Beyond The Wall Of Sleep: Part 2 - Bedtime Story

Hey Sound Sleepers! I hope you've already listened to Part 1 because we now return with our second part of the science fiction short story written by H.P. Lovecraft.

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Transcript

Beyond the Wall of Sleep Part II The manner in which Slater alluded to their dealings,

I judged that he and the luminous thing had met on equal terms.

That in his dream existence,

The man was himself a luminous thing of the same race as his enemy.

This impression was sustained by his frequent references to flying through space and burning all that impeded his progress.

Yet these conceptions were formulated in rustic words,

Wholly inadequate to convey them,

A circumstance which drove me to the conclusion that if a true dream world indeed existed,

Oral language was not its medium for the transmission of thought.

Could it be that the dream soul inhabiting this inferior body was desperately struggling to speak things which the simple and halting tongue of dullness could not utter?

Could it be that I was face to face with intellectual emanations which would explain the mystery?

If I could but learn to discover and read them,

I did not tell the older physicians of these things,

For middle age is skeptical,

Cynical,

And disinclined to accept new ideas.

Besides,

The head of the institution had but lately warned me in his paternal way that I was overworking,

That my mind needed a rest.

It had long been my belief that human thought consists basically of atomic or molecular motion convertible into either waves of radiant energy like heat,

Light,

And electricity.

This belief had early led me to contemplate the possibility of telepathy or mental communication by means of suitable apparatus,

And I had in my college days prepared a set of transmitting and receiving instruments somewhat similar to the devices employed in wireless telegraphy at that crude pre-radio period.

These I had tested with a fellow student,

But achieving no result had soon packed them away with other scientific odds and ends for possible future use.

Now,

In my intense desire to probe into the dream life of Joe Slater,

I sought these instruments again and spent several days in repairing them for action.

When they were complete once more,

I missed no opportunity for their trial.

At each outburst of Slater's violence,

I would fit the transmitter to his forehead and the receiver to my own,

Constantly making delicate adjustments for various hypothetical wavelengths of intellectual energy.

I had but little notion of how the thought impressions would,

If successfully conveyed,

Arouse an intelligent response in my brain.

Yet I felt certain that I could detect Bingley.

I continued my experiments,

Though informing no one of their nature.

It was on the twenty-first day of February,

1901,

That the thing finally occurred.

As I look back across the years,

I realize how unreal it seems,

And sometimes half-wonder if old Dr.

Fenton was not right when he charged it all to my excited imagination.

I recall that he listened with great kindness and patience when I told him,

But afterward gave me a nerve powder and arranged for the half-year's vacation on which I departed the next week.

That fateful night,

I was wildly agitated and perturbed,

For despite the excellent care he had received,

Joe Slater was unmistakably dying.

Perhaps it was his mountain freedom that he missed,

Or perhaps the turmoil in his brain had grown too acute for his rather sluggish physique.

But at all events,

The flame of vitality flickered low in the decadent body.

He was drowsy near the end,

And as darkness fell,

He dropped off into a troubled sleep.

I did not strap on the straitjacket,

As was customary when he slept,

Since I saw that he was too feeble to be dangerous,

Even if he woke in mental disorder once more before passing away.

But I did place upon his head and mine the two ends of my cosmic radio,

Hoping against hope for a first and last message from the dream world in the brief time remaining.

In the cell with us was one nurse,

A mediocre fellow who did not understand the purpose of the apparatus or think to inquire into my course.

As the hours wore on,

I saw his head droop awkwardly in sleep,

But I did not disturb him,

I myself lulled by the rhythmical breathing of the healthy and dying man.

Must have nodded a little later,

The sound of the weird lyric melody was what aroused me.

Chords,

Vibrations,

And harmonic ecstasies echoed passionately on every hand,

While on my ravished sight burst the stupendous spectacle of ultimate beauty.

Walls,

Columns,

And architraves of living fire blazed around the spot where I seemed to float in air,

Extending upward to an infinitely high vaulted dome of indescribable splendor,

Blending with this display of palatial magnificence,

Or rather,

Supplanting it at times in kaleidoscopic rotation were glimpses of wide plains and graceful valleys,

High mountains and inviting grottos,

Covered with every lovely attribute of scenery which my delighted eye could conceive of,

Yet formed wholly of some glowing,

Ethereal,

Plastic entity,

Which in consistency partook as much of spirit as of matter.

As I gazed,

I perceived that my own brain held the key to these enchanting metamorphoses,

For each vista which appeared to me was the one my changing mind most wished to behold.

Amidst this Elysian realm,

I dwelt not as a stranger,

For each sight and sound was familiar to me,

Just as it had been for uncounted eons of eternity before,

And would be for like eternities to come,

The resplendent aura of my brother of light drew near and held a moment with me,

Soul to soul,

With a silent and perfect interchange of thought.

The hour was one of approaching triumph,

For was not my fellow being escaping at last from a degrading,

Periodic bondage,

Escaping forever,

And preparing to follow the accursed oppressor even unto the uttermost fields of aether,

That upon it might be wrought a flaming cosmic vengeance which would shake the spheres.

We floated thus for a little time,

When I perceived a slight blurring and fading of the objects around us,

As though some force were recalling me to earth.

I least wished to go,

The form near me seemed to feel a change also,

For it gradually brought its discourse toward a conclusion,

And it self-prepared to quit the scene,

Fading from my sight at a rate somewhat less rapid than that of the other objects.

A few more thoughts were exchanged,

And I knew that the luminous one and I were being recalled to bondage,

Though for my brother of light it would be the last time,

The sorry planet shell being well nigh spent.

In less than an hour,

My fellow would be free to pursue the oppressor along the Milky Way past the hither stars to the very confines of infinity.

A well-defined shock separates my final impression of the fading scene of light from my sudden and somewhat shamefaced awakening,

And straightening up in my chair as I saw the dying figure on the couch move hesitantly.

Joe Slater was indeed awaking,

Though probably for the last time,

As I looked more closely,

I saw that in the sallowed cheeks shone spots of color which had never before been present.

The lips too seemed unusual,

Being tightly compressed,

As if by the force of a stronger character than had been Slater's.

The whole face finally began to grow tense,

And the head turned restlessly with closed eyes.

I did not arouse the sleeping nurse,

But readjusted the slightly disarranged headbands of my telepathic radio,

Intent to catch any parting message the dreamer might have to deliver.

All at once the head turned sharply in my direction,

And the eyes fell open,

Causing me to stare in blank amazement at what I beheld.

The man who had been Joe Slater,

The cat-skill decadent,

Was now gazing at me with a pair of luminous,

Expanded eyes,

Whose blue seemed subtly to have deepened,

Neither mania nor degeneracy was visible in that gaze,

And I felt beyond a doubt that I was viewing a face behind which lay an active mind of high order.

At this juncture my brain became aware of a steady external influence operating upon it.

I closed my eyes to concentrate my thoughts more profoundly,

And was rewarded by a positive knowledge that my long-sought mental message had come at last.

Each transmitted idea formed rapidly in my mind,

And though no actual language was employed,

My habitual association of conception and expression was so great that I seemed to be receiving the message in ordinary English.

Joe Slater is dead,

Came the sole petrifying voice or agency from beyond the wall of sleep.

My opened eyes sought the couch of pain and curious horror,

But the blue eyes were still calmly gazing,

And the countenance was still intelligently animated.

He is better dead,

For he was unfit to bear the active intellect of cosmic entity.

His gross body could not undergo the needed adjustments between ethereal life and planet life.

He was too much of an animal,

Too little a man,

Yet it is through his deficiency that you have come to discover me,

For the cosmic and planet souls rightly should never meet.

He has been my torment for forty-two of your terrestrial years.

I am an entity like that which you yourself become in the freedom of dreamless sleep.

I am your brother of light,

And have floated with you in the vast valleys.

It has not permitted me to tell your waking earth self of your real self,

But we are all roamers of vast spaces and travelers in many ages.

Next year I may be dwelling in the dark Egypt which you call ancient,

Or in the cruel empire of the San-Chan which has come three thousand years hence.

You and I have drifted to the worlds that reel about the red earths,

And dwelt in the bodies of the insect philosophers that crawl proudly over the fourth moon of Jupiter.

How little does the earth self know of life and its extent,

How little indeed ought it to know for its own tranquility.

Of the oppressor I cannot speak.

You on earth have unwittingly felt its distant presence.

You who without knowingly,

Idly gave to its blinking beacon the name of Algal,

The demon star.

It is to meet and conquer the oppressor that I have vainly striven for eons,

Held back by bodily encumbrances,

Who is a nemesis bearing just and blazingly cataclysmic ventions.

Watch me in the sky close by the demon star,

Not speak longer,

For the body of Joe Slater grows cold and rigid,

And the coarse brains are ceasing to vibrate as I wish.

You have been my friend in the cosmos.

You have been my only friend on this planet,

The only soul to sense and seek for me.

Within the repellent form which lies on this couch,

We shall meet again,

Perhaps in the shining mists of Orion's sword,

Perhaps on a bleak plateau in prehistoric Asia,

Perhaps in unremembered dreams tonight,

Perhaps in some other form,

An eon hence,

When the solar system shall have been swept away.

At this point,

The thought waves abruptly ceased,

And the pale eyes of the dreamer,

Or can I say dead man,

Benced to glaze vishly.

In a half stupor,

I crossed over to the couch and felt of his wrist,

But found it cold,

Stiff and pulseless.

The sallow cheeks paled again and the thick lips fell open,

Disclosing the repulsively rotten fangs of the degenerate Joe Slater.

I shivered,

Pulled a blanket over the hideous face,

And awakened the nurse.

Then I left the cell and went silently to my room.

I had an insistent and unaccountable craving for a sleep whose dreams I should not remember.

The Climax What plain tale of science can boast of such a rhetorical effect?

I have merely set down certain things appealing to me as facts,

Allowing you to construe them as you will,

As I have already admitted.

My superior,

Old Dr.

Fenton,

Denies the reality of everything I have related.

He vows that I was broken down with nervous strain,

And badly in need of the long vacation on full pay,

Which he so generously gave me.

He assures me on his professional honor that Joe Slater was but a low-grade paranoiac whose fantastic notions must have come from the crude,

Hereditary folk tales which circulate in even the most decadent of communities.

All this he tells me,

Yet I cannot forget what I saw in the sky on the night after Slater died.

Lest you think me a biased witness,

Another's pen must add this final testimony,

Which may perhaps supply the climax you expect.

I will quote the following account of the star Nova Perse Verbatim from the pages of that eminent astronomical authority,

Professor Garrett P.

Servisse,

On February 22,

1901.

A marvelous new star was discovered by Dr.

Anderson of Edinburgh,

Not very far from Algol.

No star had been visible at that point before.

Within twenty-four hours,

The stranger had become so bright that it outshone Capella.

In a week or two,

It had visibly faded,

And in the course of a few months,

It was hardly discernible with the naked eye.

Reviews

Really interesting story. I had to listen to it a few times because I kept falling asleep. I really enjoy your work. Keep on recording!