The Statement of Randolph Carter

by H. P. Lovecraft

　　

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Again I say, I do not know what has become of Harley Warren, though Ithink--almost hope--that he is in peaceful oblivion, if there be anywhere soblessed a thing. It is true that I have for five years been his closest friend,and a partial sharer of his terrible researches into the unknown. I will notdeny, though my memory is uncertain and indistinct, that this witness of yoursmay have seen us together as he says, on the Gainsville pike, walking toward BigCypress Swamp, at half past 11 on that awful night. That we bore electriclanterns, spades, and a curious coil of wire with attached instruments, I willeven affirm; for these things all played a part in the single hideous scenewhich remains burned into my shaken recollection. But of what followed, and ofthe reason I was found alone and dazed on the edge of the swamp next morning, Imust insist that I know nothing save what I have told you over and over again.You say to me that there is nothing in the swamp or near it which could form thesetting of that frightful episode. I reply that I knew nothing beyond what Isaw. Vision or nightmare it may have been--vision or nightmare I fervently hopeit was--yet it is all that my mind retains of what took place in those shockinghours after we left the sight of men. And why Harley Warren did not return, heor his shade--or some nameless thing I cannot describe-- alone can tell.As I have said before, the weird studies of Harley Warren were well known tome, and to some extent shared by me. Of his vast collection of strange, rarebooks on forbidden subjects I have read all that are written in the languages ofwhich I am master; but these are few as compared with those in languages Icannot understand. Most, I believe, are in Arabic; and the fiend-inspired bookwhich brought on the end--the book which he carried in his pocket out of theworld--was written in characters whose like I never saw elsewhere. Warren wouldnever tell me just what was in that book. As to the nature of our studies--mustI say again that I no longer retain full comprehension? It seems to me rathermerciful that I do not, for they were terrible studies, which I pursued morethrough reluctant fascination than through actual inclination. Warren alwaysdominated me, and sometimes I feared him. I remember how I shuddered at hisfacial expression on the night before the awful happening, when he talked soincessantly of his theory, why certain corpses never decay, but rest firm andfat in their tombs for a thousand years. But I do not fear him now, for Isuspect that he has known horrors beyond my ken. Now I fear for him.Once more I say that I have no clear idea of our object on that night.Certainly, it had much to do with something in the book which Warren carriedwith him--that ancient book in undecipherable characters which had come to himfrom India a month before--but I swear I do not know what it was that weexpected to find. Your witness says he saw us at half past 11 on the Gainsvillepike, headed for Big Cypress Swamp. This is probably true, but I have nodistinct memory of it. The picture seared into my soul is of one scene only, andthe hour must have been long after midnight; for a waning crescent moon was highin the vaporous heavens.The place was an ancient cemetery; so ancient that I trembled at themanifold signs of immemorial years. It was in a deep, damp hollow, overgrownwith rank grass, moss, and curious creeping weeds, and filled with a vaguestench which my idle fancy associated absurdly with rotting stone. On every handwere the signs of neglect and decrepitude, and I seemed haunted by the notionthat Warren and I were the first living creatures to invade a lethal silence ofcenturies. Over the valley's rim a wan, waning crescent moon peered through thenoisome vapors that seemed to emanate from unheard of catacombs, and by itsfeeble, wavering beams I could distinguish a repellent array of antique slabs,urns, cenotaphs, and mausoleum facades; all crumbling, moss-grown, andmoisture-stained, and partly concealed by the gross luxuriance of the unhealthyvegetation.My first vivid impression of my own presence in this terrible necropolisconcerns the act of pausing with Warren before a certain half- obliteratedsepulcher and of throwing down some burdens which we seemed to have beencarrying. I now observed that I had with me an electric lantern and two spades,whilst my companion was supplied with a similar lantern and a portable telephoneoutfit. No word was uttered, for the spot and the task seemed known to us; andwithout delay we seized our spades and commenced to clear away the grass, weeds,and drifted earth from the flat, archaic mortuary. After uncovering the entiresurface, which consisted of three immense granite slabs, we stepped back somedistance to survey the charnel scene; and Warren appeared to make some mentalcalculations. Then he returned to the sepulcher, and using his spade as a lever,sought to pry up the slab lying nearest to a stony ruin which may have been amonument in its day. He did not succeed, and motioned to me to come to hisassistance. Finally our combined strength loosened the stone, which we raisedand tipped to one side.The removal of the slab revealed a black aperture, from which rushed aneffluence of miasmal gases so nauseous that we started back in horror. After aninterval, however, we approached the pit again, and found the exhalations lessunbearable. Our lanterns disclosed the top of a flight of stone steps, drippingwith some detestable ichor of the inner earth, and bordered by moist wallsencrusted with niter. And now for the first time my memory records verbaldiscourse, Warren addressing me at length in his mellow tenor voice; a voicesingularly unperturbed by our awesome surroundings."I'm sorry to have to ask you to stay on the surface," he said, "but itwould be a crime to let anyone with your frail nerves go down there. You can'timagine, even from what you have read and from what I've told you, the things Ishall have to see and do. It's fiendish work, Carter, and I doubt if any manwithout ironclad sensibilities could ever see it through and come up alive andsane. I don't wish to offend you, and Heaven knows I'd be glad enough to haveyou with me; but the responsibility is in a certain sense mine, and I couldn'tdrag a bundle of nerves like you down to probable death or madness. I tell you,you can't imagine what the thing is really like! But I promise to keep youinformed over the telephone of every move--you see I've enough wire here toreach to the center of the earth and back!"I can still hear, in memory, those coolly spoken words; and I can stillremember my remonstrances. I seemed desperately anxious to accompany my friendinto those sepulchral depths, yet he proved inflexibly obdurate. At one time hethreatened to abandon the expedition if I remained insistent; a threat whichproved effective, since he alone held the key to the thing. All this I can stillremember, though I no longer know what manner of thing we sought. After he hadobtained my reluctant acquiescence in his design, Warren picked up the reel ofwire and adjusted the instruments. At his nod I took one of the latter andseated myself upon an aged, discolored gravestone close by the newly uncoveredaperture. Then he shook my hand, shouldered the coil of wire, and disappearedwithin that indescribable ossuary.For a minute I kept sight of the glow of his lantern, and heard the rustleof the wire as he laid it down after him; but the glow soon disappearedabruptly, as if a turn in the stone staircase had been encountered, and thesound died away almost as quickly. I was alone, yet bound to the unknown depthsby those magic strands whose insulated surface lay green beneath the strugglingbeams of that waning crescent moon.I constantly consulted my watch by the light of my electric lantern, andlistened with feverish anxiety at the receiver of the telephone; but for morethan a quarter of an hour heard nothing. Then a faint clicking came from theinstrument, and I called down to my friend in a tense voice. Apprehensive as Iwas, I was nevertheless unprepared for the words which came up from that uncannyvault in accents more alarmed and quivering than any I had heard before fromHarley Warren. He who had so calmly left me a little while previously, nowcalled from below in a shaky whisper more portentous than the loudest shriek:"God! If you could see what I am seeing!"I could not answer. Speechless, I could only wait. Then came the frenziedtones again:"Carter, it's terrible--monstrous--unbelievable!"This time my voice did not fail me, and I poured into the transmitter aflood of excited questions. Terrified, I continued to repeat, "Warren, what isit? What is it?"Once more came the voice of my friend, still hoarse with fear, and nowapparently tinged with despair:"I can't tell you, Carter! It's too utterly beyond thought--I dare not tellyou--no man could know it and live--Great God! I never dreamed of this!"Stillness again, save for my now incoherent torrent of shuddering inquiry.Then the voice of Warren in a pitch of wilder consternation:"Carter! for the love of God, put back the slab and get out of this if youcan! Quickit's your onlychance! Do as I say, and don't ask me to explain!"I heard, yet was able only to repeat my frantic questions. Around me werethe tombs and the darkness and the shadows; below me, some peril beyond theradius of the human imagination. But my friend was in greater danger than I, andthrough my fear I felt a vague resentment that he should deem me capable ofdeserting him under such circumstances. More clicking, and after a pause apiteous cry from Warren:"Beat it! For God's sake, put back the slab and beat it, Carter!"Something in the boyish slang of my evidently stricken companion unleashedmy faculties. I formed and shouted a resolution, "Warren, brace up! I'm comingdown!" But at this offer the tone of my auditor changed to a scream of utterdespair:"Don't! You can't understand! It's too late--and my own fault. Put back theslab and run--there's nothing else you or anyone can do now!"The tone changed again, this time acquiring a softer quality, as of hopelessresignation. Yet it remained tense through anxiety for me."Quick--before it's too late!"I tried not to heed him; tried to break through the paralysis which held me,and to fulfil my vow to rush down to his aid. But his next whisper found mestill held inert in the chains of stark horror."Carter--hurry! It's no use--you must go--better one than two--the slab--"A pause, more clicking, then the faint voice of Warren:"Nearly over now--don't make it harder--cover up those damned steps and runfor your life--you're losing time--so long, Carter--won't see you again."Here Warren's whisper swelled into a cry; a cry that gradually rose to ashriek fraught with all the horror of the ages--"Curse these hellish things--legions--My God! Beat it! Beat it! BEAT IT!"After that was silence. I know not how many interminable eons I satstupefied; whispering, muttering, calling, screaming into that telephone. Overand over again through those eons I whispered and muttered, called, shouted, andscreamed, "Warren! Warren! Answer me--are you there?"And then there came to me the crowning horror of all--the unbelievable,unthinkable, almost unmentionable thing. I have said that eons seemed to elapseafter Warren shrieked forth his last despairing warning, and that only my owncries now broke the hideous silence. But after a while there was a furtherclicking in the receiver, and I strained my ears to listen. Again I called down,"Warren, are you there?" and in answer heard the thing which has brought thiscloud over my mind. I do not try, gentlemen, to account for that thing--thatvoice--nor can I venture to describe it in detail, since the first words tookaway my consciousness and created a mental blank which reaches to the time of myawakening in the hospital. Shall I say that the voice was deep; hollow;gelatinous; remote; unearthly; inhuman; disembodied? What shall I say? It wasthe end of my experience, and is the end of my story. I heard it, and knew nomore--heard it as I sat petrified in that unknown cemetery in the hollow, amidstthe crumbling stones and the falling tombs, the rank vegetation and the miasmalvapors-- heard it well up from the innermost depths of that damnable opensepulcher as I watched amorphous, necrophagous shadows dance beneath an accursedwaning moon.And this is what it said:"You fool, Warren is DEAD!"

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