul-annihilating memory. I knew in that second
all that had been; I remembered beyond the frightful castle and the trees,
and recognized the altered edifice in which I now stood; I recognized, most
terrible of all, the unholy abomination that stood leering before me as I
withdrew my sullied fingers from its own.

But in the cosmos there is balm as well as bitterness, and that balm is
nepenthe. In the supreme horror of that second I forgot what had horrified
me, and the burst of black memory vanished in a chaos of echoing images. In
a dream I fled from that haunted and accursed pile, and ran swiftly and
silently in the moonlight. When I returned to the churchyard place of marble
and went down the steps I found the stone trap-door immovable; but I was not
sorry, for I had hated the antique castle and the trees. Now I ride with the
mocking and friendly ghouls on the night-wind, and play by day amongst the
catacombs of Nephren-Ka in the sealed and unknown valley of Hadoth by the
Nile. I know that light is not for me, save that of the moon over the rock
tombs of Neb, nor any gaiety save the unnamed feasts of Nitokris beneath the
Great Pyramid; yet in my new wildness and freedom I almost welcome the
bitterness of alienage.

For although nepenthe has calmed me, I know always that I am an outsider; a
stranger in this century and among those who are still men. This I have
known ever since I stretched out my fingers to the abomination within that
great gilded frame; stretched out my fingers and touched a cold and
unyielding surface of polished glass.