The Other Gods and More Unearthly Tales Read Online Free PDF

represent it on that vacant slab in the alcove of the vault. Jervas Hyde should never share the sad fate of Palinurus!
    As the phantom of the burning house faded, I found myself screaming and struggling madly in the arms of two men, one of whom was the spy who had followed me to the tomb. Rain was pouring down in
torrents, and upon the southern horizon were flashes of the lightning that had so lately passed over our heads. My father, his face lined with sorrow, stood by as I shouted my demands to be laid
within the tomb; frequently admonishing my captors to treat me as gently as they could. A blackened circle on the floor of the ruined cellar told of a violent stroke from the heavens; and from this
spot a group of curious villagers with lanterns were prying a small box of antique workmanship which the thunderbolt had brought to light. Ceasing my futile and now objectless writhing, I watched
the spectators as they viewed the treasure-trove, and was permitted to share in their discoveries. The box, whose fastenings were broken by the stroke which had unearthed it, contained many papers
and objects of value; but I had eyes for one thing alone. It was the porcelain miniature of a young man in a smartly curled bag-wig, and bore the initials “J.H.” The face was such that
as I gazed, I might well have been studying my mirror.
    On the following day I was brought to this room with the barred windows, but I have been kept informed of certain things through an aged and simpleminded servitor, for whom I bore a fondness in
infancy, and who like me loves the churchyard. What I have dared relate of my experiences within the vault has brought me only pitying smiles. My father, who visits me frequently, declares that at
no time did I pass the chained portal, and swears that the rusted padlock had not been touched for fifty years when he examined it. He even says that all the village knew of my journeys to the
tomb, and that I was often watched as I slept in the bower outside the grim facade, my half-open eyes fixed on the crevice that leads to the interior. Against these assertions I have no tangible
proof to offer, since my key to the padlock was lost in the struggle on that night of horrors. The strange things of the past which I learnt during those nocturnal meetings with the dead he
dismisses as the fruits of my lifelong and omnivorous browsing amongst the ancient volumes of the family library. Had it not been for my old servant Hiram, I should have by this time become quite
convinced of my madness.
    But Hiram, loyal to the last, has held faith in me, and has done that which impels me to make public at least a part of my story. A week ago he burst open the lock which chains the door of the
tomb perpetually ajar, and descended with a lantern into the murky depths. On a slab in an alcove he found an old but empty coffin whose tarnished plate bears the single word
“ Jervas ”. In that coffin and in that vault they have promised me I shall be buried.

 
P OLARIS
    This tale was probably written in May or June 1918, shortly after a dream that Lovecraft had (as recorded in a letter of May 15, 1918) of “a strange city—a
     city of many palaces and golded domes, lying in a hollow betwixt ranges of grey, horrible hills.” Lovecraft himself later noted its striking anticipation of the prose of Lord Dunsany,
     whom Lovecraft would not read for another year; but perhaps the influence of Poe’s prose poems (such as “Silence—a Fable”) can be put forward. The story is not in fact a
     “dream fantasy” but an account of a man of the present day who is possessed by the spirit of an ancestor from the distant past. It first appeared in the Philosopher (December
     1920).
    I NTO THE NORTH WINDOW OF MY CHAMBER GLOWS THE POLE STAR WITH uncanny light. All through the long hellish hours of blackness it shines there. And in the
autumn of the year, when the winds from the north curse and whine, and the red-leaved trees of the swamp