During our sunset dash through Portland
23
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 upstairsâbut 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 manâto be fully humanâthat 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 bodyâdisappear 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 seaâit was horrible. . . . And old Ephraimâhe had known the secret, and when he grew old did a hideous thing to keep alive . . . he wanted to live forever ... Asenath would succeedâone successful demonstration had taken place already.
As Derby muttered on I turned to look at him closely, verifying the impression of change which an earlier scrutiny had given me. Paradoxically, he seemed in better shape than usualâharder, more normally developed, and without the trace of sickly flabbiness caused by his indolent habits. It was as if he had been really active and properly exercised for the first time in his coddled life, and I judged that Asenath's force must have pushed him into unwonted channels of motion and alertness. But just now his mind was in a pitiable state; for he was mumbling wild extravagances about his wife, about black magic, about old Ephraim, and about some revelation which would convince even me. He repeated names which I recognised from bygone browsings in forbidden volumes, and at times made me shudder with a certain thread of mythological consistencyâof convincing coherenceâwhich ran through his maundering. Again and again he would pause, as if to gather courage for some final and terrible disclosure.
“Dan, Dan, don't you remember himâthe wild eyes and the unkempt beard that never turned white? He glared at me once, and I never forgot it. Now
she
glares that way.
And I know why!
He found it in the
Necronomicon
âthe formula. I don't dare tell you the page yet, but when I do you can read and understand. Then you will know what has engulfed me. On, on, on, onâbody to body to bodyâhe means never to die. The life-glowâhe knows how to break the link . . . it can flicker on a while even when the body is dead. I'll give you hints, and maybe you'll guess. Listen, Danâdo you know why my wife always takes such pains with that silly backhand writing? Have you ever seen a manuscript of old Ephraim's? Do you want to know why I shivered when I saw some hasty notes Asenath had jotted down?
24
“Asenath . . .
is there such a person?
Why did they half think there was poison in old Ephraim's stomach? Why do the Gilmans
25
whisper about the way he shriekedâlike a frightened childâwhen he went mad and Asenath locked him up in the padded attic room whereâthe otherâhad been?
Was it old Ephraim's soul that was locked in? Who locked in whom?
Why had he been looking for months for someone with a fine mind and a weak will? Why did he curse that his daughter wasn't a son? Tell me, Daniel Uptonâ
what devilish exchange was perpetuated in the house of horror where that blasphemous monster had his trusting, weak-willed, half-human child at his mercy?
Didn't he make it permanentâas she'll do in the end with me? Tell me why that thing that calls itself Asenath writes differently when off guard,
so that you can't tell its script from.
. . .”
Then the thing happened. Derby's voice was rising to a thin treble scream as he raved, when suddenly it was shut off with an almost mechanical click. I thought of those other occasions at my home when his confidences had abruptly ceasedâwhen I had half fancied that some obscure telepathic wave of Asenath's mental force was intervening to keep him silent. This, though, was something altogether differentâand, I felt, infinitely more horrible. The face beside me was twisted almost unrecognisably for a moment, while through the whole body there passed a shivering motionâas if all the bones, organs, muscles, nerves, and glands were readjusting themselves to a radically different posture, set of stresses, and general personality.
Just where the supreme horror lay, I could not for my life tell; yet there swept over me such a swamping wave of sickness and repulsionâsuch a freezing, petrifying sense of utter alienage and abnormalityâthat my grasp of the wheel grew feeble and uncertain. The figure beside me seemed less like a lifelong friend than like some monstrous intrusion from outer spaceâsome damnable, utterly accursed focus of unknown and malign cosmic forces.
I had faltered only a moment, but before another moment was over my companion had seized the wheel and forced me to change places with him. The dusk was now very thick, and the lights of Portland far behind, so I could not see much of his face. The blaze of his eyes, though, was phenomenal; and I knew that he must now be in that queerly energised stateâso unlike his usual selfâwhich so many people had noticed. It seemed odd and incredible that listless Edward Derbyâhe who could never assert himself, and who had never learned to driveâshould be ordering me about and taking the wheel of my own car, yet that was precisely what had happened. He did not speak for some time, and in my inexplicable horror I was glad he did not.
In the lights of Biddeford and Saco
26
I saw his firmly set mouth, and shivered at the blaze of his eyes. The people were rightâhe did look damnably like his wife and like old Ephraim when in these moods. I did not wonder that the moods were dislikedâthere was cetainly something unnatural and diabolic in them, and I felt the sinister element all the more because of the wild ravings I had been hearing. This man, for all my lifelong knowledge of Edward Pickman Derby, was a strangerâan intrusion of some sort from the black abyss.
He did not speak until we were on a dark stretch of road, and when he did his voice seemed utterly unfamiliar. It was deeper, firmer, and more decisive than I had ever known it to be; while its accent and pronunciation were altogether changedâthough vaguely, remotely, and rather disturbingly recalling something I could not quite place. There was, I thought, a trace of very profound and very genuine irony in the timbreânot the flashy, meaninglessly jaunty pseudo-irony of the callow “sophisticate”, which Derby had habitually affected, but something grim, basic, pervasive, and potentially evil. I marvelled at the self-possession so soon following the spell of panic-struck muttering.
“I hope you'll forget my attack back there, Upton,” he was saying. “You know what my nerves are, and I guess you can excuse such things. I'm enormously grateful, of course, for this lift home.
“And you must forget, too, any crazy things I may have been saying about my wifeâand about things in general. That's what comes from overstudy in a field like mine. My philosophy is full of bizarre concepts, and when the mind gets worn out it cooks up all sorts of imaginary concrete applications. I shall take a rest from now onâyou probably won't see me for some time, and you needn't blame Asenath for it.
“This trip was a bit queer, but it's really very simple. There are certain Indian relics in the north woodsâstanding stones, and all thatâwhich mean a good deal in folklore, and Asenath and I are following that stuff up. It was a hard search, so I seem to have gone off my head. I must send somebody for the car when I get home. A month's relaxation will put me back on my feet.”
I do not recall just what my own part of the conversation was, for the baffling alienage of my seatmate filled my consciousness. With every moment my feeling of elusive cosmic horror increased, till at length I was in a virtual delirium of longing for the end of the drive. Derby did not offer to relinquish the wheel, and I was glad of the speed with which Portsmouth and Newburyport flashed by.
27
At the junction where the main highway runs inland and avoids Innsmouth I was half afraid my driver would take the bleak shore road that goes through that damnable place. He did not, however, but darted rapidly past Rowley and Ipswich
28
toward our destination. We reached Arkham before midnight, and found the lights still on at the old Crowinshield house. Derby left the car with a hasty repetition of his thanks, and I drove home alone with a curious feeling of relief. It had been a terrible driveâall the more terrible because I could not quite tell whyâand I did not regret Derby's forecast of a long absence from my company.
V.
The next two months were full of rumours. People spoke of seeing Derby more and more in his new energised state, and Asenath was scarcely ever in to her few callers. I had only one visit from Edward, when he called briefly in Asenath's carâduly reclaimed from wherever he had left it in Maineâto get some books he had lent me. He was in his new state, and paused only long enough for some evasively polite remarks. It was plain that he had nothing to discuss with me when in this conditionâand I noticed that he did not even trouble to give the old three-and-two signal when ringing the doorbell. As on that evening in the car, I felt a faint, infinitely deep horror which I could not explain; so that his swift departure was a prodigious relief.
In mid-September Derby was away for a week, and some of the decadent college set talked knowingly of the matterâhinting at a meeting with a notorious cult-leader, lately expelled from England, who had established headquarters in New York. For my part I could not get that strange ride from Maine out of my head. The transformation I had witnessed had affected me profoundly, and I caught myself again and again trying to account for the thingâand for the extreme horror it had inspired in me.
But the oddest rumours were those about the sobbing in the old Crowinshield house. The voice seemed to be a woman's, and some of the younger people thought it sounded like Asenath's. It was heard only at rare intervals, and would sometimes be choked off as if by force. There was talk of an investigation, but this was dispelled one day when Asenath appeared in the streets and chatted in a sprightly way with a large number of acquaintancesâapologising for her recent absences and speaking incidentally about the nervous breakdown and hysteria of a guest from Boston. The guest was never seen, but Asenath's appearance left nothing to be said. And then someone complicated matters by whispering that the sobs had once or twice been in a man's voice.
One evening in mid-October I heard the familiar three-and-two ring at the front door. Answering it myself, I found Edward on the steps, and saw in a moment that his personality was the old one which I had not encountered since the day of his ravings on that terrible ride from Chesuncook. His face was twitching with a mixture of odd emotions in which fear and triumph seemed to share dominion, and he looked furtively over his shoulder as I closed the door behind him.
Following me clumsily to the study, he asked for some whiskey to steady his nerves. I forbore to question him, but waited till he felt like beginning whatever he wanted to say. At length he ventured some information in a choking voice.
“Asenath has gone, Dan. We had a long talk last night while the servants were out, and I made her promise to stop preying on me. Of course I had certainâcertain occult defences I never told you about. She had to give in, but got frightfully angry. Just packed up and started for New Yorkâwalked right out to catch the 8:20 in to Boston. I suppose people will talk, but I can't help that. You needn't mention that there was any troubleâjust say she's gone on a long research trip.
“She's probably going to stay with one of her horrible groups of devotees. I hope she'll go west and get a divorceâanyhow, I've made her promise to keep away and let me alone. It was horrible, Danâshe was stealing my bodyâcrowding me outâmaking a prisoner of me. I laid low and pretended to let her do it, but I had to be on the watch. I could plan if I was careful, for she can't read my mind literally, or in detail. All she could read of my planning was a sort of general mood of rebellionâand she always thought I was helpless. Never thought I could get the best of her . . . but I had a spell or two that worked.”
Derby looked over his shoulder and took some more whiskey.
“I paid off those damned servants this morning when they got back. They were ugly about it, and asked questions, but they went. They're her kindâInnsmouth peopleâand were hand and glove with her. I hope they'll let me aloneâI didn't like the way they laughed when they walked away. I must get as many of Dad's old servants again as I can. I'll move back home now.
“I suppose you think I'm crazy, Danâbut Arkham history ought to hint at things that back up what I've told youâand what I'm going to tell you. You've seen one of the changes, tooâin your car after I told you about Asenath that day coming home from Maine. That was when she got meâdrove me out of my body. The last thing of the ride I remember was when I was all worked up trying to tell you
what that she-devil is.
Then she got me, and in a flash I was back at the houseâin the library where those damned servants had me locked upâand in that cursed fiend's body . . . that isn't even human. . . . You know, it was she you must have ridden home with . . . the preying wolf in my body. . . . You ought to have known the difference!”