The House on the Borderland (2 page)

And then, without any warning whatsoever, the river we had followed so
confidently, came to an abrupt end—vanishing into the earth.

"Good Lord!" I said, "who ever would have thought of this?"

And I stared in amazement; then I turned to Tonnison. He was looking,
with a blank expression upon his face, at the place where the river
disappeared.

In a moment he spoke.

"Let us go on a bit; it may reappear again—anyhow, it is worth
investigating."

I agreed, and we went forward once more, though rather aimlessly; for we
were not at all certain in which direction to prosecute our search. For
perhaps a mile we moved onward; then Tonnison, who had been gazing about
curiously, stopped and shaded his eyes.

"See!" he said, after a moment, "isn't that mist or something, over
there to the right—away in a line with that great piece of rock?" And
he indicated with his hand.

I stared, and, after a minute, seemed to see something, but could not be
certain, and said so.

"Anyway," my friend replied, "we'll just go across and have a glance."
And he started off in the direction he had suggested, I following.
Presently, we came among bushes, and, after a time, out upon the top of
a high, boulder-strewn bank, from which we looked down into a wilderness
of bushes and trees.

"Seems as though we had come upon an oasis in this desert of stone,"
muttered Tonnison, as he gazed interestedly. Then he was silent, his
eyes fixed; and I looked also; for up from somewhere about the center of
the wooded lowland there rose high into the quiet air a great column of
hazelike spray, upon which the sun shone, causing innumerable rainbows.

"How beautiful!" I exclaimed.

"Yes," answered Tonnison, thoughtfully. "There must be a waterfall, or
something, over there. Perhaps it's our river come to light again. Let's
go and see."

Down the sloping bank we made our way, and entered among the trees and
shrubberies. The bushes were matted, and the trees overhung us, so that
the place was disagreeably gloomy; though not dark enough to hide from
me the fact that many of the trees were fruit trees, and that, here and
there, one could trace indistinctly, signs of a long departed
cultivation. Thus it came to me that we were making our way through the
riot of a great and ancient garden. I said as much to Tonnison, and he
agreed that there certainly seemed reasonable grounds for my belief.

What a wild place it was, so dismal and somber! Somehow, as we went
forward, a sense of the silent loneliness and desertion of the old
garden grew upon me, and I felt shivery. One could imagine things
lurking among the tangled bushes; while, in the very air of the place,
there seemed something uncanny. I think Tonnison was conscious of this
also, though he said nothing.

Suddenly, we came to a halt. Through the trees there had grown upon our
ears a distant sound. Tonnison bent forward, listening. I could hear it
more plainly now; it was continuous and harsh—a sort of droning roar,
seeming to come from far away. I experienced a queer, indescribable,
little feeling of nervousness. What sort of place was it into which we
had got? I looked at my companion, to see what he thought of the matter;
and noted that there was only puzzlement in his face; and then, as I
watched his features, an expression of comprehension crept over them,
and he nodded his head.

"That's a waterfall," he exclaimed, with conviction. "I know the sound
now." And he began to push vigorously through the bushes, in the
direction of the noise.

As we went forward, the sound became plainer continually, showing that
we were heading straight toward it. Steadily, the roaring grew louder
and nearer, until it appeared, as I remarked to Tonnison, almost to come
from under our feet—and still we were surrounded by the trees
and shrubs.

"Take care!" Tonnison called to me. "Look where you're going." And then,
suddenly, we came out from among the trees, on to a great open space,
where, not six paces in front of us, yawned the mouth of a tremendous
chasm, from the depths of which the noise appeared to rise, along with
the continuous, mistlike spray that we had witnessed from the top of the
distant bank.

For quite a minute we stood in silence, staring in bewilderment at the
sight; then my friend went forward cautiously to the edge of the abyss.
I followed, and, together, we looked down through a boil of spray at a
monster cataract of frothing water that burst, spouting, from the side
of the chasm, nearly a hundred feet below.

"Good Lord!" said Tonnison.

I was silent, and rather awed. The sight was so unexpectedly grand and
eerie; though this latter quality came more upon me later.

Presently, I looked up and across to the further side of the chasm.
There, I saw something towering up among the spray: it looked like a
fragment of a great ruin, and I touched Tonnison on the shoulder. He
glanced 'round, with a start, and I pointed toward the thing. His gaze
followed my finger, and his eyes lighted up with a sudden flash of
excitement, as the object came within his field of view.

"Come along," he shouted above the uproar. "We'll have a look at it.
There's something queer about this place; I feel it in my bones." And he
started off, 'round the edge of the craterlike abyss. As we neared this
new thing, I saw that I had not been mistaken in my first impression. It
was undoubtedly a portion of some ruined building; yet now I made out
that it was not built upon the edge of the chasm itself, as I had at
first supposed; but perched almost at the extreme end of a huge spur of
rock that jutted out some fifty or sixty feet over the abyss. In fact,
the jagged mass of ruin was literally suspended in midair.

Arriving opposite it, we walked out on to the projecting arm of rock,
and I must confess to having felt an intolerable sense of terror as I
looked down from that dizzy perch into the unknown depths below us—into
the deeps from which there rose ever the thunder of the falling water
and the shroud of rising spray.

Reaching the ruin, we clambered 'round it cautiously, and, on the
further side, came upon a mass of fallen stones and rubble. The ruin
itself seemed to me, as I proceeded now to examine it minutely, to be a
portion of the outer wall of some prodigious structure, it was so thick
and substantially built; yet what it was doing in such a position I
could by no means conjecture. Where was the rest of the house, or
castle, or whatever there had been?

I went back to the outer side of the wall, and thence to the edge of the
chasm, leaving Tonnison rooting systematically among the heap of stones
and rubbish on the outer side. Then I commenced to examine the surface
of the ground, near the edge of the abyss, to see whether there were not
left other remnants of the building to which the fragment of ruin
evidently belonged. But though I scrutinized the earth with the greatest
care, I could see no signs of anything to show that there had ever been
a building erected on the spot, and I grew more puzzled than ever.

Then, I heard a cry from Tonnison; he was shouting my name, excitedly,
and without delay I hurried along the rocky promontory to the ruin. I
wondered whether he had hurt himself, and then the thought came, that
perhaps he had found something.

I reached the crumbled wall and climbed 'round. There I found Tonnison
standing within a small excavation that he had made among the
débris
:
he was brushing the dirt from something that looked like a book, much
crumpled and dilapidated; and opening his mouth, every second or two, to
bellow my name. As soon as he saw that I had come, he handed his prize
to me, telling me to put it into my satchel so as to protect it from the
damp, while he continued his explorations. This I did, first, however,
running the pages through my fingers, and noting that they were closely
filled with neat, old-fashioned writing which was quite legible, save in
one portion, where many of the pages were almost destroyed, being
muddied and crumpled, as though the book had been doubled back at that
part. This, I found out from Tonnison, was actually as he had discovered
it, and the damage was due, probably, to the fall of masonry upon the
opened part. Curiously enough, the book was fairly dry, which I
attributed to its having been so securely buried among the ruins.

Having put the volume away safely, I turned-to and gave Tonnison a hand
with his self-imposed task of excavating; yet, though we put in over an
hour's hard work, turning over the whole of the upheaped stones and
rubbish, we came upon nothing more than some fragments of broken wood,
that might have been parts of a desk or table; and so we gave up
searching, and went back along the rock, once more to the safety of
the land.

The next thing we did was to make a complete tour of the tremendous
chasm, which we were able to observe was in the form of an almost
perfect circle, save for where the ruin-crowned spur of rock jutted out,
spoiling its symmetry.

The abyss was, as Tonnison put it, like nothing so much as a gigantic
well or pit going sheer down into the bowels of the earth.

For some time longer, we continued to stare about us, and then, noticing
that there was a clear space away to the north of the chasm, we bent our
steps in that direction.

Here, distant from the mouth of the mighty pit by some hundreds of
yards, we came upon a great lake of silent water—silent, that is, save
in one place where there was a continuous bubbling and gurgling.

Now, being away from the noise of the spouting cataract, we were able to
hear one another speak, without having to shout at the tops of our
voices, and I asked Tonnison what he thought of the place—I told him
that I didn't like it, and that the sooner we were out of it the better
I should be pleased.

He nodded in reply, and glanced at the woods behind furtively. I asked
him if he had seen or heard anything. He made no answer; but stood
silent, as though listening, and I kept quiet also.

Suddenly, he spoke.

"Hark!" he said, sharply. I looked at him, and then away among the trees
and bushes, holding my breath involuntarily. A minute came and went in
strained silence; yet I could hear nothing, and I turned to Tonnison to
say as much; and then, even as I opened my lips to speak, there came a
strange wailing noise out of the wood on our left.... It appeared to
float through the trees, and there was a rustle of stirring leaves, and
then silence.

All at once, Tonnison spoke, and put his hand on my shoulder. "Let us
get out of here," he said, and began to move slowly toward where the
surrounding trees and bushes seemed thinnest. As I followed him, it came
to me suddenly that the sun was low, and that there was a raw sense of
chilliness in the air.

Tonnison said nothing further, but kept on steadily. We were among the
trees now, and I glanced around, nervously; but saw nothing, save the
quiet branches and trunks and the tangled bushes. Onward we went, and no
sound broke the silence, except the occasional snapping of a twig under
our feet, as we moved forward. Yet, in spite of the quietness, I had a
horrible feeling that we were not alone; and I kept so close to Tonnison
that twice I kicked his heels clumsily, though he said nothing. A
minute, and then another, and we reached the confines of the wood coming
out at last upon the bare rockiness of the countryside. Only then was I
able to shake off the haunting dread that had followed me among
the trees.

Once, as we moved away, there seemed to come again a distant sound of
wailing, and I said to myself that it was the wind—yet the evening was
breathless.

Presently, Tonnison began to talk.

"Look you," he said with decision, "I would not spend the night in
that
place for all the wealth that the world holds. There is something
unholy—diabolical—about it. It came to me all in a moment, just after
you spoke. It seemed to me that the woods were full of vile
things—you know!"

"Yes," I answered, and looked back toward the place; but it was hidden
from us by a rise in the ground.

"There's the book," I said, and I put my hand into the satchel.

"You've got it safely?" he questioned, with a sudden access of anxiety.

"Yes," I replied.

"Perhaps," he continued, "we shall learn something from it when we get
back to the tent. We had better hurry, too; we're a long way off still,
and I don't fancy, now, being caught out here in the dark."

It was two hours later when we reached the tent; and, without delay, we
set to work to prepare a meal; for we had eaten nothing since our lunch
at midday.

Supper over, we cleared the things out of the way, and lit our pipes.
Then Tonnison asked me to get the manuscript out of my satchel. This I
did, and then, as we could not both read from it at the same time, he
suggested that I should read the thing out loud. "And mind," he
cautioned, knowing my propensities, "don't go skipping half the book."

Yet, had he but known what it contained, he would have realized how
needless such advice was, for once at least. And there seated in the
opening of our little tent, I began the strange tale of
The House on
the Borderland
(for such was the title of the MS.); this is told in the
following pages.

I am an old man. I live here in this ancient house, surrounded by huge,
unkempt gardens.

The peasantry, who inhabit the wilderness beyond, say that I am mad.
That is because I will have nothing to do with them. I live here alone
with my old sister, who is also my housekeeper. We keep no servants—I
hate them. I have one friend, a dog; yes, I would sooner have old Pepper
than the rest of Creation together. He, at least, understands me—and
has sense enough to leave me alone when I am in my dark moods.