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n the long hours of the house, an incident occurred which it has come time at last to relate. Precisely how long ago the event happened is impossible to say—a point that will be better understood in later descriptions that I will draw from the journals and notes made in the house and still in my possession.
For now, it is enough to say that I still passed frequently through the many doors of the house, into disparate times and places, watching, searching, trying to think of some means of escape. I had by now lost all sense of time. I could not be certain that I had not inhabited the windowless mansion for a hundred years. When I thought of the time passed in isolation—of the many years that might have passed while my own generation slid on its natural course past my isolated oblivion—I thought I would lose my mind.
And as I have said, the only means of retaining my sanity was observation and study. So I passed through the doors into the insubstantiality of an otherworldly observer. And returning again, I consulted the house’s vast library for the identification of the places and times I visited.
Rising then one night during the limitless night of the house, I made a fresh attempt to shake off my feelings of hopelessness. I passed down the hallways, checking each door as I passed for the shallow scratches made with a penknife—blazes to show where I had already passed. At length, I found an unmarked door on one of the upper floors and opened it. But there was nothing. Standing before me and immediately succeeding the doorframe was a sheet of unmoving blackness. I peered into it. I held my eyes so that my nose nearly touched the surface. Here, as through no other door in the house, was a perfect vacancy of night or solidity of obsidian rock, but nothing to be seen.
As an experiment, I put one finger against the surface and pressed inward. I, of course, felt nothing. My ventures through the doors were always without sensation beyond those I willfully imagined for myself. This inconsistency—my ability to see and hear but not to feel beyond the bounds of the doors—had puzzled me since my first explorations. Tactile sense was no more or less dependent on physicality than the others. And it had not yet occurred to me that this inconsistency should itself be a clue to the nature of my imprisonment.
At length, I put my whole head in and looked in all directions, but the interior remained perfectly dark. The feeblest and most diffuse light did not show itself. There was sound but it was ambiguous and indistinct. It seemed no natural sound at all. I heard no human voice, no animals, no recognizable noise of water or wind. I can best describe it, if at all, as a low, constant and slowly altering thrum.
I have said there was no light. And so far as my description concerns everything that lay beyond the door, this is true. But in craning my head around, I saw that the doorway behind me was still visible although muted and distorted by a thick, wavering film. Seeing this, I withdrew my head, stepped back from the doorway and tried to think in what locale this new door could possibly terminate. I could see from the quality of light—from that film—that the door was set underwater. But in what precise body of water it lay seemed unknowable. Several more prolonged backward inspections of the light from the doorway did not reveal fish of any kind whatever, and I was inclined to think it the water of an underground lake, heavy with minerals, which would explain the absence both of fish and light. But whatever it was, it seemed likely that I could discover it by a few minutes exploration. I was, at any rate, only too glad to have some other mystery to probe than that of my imprisonment.
I now passed through the doorway entirely and paused. Since I had no physical sensations, my passage could only be judged by reference to the light of the doorway. So, steadily regarding it, I slowly moved upward and away from it, in order to keep it easily in view. Perhaps a minute passed while the light grew steadily dimmer. But as it was still easily seen, I was not concerned. I was moving slowly, methodically upward and expected any second to come to the surface.
But as I looked, some shadow seemed to pass before the doorway and the light abruptly vanished. I waited but it did not reappear. I descended, but the light was no more evident than before. I remained still and waited, thinking that to go further without perfectly knowing my direction in relation to the door would only put me at risk of getting lost. And meanwhile, my surroundings were perfectly black and unrelieved by any noise whatsoever except the low, liquid thrumming of the water.
It now occurred to me for the first time (now that I was beyond the security of the light) that it was highly unlikely that I was in any underground lake. By the distance of the doorway’s light as it had last appeared, it must have been a hundred feet beneath me. I could remember no underground lake of that depth—and if it was not that, then I could only be in some extreme depth of the ocean.
Then several thoughts came to me. Why could I not see the light of the door? Even if I had passed unknowingly through some solid body, which had obscured my sight by its obstruction, the light should have still reappeared upon my descent. Seeing that it did not, I could only suppose that the door had been closed. And who could have closed it but the house’s maker or the creature once left as its sole inhabitant?
I met the first of these when I moved to Arlingdale, a small town about 50 miles east of Falport. The neighborhood was sparse enough. My house was situated well outside the business district and I had only one near neighbor. But if I took pains to introduce myself to him, he took none to welcome me. He called himself Thomas Bale and was, as far as I could see, a hermit, settled with whatever fortune he had made in the world and now, in his latter years, content with his own company. This being the case, I didn’t trouble him further.
But slowly, over a period of many months, I began to have strange dreams of Bale and his house. These dreams disclosed fragmentary visions of incongruous criss-crossing walls and facades that intermingled and displaced one another with a shuddering incoherence. It seemed to me that there were two houses, one existing inside the other. And in the corridors of each, moved two distinct residents—the dry, pale and taciturn Bale whom I had seen frequently enough passing down the road toward town—and another, a thing diminutive and bestial, a parody of the human form. Its skin was blue and darkly mottled, nearly hairless and covered with wrinkles as though it was unspeakably ancient. But the two led apparently independent existences. Bale existed in the house I knew and had visited; the creature lived in another, labyrinthine and apparently limitless—the very house in which I would later be imprisoned.
These dreams were disturbing, but they were only dreams. I continued in my life and Bale in his. Except that, with the progress of the dreams, I saw him take more notice of me. When I went out of my house, which was just in sight of his, I could see him looking out his window. And many times I looked up from my work through my own window to see him pacing by my house or merely standing there, gazing at a spot of ground as if lost or preoccupied. At length, he came to visit me.
He seemed to have no purpose in the visit. He asked perfunctory questions, gave uninformative responses. He showed no great interest in speaking and, although he listened patiently, showed no particular interest in anything I said. And whenever I permitted a prolonged silence in the hope that conversational lassitude would end our meeting, he interposed some trivial question to prolong it. His whole conduct suggested a desire to remain in my presence but of nothing more than that. After an hour he left, and only then after inviting me to visit and have dinner at his house the next evening—an invitation that, partly out of politeness and partly from the desire to satisfy and be rid of him, I accepted.
The next day, shortly before sunset, I showed myself at his door. He brought me into a small sun room which he insisted on shutting off from the rest of the house. At the same time, he kept up a steady stream of conversation on the incidents of the day while he lighted a bowl of incense in the corner. In the same room, he had ready a pot of coffee which he poured out as he kept up his chatter. And meanwhile, the incense, thick, profuse and opaque, continually filled the room.
It is here that memory of my earlier life gives out. My next coherent sight was of that other house, while crouching before me was that creature I have already described. I don’t remember its words but it was talking to me in an apparently civilized voice, in clear and articulate syllables. But whether because of the shock of seeing it, because of the subtle signs of moral dereliction that I read in the derangement of its features, or because of the vague suspicion that I had been drugged by the vapors of the incense—I grasped the creature’s throat and squeezed with all my might.
It tore free of me, however, and before I could get to my feet and scrambled down the hallway out of sight. A long search of the house did not disclose its presence. And with the slow understanding of where I was, the nature of the doors and the impossibility of escape, I assumed my imprisonment.
So that now, as I hovered in a black and unknown deep, I had every reason to believe that the creature had resumed its own residence and meant, by the unlikelihood of my finding my way back in the darkness, to shut me out.
With this revolution of thought came fear. I repassed, as I thought, the path I had taken from the door. I knew from previous experience that if it was there, it would be solid to my touch. But I felt nothing. I might have passed it mere feet away. I repassed again, as well as I could guess, the same course. But without any sight or tactile sense, it was impossible to be sure I was not moving in increasing large deviations from my object. And every movement I made without finding the door made it increasingly unlikely that I would ever find it again.
I suspected that I did not move at all. If I did, I thought, how would I know? And in this insubstantial form, how could I know that I would not always remain as I was—forever imagining me to drift in darkness, searching for a door that neither came nearer nor moved further away but remained as always near and infinitely far. And with the passage of hours, I could only guess that I would remain in the unfeeling darkness forever.
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