The Watchers Out of Time

by H. P. Lovecraft

  I had brought with me various books and papers necessary to the doctoral dissertation on which I was at work, and I knew that the shelves of the library of Miskatonic University, scarcely a mile from the house, would offer me all the additional assistance I might need; Thomas Hardy and the Wessex country hardly constituted a subject so obscure as to make necessary application to the Widener or some more expanded college library. So to that work I set myself until mid-evening of my first day in Uriah Garrison’s old house, when, being tired, I went to bed in what had been my great-uncle’s room on the second floor rather than in the guest room on the ground floor.

  II

  Rhoda surprised me by coming to visit late the following day. She arrived without any prior notice, driving her own roadster. Rhoda Prentiss. It was, actually, a ridiculously prim name for such a lovely young lady, one so filled with excitement and so vigorously alive. I failed to hear her drive in, and was not aware of her until she opened the front door of the house and called out, “Adam! Are you home?”

  I bounded out of the study where I was at work—by lamplight, for the day was dark and louring with squalls—and there she stood, with her shoulder-length ash-blonde hair damp with raindrops, and her thin-lips parted, and her candid blue eyes taking in what she could see of the house with lively curiosity.

  But when I took her in my arms, a faint tremor ran through her body.

  “How can you bear three months in this house?” she cried.

  “It was made for doctoral dissertations,” I said. “There’s nothing here to disturb me.”

  “The whole house disturbs me, Adam,” she said with unaccustomed gravity. “Don’t you feel anything wrong?”

  “What was wrong about it is dead. That was my great-uncle. When he was here, I admit, the house reeked of evil.”

  “And it still does.”

  “If you believe in psychic residue.”

  She might have said more, but I changed the subject.

  “You’re just in time to drive into Arkham for dinner. There’s a quaint old-fashioned restaurant at the foot of French Hill.”

  She said no more, however much, as I saw by the small frown that held for a while, she was of a mind to say. And at dinner her mood changed, she spoke of her work, of our plans, of herself and of me, and we spent over two hours in the French House before we returned to the house. It was only natural that she should stay the night, taking the guest room, which, being below my own, enabled her simply to rap on the ceiling if she wanted for anything, or if, as I put it, “the psychic residue crowds you.”

  Nevertheless, despite my jesting, I was aware from the moment of my fiancee’s arrival of a kind of heightened awareness in the house; it was as if the house had shaken off its indolence, as if, suddenly, it had come upon need to be more alert, as if it apprehended some danger to itself in somehow learning of my intention to dispose of it to someone who would unfeelingly tear it down. This feeling grew throughout the evening, and with it a curious response that was basically sympathetic, unaccountably. Yet, I suppose this should not have been so strange to me, since any house slowly assumes an atmosphere, and one of two centuries in age has undeniably more than a house less old. Indeed, it was the great number of such houses that lent to Arkham its chief distinction—not alone the architectural treasures, but the atmosphere of the houses, the lore and legendry of human lives come into being and spent in the relatively small confines of the city.

  And from that moment, too, I was aware of something on another plane about the house—not that Rhoda’s intuitive reaction to it had been communicated to me, but simply that her arrival spurred events, the first of which took place that very night. I have thought afterward that Rhoda’s appearance on the scene hastened the happenings that were bound to take place in any event, but which would, in the normal course of circumstances, have taken place more insidiously.

  We went to bed late that night. For my part, I fell asleep instantly, for the house was set well away from most of the city traffic, and there was nothing in the house of those settling and creaking noises so common to old houses. Below me, Rhoda still moved restlessly about, and she was still up and around when I drifted off.

  It was sometime after midnight when I was awakened.

  I lay for a few seconds growing to full wakefulness. What was it that had awakened me? A sound of breathing not my own? A nearby presence? Something on my bed? Or all these things together?

  I thrust forth a hand and encountered, unmistakably, a woman’s naked breast! And at the same moment I was aware of her hot, fervid breath—and then, instantaneously, she was gone, the bed lightened, I felt, rather than heard, her movement toward the door of the bedroom.

  Fully awake now, I thrust back the light sheet covering me—for the night was sultry and humid, and got out of bed. With hands that trembled a little, I lit the lamp and stood there, undecided as to what to do. I was clad only in my shorts, and the experience had unsettled me more than I cared to say.

  I am ashamed to admit that I thought at first it had been Rhoda—which was only evidence of the mental confusion the incident had brought me to, for Rhoda was incapable of such an act; had she wished to spend the night in my bed, she would have said as much—she had done so before this. Further, the breast I had touched was not Rhoda’s; her breasts were firm, beautifully rounded—and the breast of the woman who lay next to me on my bed was flaccid, large nippled, and old. And the effect of it, unlike Rhoda’s, was one of shuddering horror.

  I took up the lamp and stepped outside my room, determined to search the house. But at the moment of my entry into the hall I heard, drifting down as if from somewhere outside, high up over the house, the wailing and screaming of a woman’s voice, the voice of a woman being punished—only a drift of sound that grew more and more tenuous and was finally lost. It could not have lasted thirty seconds in all, but it was, in its way, as unmistakable as what I had felt beside me on my bed.

  I stood, shaken—and in the end retreated to my bed and lay sleepless for over an hour, waiting for what might happen.

  Nothing did, and when at last I slept again, I had begun to wonder whether I had not confused dream with reality.

  But in the morning, the cloud on Rhoda’s face told me that something was wrong. She had got up to prepare breakfast for the two of us, and I came upon her in the kitchen.

  Without a greeting, she turned and said, “There was a woman in the house last night!”

  “Then it wasn’t a dream!” I cried.

  “Who was she?” she demanded.

  I shook my head. “I wish I could tell you.”

  “It seems to me an extraordinary thing to have a cleaning woman in the middle of the night,” she went on.

  “You saw her?”

  “I saw her, yes. Why?”

  “What did she look like?”

  “She seemed to be a young woman—but I had a strange feeling that she wasn’t young at all. Her face was expressionless—fixed. Only her eyes seemed to be alive.”

  “She saw you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “My great-uncle’s cleaning woman!” I cried. “That’s who it must have been. I found the house clean when I came. You see how clean it is. He must never have left orders for her not to come again. I remember seeing her once when I was a child. He always had her in at night….”

  “How utterly ridiculous! Uriah Garrison died in March—over three months ago. Only a cretin couldn’t tell by this time that he was no longer alive. Who pays her?”

  Who, indeed? I could not answer.

  Furthermore, in the circumstances, I could not tell Rhoda of my experience in the night. I could only assure her that I had not seen a woman in the house since that night in my early years when I had inadvertently caught a glimpse of the cleaning woman at her work.

  “I remember having the same impression, too—the expression-lessness of her face,” I said.

  “Adam, that was twenty years ago—perhaps more,” Rh
oda pointed out. “It couldn’t be the same woman.”

  “I shouldn’t think so. Still, I suppose it isn’t impossible. And in spite of what Mr. Saltonstall said, she must have a key.”

  “It simply doesn’t make sense. And you’ve hardly been here long enough to hire anyone yourself.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I believe it. You wouldn’t lift a finger to dust even if you were drowning in it.” She shrugged. “You’ll have to find out who she is and put a stop to it. It won’t do to have people gossiping, you know.”

  On this note we sat down to breakfast, after which, I knew, Rhoda intended to be on her way.

  But the troubled frown remained on Rhoda’s forehead, and she said very little during the meal, responding to my comments with only the briefest of monosyllables, until at last she burst forth with, “Oh, Adam—can’t you feel it?”

  “Feel what?”

  “Something in this house wants you, Adam—I sense it. It’s you the house wants.”

  After my initial astonishment, I pointed out soberly that the house was an inanimate object, I was to the best of my knowledge the only living creature in it, exclusive of mice I may not have seen or heard, and that the house could not want or not want anything.

  She was not convinced, and when, an hour later, she was ready to leave, she said impulsively, “Adam come away with me—now.”

  “It would be folly to surrender a valuable property we can both turn to good use simply to satisfy your whim, Rhoda,” I answered.

  “It’s more than a whim. Take care, Adam.”

  On this note we parted, Rhoda promising to come again later in the summer, and exacting my promise to write her faithfully.

  III

  The experience of that second night in the house stirred my memory to thoughts of the sinister gloom that had pervaded the house for me as a boy—gloom which radiated from my great-uncle Uriah’s forbidding countenance, and from the locked attic room which no one dared enter, however often my great-uncle went in and out of it. I suppose it was only natural that eventually I would think again of the challenge represented by the attic room and would respond to it.

  The rain of yesterday had given way to bright sunlight which streamed into the house through the windows on the sunny side and gave to it an air of genteel and mellow age, one far removed from the sinister. It was such a day as to make all that was dark and ominous seem very far away, and I did not hesitate to light a lamp to dispel the darkness in the windowless attic and set out forthwith for the top of the old house, carrying along all the keys Mr. Saltonstall had surrendered to me.

  None was necessary, however. The attic room was unlocked.

  And empty, too, I thought, when I stepped into it. But not quite. A single chair stood in the middle of that gabled room, and on it lay a few prosaic objects and one which could not be so described—some woman’s clothing—and a rubber mask—one of that kind which moulds to the features of the wearer. I crossed to it, astonished, and put the lamp down on the floor the better to examine the things on the chair.

  They were nothing more than what I had seen at a glance—a common cotton house dress in a very old-fashioned square print design, in various shades of grey—an apron—a pair of skin-tight rubber gloves—elastic stockings—house slippers—and then the mask, which, on examination, proved to be ordinary enough, save for having hair attached to it—however unusual it was to find it here. The clothing could very likely have belonged to Great-uncle Uriah’s cleaning woman—it would have been like him to let her use only the attic room in which to change. And yet, of course, this did not ring true, considering the care he had always taken to allow no one to enter that room but himself.

  The mask could not be so readily explained. It was not at all hardening, betokening long disuse; it had the softness and flexibility of rubber that is being used, which was all the more mystifying. Moreover, in common with all the rest of the house, the attic was spotless.

  Leaving the clothing undisturbed, I picked up the lamp again and held it high. It was then that I saw the shadow, which lay beyond my own, against the wall and sloping ceiling—a monstrous, misshapen, blackened area, as if some vast flame had flared forth and burnt its image into the wood there. I stared at it for some time before I realized that, however grotesque it was, it bore a resemblance to a distorted human figure, though its head—for it had a surmounting blob of shapelessness that served it as head—was horribly out of shape.

  I walked over to examine it, but its outlines faded as I drew close. Yet, undeniably, it had the appearance of having been burned into the wood by some searing blast. I moved back again, toward the chair, and a trifle beyond it. The shadow bore the appearance of having come from a blast of flame virtually at floor level; its angle was odd and inexplicable. I turned, accordingly, and tried to find the possible point from which whatever had made this strange blemish on the wall and ceiling could have come.

  As I turned, the light fell upon the opposite side of the attic room and disclosed, at the point I sought, an opening at the juncture of the roof and the floor—for there was along this side of the house no wall between floor and roof—an opening no larger than that for a mouse, and I assumed instantly that it was, indeed, a mouse-hole, and it did not attract my attention for more than a second, but what was painted in garish red chalk or oil around it did—a sequence of curious angular lines, which seemed to me completely unlike any geometrical designs with which I was familiar and which were arranged in such a fashion as to make the mouse-hole seem their precise center. I thought instantly of my great-uncle’s absorption in witchcraft, but no, these were not the familiar pentagrams and tetrahedrons and circles associated with sorcery—rather their opposite.

  I carried the lamp toward the painted lines and examined them; up close, they were simply lines, no more—but from the middle of the attic they had a strange kind of design, essentially other-dimensional, I thought. There was no telling how long they had been there, but they did not seem to be of recent origin—that is, within the last three decades or so, and they might very well have been a century old.

  It was while I was pondering the meaning of the strange shadow and the painted lines opposite it that I began to grow aware of a kind of tension in the attic; it was actually indescribable; it felt—how curious it is to put it into words—as if the attic were holding its breath! I began to grow uneasy, as if not the attic but I were under observation, and the flame on the wick wavered and began to smoke, and the room seemed to grow dark. There was a moment that was as if the earth had taken a half turn backward or something of that kind, and I had not gone along with it but were suspended somewhere far out in space at the instant before plunging into orbit of my own—and then the moment passed, the earth resumed its regularity of turning, the room lightened, the flame in the lamp steadied.

  I left the attic in unseemly haste, with all the whispered lore of my childhood pressing after me out of the store of memories. I wiped away from my temples the fine beading of perspiration which had gathered there, blew out the lamp, and started down the narrow stairs, considerably shaken, though, by time I reached the ground floor I had regained my composure. Nevertheless, I was now a little less ready than I had been to brush aside my fiancée’s perturbation about the house in which I had consented to spend the summer.

  I pride myself on being a methodical man. In her lighter moments, Rhoda has referred to me as her “little pendant,”—referring strictly, of course, to my concern with books and writers and the circumstances of literature. Not that I mind. The truth, no matter how it is put, is no less truth. Once recovered from my momentarily frightening experience in the attic, following so hard upon the events of the night, I resolved to get to the bottom of the matter and uncover some tenable explanation for what had happened in both instances. Had I, in fact, been in an hallucinatory state on both occasions? Or had I not?

  The cleaning woman obviously was the nearest point of departure.

  An imme
diate telephone call to Mr. Saltonstall, however, only confirmed what he had said before—he knew of no cleaning woman, he had no knowledge that my great-uncle had ever employed a housekeeper of any kind, and to the best of his knowledge there was no other key to the house.

  “But you do understand, Mr. Duncan,” finished Mr. Saltonstall, “that your great-uncle was a reclusive sort of man, secretive almost to the point of fanaticism. What he did not wish others to know, others did not know. But, if I may make a suggestion—why not make inquiry among the neighbors? I’ve set foot in the house only once or twice, and they’ve had it under daily observation for years. There isn’t much, you know, that neighbors don’t find out.”

  I thanked him and rang off.

  Approaching the neighbors, however, apart from a frontal attack, represented a problem, for most of the houses in the area were at more than lot-line distances from my great-uncle’s house. The nearest house was two lots away, off to the left of my great-uncle’s ancient house; I had noticed very little sign of life about it, but now that I peered from the windows, I saw someone in a rocking-chair taking the sun on the porch of that house.

  I pondered for a few minutes about my best approach, but I could think of nothing but a direct question. So I walked out of the house and down the lane to the house next door. As I turned into the yard, I saw that the occupant of the chair was an old man.

  “Good morning, sir,” I greeted him. “I wonder if you could help me.”

  The old man stirred. “Who’re you?”