by Anthology
He rose and strode to the mantel. When he faced me again he was holding a small square box in the palm of his hand.
“I have here five pellets of the drug Liao. It was used by the Chinese philosopher Lao Tze, and while under its influence he visioned Tao. Tao is the most mysterious force in the world; it surrounds and pervades all things; it contains the visible universe and everything that we call reality. He who apprehends the mysteries of Tao sees clearly all that was and will be.”
“Rubbish!” I retorted.
“Tao resembles a great animal, recumbent, motionless, containing in its enormous body all the worlds of our universe, the past, the present and the future. We see portions of this great monster through a slit, which we call time. With the aid of this drug, I shall enlarge the slit. I shall behold the great figure of life, the great recumbent beast in its entirety.”
“And what do you wish me to do?”
“Watch, my friend. Watch and take notes. And if I go back too far, you must recall me to reality. You can recall me by shaking me violently. If I appear to be suffering acute physical pain, you must recall me at once.”
“Chalmers.” I said. “I wish you wouldn’t make this experiment. You are taking dreadful risks. I don’t believe that there is any fourth dimension, and I emphatically do not believe in Tao. And I don’t approve of your experimenting with unknown drugs.”
“I know the properties of this drug,” he replied. “I know precisely how it affects the human animal and I know its dangers. The risk does not reside in the drug itself My only fear is that I may become lost in time. You see, I shall assist the drug. Before I swallow this pellet, I shall give my undivided attention to the geometric and algebraic symbols that I have traced on this paper.” He raised the mathematical chart that rested on his knee. “I shall prepare my mind for an excursion into time. I shall approach the fourth dimension with my conscious mind before I take the drug which will enable me to exercise occult powers of perception. Before I enter the dream world of the Eastern mystics, I shall acquire all of the mathematical help that modern science can offer. This mathematical knowledge, this conscious approach to an actual apprehension of the fourth dimension of time, will supplement the work of the drug. The drug will open up stupendous new vistas—the mathematical preparation will enable me to grasp them intellectually. I have often grasped the fourth dimension in dreams, emotionally, intuitively, but I have never been able to recall, in waking life, the occult splendors that were momentarily revealed to me.
“But with your aid, I believe that I can recall them. You will take down everything that I say under the influence of the drug. No matter how strange or incoherent my speech may become, you will omit nothing. When I awake, I may be able to supply the key to whatever is mysterious or incredible. I am not sure that I shall succeed, but if I do succeed”—his eyes were strangely luminous—“time will exist for me no longer!”
He sat down abruptly. “I shall make the experiment at once. Please stand over there by the window and watch. Have you a fountain pen?”
I nodded gloomily and removed a pale green Waterman from my upper vest pocket.
“And a pad, Frank?”
I groaned and produced a memorandum book.
“I emphatically disapprove of this experiment,” I muttered. “You’re taking a frightful risk.”
“Don’t be an asinine old woman!” he admonished. “Nothing that you can say will induce me to stop now. I entreat you to remain silent while I review these charts.” He raised the charts and studied them intently. I watched the clock on the mantel as it ticked out the seconds, and a curious dread clutched at my heart so that I choked.
Suddenly the clock stopped ticking, and exactly at that moment Chalmers swallowed the drug. I rose quickly and moved toward him, but his eyes implored me not to interfere.
“The clock has stopped,” he murmured. “The forces that control it approve of my experiment. Time stopped, and I swallowed the drug. I pray God that I shall not lose my way.”
He closed his eyes and leaned back on the sofa. All of the blood had left his face, and he was breathing heavily. It was clear that the drug was acting with extraordinary rapidity.
“It is beginning to get dark,” he murmured. “Write that. It is beginning to get dark, and the familiar objects in the room are fading out. I can discern them vaguely through my eyelids, but they are fading swiftly.”
I shook my pen to make the ink come and wrote rapidly in shorthand as he continued to dictate.
“I am leaving the room. The walls are vanishing, and I can no longer see any of the familiar objects. Your face, though, is still visible to me. I hope that you are writing. I think that I am about to make a great leap—a leap through space. Or perhaps it is through time that I shall make the leap. I cannot tell. Everything is dark, indistinct.”
He sat for a while, silent with his head sunk upon his breast. Then suddenly he stiffened and his eyelids fluttered open. “God in heaven!” he cried. “I see!”
He was straining forward in his chair, staring at the opposite wall. But I knew that he was looking beyond the wall and that the objects in the room no longer existed for him.
“Chalmers,” I cried, “Chalmers, shall I wake you?”
“Do not!” he shrieked. “I see everything. All of the billions of lives that preceeded me on this planet are before me at this moment. I see men of all ages, all races, all colors. They are fighting, killing, building, dancing, singing. They are sitting about rude fires on lonely gray deserts and flying through the air in monoplanes. They are riding the seas in bark canoes and enormous steamships; they are painting bison and mammoths on the walls of dismal caves and covering huge canvases with queer futuristic designs. I watch the migrations from Atlantis. I watch the migrations from Lemuria. I see the elder races—a strange horde of black dwarfs overwhelming Asia, and the Neanderthalers with lowered heads and bent knees ranging obscenely across Europe. I watch the Achaeans streaming into the Greek islands, and the crude beginnings of Hellenic culture. I am in Athens and Pericles is young. I am standing on the soil of Italy. I assist in the rape of the Sabines; I march with the Imperial Legions. I tremble with awe and wonder as the enormous standards go by and the ground shakes with the tread of the victorious hastati. A thousand naked slaves grovel before me as I pass in a litter of gold and ivory drawn by night-black oxen from Thebes, and the flower-girls scream ‘Ave Caesar’ as I nod and smile. I am myself a slave on a Moorish galley. I watch the erection of a great cathedral. Stone by stone it rises, and through months and years I stand and watch each stone as it falls into place. I am burned on a cross head downward in the thyme-scented gardens of Nero, and I watch with amusement and scorn the torturers at work in the chambers of the Inquisition.
“I walk in the holiest sanctuaries. I enter the temples of Venus. I kneel in adoration before the Magna Mater, and I throw coins on the bare knees of the sacred courtesans who sit with veiled faces in the groves of Babylon. I creep into an Elizabethan theater and with the stinking rabble about me I applaud The Merchant of Venice. I walk with Dante through the narrow streets of Florence. I meet the young Beatrice, and the hem of her garment brushes my sandals as I stare enraptured. I am a priest of Isis, and my magic astounds the nations. Simon Magus kneels before me, imploring my assistance, and Pharaoh trembles when I approach. In India I talk with the Masters and run screaming from their presence, for their revelations are as salt on wounds that bleed.
“I perceive everything simultaneously. I perceive everything from all sides; I am a part of all the teeming billions about me. I exist in all men and all men exist in me. I perceive the whole of human history in a single instant, the past and the present.
“By simply straining I can see farther and farther back. Now I am going back through strange curves and angles. Angles and curves multiply about me. I perceive great segments of time through curves. There is curved time, and angular time. The beings that exist in angular time cannot enter curved time. It is v
ery strange.
“I am going back and back. Man has disappeared from the Earth. Gigantic reptiles crouch beneath enormous palms and swim through the loathly black waters of dismal lakes. Now the reptiles have disappeared. No animals remain upon the land, but beneath the waters, plainly visible to me, dark forms move slowly over the rotting vegetation.
“These forms are becoming simpler and simpler. Now they are single cells. All about me there are angles—strange angles that have no counterparts on the Earth. I am desperately afraid.
“There is an abyss of being which man has never fathomed.”
I stared. Chalmers had risen to his feet and he was gesticulating helplessly with his arms.
“I am passing through unearthly angles; I am approaching—oh, the burning horror of it!”
“Chalmers!” I cried. “Do you wish me to interfere?”
He brought his right hand quickly before his face, as though to shut out a vision unspeakable.
“Not yet!” he cried “I will go on. I will see—what—lies—beyond—” A cold sweat streamed from his forehead, and his shoulders jerked spasmodically. “Beyond life there are”—his face grew ashen with terror—“things that I cannot distinguish. They move slowly through angles. They have no bodies, and they move slowly through outrageous angles.”
It was then that I became aware of the odor in the room. It was a pungent, indescribable odor, so nauseous that I could scarcely endure it. I stepped quickly to the window and threw it open. When I returned to Chalmers and looked into his eyes, I nearly fainted.
“I think they have scented me!” he shrieked. “They are slowly turning toward me!”
He was trembling horribly. For a moment he clawed at the air with his hands. Then his legs gave way beneath him, and he fell forward on his face, slobbering and moaning.
I watched him in silence as he dragged himself across the floor. He was no longer a man. His teeth were bared, and saliva dripped from the corners of his mouth.
“Chalmers!” I cried “Chalmers, stop it! Stop it, do you hear?”
As if in reply to my appeal, he commenced to utter hoarse convulsive sounds which resembled nothing so much as the barking of a dog and began a sort of hideous writhing in a circle about the room. I bent and seized him by the shoulders. Violently, desperately, I shook him.
He turned his head and snapped at my wrist. I was sick with horror, but I dared not release him for fear that he would destroy himself in a paroxysm of rage.
“Chalmers,” I muttered, “you must stop that. There is nothing in this room that can harm you. Do you understand?”
I continued to shake and admonish him, and gradually the madness died out of his face. Shivering convulsively, he crumpled into a grotesque heap on the Chinese rug. I carried him to the sofa and deposited him upon it. His features were twisted in pain, and I knew that he was still struggling dumbly to escape from abominable memories.
“Whisky,” he muttered. “You’ll find a flask in the cabinet by the window—upper left-hand drawer.”
When I handed him the flask, his fingers tightened about it until the knuckles showed blue.
“They nearly got me,” he gasped. He drained the stimulant in immoderate gulps, and gradually the color crept back into his face.
“That drug was the very devil!” I murmured.
“It wasn’t the drug,” he moaned. His eyes no longer glared insanely, but he still wore the look of a lost soul. “They scented me in time,” he moaned. “I went too far!”
“What were they like?” I said, to humor him.
He leaned forward and gripped my arm. He was shivering horribly.
“No words in our language can describe them!” He spoke in a hoarse whisper. “They are symbolized vaguely in the myth of the Fall, and in an obscene form which is occasionally found engraved on ancient tablets. The Greeks had a name for them, which veiled their essential foulness. The tree, the snake, and the apple—these are the vague symbols of a most awful mystery!” His voice had risen to a scream. “Frank, Frank, a terrible and unspeakable deed was done in the beginning. Before time, the deed, and from the deed—”
He had risen and was hysterically pacing the room. “The seeds of the deed move through angles in dim recesses of time. They are hungry and athirst!”
“Chalmers,” I pleaded to quiet him. “We are living in the third decade of the Twentieth Century.”
“They are lean and athirst!” he shrieked. “The Hounds of Tindalos!”
“Chalmers, shall I phone for a physician?”
“A physician cannot help me now. They are horrors of the soul, and yet”—he hid his face in his hands and groaned—“they are real, Frank. I saw them for a ghastly moment. For a moment I stood on the other side. I stood on the pale gray shores beyond time and space. In an awful light that was not light, in a silence that shrieked, I saw them.”
“All the evil in the universe was concentrated in their lean, hungry bodies. Or had they bodies? I saw them only for a moment; I cannot be certain. But I heard them breathe. Indescribably, for a moment I felt their breath upon my face. They turned toward me, and I fled screaming. In a single moment, I fled screaming through time. I fled down quintillions of years.
“But they scented me. Men awake in them cosmic hungers. We have escaped, momentarily, from the foulness that rings them round. They thirst for that in us which is clean, which emerged from the deed without stain. There is a part of us which did not partake in the deed, and that they hate. But do not imagine that they are literally, prosaically evil. They are beyond good and evil as we know it. They are that which in the beginning fell away from cleanliness. Through the deed they became bodies of death, receptacles of all foulness. But they are not evil in our sense because in the spheres through which they move there is no thought, no morals, no right or wrong as we understand it. There is merely the pure and the foul. The foul expresses itself through angles; the pure through curves. Man, the pure part of him, is descended from a curve. Do not laugh. I mean that literally.”
I rose and searched for my hat. “I’m dreadfully sorry—for you, Chalmers,” I said, as I walked toward the door. “But I don’t intend to stay and listen to such gibberish. I’ll send my physician to see you. He’s an elderly, kindly chap, and he won’t be offended if you tell him to go to the devil. But I hope you’ll respect his advice. A week’s rest in a good sanitarium should benefit you immeasurably.”
I heard him laughing as I descended the stairs, but his laughter was so utterly mirthless that it moved me to tears.
II
When Chalmers phoned the following morning, my first impulse was to hang up the receiver immediately. His request was so unusual and his voice was so wildly hysterical that I feared any further association with him would result in the impairment of my own sanity. But I could not doubt the genuineness of his misery, and when he broke down completely and I heard him sobbing over the wire, I decided to comply with his request.
“Very well,” I said “I will come over immediately and bring the plaster.”
* * * *
On route to Chalmers’ home, I stopped at a hardware store and purchased twenty pounds of plaster of Paris. When I entered my friend’s room, he was crouching by the window watching the opposite wall out of eyes that were feverish with fright. When he saw me, he rose and seized the parcel containing the plaster with an avidity that amazed and horrified me. He had removed all of the furniture, and the room presented a desolate appearance.
“It is just conceivable that we can thwart them!” he exclaimed, “But we must work rapidly. Frank, there is a stepladder in the hall. Bring it here immediately. And then fetch a pail of water.”
“What for?” I murmured.
He turned sharply, and there was a flush on his face. “To mix the plaster, you fool!” he cried. “To mix the plaster that will save our bodies and souls from a contamination unmentionable. To mix the plaster that will save the world from—Frank, they must be kept out!”
; “Who?” I murmured.
“The Hounds of Tindalos!” he muttered. “They can only reach us through angles. We must eliminate all angles from this room. I shall plaster up all of the corners, all of the crevices. We must make this room resemble the interior of a sphere.”
I knew that it would have been useless to argue with him. I fetched the stepladder, Chalmers mixed the plaster, and for three hours we labored. We filled in the four corners of the wall, and the intersections of the floor and wall, and the wall and ceiling, and we rounded the sharp angles of the window-seat.
“I shall remain in this room until they return in time,” he affirmed when our task was completed. “When they discover that the scent leads through curves, they will return. They will return ravenous and snarling and unsatisfied to the foulness that was in the beginning, before time, beyond space.” He nodded graciously and lit a cigarette. “It was good of you to help,” he said.
“Will you not see a physician, Chalmers?” I pleaded.
“Perhaps—tomorrow,” he murmured. “But now I must watch and wait.”
“Wait for what?”
Chalmers smiled wanly. “I know that you think me insane,” he said. “You have a shrewd but prosaic mind, and you cannot conceive of an entity that does not depend for its existence on force and matter. But did it ever occur to you, my friend, that force and matter are merely the barriers to perception imposed by time and space? When one knows, as I do, that time and space are identical and that they are both deceptive because they are merely imperfect manifestations of a higher reality, one no longer seeks in the visible world for an explanation of the mystery and terror of being.”
I rose and walked toward the door.
“Forgive me,” he cried. “I did not mean to offend you. You have a superlative intellect, but I—I have a superhuman one. It is only natural that I should be aware of your limitations.”
“Phone if you need me,” I said and descended the stairs two steps at a time. “I’ll send my physician over at once,” I muttered, to myself. “He’s a hopeless maniac, and heaven knows what will happen if someone doesn’t take charge of him immediately.”
