Howard Lovecraft - The Color out of Space and Other Mystery Stories / «Цвет из иных миров» и другие мистические истории

As the weeks passed, I was sorry to see that my new friend was slowly getting physically weaker and weaker, as Mrs. Herrero had said. His complexion was grayer than usual, his voice became hollow, his movements were slow, and his mind was blurred. He did not seem to notice this sad change, and little by little my conversations with him started bringing back that slight dislike I had felt at first.

He had also developed strange whims, for example, he started using exotic spices and Egyptian incense till his room smelled like a tomb of a pharaoh. At the same time, he demanded even colder air, and with my help he increased the ammonia in his refrigerating machine till he could keep the temperature as low as 40° or 34° and finally even 28° [9] +4 °C, +1 °C и, под конец, даже -2 °C . The bathroom and laboratory, of course, were less chilly, or all the water there would have frozen and the chemical processes would have stopped. Yet, a kind of growing horror seemed to possess the doctor. He now talked of death all the time, but laughed bitterly when things such as burial or funeral were mentioned.

All in all, he became a sad and even depressing companion, but I was grateful to him for helping me, and I could not leave him to the strangers around him. I carefully dusted his room every day and did much of his shopping, though some chemicals he ordered from druggists puzzled me.

There seemed to be an unexplained atmosphere of panic around his apartment. The whole house, as I have said, had a musty smell, but the smell in his room was the worst, despite all the spices and incense he used. The stench of chemical baths which he was constantly taking was unbearable. I thought that it must be connected with his illness and often wondered what that illness might be. The appearance and the voice of the doctor became frightful, so even Mrs. Herrero crossed herself when she looked at the doctor and left him all to me, not letting her son Esteban do chores for him anymore. When I suggested bringing in other doctors, Dr. Muñoz became furious. Although he avoided any emotions, he strongly refused to stay in his bed. He seemed determined to defy the death demon – his ancient enemy. He then stopped eating anything and lived on his mental power [10] сила духа alone.

He started writing some long documents, which he carefully sealed, and instructed me to send them after his death to certain people whom he named. As it happened, I burned all these papers unopened.

Then, in the middle of October, suddenly came the horror of horrors. One night, at about eleven, the pump of the refrigerating machine broke down, so that in three hours the process of ammonia cooling became impossible. Dr. Muñoz called me, and I tried to repair the engine, but my efforts were useless. When I had brought in a mechanic from an all-night garage, we learned that nothing could be done till morning because a new spare part was needed. The doctor’s rage and fear ruined the last of his poor health. A spasm made him cover his eyes with his hands and rush into the bathroom. He later came out with his face bandaged, and I never saw his eyes again.

The apartment was now getting warmer and warmer, and at about 5 a. m. the doctor went to the bathroom, ordering me to bring him all the ice I could get at the all-night drugstores and cafeterias. As I returned from my trips and lay the ice before the closed bathroom door, I could hear the doctor shouting, “More, more!”

Then another warm day came, and the shops opened one by one. I asked Esteban to help the doctor with the ice while I would go and find the pump spare parts and the workmen, but instructed by his mother, he absolutely refused.

Finally, I hired a man whom I met in the street to keep bringing the ice from a little shop. The hours went by in vain as I was telephoning different companies and running from place to place to find the right spare part. Finally, at about 1:30 p. m., I returned to my boarding house with the necessary equipment and two intelligent mechanics. I had done all I could, and hoped I was in time.

But the house was in black terror. Unthinkable stench was coming from under the doctor’s closed door. The man I had hired, it seemed, had run away screaming soon after his second delivery of ice. The doctor’s door was locked from the inside, and there was no sound except of slow dripping.

I spoke with Mrs. Herrero and the workmen, and at first, despite our fear, we decided to break down the door, but the landlady found a way to turn the key from the outside with some wire. We had opened the doors and windows of all the other rooms, and now, with our noses covered by handkerchiefs, we entered the doctor’s room.

A kind of dark, slimy trail led from the open bathroom door to the hall, and then to the desk, where there was a terrible little pool. Something was written there in pencil on a piece of paper – the doctor’s last words. Then the trail led to the couch and ended unspeakably.

What was, or had been, on the couch – I cannot describe. But here is what I saw on that paper before I burned it while the landlady and two mechanics rushed from that hellish place to the nearest police station. The sickening words seemed unbelievable, yet I confess that I believed them then. I honestly do not know if I believe them now. There are things about which it is better not to talk, and all I can say is that now I hate the smell of ammonia and can faint at a draught of unusually cool air.

“The end,” it was written on the paper, “is here. No more ice – the man saw me and ran away. Warmer every minute, and the tissues can’t last. I think you understood what I said about the will and the nerves, and the preserved body after the organs stopped working. It was a good idea, but it couldn’t last forever. I didn’t realize it. Dr. Torres had understood it, but the shock killed him. He couldn’t stand what he had to do when he got my letter. He had put me in a strange, dark place and nursed me back, but the organs would never work again. So it had to be done my way – artificial preservation – because, you see, I died that time, eighteen years ago. ”

Southeast of Hampden, near the Salmon River, there is a range of rocky hills on which no one lives. The canyons are too deep and the slopes are too steep for anyone except the cows and sheep. The last time I visited Hampden, the region known as Hell’s Acres was part of the Blue Mountain Forest Reserve. There are no roads linking this place with the outside world, and the local people will tell you that it is indeed an evil spot. There is a local superstition that the area is haunted, but by what or by whom no one seems to know. Natives do not go walking in those hills because they believe the stories told by the Nez Perce Indians, who have avoided the region for generations, because, according to them, it is a playground of devils from the Outside. These tales made me very curious.

My first visit – and my last, thank God! – to those hills was while Theunis and I were living in Hampden the summer of 1938. He was writing an article on Egyptian mythology, and I was walking alone much of the time. We lived in a small house on Beacon Street.

On the morning of June 23rd, I was walking in those strangely shaped hills, which at first had seemed very ordinary. I must have been about seven miles south of Hampden before I noticed anything unusual. I was climbing a grassy slope of a deep canyon when I saw an area totally without any vegetation. It went southward over many hills and valleys. At first I thought the spot had been burned in the previous fall, but after examining the ground, I found no signs of a fire. The nearby slopes and ravines looked terribly scarred as if some gigantic torch had blasted them, burning all vegetation. And yet there was no sign of a fire…