“The Outsider” — H. P. Lovecraft simplified

I adapted some of H. P. Lovecraft’s gothic horror stories so my young kids could enjoy them. (I wrote about the process in https://medium.com/@prosetech/serving-up-cthulhu-for-kids-be420ac2cd97.) Now, in honor of Halloween, I’ve posted one of my favorites: the twisted and chilling tale of “The Outsider.”

I do not know where I was born, only that I lived in a castle that was infinitely old and infinitely horrible.

I sat in dark halls that were thick with cobwebs and shadows. I wandered in crumbling corridors, over stones that were cold and sickeningly damp. The smell of mold and decay was everywhere.

I must have lived years in this place, but I had no way to measure the time. Someone must have cared for my needs, but I cannot remember any person except myself, or anything alive except the scurrying rats and the silent spiders.

I think the person that cared for me must have been very old. The first image I have of a living person is someone that looked like me but was distorted, shriveled, and decaying like the castle.

I learned about the outside world from the old books in the library.

There was no teacher to guide me. In fact, I do not remember hearing any human sound in all those years. I did not even hear my own voice, because I had never thought to speak. Nor did I think about my appearance, because there were no mirrors in the castle. But I knew, by instinct, that I was like the young children I saw drawn in the books.

Once I tried to escape by crossing the forest that encircles the castle. But as I went farther from the castle walls, the shade grew deeper and the air became thick and forbidding. I felt a growing fear that I would lose my way in the silence, and that fear rose into a panic, until I ran frantically back to the safety of the crumbling castle.

For endless days I dreamed and waited, but I did not know what I waited for.

In the castle, there was one black tower that reached above the trees into the unknown sky, but its staircase was crumbling and ruined. The only way to reach the top of the tower was to climb up the inside wall, along tiny footholds in the stone. Such a climb would be dangerous — nearly impossible — and so I had never tried. But as the days passed I grew more desperate to see light, and I decided to make my attempt. I knew that I might fall, but in my lonely heart I thought it was better to glimpse the sky and die than to live without ever seeing the day outside the castle.

The climb was terrifying. In the dank twilight I clung to the wall as startled bats swirled around me. My progress was agonizingly slow, inches at a time, and though I climbed and climbed the darkness overhead grew no thinner.

I do not know how long I crawled blindly up the cold stone wall in the tower. But all at once, I felt my head touch something solid, and I knew I must have reached the roof.

In the darkness I raised my free hand and felt the barrier above me. It was cold stone, but as I pushed it slowly swung up. With great effort I lifted the stone door just enough that I could crawl through. Then, as I slipped through, the heavy slab fell back into place with a crash. I lay exhausted on the stone floor, listening to the eerie echoes below.

I did not know what the tower held, but I believed myself to be at the top of a great height, far above the twisted branches of the forest. When I finally caught my breath, I dragged myself up from the floor and fumbled in the dark. I hoped to find a window so I could look for the first time at the sky, the moon, and the stars, which I had studied in my books. And I wondered what secrets might be in this high chamber that had been cut off from the castle below for so many years.

Then, unexpectedly, my hands found a rough stone doorway. I dragged the door open, and then I felt the purest joy I have ever known. For through the door, up a short stone passageway of steps, and through an iron grate, I saw the radiant full moon.

I had never seen the moon before, except in dreams and cloudy memories.

The grate was not locked, but I did not open it right away. You see, I was still careful. I did not want to risk falling from the amazing height to which I had climbed.

Then the moon came out again.

Nothing I had seen before could compare with the sight that met my eyes in that instant of cool moonlight. I had expected to look out from a great height on a dizzying range of treetops. But what I saw was simpler and far more shocking. Through the grating I saw solid ground all around me. Somehow, I had not reached the top of the tower as I had thought. Instead, I was looking out on the even surface of a courtyard that was paved with white gravel.

The sight shook me to my core. Was it magic? A dream? A sudden bout of insanity? I did not understand at that moment that my home — which I thought to be a castle — was truly an underground tomb.

Though my mind was stunned and confused, I still longed for warmth. Even this mystery could not stop me. I staggered through the grate and onto the gravel path. I decided that I would continue until I found the light I craved.

As I stumbled ahead, I began to feel as if a dim memory was guiding me. I passed an old stone church and went under an arch. I wandered through the meadows of an open countryside. I walked for more than hour before I reached what seemed to be my goal: a grand manor whose windows were ablaze with life. Music and laughter spilled out into the warm air, reminding me of the happiest pictures from the books in the castle library.

As I approached the building, it felt familiar but strange, and the effect was maddening. It was as though I had visited the manor many years ago, when it had looked quite different. Towers I expected to see were gone, replaced with walls that I did not recognize. Like my castle, the manor had a moat encircling it, but this moat was filled in.

I approached one of the brightly lit windows and looked through it.

Inside, a grand ball was taking place. The partygoers were dressed in tailored coats and shimmering dresses. They celebrated together, sharing dances and speaking brightly to each other. I could not make out what they were saying, because the sound of their speech was foreign to my ears. But my excitement rose.

As I entered, there occurred immediately one of the most terrifying changes I have ever seen. I realized at once that something else was here. Before I had even crossed the window sill, a sudden suffocating fear descended on the partygoers. Every face crumpled in horror, and screams rose up from nearly every throat. Many covered their eyes, and all of them rushed to escape through one of the many doors, overturning furniture and stumbling against the walls in their panic.

The cries shocked me. I stood in the brilliant ballroom alone and dazed, listening to their vanishing echoes.

I was alone.

I trembled at the thought of what might be lurking nearby. I looked quickly around the room, and it seemed deserted. But when I moved toward one of the alcoves, I noticed something. There was a hint of motion — there beyond a golden-arched doorway that lead to another, somewhat similar room. As I approached the arch, I realized I was not alone.

Then I saw it.

Words cannot describe the monstrosity that I saw. It was a dripping, decaying creature, an unnatural being that should have been hidden beneath the earth centuries ago. Stained rags clung to its body, but they did nothing to hide the beast’s stooped and disfigured body. God knows it was not of this world — or no longer of this world. But to my horror, I saw in its outline the shadow of a human being. And I knew that — perhaps hundreds of years in the dark past — this foul beast had been a man.

I tried to raise my hand to shut out the sight, but my nerves were shocked and my arm would not fully obey my will. The effort threw me off balance, so that I had to stagger forward several steps to avoid falling. As I did, I became suddenly and agonizingly aware of my nearness to the hideous thing. I half-imagined I could hear its hollow breathing.

I threw up my arms to protect myself, and in one shattering second my fingers brushed the outstretched paw of the monster beneath the golden arch.

I did not shriek, but all the spirits that ride the night-wind shrieked for me. In that brief second there crashed down upon my mind an avalanche of memory.

I knew in that second all that had been. I remembered beyond the frightful castle and the trees, and I recognized the manor in which I stood. I recognized, most terrible of all, the creature that stood leering before me as I drew back my hand.

The next minutes passed as if I were in a dream. Half-mad, I fled from the manor and ran swiftly and silently in the moonlight. When I returned to the churchyard and went down the steps, I found that the stone trap-door would not move.

I could not return to my home.

But I was not sorry, for I had hated the ancient castle and the trees.

Now I ride with mocking ghouls on the night wind, and I play by day among the caves in the secret valleys by the Nile. I know that light is not for me, except that of the moon over the great pyramids. Yet in my new wildness and freedom, I can almost forget the bitterness of my discovery.

For although I left the manor behind, I know that I am an outsider — a stranger in this time and among those who are still men. This I have known ever since I stretched out my fingers to the creature within that great golden frame and touched the cold polished glass of a mirror.

Matthew MacDonald is a mostly-tech author with a strange Halloween project. You can get the complete Four Tales of Cthulhu on Amazon https://amzn.to/2pX0Q46 or see his other projects at http://prosetech.com.