The Unnameable

P. Lovecraft\nWe were sitting on a dilapidated seventeenth-century tomb in the late afternoon of an autumn\nday at the old burying-ground in Arkham, and speculating about the unnamable.

Looking\ntoward the giant willow in the centre of the cemetery, whose trunk has nearly engulfed an\nancient, illegible slab, I had made a fantastic remark about the spectral and unmentionable\nnourishment which the colossal roots must be sucking in from that hoary, charnel earth; when\nmy friend chided me for such nonsense and told me that since no interments had occurred there\nfor over a century, nothing could possibly exist to nourish the tree in other than an ordinary\nmanner. Besides, he added, my constant talk about \u201cunnamable\u201d and \u201cunmentionable\u201d things\nwas a very puerile device, quite in keeping with my lowly standing as an author. I was too fond\nof ending my stories with sights or sounds which paralysed my heroes\u2019 faculties and left them\nwithout courage, words, or associations to tell what they had experienced. We know things, he\nsaid, only through our five senses or our religious intuitions; wherefore it is quite impossible to\nrefer to any object or spectacle which cannot be clearly depicted by the solid definitions of fact\nor the correct doctrines of theology\u2014preferably those of the Congregationalists, with whatever\nmodifications tradition and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle may supply.\nWith this friend, Joel Manton, I had often languidly disputed.

He was principal of the East High\nSchool, born and bred in Boston and sharing New England\u2019s self-satisfied deafness to the\ndelicate overtones of life.

It was his view that only our normal, objective experiences possess any\naesthetic significance, and that it is the province of the artist not so much to rouse strong\nemotion by action, ecstasy, and astonishment, as to maintain a placid interest and appreciation\nby accurate, detailed transcripts of every-day affairs.

Especially did he object to my\npreoccupation with the mystical and the unexplained; for although believing in the supernatural\nmuch more fully than I, he would not admit that it is sufficiently commonplace for literary\ntreatment.

That a mind can find its greatest pleasure in escapes from the daily treadmill, and in\noriginal and dramatic recombinations of images usually thrown by habit and fatigue into the\nhackneyed patterns of actual existence, was something virtually incredible to his clear, practical,\nand logical intellect. With him all things and feelings had fixed dimensions, properties, causes,\nand effects; and although he vaguely knew that the mind sometimes holds visions and\nsensations of far less geometrical, classifiable, and workable nature, he believed himself justified\nin drawing an arbitrary line and ruling out of court all that cannot be experienced and\nunderstood by the average citizen. Besides, he was almost sure that nothing can be really\n\u201cunnamable\u201d. It didn\u2019t sound sensible to him.\nThough I well realised the futility of imaginative and metaphysical arguments against the\ncomplacency of an orthodox sun-dweller, something in the scene of this afternoon colloquy\nmoved me to more than usual contentiousness. The crumbling slate slabs, the patriarchal trees,\nand the centuried gambrel roofs of the witch-haunted old town that stretched around, all\ncombined to rouse my spirit in defence of my work; and I was soon carrying my thrusts into the\nenemy\u2019s own country.

It was not, indeed, difficult to begin a counter-attack, for I knew that Joel\nManton actually half clung to many old-wives\u2019 superstitions which sophisticated people had\nlong outgrown; beliefs in the appearance of dying persons at distant places, and in the\nimpressions left by old faces on the windows through which they had gazed all their lives.

To\ncredit these whisperings of rural grandmothers, I now insisted, argued a faith in the existence of\nspectral substances on the earth apart from and subsequent to their material counterparts. It\nargued a capability of believing in phenomena beyond all normal notions; for if a dead man can\ntransmit his visible or tangible image half across the world, or down the stretch of the centuries,\nhow can it be absurd to suppose that deserted houses are full of queer sentient things, or that\nold graveyards teem with the terrible, unbodied intelligence of generations?

And since spirit, in\norder to cause all the manifestations attributed to it, cannot be limited by any of the laws of\nmatter; why is it extravagant to imagine psychically living dead things in shapes\u2014or absences of\nshapes\u2014which must for human spectators be utterly and appallingly \u201cunnamable\u201d? \u201cCommon\nsense\u201d in reflecting on these subjects, I assured my friend with some warmth, is merely a stupid\nabsence of imagination and mental flexibility.\nTwilight had now approached, but neither of us felt any wish to cease speaking. Manton\nseemed unimpressed by my arguments, and eager to refute them, having that confidence in\nhis own opinions which had doubtless caused his success as a teacher; whilst I was too sure\nof my ground to fear defeat. The dusk fell, and lights faintly gleamed in some of the distant\nwindows, but we did not move. Our seat on the tomb was very comfortable, and I knew that\nmy prosaic friend would not mind the cavernous rift in the ancient, root-disturbed\nbrickwork close behind us, or the utter blackness of the spot brought by the intervention of\na tottering, deserted seventeenth-century house between us and the nearest lighted road.\nThere in the dark, upon that riven tomb by the deserted house, we talked on about the\n\u201cunnamable\u201d, and after my friend had finished his scoffing I told him of the awful evidence\nbehind the story at which he had scoffed the most.\nMy tale had been called \u201cThe Attic Window\u201d, and appeared in the January, 1922, issue of\nWhispers. In a good many places, especially the South and the Pacific coast, they took the\nmagazines off the stands at the complaints of silly milksops; but New England didn\u2019t get the\nthrill and merely shrugged its shoulders at my extravagance. The thing, it was averred, was\nbiologically impossible to start with; merely another of those crazy country mutterings\nwhich Cotton Mather had been gullible enough to dump into his chaotic Magnalia Christi\nAmericana, and so poorly authenticated that even he had not ventured to name the locality\nwhere the horror occurred. And as to the way I amplified the bare jotting of the old mystic\u2014\nthat was quite impossible, and characteristic of a flighty and notional scribbler! Mather had\nindeed told of the thing as being born, but nobody but a cheap sensationalist would think of\nhaving it grow up, look into people\u2019s windows at night, and be hidden in the attic of a house,\nin flesh and in spirit, till someone saw it at the window centuries later and couldn\u2019t describe\nwhat it was that turned his hair grey. All this was flagrant trashiness, and my friend Manton\nwas not slow to insist on that fact.

Then I told him what I had found in an old diary kept\nbetween 1706 and 1723, unearthed among family papers not a mile from where we were\nsitting; that, and the certain reality of the scars on my ancestor\u2019s chest and back which the\ndiary described. I told him, too, of the fears of others in that region, and how they were\nwhispered down for generations; and how no mythical madness came to the boy who in\n1793 entered an abandoned house to examine certain traces suspected to be there.\nIt had been an eldritch thing\u2014no wonder sensitive students shudder at the Puritan age in\nMassachusetts. So little is known of what went on beneath the surface\u2014so little, yet such a\nghastly festering as it bubbles up putrescently in occasional ghoulish glimpses.

The\nwitchcraft terror is a horrible ray of light on what was stewing in men\u2019s crushed brains, but\neven that is a trifle. There was no beauty; no freedom\u2014we can see that from the\narchitectural and household remains, and the poisonous sermons of the cramped divines.\nAnd inside that rusted iron strait-jacket lurked gibbering hideousness, perversion, and\ndiabolism.

Here, truly, was the apotheosis of the unnamable.\nCotton Mather, in that daemoniac sixth book which no one should read after dark, minced\nno words as he flung forth his anathema. Stern as a Jewish prophet, and laconically\nunamazed as none since his day could be, he told of the beast that had brought forth what\nwas more than beast but less than man\u2014the thing with the blemished eye\u2014and of the\nscreaming drunken wretch that they hanged for having such an eye. This much he baldly\ntold, yet without a hint of what came after. Perhaps he did not know, or perhaps he knew\nand did not dare to tell. Others knew, but did not dare to tell\u2014there is no public hint of why\nthey whispered about the lock on the door to the attic stairs in the house of a childless,\nbroken, embittered old man who had put up a blank slate slab by an avoided grave,\nalthough one may trace enough evasive legends to curdle the thinnest blood.\nIt is all in that ancestral diary I found; all the hushed innuendoes and furtive tales of things\nwith a blemished eye seen at windows in the night or in deserted meadows near the woods.\nSomething had caught my ancestor on a dark valley road, leaving him with marks of horns\non his chest and of ape-like claws on his back; and when they looked for prints in the\ntrampled dust they found the mixed marks of split hooves and vaguely anthropoid paws.\nOnce a post-rider said he saw an old man chasing and calling to a frightful loping, nameless\nthing on Meadow Hill in the thinly moonlit hours before dawn, and many believed him.\nCertainly, there was strange talk one night in 1710 when the childless, broken old man was\nburied in the crypt behind his own house in sight of the blank slate slab. They never\nunlocked that attic door, but left the whole house as it was, dreaded and deserted. When\nnoises came from it, they whispered and shivered; and hoped that the lock on that attic door\nwas strong. Then they stopped hoping when the horror occurred at the parsonage, leaving\nnot a soul alive or in one piece. With the years the legends take on a spectral character\u2014I\nsuppose the thing, if it was a living thing, must have died. The memory had lingered\nhideously\u2014all the more hideous because it was so secret.\nDuring this narration my friend Manton had become very silent, and I saw that my words\nhad impressed him.

He did not laugh as I paused, but asked quite seriously about the boy\nwho went mad in 1793, and who had presumably been the hero of my fiction. I told him why\nthe boy had gone to that shunned, deserted house, and remarked that he ought to be\ninterested, since he believed that windows retained latent images of those who had sat at\nthem.

The boy had gone to look at the windows of that horrible attic, because of tales of\nthings seen behind them, and had come back screaming maniacally.\nManton remained thoughtful as I said this, but gradually reverted to his analytical mood.\nHe granted for the sake of argument that some unnatural monster had really existed, but\nreminded me that even the most morbid perversion of Nature need not be unnamable or\nscientifically indescribable. I admired his clearness and persistence, and added some\nfurther revelations I had collected among the old people. Those later spectral legends, I\nmade plain, related to monstrous apparitions more frightful than anything organic could\nbe; apparitions of gigantic bestial forms sometimes visible and sometimes only tangible,\nwhich floated about on moonless nights and haunted the old house, the crypt behind it, and\nthe grave where a sapling had sprouted beside an illegible slab. Whether or not such\napparitions had ever gored or smothered people to death, as told in uncorroborated\ntraditions, they had produced a strong and consistent impression; and were yet darkly\nfeared by very aged natives, though largely forgotten by the last two generations\u2014perhaps\ndying for lack of being thought about. Moreover, so far as aesthetic theory was involved, if\nthe psychic emanations of human creatures be grotesque distortions, what coherent\nrepresentation could express or portray so gibbous and infamous a nebulosity as the spectre\nof a malign, chaotic perversion, itself a morbid blasphemy against Nature?

Moulded by the\ndead brain of a hybrid nightmare, would not such a vaporous terror constitute in all\nloathsome truth the exquisitely, the shriekingly unnamable?\nThe hour must now have grown very late. A singularly noiseless bat brushed by me, and I\nbelieve it touched Manton also, for although I could not see him I felt him raise his arm.\nPresently he spoke.\n\u201cBut is that house with the attic window still standing and deserted?\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d I answered. \u201cI have seen it.\u201d\n\u201cAnd did you find anything there\u2014in the attic or anywhere else?\u201d\n\u201cThere were some bones up under the eaves. They may have been what that boy saw\u2014if he\nwas sensitive he wouldn\u2019t have needed anything in the window-glass to unhinge him. If they\nall came from the same object it must have been an hysterical, delirious monstrosity. It\nwould have been blasphemous to leave such bones in the world, so I went back with a sack\nand took them to the tomb behind the house. There was an opening where I could dump\nthem in. Don\u2019t think I was a fool\u2014you ought to have seen that skull. It had four-inch horns,\nbut a face and jaw something like yours and mine.\u201d\nAt last I could feel a real shiver run through Manton, who had moved very near. But his\ncuriosity was undeterred.\n\u201cAnd what about the window-panes?\u201d\n\u201cThey were all gone. One window had lost its entire frame, and in the other there was not a\ntrace of glass in the little diamond apertures. They were that kind\u2014the old lattice windows\nthat went out of use before 1700. I don\u2019t believe they\u2019ve had any glass for an hundred years\nor more\u2014maybe the boy broke \u2019em if he got that far; the legend doesn\u2019t say.\u201d\nManton was reflecting again.\n\u201cI\u2019d like to see that house, Carter. Where is it? Glass or no glass, I must explore it a little.\nAnd the tomb where you put those bones, and the other grave without an inscription\u2014the\nwhole thing must be a bit terrible.\u201d\n\u201cYou did see it\u2014until it got dark.\u201d\nMy friend was more wrought upon than I had suspected, for at this touch of harmless\ntheatricalism he started neurotically away from me and actually cried out with a sort of\ngulping gasp which released a strain of previous repression. It was an odd cry, and all the\nmore terrible because it was answered. For as it was still echoing, I heard a creaking sound\nthrough the pitchy blackness, and knew that a lattice window was opening in that accursed\nold house beside us. And because all the other frames were long since fallen, I knew that it\nwas the grisly glassless frame of that daemoniac attic window.\nThen came a noxious rush of noisome, frigid air from that same dreaded direction, followed\nby a piercing shriek just beside me on that shocking rifted tomb of man and monster. In\nanother instant I was knocked from my gruesome bench by the devilish threshing of some\nunseen entity of titanic size but undetermined nature; knocked sprawling on the root-\nclutched mould of that abhorrent graveyard, while from the tomb came such a stifled\nuproar of gasping and whirring that my fancy peopled the rayless gloom with Miltonic\nlegions of the misshapen damned.

There was a vortex of withering, ice-cold wind, and then\nthe rattle of loose bricks and plaster; but I had mercifully fainted before I could learn what it\nmeant.\nManton, though smaller than I, is more resilient; for we opened our eyes at almost the same\ninstant, despite his greater injuries. Our couches were side by side, and we knew in a few\nseconds that we were in St. Mary\u2019s Hospital. Attendants were grouped about in tense\ncuriosity, eager to aid our memory by telling us how we came there, and we soon heard of\nthe farmer who had found us at noon in a lonely field beyond Meadow Hill, a mile from the\nold burying-ground, on a spot where an ancient slaughterhouse is reputed to have stood.\nManton had two malignant wounds in the chest, and some less severe cuts or gougings in\nthe back. I was not so seriously hurt, but was covered with welts and contusions of the most\nbewildering character, including the print of a split hoof. It was plain that Manton knew\nmore than I, but he told nothing to the puzzled and interested physicians till he had learned\nwhat our injuries were.

Then he said we were the victims of a vicious bull\u2014though the\nanimal was a difficult thing to place and account for.\nAfter the doctors and nurses had left, I whispered an awestruck question:\n\u201cGood God, Manton, but what was it? Those scars\u2014was it like that?\u201d\nAnd I was too dazed to exult when he whispered back a thing I had half expected\u2014\n\u201cNo\u2014it wasn\u2019t that way at all.

It was everywhere\u2014a gelatin\u2014a slime\u2014yet it had shapes, a\nthousand shapes of horror beyond all memory. There were eyes\u2014and a blemish. It was the\npit\u2014the maelstrom\u2014the ultimate abomination.

Carter, it was the unnamable!\u201d\nDownloaded from www.libraryofshortstories.com\nThis work is in the public domain of Australia. Please check your local copyright laws if you live\nelsewhere."}