And then to the sound of obscure harmonies there floated into that room from the deep all the dreams and memories of earth’s sunken Mighty Ones. And golden flames played about weedy locks, so that Olney was dazzled as he did them homage. Trident-bearing Neptune was there, and sportive tritons and fantastic nereids, and upon dolphins’ backs was balanced a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the grey[43] and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss. And the conches[44] of the tritons gave weird blasts, and the nereids made strange sounds by striking on the grotesque resonant shells of unknown lurkers in black sea-caves. Then hoary Nodens reached forth a wizened hand and helped Olney and his host into the vast shell, whereat the conches[45] and the gongs set up a wild and awesome clamour.[46] And out into the limitless aether reeled that fabulous train, the noise of whose shouting was lost in the echoes of thunder.
All night in Kingsport they watched that lofty cliff when the storm and the mists gave them glimpses of it, and when toward the small hours the little dim windows went dark they whispered of dread and disaster. And Olney’s children and stout wife prayed to the bland proper god of Baptists, and hoped that the traveller would borrow an umbrella and rubbers unless the rain stopped by morning. Then dawn swam dripping and mist-wreathed out of the sea, and the buoys tolled solemn in vortices of white aether. And at noon elfin horns rang over the ocean as Olney, dry and light-footed, climbed down from the cliffs to antique Kingsport with the look of far places in his eyes. He could not recall what he had dreamed in the sky-perched hut of that still nameless hermit, or say how he had crept down that crag untraversed by other feet. Nor could he talk of these matters at all save with the Terrible Old Man, who afterward mumbled queer things in his long white beard; vowing that the man who came down from that crag was not wholly the man who went up, and that somewhere under that grey[47] peaked roof, or amidst inconceivable reaches of that sinister white mist, there lingered still the lost spirit of him who was Thomas Olney.
And ever since that hour, through dull dragging years of greyness[48] and weariness, the philosopher has laboured[49] and eaten and slept and done uncomplaining the suitable deeds of a citizen. Not any more does he long for the magic of farther hills, or sigh for secrets that peer like green reefs from a bottomless sea. The sameness of his days no longer gives him sorrow, and well-disciplined thoughts have grown enough for his imagination. His good wife waxes stouter and his children older and prosier and more useful, and he never fails to smile correctly with pride when the occasion calls for it. In his glance there is not any restless light, and if he ever listens for solemn bells or far elfin horns it is only at night when old dreams are wandering. He has never seen Kingsport again, for his family disliked the funny old houses,[50] and complained that the drains were impossibly bad. They have a trim bungalow now at Bristol Highlands, where no tall crags tower, and the neighbours[51] are urban and modern.
But in Kingsport strange tales are abroad, and even the Terrible Old Man admits a thing untold by his grandfather. For now, when the wind sweeps boisterous out of the north past the high ancient house that is one with the firmament, there is broken at last that ominous[52] brooding silence ever before the bane of Kingsport’s maritime cotters. And old folk tell of pleasing voices heard singing there, and of laughter that swells with joys beyond earth’s joys; and say that at evening the little low windows are brighter than formerly. They say, too, that the fierce aurora comes oftener to that spot, shining blue in the north with visions of frozen worlds while the crag and the cottage hang black and fantastic against wild coruscations. And the mists of the dawn are thicker, and sailors are not quite so sure that all the muffled seaward ringing is that of the solemn buoys.
Worst of all, though, is the shrivelling of old fears in the hearts of Kingsport’s young men, who grow prone to listen at night to the north wind’s faint distant sounds. They swear no harm or pain can inhabit that high peaked cottage, for in the new voices gladness beats, and with them the tinkle of laughter and music. What tales the sea-mists may bring to that haunted and northernmost pinnacle they do not know, but they long to extract some hint of the wonders that knock at the cliff-yawning door when clouds are thickest. And patriarchs dread lest some day one by one they seek out that inaccessible peak in the sky, and learn what centuried secrets hide beneath the steep shingled roof which is part of the rocks and the stars and the ancient fears of Kingsport. That those venturesome youths will come back they do not doubt, but they think a light may be gone from their eyes, and a will from their hearts. And they do not wish quaint Kingsport with its climbing lanes and archaic gables to drag listless down the years while voice by voice the laughing chorus grows stronger and wilder in that unknown and terrible eyrie where mists and the dreams of mists stop to rest on their way from the sea to the skies.
They do not wish the souls of their young men to leave the pleasant hearths and gambrel-roofed taverns of old Kingsport, nor do they wish the laughter and song in that high rocky place to grow louder. For as the voice which has come has brought fresh mists from the sea and from the north fresh lights, so do they say that still other voices will bring more mists and more lights, till perhaps the olden gods (whose existence they hint only in whispers for fear the Congregational parson shall hear) may come out of the deep and from unknown Kadath in the cold waste and make their dwelling on that evilly appropriate crag so close to the gentle hills and valleys of quiet simple fisherfolk.[53] This they do not wish, for to plain people things not of earth are unwelcome; and besides, the Terrible Old Man often recalls what Olney said about a knock that the lone dweller feared, and a shape seen black and inquisitive against the mist through those queer translucent windows of leaded bull’s-eyes.
All these things, however, the Elder Ones only may decide; and meanwhile the morning mist still comes up by that lonely vertiginous peak with the steep ancient house, that grey[54] low-eaved house where none is seen but where evening brings furtive lights while the north wind tells of strange revels. White and feathery it comes from the deep to its brothers the clouds, full of dreams of dank pastures and caves of leviathan. And when tales fly thick in the grottoes of tritons, and conches[55] in seaweed cities blow wild tunes learned from the Elder Ones, then great eager vapours[56] flock to heaven laden with lore; and Kingsport, nestling uneasy on its lesser cliffs below that awesome hanging sentinel of rock, sees oceanward only a mystic whiteness, as if the cliff’s rim were the rim of all earth, and the solemn bells of the buoys tolled free in the aether of faery.[57]
Notes
Editor’s Note: The surviving ms. is a strange compendium of the original autograph draft (pp. 1–7, 10) and a T.Ms. (pp. 8–9) extensively revised by HPL in pen. The ms. has been revised in pencil; some of these revisions must date after the first appearance (Weird Tales, October 1931), since that publication prints those phrases in the text in their unrevised state. Moreover, at least one phrase was probably revised as HPL prepared a clean T.Ms. to send to Weird Tales. Arkham House editions derive from the Weird Tales text, hence do not incorporate these revisions (of which there are comparatively few).
On a page prefacing the text, and written in a much later hand than the A.Ms. part of the text, HPL has written: “A fantastic short story by me, entitled ‘The Strange High House in the Mist’, was to have appeared in the second number of The Recluse. The rough draught is no longer in existence, & no proofs were furnished. Several carbon copies of the typed ms. remain, & the story was later printed in Weird Tales.”
Texts: A = A.Ms./T.Ms. (JHL); B = Weird Tales 18, No. 3 (October 1931): 394–400; C = Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (Arkham House, 1965), 260–68. Copy-text: A.
1. rumour] rumor B, C
2. old,] old B, C
3. conches] conchs B, C
4. faery.] faëry. B, C
5. grey] gray B, C
6. shews] shows A, B, C
7. The Causeway;] “The Causeway;” B; “The Causeway”; C
8. Portuguese] Portugese A
9. than] then B
10. therein] within B, C
11. faery.] faëry. B, C
12. grey] gray B, C
13. grey] gray B, C
14. cannot] can not B, C
15. odd pillared] odd-pillared B, C
16. grey] gray B, C
17. up from] up from C
18. for] of C
19. grey] gray B, C
20. vertically] perpendicular A, B, C [revised in pencil in A]
21. Arkham,] Arkham C
22. powder house] powder-house B, C
23. briers] briars B, C
24. difficulty;] difficulty B, C
25. rumour] rumor B, C
26. grey] gray B, C
27. sky. South] sky, south C
28. grey] gray B, C
29. vapours.] vapors. B, C
30. seventeenth-century] Seventeenth Century B, C
31. but] om. C
32. a] the C
33. were phosphorescent] shone phosphorescently A
34. marvellous] marvelous B, C
35. rumours] rumors B, C
36. Kings] kings B, C
37. only] om. B, C
38. river] River A, B, C
39. peep-hole.] peephole. B, C
40. candlesticks.] candle-sticks. C
41. someone,] some one, B, C
42. peep-hole,] peephole, B; peep-/hole, C
43. grey] gray B, C
44. conches] conchs B
45. conches] conchs B, C
46. clamour.] clamor. B, C
47. grey] gray B, C
48. greyness] grayness B, C
49. laboured] labored B, C
50. houses,] houses B, C
51. neighbours] neighbors B, C
52. ominous] ominous, B, C
53. quiet . . . fisherfolk.] quiet, . . . fisher folk. B, C
54. grey] gray, B, C
55. conches] conchs B
56. vapours] vapors B, C
57. faery.] faëry. B, C
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
Three times Randolph Carter dreamed of the marvellous city, and three times was he snatched away while still he paused on the high terrace above it. All golden and lovely it blazed in the sunset, with walls, temples, colonnades,[1] and arched bridges of veined marble, silver-basined fountains of prismatic spray in broad squares and perfumed gardens, and wide streets marching between delicate trees and blossom-laden urns and ivory statues in gleaming rows; while on steep northward slopes climbed tiers of red roofs and old peaked gables harbouring little lanes of grassy cobbles. It was a fever of the gods;[2] a fanfare of supernal trumpets and a clash of immortal cymbals. Mystery hung about it as clouds about a fabulous unvisited mountain; and as Carter stood breathless and expectant on that balustraded parapet there swept up to him the poignancy and suspense of almost-vanished memory, the pain of lost things,[3] and the maddening need to place again what once had[4] an awesome and momentous place.
He knew that for him its meaning must once have been supreme; though in what cycle or incarnation he had known it, or whether in dream or in waking, he could not tell. Vaguely it called up glimpses of a far,[5] forgotten first youth, when wonder and pleasure lay in all the mystery of days, and dawn and dusk alike strode forth prophetick[6] to the eager sound of lutes and song;[7] unclosing faery[8] gates toward further and surprising marvels. But each night as he stood on that high marble terrace with the curious urns and carven rail and looked off over that hushed sunset city of beauty and unearthly immanence,[9] he felt the bondage of dream’s tyrannous gods; for in no wise could he leave that lofty spot, or descend the wide marmoreal flights flung endlessly down to where those streets of elder witchery lay outspread and beckoning.
When for the third time he awaked[10] with those flights still undescended and those hushed sunset streets still untraversed, he prayed long and earnestly to the hidden gods of dream that brood capricious above the clouds on unknown Kadath, in the cold waste where no man treads. But the gods made no answer and shewed no relenting, nor did they give any favouring sign when he prayed to them in dream, and invoked them sacrificially through the bearded priests[11] Nasht and Kaman-Thah, whose cavern-temple with its pillar of flame lies not far from the gates of the waking world. It seemed, however, that his prayers must have been adversely heard, for after even the first of them he ceased wholly to behold the marvellous city; as if his three glimpses from afar had been mere accidents or oversights,[12] and against some hidden plan or wish of the gods.
At length, sick with longing for those glittering sunset streets and cryptical hill lanes among ancient tiled roofs, nor able sleeping or waking to drive them from his mind, Carter resolved to go with bold entreaty whither no man had gone before, and dare the icy deserts through the dark to where unknown Kadath, veiled in cloud and crowned with unimagined stars, holds secret and nocturnal the onyx castle of the Great Ones.
In light slumber he descended the seventy steps to the cavern of flame and talked of this design to the bearded priests Nasht and Kaman-Thah. And the priests shook their pshent-bearing heads and vowed it would be the death of his soul. They pointed out that the Great Ones had shewn[13] already their wish, and that it is not agreeable to them to be harassed by insistent pleas. They reminded him, too, that not only had no man ever been to unknown[14] Kadath, but no man had ever suspected in what part of space it may lie; whether it be in the dreamlands around our[15] world, or in those surrounding some unguessed companion of Fomalhaut or Aldebaran. If in our dreamland, it might conceivably be reached; but[16] only three fully human souls since time began had ever crossed and re-crossed[17] the black impious gulfs to other dreamlands, and of that three[18] two had come back quite mad. There were, in such voyages, incalculable local dangers; as well as that shocking final peril which gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered universe, where no dreams reach; that last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity—the boundless daemon-sultan[19] Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin, monotonous whine of accursed flutes; to which detestable pounding and piping dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic ultimate[20] gods, the blind, voiceless, tenebrous, mindless Other Gods whose soul and messenger is the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep.
Of these things was Carter warned by the priests Nasht and Kaman-Thah in the cavern of flame, but still he resolved to find the gods on unknown Kadath in the cold waste, wherever that might be, and to win from them the sight and remembrance and shelter of the marvellous sunset city. He knew that his journey would be strange and long, and that the Great Ones would be against it; but being old in the land of dream he counted on many useful memories and devices to aid him. So asking a farewell[21] blessing of the priests and thinking shrewdly on his course, he boldly descended the seven hundred steps to the Gate of Deeper Slumber and set out through the enchanted wood.[22]
In the tunnels of that twisted wood, whose low prodigious oaks twine groping boughs and shine dim with the phosphorescence of strange fungi, dwell the furtive and secretive zoogs;[23] who know many obscure secrets of the dream-world[24] and a few of the waking world, since the wood at two places touches the lands of men, though it would be disastrous to say where. Certain unexplained rumours, events,[25] and vanishments occur among men where the zoogs[26] have access, and it is well that they cannot travel far outside the world of dream. But over the nearer parts of the dream-world[27] they pass freely, flitting small and brown and unseen and bearing back piquant tales to beguile the hours around their hearths in the forest they love. Most of them live in burrows, but some inhabit the trunks of the great trees; and although they live mostly on fungi it is muttered that they have also a slight taste for meat, either physical or spiritual, for certainly many dreamers have entered that wood who have not come out. Carter, however, had no fear; for he was an old d
reamer and had learnt their fluttering language and made many a treaty with them; having found through their help the splendid city of Celephaïs[28] in Ooth-Nargai beyond the Tanarian Hills, where reigns half the year the great King[29] Kuranes, a man he had known by another name in life. Kuranes was the one soul who had been to the star-gulfs and returned free from madness.
Threading now the low phosphorescent aisles between those gigantic trunks, Carter made fluttering sounds in the manner of the zoogs,[30] and listened now and then for responses. He remembered one particular village of the creatures near[31] the centre of the wood, where a circle of great mossy stones in what was once a clearing tells of older and more terrible dwellers long forgotten, and toward this spot he hastened. He traced his way by the grotesque fungi, which always seem better nourished as one approaches the dread circle where elder beings danced and sacrificed. Finally the greater[32] light of those thicker fungi revealed a sinister green and grey vastness pushing up through the roof of the forest and out of sight. This was the nearest of the great ring of stones, and Carter knew he was close to the zoog[33] village. Renewing his fluttering sound, he waited patiently; and was at length[34] rewarded by an impression of many eyes watching him. It was the zoogs,[35] for one sees their weird eyes long before one can discern their small, slippery brown outlines.
Out they swarmed, from hidden burrow and honeycombed[36] tree, till the whole dim-litten region was alive with them. Some of the wilder ones brushed Carter unpleasantly, and one even nipped loathsomely at his ear; but these lawless spirits were soon restrained by their elders. The Council of Sages, recognising the visitor, offered a gourd of fermented sap from a haunted tree unlike the others, which had grown from a seed dropt down by someone on the moon; and as Carter drank it ceremoniously a very strange colloquy began. The zoogs[37] did not, unfortunately, know where the peak of Kadath lies, nor could they even say whether the cold waste is in our dream-world[38] or in another. Rumours of the Great Ones came equally from all points; and one might only say that they were likelier to be seen on high mountain peaks than in valleys, since on such peaks they dance reminiscently when the moon is above and the clouds beneath.