[Amongst the papers of the well-known physician, Dr. Robert
Matheson, of Ashley Street, Piccadilly, who died suddenly, of
apoplectic seizure, at the beginning of 1892, a leaf of manuscript
paper was found, covered with pencil jottings. These notes were in
Latin, much abbreviated, and had evidently been made in great haste.
The MS. was only deciphered with great difficulty, and some words
have up to the present time evaded all the efforts of the expert
employed. The date, 'XXV Jul. 1888,' is written on the right-hand
corner of the MS. The following is a translation of Dr. Matheson's
manuscript.]
'Whether science would benefit by these brief notes if they could be
published, I do not know, but rather doubt. But certainly I shall never
take the responsibility of publishing or divulging one word of what is
here written, not only on account of my oath freely given to those two
persons who were present, but also because the details are too
abominable. It is probably that, upon mature consideration, and after
weighing the good and evil, I shall one day destroy this paper, or at
least leave it under seal to my friend D., trusting in his discretion,
to use it or to burn it, as he may think fit.
'As was befitting, I did all that my knowledge suggested to make sure
that I was suffering under no delusion. At first astounded, I could
hardly think, but in a minute's time I was sure that my pulse was steady
and regular, and that I was in my real and true senses. I then fixed my
eyes quietly on what was before me.
'Though horror and revolting nausea rose up within me, and an odour of
corruption choked my breath, I remained firm. I was then privileged or
accursed, I dare not say which, to see that which was on the bed, lying
there black like ink, transformed before my eyes. The skin, and the
flesh, and the muscles, and the bones, and the firm structure of the
human body that I had thought to be unchangeable, and permanent as
adamant, began to melt and dissolve.
'I knew that the body may be separated into its elements by external
agencies, but I should have refused to believe what I saw. For here
there was some internal force, of which I knew nothing, that caused
dissolution and change.
'Here too was all the work by which man had been made repeated before my
eyes. I saw the form waver from sex to sex, dividing itself from itself,
and then again reunited. Then I saw the body descend to the beasts
whence it ascended, and that which was on the heights go down to the
depths, even to the abyss of all being. The principle of life, which
makes organism, always remained, while the outward form changed.
'The light within the room had turned to blackness, not the darkness of
night, in which objects are seen dimly, for I could see clearly and
without difficulty. But it was the negation of light; objects were
presented to my eyes, if I may say so, without any medium, in such a
manner that if there had been a prism in the room I should have seen no
colours represented in it.
'I watched, and at last I saw nothing but a substance as jelly. Then the
ladder was ascended again ... [_here the MS. is illegible_] ... for one
instant I saw a Form, shaped in dimness before me, which I will not
farther describe. But the symbol of this form may be seen in ancient
sculptures, and in paintings which survived beneath the lava, too foul
to be spoken of ... as a horrible and unspeakable shape, neither man nor
beast, was changed into human form, there came finally death.
'I who saw all this, not without great horror and loathing of soul, here
write my name, declaring all that I have set on this paper to be true.
'ROBERT MATHESON, Med. Dr.'
* * * * *
... Such, Raymond, is the story of what I know and what I have seen. The
burden of it was too heavy for me to bear alone, and yet I could tell it
to none but you. Villiers, who was with me at the last, knows nothing of
that awful secret of the wood, of how what we both saw die, lay upon the
smooth, sweet turf amidst the summer flowers, half in sun and half in
shadow, and holding the girl Rachel's hand, called and summoned those
companions, and shaped in solid form, upon the earth we tread on, the
horror which we can but hint at, which we can only name under a figure.
I would not tell Villiers of this, nor of that resemblance, which struck
me as with a blow upon my heart, when I saw the portrait, which filled
the cup of terror at the end. What this can mean I dare not guess. I
know that what I saw perish was not Mary, and yet in the last agony
Mary's eyes looked into mine. Whether there be any one who can show the
last link in this chain of awful mystery, I do not know, but if there be
any one who can do this, you, Raymond, are the man. And if you know the
secret, it rests with you to tell it or not, as you please.
I am writing this letter to you immediately on my getting back to town.
I have been in the country for the last few days; perhaps you may be
able to guess in what part. While the horror and wonder of London was at
its height--for 'Mrs. Beaumont,' as I have told you, was well known in
society--I wrote to my friend Dr. Phillips, giving some brief outline,
or rather hint, of what had happened, and asking him to tell me the name
of the village where the events he had related to me occurred. He gave
me the name, as he said with the less hesitation, because Rachel's
father and mother were dead, and the rest of the family had gone to a
relative in the State of Washington six months before. The parents, he
said, had undoubtedly died of grief and horror caused by the terrible
death of their daughter, and by what had gone before that death. On the
evening of the day on which I received Phillips's letter I was at
Caermaen, and standing beneath the mouldering Roman walls, white with
the winters of seventeen hundred years, I looked over the meadow where
once had stood the older temple of the 'God of the Deeps,' and saw a
house gleaming in the sunlight. It was the house where Helen had lived.
I stayed at Caermaen for several days. The people of the place, I found,
knew little and had guessed less. Those whom I spoke to on the matter
seemed surprised that an antiquarian (as I professed myself to be)
should trouble about a village tragedy, of which they gave a very
commonplace version, and, as you may imagine, I told nothing of what I
knew. Most of my time was spent in the great wood that rises just above
the village and climbs the hillside, and goes down to the river in the
valley; such another long lovely valley, Raymond, as that on which we
looked one summer night, walking to and fro before your house. For many
an hour I strayed through the maze of the forest, turning now to right
and now to left, pacing slowly down long alleys of undergrowth, shadowy
and chill, even under the midday sun, and halting beneath great oaks;
lying on the short turf of a clearing where the faint sweet scent of
wild roses came to me on the wind and mixed with the heavy perfume of
the elder, whose mingled odour is like the odour of the room of the
dead, a vapour of incense and corruption. I stood at the edges of the
wood, gazing at all the pomp and procession of the foxgloves towering
amidst the bracken and shining red in the broad sunshine, and beyond
them into deep thickets of close undergrowth where springs boil up from
the rock and nourish the water-weeds, dank and evil. But in all my
wanderings I avoided one part of the wood; it was not till yesterday
that I climbed to the summit of the hill, and stood upon the ancient
Roman road that threads the highest ridge of the wood. Here they had
walked, Helen and Rachel, along this quiet causeway, upon the pavement
of green turf, shut in on either side by high banks of red earth, and
tall hedges of shining beech, and here I followed in their steps,
looking out, now and again, through partings in the boughs, and seeing
on one side the sweep of the wood stretching far to right and left, and
sinking into the broad level, and beyond, the yellow sea, and the land
over the sea. On the other side was the valley and the river and hill
following hill as wave on wave, and wood and meadow, and cornfield, and
white houses gleaming, and a great wall of mountain, and far blue peaks
in the north. And so at last I came to the place. The track went up a
gentle slope, and widened out into an open space with a wall of thick
undergrowth around it, and then, narrowing again, passed on into the
distance and the faint blue mist of summer heat. And into this pleasant
summer glade Rachel passed a girl, and left it, who shall say what? I
did not stay long there.
In a small town near Caermaen there is a museum, containing for the most
part Roman remains which have been found in the neighbourhood at various
times. On the day after my arrival at Caermaen I walked over to the
town in question, and took the opportunity of inspecting this museum.
After I had seen most of the sculptured stones, the coffins, rings,
coins, and fragments of tessellated pavement which the place contains, I
was shown a small square pillar of white stone, which had been recently
discovered in the wood of which I have been speaking, and, as I found on
inquiry, in that open space where the Roman road broadens out. On one
side of the pillar was an inscription, of which I took a note. Some of
the letters have been defaced, but I do not think there can be any doubt
as to those which I supply. The inscription is as follows:
DEVOMNODENT_i_
FLA_v_IVSSENILISPOSSV_it_
PROPTERNVP_tias_
_qua_SVIDITSVBVMB_ra_
'To the great god Nodens (the god of the Great Deep or Abyss) Flavius
Senilis has erected this pillar on account of the marriage which he saw
beneath the shade.'
The custodian of the museum informed me that local antiquaries were much
puzzled, not by the inscription, or by any difficulty in translating it,
but as to the circumstance or rite to which allusion is made.
* * * * *
... And now, my dear Clarke, as to what you tell me about Helen Vaughan,
whom you say you saw die under circumstances of the utmost and almost
incredible horror. I was interested in your account, but a good deal,
nay all, of what you told me I knew already. I can understand the
strange likeness you remarked both in the portrait and in the actual
face; you have seen Helen's mother. You remember that still summer night
so many years ago, when I talked to you of the world beyond the shadows,
and of the god Pan. You remember Mary. She was the mother of Helen
Vaughan, who was born nine months after that night.
Mary never recovered her reason. She lay, as you saw her, all the while
upon her bed, and a few days after the child was born she died. I fancy
that just at the last she knew me; I was standing by the bed, and the
old look came into her eyes for a second, and then she shuddered and
groaned and died. It was an ill work I did that night when you were
present; I broke open the door of the house of life, without knowing or
caring what might pass forth or enter in. I recollect your telling me at
the time, sharply enough, and rightly enough too, in one sense, that I
had ruined the reason of a human being by a foolish experiment, based on
an absurd theory. You did well to blame me, but my theory was not all
absurdity. What I said Mary would see, she saw, but I forgot that no
human eyes could look on such a vision with impunity. And I forgot, as I
have just said, that when the house of life is thus thrown open, there
may enter in that for which we have no name, and human flesh may become
the veil of a horror one dare not express. I played with energies which
I did not understand, and you have seen the ending of it. Helen Vaughan
did well to bind the cord about her neck and die, though the death was
horrible. The blackened face, the hideous form upon the bed, changing
and melting before your eyes from woman to man, from man to beast, and
from beast to worse than beast, all the strange horror that you
witnessed, surprises me but little. What you say the doctor whom you
sent for saw and shuddered at I noticed long ago; I knew what I had done
the moment the child was born, and when it was scarcely five years old I
surprised it, not once or twice but several times with a playmate, you
may guess of what kind. It was for me a constant, an incarnate horror,
and after a few years I felt I could bear it no longer, and I sent Helen
Vaughan away. You know now what frightened the boy in the wood. The rest
of the strange story, and all else that you tell me, as discovered by
your friend, I have contrived to learn from time to time, almost to the
last chapter. And now Helen is with her companions....