Classic Audiobook Collection - The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson ~ Full Audiobook [horror]

Episode Date: May 27, 2026

The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson audiobook. Genre: horror William Hope Hodgson's The House on the Borderland is a haunting early classic of cosmic horror that begins when two travelers discover a strange manuscript in the ruins of a remote house in rural Ireland. The written account comes from a solitary old recluse who lives in the decaying house with his loyal dog, Pepper, and whose uneasy existence is shattered by a series of terrifying events. As night after night brings grotesque attackers from underground and the house itself seems poised on the edge of an unseen abyss, the narrator is drawn into visions that stretch far beyond ordinary reality. His experiences move from physical siege to vast, dreamlike journeys across space and time, confronting him with the fragility of human life in an immense and indifferent universe. Mixing gothic atmosphere with startling imagination, Hodgson creates a story of isolation, dread, and wonder that feels both intimate and cosmic. The novel's power lies in the way it turns one lonely, crumbling house into a gateway to nightmare, mystery, and the terrifying unknown. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 00 (00:03:36) Chapter 01 (00:27:13) Chapter 02 (00:40:01) Chapter 03 (00:54:09) Chapter 04 (01:01:14) Chapter 05 (01:14:58) Chapter 06 (01:35:13) Chapter 07 (01:46:23) Chapter 08 (01:56:08) Chapter 09 (02:04:23) Chapter 10 (02:11:03) Chapter 11 (02:24:58) Chapter 12 (02:46:35) Chapter 13 (02:56:15) Chapter 14 (03:05:25) Chapter 15 (03:28:26) Chapter 16 (03:40:16) Chapter 17 (03:54:21) Chapter 18 (04:11:23) Chapter 19 (04:21:17) Chapter 20 (04:29:02) Chapter 21 (04:40:02) Chapter 22 (04:51:02) Chapter 23 (04:53:22) Chapter 24 (05:01:48) Chapter 25 (05:20:53) Chapter 26 (05:26:48) Chapter 27 (05:35:59) Chapter 28 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson, from the manuscript discovered in 1877 by Messrs. Tonneson and Boregnaug in the ruins that lie to the south of the village of Crichton in the west of Ireland. Set out here with notes. Dedication. To my father, whose feet tread the lost Ions. Open the door and listen. Only the winds muffled roar And the glisten of tears round the moon And in fancy the tread of vanishing shun Out in the night with the dead

Hush and hark to the sorrowful cry Of the wind in the dark Hush and hark without murmur or sigh To shun that tread the lost eons To the sound that bids you to die Hush and Hark hush and hark, shun of the dead. Author's introduction to the manuscript.

Many are the hours in which I have pondered upon the story that is set forth in the following pages. I trust that my instincts are not awry when they prompt me to leave the account in simplicity, as it was handed to me. And the manuscript itself, you must picture me when forth. First it was given into my care, turning it over curiously and making a swift, jerky examination. A small book it is, but thick, and all save the last few pages filled with a quaint but legible handwriting, and writ very close. I have the queer faint, pit-water smell of it in my nostrils now as I write, and my fingers have subconscious memories of the soft, cloggy feel.

of the long, damp pages. I read, and in reading, lifted the curtains of the impossible that blind the mind, and looked out into the unknown. Amid stiff, abrupt sentences I wandered, and presently I had no fault to charge against their abrupt tellings,

for better far than my own ambitious phrasing is this mutilated story capable of bringing home awe that the old recluse, of the vanished house, had striven to tell. Of the simple, stiffly given account of weird and extraordinary matters, I will say little. It lies before you. The inner story must be uncovered personally by each reader,

according to ability and desire. And even should any fail to see, as now I see, the shadowed picture and conception of that to which one may well give the accepted titles of heaven and hell. Yet can I promise certain thrills, merely taking the story as a story. William Hope Hodgson, December 17th, 1907. End of Chapter Zero. Recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia.

Chapter 1 of the House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. This Lieberbox recording is in the public, domain. The finding of the manuscript. Right away in the west of Ireland lies a tiny hamlet called Crichton. It is situated alone at the base of a low hill. Far around there spreads a waste of bleak and totally inhospitable country, where, here and there at great intervals one may come upon the ruins of some long, desolate

cottage, unthatched and stark. The whole land is bare and unpeopled, the very earth scarcely covering the rock that lies beneath it, and with which the country abounds, in places rising out of the soil, in wave-shaped ridges. Yet in spite of its desolation, my friend Tonneson and I had elected to spend our vacation there. He had stumbled on the place by mere chance the year previously, during the course of a long walking tour, and discovered the possibilities for the angler in a small and unnamed river that runs past the outskirts of the little village. I have said that the river is without name. I may add to that, no map that I have hitherto consulted as shown either village or stream. They seem to have entirely

escaped observation. Indeed, they might never exist for all that the average guide tells one. possibly this can be partly accounted for by the fact that the nearest railway station, Ardrahan, is some forty miles distant. It was early one warm evening when my friend and I arrived in Crichton. We had reached Ardrahan the previous night, sleeping there in rooms hired at the village post office and leaving in good time on the following morning, clinging in securely to one of the typical jaunting cars. It had taken us all day to accomplish our job.

journey over some of the roughest tracks imaginable, with the result that we were thoroughly tired and somewhat bad-tempered. However, the tent had to be erected and our goods stowed away before we could think of food or rest. And so we set to work with the aid of our driver, and soon had the tent up upon a small patch of ground, just outside the little village and quite near to the river. Then, having stored all our belongings, we dismissed the driver as he had to make his way back as speedily as possible, and told him to come across to us at the end of a fortnight. We had brought sufficient provisions to last us for that space of time and water we could get from the stream. Fuel we did not need as we had included a small oil stove among our outfit,

and the weather was fine and warm. It was Tonneson's idea to keep. camp out instead of getting lodgings in one of the cottages. As he put it, there was no joke in sleeping in a room with a numerous family of healthy Irish in one corner, and the pigsty and the other, while overhead a ragged colony of roosting fowls distributed their blessings impartially, and the whole place so full of peat smoke that it made a fellow sneeze his head off, just to put it inside the doorway. Tonneson had got the stove lit now and was busy cutting slices of bacon into the frying-pan. So I took the kettle and walked down to the river for water.

On the way I had to pass close to a little group of the village people, who eyed me curiously, but not in any unfriendly manner, though none of them ventured a word. As I returned with my kettle filled, I went up to them, and, after a friendly nod to which they replied in like manner, I asked them casually about the fishing, but instead of answering, they just shook their head silently and stared at me. I repeated the question, addressing more particularly a great gaunt fellow at my elbow. Yet again I received no answer. Then the man turned to a comrade and said something rapidly in a language that I did not

understand, and at once the whole crowd of them fell to jabbering in what, after a few moments, I guessed to be pure Irish. At the same time they cast many glances in my direction. for a minute perhaps they spoke among themselves thus. Then the man I had addressed faced round at me and said something. By the expression of his face I guess that he in turn was questioning me. But now I had to shake my head and indicate that I did not comprehend what it was they wanted to know. And so we stood looking at one another until I heard Tonneson calling to me to hurry up with the kettle.

Then with a smile and a nod I left them. and all in the little crowd smiled and nodded in return, though their faces still betrayed their puzzlement. It was evident, I reflected as I went toward the tent, that the inhabitants of these few huts in the wilderness did not know a word of English. And when I told Tonneson, he remarked that he was aware of the fact, and more that it was not at all uncommon in that part of the country, where the people often lived and died in their isolated hamlets without ever coming in contact with the outside world.

I wish we had got the driver to interpret for us before he left. I remarked as we sat down to our meal, it seems so strange for the people of this place not even to know what we've come for. Tonneson grunted an assent, and thereafter was silent for a while. Later, having satisfied our appetites somewhat, we began to talk, laying our plans for the morrow. Then after a smoke we closed the flap of the tent and prepared to turn in. I suppose there's no chance of those fellows outside taking anything, I asked as we rolled ourselves in our blankets. Tonneson said that he did not think so, at least while we were about, and as he went

on to explain, we could lock up everything except the tent, in the big chest that we had brought to hold our provisions. I agreed to this, and soon we were both asleep. Next morning, early, we rose and went for a swim in the river, after which we dressed and had breakfast. Then we roused at our fishing tackle and overhauled it, by which time our breakfast, having settled somewhat, we made all secure within the tent and strode off in the direction my friend had explored on his previous visit. During the day we fished happily, working steadily upstream and by evening we had one of the prettiest creoles of fish that I had seen for a long while. Returning to the village, we made a good feed off our day's spoil,

after which, having selected a few of the finer fish for our breakfast, we presented the remainder to the group of villagers who had assembled at a respectful distance to watch our doings. They seemed wonderfully grateful and heaped mountains of what I presume to be Irish blessings upon our heads. Thus, we spent several days, having splendid sport and first-rate appetites to do justice upon our prey. We were pleased to find how friendly the villagers were inclined to be, and that there was no evidence of their having ventured to meddle with our belongings during our absences. It was on a Tuesday that we arrived in Crichton, and it would be on the Sunday following that we made a great discovery. Hitherto we had always gone upstream. On that day, however, we laid aside our rods and taking some provisions set off for a long

ramble in the opposite direction. The day was warm, and we trudged along leisurely enough, stopping about midday to eat our lunch upon a great flat rock near the riverbank. Afterward we sat and smoked a while, resuming our walk only when we were tired of inaction. For perhaps another hour we wandered onward, chatting quietly and comfortably on this and that matter, and on several occasions stopping while my companion, who is something of an artist, made rough sketches of striking bits of the wild scenery. 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. Whoever would have thought of this? And I stared in amazement, then I turned to Tonneson. 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 Tonneson, 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,

eye 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 Tonneson, as he gazed interestingly. 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 haze-like spray, upon which the sun shone, causing innumerable rainbows. How beautiful, I exclaimed. Yes, answered Tonneson 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 a little. 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 Tonneson, 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 Tonneson 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. Tonneson 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 queerer. 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 Tonneson, almost to come from under our feet. And still we were surrounded by the trees and shrubs. Take care, Tonneson called to me, look where you're going. And then suddenly

we came out from among the trees, onto a great open space, where not six paces in front of us, yonned the mouth of a tremendous chasm, from the depths of which the noise appeared to rise, along with the continuous, mist-like 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, a frothing, water that burst spouting from the side of the chasm, nearly a hundred feet below. Good Lord, said Tonneson. 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 Tonneson on the shoulder. He glanced around 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 crater like a this. 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 mid-air. Arriving opposite it, we walked out onto 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 depths 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 Tonneson, rooting systematically among the heap of stone. 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 fragments 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 Tonneson.

He was shouting my name excitedly, and without delay I hurried along the rock 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 Tonneson standing with a small excavation that he had made among the debris. 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 own. 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 the the book had been doubled back at that part. This, I found out from Tonneson, 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 Tonneson a hand with his self-imposed task of excavating. Yet, though we put in... over an hour's hard work, turning over the hole of the unheaped stones and rubbish, we came upon nothing more than some fragments of broken wood, that which might have been parts of a desk or table, and so we gave up searching, and we 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 Tonneson 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 Tonneson 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 and strained silence. Yet I could hear nothing, and I turned to Tonneson 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, Tonneson 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 chillness in the air. Tonneson 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 move forward.

yet in spite of the quietness I had a horrible feeling that we were not alone, and I kept so close to Tonneson 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 to me. again a distant sound of whaling, and I said to myself that it was the wind, yet the evening was breathless. Presently Tonneson 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. 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 Tonneson 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 manuscript. This is told in the following pages. End of Chapter 1, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia.

Chapter 2 of the House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. The Plain of Silence. 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. I have decided to start a kind of diary. It may enable me to record some of the thoughts and feelings that I cannot express to anyone.

But beyond this, I am anxious to make some record of the strange things that I have heard and seen during many years of loneliness in this weird old building. For a couple of centuries, this house has had a reputation, a bad one. And until I bought it for more than eighty years no one had lived here. Consequently, I got the house. the old place at a ridiculously low figure. I am not superstitious, but I have ceased to deny that things happen in this old house, things that I cannot explain, and therefore I must needs ease my mind by writing down an account of them, to the best of my ability. Though should this,

my diary, ever be read when I am gone, the readers will but shake their heads, and be the more convinced that I was mad. This house, how ancient it is, though its age strikes one less, perhaps, than the quaintness of its structure, which is curious and fantastic to the last degree. Little curved towers and pinnacles with outlines suggestive of leaping flames predominate, while the body of the building is in the form of a circle. I have heard that there is an old story told amongst the country people to the effect that the devil built the place. However, that is as may be. True or not, I neither know nor care,

save as it may have helped to cheapen it ere I came. I must have been here some ten years before I saw sufficient to warrant any belief in the stories, current in the neighborhood, about this house. It is true that I had on at least a dozen occasions seen vaguely, things that puzzled me and perhaps had felt more than I had seen. Then as the years passed, bringing age upon me, I became often aware of something unseen, yet unmistakably present in the empty rooms and corridors. Still, it was, as I have said many years before, I saw any real manifestations of the so-called supernatural.

It was not Halloween. If I were telling the story, for amusement's sake, I should probably place it on that night of nights. But this is a true record of my own experience. and I would not put pen to paper to amuse anyone. No. It was after midnight on the morning of the 21st day of January. I was sitting reading as is often my custom in my study. Pepper lay sleeping near my chair. Without warning, the flames of the two candles went low, and then shone with a ghastly green effulgence. I looked up quickly, and as I did so I saw the lights sink into a dull rub.

muddy tint, so that the room glowed with a strange, heavy crimson twilight that gave the shadows beneath the chairs and tables a double depth of blackness. And wherever the light struck, it was as though luminous blood had been splashed over the room. Down on the floor I heard a faint, frightened whimper and something pressed itself in between my two feet. It was pepper, cowering under my dressing gown. Pepper, usually as brave as a lion. It was this movement of the dogs, I think, that gave me the first twinge of real fear. I had been considerably startled when the lights burnt first green and then red, but had been momentarily under the impression that the change was due to some influx of noxious gas into the room.

Now, however, I saw that it was not so, for the candles burned with a steady flame and showed no signs of going out, as would have been the case had the change. been due to fumes in the atmosphere. I did not move. I felt distinctly frightened, but could think of nothing better to do than wait. For perhaps a minute I kept my glance about the room nervously. Then I noticed that the lights had commenced to sink very slowly, until presently they showed minute specks of red fire, like the gleamings of rubies in the darkness. Still, I sat watching, while a sort of dreamy indifference seemed to steal over me, banishing altogether the fear that had begun to grip me. Away in the far end of the huge, old-fashioned room, I became conscious

of a faint glow. Steadily it grew, filling the room with gleams of quivering green light. They then sank quickly and changed even as the candle flames had done, into a deep, sombered crimson that strengthened and lit up the room with a flood of awful glory. The light came from the end wall, and grew ever brighter until its intolerable glare caused my eyes acute pain, and involuntarily I closed them. It may have been a few seconds before I was able to open them. The first thing I noticed was that the light had decreased greatly, so that it no longer tried my eyes. Then, as it grew still duller, I was aware all at once that instead of looking at the redness, I was staring through it and through the wall

beyond. Gradually, as I became more accustomed to the idea, I realized that I was looking out onto a vast plain, lit with the same gloomy twilight that pervaded the room. The immensity of this plane scarcely can be conceived. In no part could I perceive its confines. It seemed to broaden and spread out so that the eye failed to. perceive any limitations. Slowly, the details of the nearer portions began to grow clear.

Then, in a moment almost, the light died away and the vision, if vision it were, faded and was gone. Suddenly, I became conscious that I was no longer in the chair. Instead, I seemed to be hovering above it and looking down at a dim something huddled and silent. In a little while a cold blast struck me, and I was outside in the night floating like a bubble up through the darkness. As I moved in icy coldness seemed to enfold me so that I shivered. After a time I looked to right and left, and saw the intolerable blackness of the night pierced by remote gleams of fire. Onward, outward I drove. Once I glanced behind and

saw the earth a small crescent of blue light. ceding away to my left. Further off the sun, a splash of white flame, burned vividly against the dark. An indefinite period passed. Then, for the last time, I saw the earth. An enduring globule of radiant blue swimming in an eternity of ether. And there I, a fragile flake of soul dust, flickered silently across the void, from the distant blue into the expect. of the unknown. A great while seemed to pass over me, and now I could nowhere see anything. I had passed beyond the fixed stars and plunged into the huge blackness that waits beyond. All this time I had experienced little, save a sense of lightness and cold discomfort.

Now, however, the atrocious darkness seemed to creep into my soul, and I became filled with fear and despair. What was going to become of me? Where was I going? Even as the thoughts were formed, there grew against the impalpable blackness that wrapped me a faint tinge of blood. It seemed extraordinarily remote,

and mislike. Yet at once the feeling of oppression was enlightened, and I no longer despaired. Slowly, the distant redness became plainer and larger, until as I drew nearer it spread out into a great somber glare, dull and tremendous. Still I fled onward, and presently I had come so close that it seemed to stretch beneath me, like a great ocean of somber red. I could see little, save that it appeared to spread out interminably in all directions.

In a further space, I found that I was descending upon it, and soon I sank, into a great sea of sullen, red-hued clouds. Slowly I emerged from these and there, below me. I saw the stupendous plain that I had seen from my room in this house that stands upon the borders of the silences. Presently, I landed and stood surrounded by a great waste of loneliness. The place was lit with a gloomy twilight that gave an impression of indescribable desolation. Far to my right, within the sky there burnt a gigantic ring of dull red fire,

from the outer edge of which were projected huge, writhing flames, darted and jagged. The interior of this ring was black, black as the gloom of the outer night. I comprehended at once that it was from this extraordinary sun that the place derived its doleful light. From that strange source of light I glanced down again to my eyes. surroundings. Everywhere I looked I saw nothing but the same flat weariness of interminable plain. Nowhere could I descry any signs of life, not even the ruins of some ancient habitation. Gradually, I found that I was being borne forward, floating across the flat waist. For what seemed in eternity I moved onward, I was unaware of any great sense of impatience.

though some curiosity and a vast wonder were with me continually. Always I saw round me the breath of that enormous plain. And always I searched for some new thing to break its monotony, but there was no change. Only loneliness, silence, and desert. Presently, in a half-conscious manner I noticed that there was a faint mistiness, ruddy and hue lying over its surface. Still, when I looked more intently, I was unable to say that it was really mist,

for it appeared to blend with the plain, giving it a peculiar unrealness and conveying to the senses the idea of unsubstantiality. gradually I began to weary with the sameness of the thing, yet it was a great time before I perceived any signs of the place toward which I was being conveyed. At first I saw it, far ahead, like a long hillock on the surface of the plain. Then as I drew nearer I perceived that I had been mistaken,

for instead of a low hill, I made out now a chain of great, mountains, whose distant peaks towered up into the red gloom until they were almost lost to sight. End of Chapter 2. Recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia. Chapter 3 of the House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. This Leaverbox recording is in the public domain. The house in the arena. And so, after a time, I came to the mountains. Then the course of my journey was altered. and I began to move along their bases until, all at once, I saw that I had come opposite to a vast rift, opening into the mountains. Through this I was born, moving at no great speed. On either side

of me, huge, scarped walls of rock-like substance rose sheer. Far overhead I discerned a thin ribbon of red, with a mouth of the chasm opened among inaccessible peaks. Within was gloom, deep and somber and chilly silence. For a while I went onward steadily, and then at last I saw a head, a deep red glow that told me I was near upon the further opening of the gorge. A minute came and went, and I was at the exit of the chasm, staring out upon an enormous amphitheatre of mountains. Yet of the mountains and the terrible grandeur of the place, I wrecked nothing, for I was confounded with amazement to behold, at a distance of several miles, and occupying the center of the arena, a stupendous structure built apparently of green jade. Yet, in itself, it was not the

discovery of the building that had so astonished me, but the fact, which became every moment more apparent, that in no particular, save in color and its enormous size, did the lonely structure vary from this house in which I live. For a while I continued to stare fixedly. Even then I could scarcely believe that I saw a right. In my mind a question formed, reiterating incessantly. What does it mean? What does it mean?

And I was unable to make answer even out of the depths of my imagination. I seemed capable only of wonder and fear. For a time longer I gazed, noting continually some fresh point of resemblance that attracted me, At last, wearied and sorely puzzled, I turned from it to view the rest of the strange place onto which I had intruded. Hitherto I had been so engrossed in my scrutiny of the house, that I had given only a cursory glance round. Now, as I looked, I began to realize upon what sort of a place I had come.

The arena, for so I have termed it, appeared a perfect circle of about ten to twelve miles in diameter. The house, as I have mentioned before, standing in the center. The surface of the place, like to that of the plain, had a peculiar misty appearance that was yet not missed. From a rapid survey, my glance passed quickly upward along the slopes of the circling mountains. How silent they were. I think that this same abominable stillness was more trying to me than anything that I had so far seen or imagined. I was looking up now at the great crags towering so loftly. Up there the impalpable redness gave a blurred appearance to everything. And then, as I peered curiously, a new terror came to me. For way up among the dim peaks to my right, I had described

a vast shape of blackness, giant-like. It grew upon my sight. It grew upon my sight. It It had an enormous equine head with gigantic ears and seemed to peer steadfastly down into the arena. There was that about the pose that gave me the impression of an eternal watchfulness, of having warded that dismal place through unknown eternities. Slowly the monster became plainer to me, and then, suddenly, my gaze sprang from it to something further off and higher among the crags. For a long minute I gazed fearfully. I was strangely conscious of something not altogether unfamiliar, as though something stirred in the back of my mind.

The thing was black, and had four grotesque arms. The features showed indistinctly, round the neck I made out several light-colored objects. Slowly the details came to me, and I realized coldly that they were skulls. Further down the body was another circling belt showing less dark against the black trunk. Then, even as I puzzled to know what the thing was, a memory slid into my mind, and straight away I knew that I was looking at a monstrous representation of Kali, the Hindu goddess of death. Other remembrances of my old student days drifted into my thoughts. My glance fell back upon the huge beast-headed thing. Simultaneously I recognized it for the ancient

Egyptian god Sator Seth. The destruction. of souls. With the knowledge, there came a great sweep of questioning. Two of the... I stopped and endeavored to think. Things beyond my imagination peered into my frightened mind. I saw obscurely. The old gods of mythology?

I tried to comprehend to what it was all pointing. My gaze dwelt flickeringly between the two. If... An idea came swiftly, and I turned and glanced rapidly upward searching the gloomy cracks away to my left. Something loomed out under a great peak, a shape of grayness. I wondered, I had not seen it earlier, and then remembered I had not yet viewed that portion. I saw it more plainly now. It was, as I have said, gray. It had a tremendous head, but no eyes. that part of its face was blank.

Now I saw that there were other things up among the mountains. Further off reclining on a lofty ledge I made out a livid mass, irregular and ghoulish. It seemed without form save for an unclean, half-animal face that looked out vilely from somewhere about its middle. And then I saw others. There were hundreds of them.

They seemed to grow out of the shadows. Several I recognized almost immediately as mythological deities. Others were strange to me, utterly strange, beyond the power of a human mind to conceive. On each side I looked and saw more continually. The mountains were full of strange things. Beast gods and horrors so atrocious and bestial that possibility and decency deny any further attempt to describe them. And I, I was filled with a terrible sense of overwhelming horror and fear and repugnance. Yet, despite of these, I wondered exceedingly. Was there, then, after all, something in the old heathen worship? Something more than the mere deifying of men, animals, and elements? The thought gripped me. Was there? Later a question

repeated itself. What were they, those beast gods and the others? At first they had appeared to me a sculptured monsters placed indiscriminately among the inaccessible peaks and precipices of the surrounding mountains. Now, as I scrutinize them with greater intentness, my mind began to reach out to fresh conclusions. There was something about them. An indescribable sort of silent vitality that suggested to my broadening consciousness a state of life and death. A something that was by no means life as we understand it, but rather an inhuman form of existence that, well, might be likened to a deathless trance, a condition in which it was possible to imagine their continuing eternally immortal. The word rose in my thoughts unbidden, and straight away I grew to wondering whether

this might be the immortality of the gods. And then, in the midst of my wondering and musing, something happened. Until then, I had been staying just within the shadow of the exit of the great rift. Now, without volition on my part, I drifted out of the semi-darkness and began to move slowly across the arena, toward the house. At this I gave up all thoughts of those prodigious shapes above me, and could only stare frightenedly at the tremendous structure toward which I was being conveyed so remorselessly. Yet, though I searched earnestly, I could discover nothing that I had not already seen, and so became gradually calmer. Presently, I had reached a point more than halfway between the house and the gorge. All around was spread the stark loneliness of the place and the

unbroken silence. Steadily I neared the great building. Then all at once, something caught my vision. Something that came round one of the huge buttresses of the house, and so into full view, it was a gigantic thing, and moved with a curious lope, going almost upright after the manner of a man. It was quite unclothed and had a remarkable luminous appearance. Yet it was the face that attracted, and frightened me the most. It was the face of a swine. Silently, intently I watched this horrible creature and for me. forgot my fear momentarily and my interest in its movements. It was making its way cumbrously

round the building, stopping as it came to each window to peer in and shake at the bars, with which, as in this house, they were protected, and whenever it came to a door it would push at it, fingering the fastening stealthily. Evidently it was searching for an ingress into the house. I had come now to within less than a quarter of a mile of the great structure, and still I was compelled forward. Abruptly the thing turned and gazed hideously in my direction. It opened its mouth, and for the first time, the stillness of that abominable place was broken by a deep, booming note that sent an added thrill of apprehension through me.

Then, immediately, I became aware that it was coming toward me, swiftly and silently. In an instant, it had covered half the distance that lay between, and still, I was born helplessly to meet it. Only a hundred yards, and the brutish ferocity of the giant face numbed me with a feeling of unmitigated horror. I could have screamed in the supremeness of my fear, and then, in the very moment of my extremity and despair, I became conscious that I was looking down upon the arena from a rapidly increasing height. I was rising, rising. In an inconceivably short while I had reached an altitude of many hundred feet.

Beneath me, the spot that I had just left was occupied by the foul swine creature. It had gone down on all fours and was snuffing and rooting like a veritable hog at the surface of the arena. A moment and it rose to its feet clutching upward. with an expression of desire upon its face such as I have never seen in this world. Continually I mounted higher. A few minutes it seemed, and I had risen above the great mountains, floating alone afar in the redness. At a tremendous distance below, the arena showed dimly.

With the mighty house looking no larger than a tiny spot of green, the swine thing was no longer visible. Presently I passed over the mountains, out above the huge breadth of the plain. Far away on its surface in the direction of the ring-shaped sun there showed a confused blur. I looked toward it indifferently. It reminded me somewhat of the first glimpse I had called of the mountain amphitheater. With a sense of weariness I glanced upward at the immense ring of fire. What a strange thing it was!

then as i stared out from the dark centre there spurted a sudden flare of extraordinary vivid fire compared with the size of the black centre it was not yet in itself stupendous with awakened interest i watched it carefully noting its strange boiling and glowing then in a moment the whole thing grew dim and unreal and so passed out of sight much amazed i glanced i glanced i glanced at a moment the whole thing grew dim and unreal and so passed out of sight much amazed i glanced down to the plain from which I was still rising. Thus I received a fresh surprise. The plain, everything had vanished, and only a sea of red mist was spread far below me. Gradually as I stared, this grew remote and died away into a dim far mystery of red against an unfathomable night. A while, and even this had gone, and I was wrapped in an impalpable, light. I was wrapped in an impalpable, lightless gloom. End of chapter three.

Recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia. Chapter 4 of the House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. This Sleeper-Fox recording is in the public domain. The Earth Thus I was, and only the memory that I had lived through the dark, once before, served to sustain my thoughts.

A great time passed. ages. And then a single star broke its way through the darkness. It was the first of one of the outlying clusters of this universe. Presently it was far behind and all about me shown the splendor of the countless stars. Later, years it seemed. I saw the sun, a clot of flame. Around it, I made out presently several remote specks of light, the planets of the solar system. And so, I saw the earth again, blue and unbelievably minute. It grew larger and became defined. A long space of time came and went, and then at last I entered into the shadow of the world, plunging headlong into the dim and holy earth night. Overhead were the old constellations, and there was a crescent

moon. Then as I neared the earth surface, the dimness swept over me, and I appeared to sink into a black missed. For a while I knew nothing. I was unconscious. Gradually I became aware of a faint, distant whining. It became plainer. A desperate feeling of agony possessed me. I struggled madly for breath and tried to shout. A moment and I got my breath more easily. I was conscious that something was licking my hand. Something damp swept across my face. I I heard a panting, and then again the whining. It seemed to come to my ears now with a sense of familiarity. And I opened my eyes. All was dark, but the feeling of oppression had left me. I was seated and something was whining piteously and licking me. I felt strangely confused

and instinctively tried to ward off the thing that licked. My head was curiously vacant, and for the moment I seemed incapable of action or thought. Then things came back to me, and I called, pepper, faintly. I was answered by a joyful bark and renewed and frantic caresses. In a little while I felt stronger and put out my hand for the matches. I groped avowed for a few moments blindly. Then my hands lit upon them and I struck a light, and looked confusedly around.

All about me I saw the old familiar things, and there I sat full of dazed wonders until the flame of the match burnt my finger and I dropped it. While a hasty expression of pain and anger escaped my lips, surprising me with the sound of my own voice. After a moment I struck another match and, stumbling across the room, lit the candles. As I did so, I observed that they had not burned away

but had been put out. out. As the flame shut up, I turned and stared about the study. Yet there was nothing unusual to see, and suddenly a gust of irritation took me. What had happened? I held my head with both hands and tried to remember. Ah, the great silent plain and the ring-shaped sun of red fire. Where were they? Where had I seen them? How long ago? I felt dazed and muddled. Once or twice I walked up and down the room unsteadily. My memory seemed dulled and already the thing I had witnessed came back to me with an effort. I have a remembrance of cursing, peevishly, in my bewilderment.

Suddenly I turned faint and giddy and had to grasp at the table for support. During a few moments I held on weakly and then managed to totter sideways into a chair. After a little time I felt somewhat better and succeeded. in reaching the cupboard where usually I keep brandy and biscuits. I poured myself out a little of the stimulant and drank it off. Then, taking a handful of biscuits, I returned to my chair and began to devour them, ravenously. I was vaguely surprised at my hunger. I felt as though I had eaten nothing for an uncountably long while. As I ate, my glance roved about the room, taking in its various details, and still searching, though almost unconsciously, for something tangible upon

which to take hold among the invisible mysteries that encompassed me. Surely, I thought, there must be something. And in that same instant my gaze dwelt upon the face of the clock in the opposite corner. Therewith I stopped eating and just stared, for though its ticking indicated most certainly that it was still going, the hands were prepared. pointing to a little before the hour of midnight, whereas it was, as well I knew, considerably after that time when I had witnessed the first of the strange happenings I have just described. For perhaps a moment I was astounded and puzzled. Had the hour been the same as when I had last seen

the clock? I should have concluded that the hands had stuck in one place while the internal mechanism went on as usual. But that would in no way account for the hands having traveled backward. Then, even as I turned the matter over in my wearied brain, the thought flashed upon me that it was now close upon the morning of the 22nd, and that I had been unconscious to the visible world through the greater portion of the last 24 hours. The thought occupied my attention for a full minute. Then I commenced to eat again.

I was still very hungry. During breakfast next morning I inquired casually if my sister regarding the date and found my surmise correct. I had indeed been absent, at least in spirit, for nearly a day and a night. My sister asked me no questions, for it is not by any means the first time that I have kept to my study for a whole day, and sometimes a couple of days at a time when I have been particularly engrossed in my books or work. And so the days pass on, and I am still filled with a wonder to know the meaning of all that I saw on that memorable night. Yet, well, I know that my curiosity is little likely to be satisfied. End of Chapter 4. Recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia.

Chapter 5 of the House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. This Lebervox recording is in the public domain. The Thing in the Pit This house is, as I have said before, surrounded by a huge estate and wild and uncultivated gardens. Away at the back, distant some 300 yards as a dark, deep ravine, spoken of as the pit by the peasantry. At the bottom runs a sluggish stream so overhung by trees

as scarcely to be seen from above. In passing, I must explain that this river has, has a subterranean origin, emerging suddenly at the east end of the ravine, and disappearing as abruptly, beneath the cliffs that form its western extremity. It was some months after my vision, if vision it were, of the great plain that my attention was particularly attracted to the pit. I happened one day to be walking along its southern edge when suddenly several pieces of rock and shale were dislodged from the face of the cliff immediately beneath me, and fell with a sullen crash through the trees.

I heard them splash in the river at the bottom and then silence. I should not have given this incident more than a passing thought, had not Pepparet once begun to bark savagely. Nor would he be silent when I bade him, which is most unusual behavior on his part. Feeling that there must be someone or something in the pit, I went back to the house quickly for a stick. When I returned, Pepperad ceased his own. barks and was growling and smelling uneasily along the top. Whistling to him to follow me,

I started to descend cautiously. The depth to the bottom of the pit must be about a hundred and fifty feet, and some time, as well as considerable care, was expended before we reached the bottom in safety. Once down, Pepper and I started to explore along the banks of the river. It was very dark there due to the overhanging trees, and I moved warily, keeping my glance about me and my stick ready. Pepper was quiet now and kept close to me all the time. Thus we searched right up one side of the river without hearing or seeing anything. Then we crossed over, by the simple method of jumping, and commenced to beat our way back through the underbrush. We had accomplished perhaps half the distance when I heard again the sound of falling stones on the other side.

the side from which we had just come. One large rock came thundering down through the treetops, struck the opposite bank and bounded into the river, driving a great jet of water right over us. At this, Pepper gave out a deep growl, then stopped and pricked up his ears. I listened also. A second later aloud,

half-human, half-pig-like squeal sounded from among the trees, apparently halfway up the south cliff. It was answered by, a similar note from the bottom of the pit. At this, Pepper gave a short, sharp bark, and springing across the little river, disappeared into the bushes. Immediately afterward, I heard his barks increase in depth and number,

and in between there sounded a noise of confused jabbering. This ceased, and in a succeeding silence, there rose a semi-human yell of agony. Almost immediately, Pepper gave a long-drawn howl of pain, and then the shrubs were violently agitated, and he came running out with his tail down and glancing as he ran over his shoulder. As he reached me, I saw that he was bleeding, from what appeared to be a great claw wound in the side that had almost laid bare his ribs. Seeing Pepper thus mutilated, a furious feeling of anger seized me, and whirling my staff, I sprang across and into the

bushes from which Pepper had emerged. As I forced my way through, I thought I heard a sound of breathing. Next instant I had burst into a little clear space, just in time to see something. Livid white and color disappear among the bushes on the opposite side. With a shout I ran toward it, but though I struck and probed among the bushes with my stick, I neither saw nor heard anything further, and so returned to Pepper. There, after bathing his wound in the river, I bound my wedded handkerchief round his body, having done which we retreated up the reveal, and into the daylight again. On reaching the house, my sister inquired what had happened to Pepper, and I told her he had

been fighting with a wildcat, of which I had heard there were several about. I felt it would be better not to tell her how it had really happened, though to be sure I scarcely knew myself. But this I did know, that the thing I had seen run into the bushes was no wildcat. It was much too big and had, so far as I had observed, a skin like a skin like a man. a hogs, only of a dead, unhealthy white color. And then it had run upright, or nearly so, upon its hind feet, with emotions somewhat resembling that of a human being. This much I had noticed in my brief glimpse and, truth to tell, I felt a good deal of uneasiness besides curiosity as I turned

the matter over in my mind. It was in the morning that the above incident had occurred. Then it would be after dinner as I sat reading that, happening to look up suddenly, I saw something peering in over the window ledge, the eyes and ears alone showing. A pig by Jove, I said and rose to my feet. Thus I saw the thing more completely, but it was no pig. God alone knows what it was. It reminded me vaguely of the hideous thing that had haunted the great arena, and had a grotesquely human mouth and jaw, but with no chin of which to speak.

the nose was prolonged into a snout, thus it was that with the little eyes and queer ears gave it such an extraordinary swine-like appearance. A forehead there was little, and the whole face was of an unwholesome white color. For perhaps a minute I stood looking at the thing with an ever-growing feeling of disgust, and some fear. The mouth kept jabbering in in inly and once emitted a half-swinish grunt. I think it was the eyes that attracted me the most. They seemed to glow at times with a horribly human intelligence and kept flickering away from my face over the details of the room, as though my stare disturbed it. It appeared to be supporting itself by two claw-like hands upon the window-sill. These claws, unlike the face, were of a clayy brown hue and bore an indistinct

resemblance to human hands, in that they had four fingers and a thumb, though these were webbed up to the first joint much as are a ducks. Nails it had also, but so long and powerful, that they were more like the talons of an eagle than ought else. As I have said before, I felt some fear, though almost of an impersonal kind. I may explain my feeling better by saying that it was more a sensation of abhorrence, such as one might expect to feel if brought in contact with something superhumanly foul, something unholy, belonging to some hitherto undreamt of state of existence.

I cannot say that I grasped these various details of the brute at the time. I think they seemed to come back to me afterward as though imprinted upon my brain. I imagined more than I saw as I looked at the thing, and the material details grew upon me later. For perhaps a minute I stared at the creature. Then as my nerves steadied a little, I shook off the vague alarm that held me and took a step toward the window. Even as I did so, the thing ducked and vanished. I rushed to the door and looked round hurriedly, but only the tangled bushes and shrubs met my gaze. I ran back

into the house, and getting my guns sallied out to search through the gardens. As I went, I asked myself whether the thing I had just seen was likely to be the same of which I had caught a glimpse in the morning. I inclined to think it was. I would have taken pepper with me, but judged it. I would have taken pepper with me, but judged it better to give his wound a chance to heal. Besides, if the creature I had just seen was, as I imagined, his antagonist of the morning, it was not likely that he would be of much use. I began my search systematically. I was determined if it were possible to find and put an end to that swine thing.

This was at least a material horror. At first I searched cautiously, with the thought of Pepper's wound in my mind, but as the hours passed and not a sign of anything living showed in the great lonely gardens, I became less apprehensive. I felt almost as though I would welcome the sight of it. Anything seemed better than this silence, with the ever-present feeling that the creature might be lurking in every bush I passed. Later I grew careless of danger to the extent of plunging right through the bushes, probing with my gun-barrel as I went. At times I shouted, but only the echoes answered, I thought thus, perhaps to frighten or stir the creature to showing itself, but only succeeded

in bringing my sister Mary out to know what was the matter. I told her that I had seen the wild cat that had wounded Pepper and that I was trying to hunt it out of the bushes. She seemed only half satisfied and went back into the house with an expression of doubt upon her face. I wondered whether she had seen or guessed anything. For the rest of the afternoon I prosecuted the search anxiously. I felt that I should be unable to sleep with that beastial thing haunting the shrubberies, and yet when evening fell, I had seen nothing. Then as I turned homeward, I heard a short, unintelligible noise among the bushes to my right. Instantly I turned and aiming quickly fired in the direction of the sound. Immediately afterward I heard something scuttling away among the bushes.

It moved rapidly and in a minute had gone out of hearing. After a few steps I ceased my pursuit, realizing how futile it must be in the fast gathering gloom, and so, with a curious feeling of depression, I entered the house. That night, after my sister had gone to bed, I went round to all the windows and doors on the ground floor and saw to it that they were securely fastened. This precaution was scarcely necessary as regards the windows, as all of those on the lower story are strongly barred. But with the doors, of which there are five,

it was wisely thought as not one was locked. Having secured these, I went to my study, yet somehow for once the place jarred upon me. It seemed so huge and echoey. For some time I tried to read, but at last finding it impossible, I carried my book down to the kitchen where a large fire was burning and sat there.

I dare say I had read for a couple of hours when suddenly I heard a sound that made me lower my book and listen intently. It was a noise of something rubbing and fumbling against the back door. Once the door creaked loudly, as though force were being applied to it. During those few short moments I experienced an indescribable feeling of terror, such as I should have believed impossible. My hands shook, a cold sweat broke out on me and I should. shivered violently. Gradually I calmed. The stealthy movements outside had ceased. Then for an hour I sat silent and watchful. All at once the feeling of fear took me again. I felt, as I imagine, an animal must under the eye of a snake. Yet now I could hear nothing. Still, there was no doubting

that some unexplained influence was at work. Gradually, imperceptibly almost, something stole on my ear, a sound that resolved itself into a faint murmur. Quickly it developed and grew into a muffled but hideous chorus of bestial shrieks. It appeared to rise from the bowels of the earth. I heard a thud and realized in a dull half-comprehending way that I had dropped my book. After that I just sat, and thus the daylight found me when it crept wanly in through the barred high windows of the great kitchen. With the dawning light the feeling of stupor and fear left me, and I came more into possession

of my senses. Thereupon I picked up my book and crept to the door to listen. Not a sound broke the chilly silence. For some moments I stood there then very gradually and cautiously. I drew back the bolt and opening the door peeped out. My caution was unneeded. Nothing was to be seen save the great. Vista of dreary, tangled bushes and trees, extending to the distant plantation.

With a shiver I closed the door and made my way quietly up to bed. End of Chapter 5. Recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia. Chapter 6 of the House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. This Liebervox recording is in the public domain. The Swine Things It was an evening, a week later. later. My sister sat in the garden knitting. I was walking up and down reading. My gun lent up against the wall of the house, for since the advent of that strange thing in the gardens I had deemed it

wise to take precautions. Yet, through the whole week there had been nothing to alarm me, either by sight or sound so that I was able to look back calmly to the incident, though still with a sense of unmitigated wonder and curiosity. I was, as I have just said, walking up and down and somewhat engrossed in my book. Suddenly I heard a crash, away in the direction of the pit. With a quick movement I turned and saw a tremendous column of dust rising high into the evening air. My sister had risen to her feet with a sharp exclamation of surprise and fright. Telling her to stay where she was, I snatched up my gun and ran toward the pit.

As I neared it, I heard a dull, rumbling sound that grew quickly into a roar, split with deeper crashes, and up from the pit drove a fresh volume of dust. The noise ceased, though the dust still rose tumultuously. I reached the edge and looked down, but could see nothing save a boil of dust clouds swirling hither and tither. The air was so full of the small particles that they blinded and choked me, and finally I had to run out from the smother to breathe. Gradually the suspended matter sank and hung in a panoply over the mouth of the pit.

I could only guess at what had happened. That there had been a landslip of some kind, I had little doubt, but the cause was beyond my knowledge, and yet, even then I had half-imaginings, for already the thought had come to me, of those falling rocks, and the thing in the bottom of the pit. But in the first minutes of confusion I failed to reach the natural conclusion to which the catastrophe pointed. Slowly the dust subsided until presently I was able to approach the edge and look down. For a while I peered impotently, trying to see through the reek. At first it was impossible to make out anything.

Then as I stared I saw something below to my left that moved. I looked intently toward it and presently made it. and presently made out another, and then another. Three dim shapes that appeared to be climbing up the side of the pit. I could see them only indistinctly. Even as I stared and wondered I heard a rattle of stones somewhere to my right. I glanced across but could see nothing. I leant forward and peered over and down into the pit,

just beneath where I stood, and saw no further than a hideous white swine face that had risen to within a couple of yards of my feet. below it I could make out several others. As the thing saw me, it gave a sudden uncouth squeal, which was answered from all parts of the pit. At that a gust of horror and fear took me, and bending down I discharged my gun right into its face. Straightway the creature disappeared with a clatter of loose earth and stones. There was a momentary silence, to which probably I owe my life. For during it I heard a quick patter of many feet and turning sharp,

saw a troop of the creatures coming toward me at a run. Instantly I raised my gun and fired at the foremost who plunged headlong with a hideous howling. Then I turned to run. More than halfway from the house to the pit I saw my sister. She was coming toward me. I could not see her face distinctly as the dusk had fallen, but there was fear in her voice as she called to know why I was shooting. Run! I shouted in reply.

Run for your life! Without more ado she turned and fled, picking up her skirts with both hands. As I followed I gave a glance behind. The brutes were running on their hind legs, at times dropping on all force. I think it must have been the terror in my voice that spurred Mary to run so, for I feel convinced that she had not as yet seen those hell creatures that pursued. On we went, my sister leading. Each moment the nearing sounds of the footsteps told me that the brutes were gay.

on us rapidly. Fortunately, I am accustomed to live in some ways an active life. As it was, the strain of the race was beginning to tell severely upon me. Ahead I could see the back door. Luckily, it was open. I was some half-dozen yards behind Mary now, and my breath was sobbing in my throat. Then something touched my shoulder. I wrenched my head round quickly and saw one of those monstrous pallid faces close to mine. One of the creatures having outwe're run its companions had almost overtaken me. Even as I turned it made a fresh grab. With a sudden effort I sprang to one side and swinging my gun by the barrel, brought it crashing down upon the foul creature's head. The thing dropped with an almost human groan. Even this short delay had been

nearly sufficient to bring the rest of the brutes down upon me, so that without an instant's waste of time I turned and ran for the door. Reaching it, I burst into the passage, then turning quickly slammed and bolted the door, just as the first of the creatures rushed against it with a sudden shock. My sister sat gasping in a chair. She seemed in a fainting condition, but I had no time then to spend on her. I had to make sure that all the doors were fastened. Fortunately they were. The one leading from my study into the gardens was the last to which I went. I had just had time to note that it was secured when I thought I heard a noise outside. I stood perfectly silent and listened. Yes. Now I could distinctly hear a sound of whispering and something slithered over the panels

with a rasping, scratchy noise. Evidently, some of the brutes were feeling with their claw hands about the door to discover whether there were any means of ingress. That the creatures should so soon I found the door was to me a proof of their reasoning capabilities. It assured me that they must not be regarded by any means as mere animals. I had felt so. something of this before when that first thing peered in through my window. Then I had applied the term superhuman to it, with an almost instinctive knowledge that the creature was something different from the brute beast. Something beyond human, yet in no good sense, but rather as something foul and hostile to the great and good in humanity. In a word as

something intelligent and yet inhuman. The very thought of the creatures filled me with revulsion. Now I bethought me of my sister, and going to the cupboard I got out a flask of brandy and a wine-glass. Taking these, I went down to the kitchen carrying a lighted candle with me. She was not sitting in the chair, but had fallen out and was lying upon the floor face downward. Very gently I turned her over and raised her head somewhat. Then I poured a little of the brandy between her lips. After a while she shivered slightly. A little later she gave her, gave several gasps and opened her eyes. In a dreamy, unrealizing way she looked at me.

Then her eyes closed slowly, and I gave her a little more of the brandy. For perhaps a minute longer she lay silent, breathing quickly. All at once. Her eyes opened again, and it seemed to me as I looked that the pupils were dilated, as though fear had come with returning consciousness. Then with a movement so unexpected that I started backwards, she sat up, noticing that she seemed to be a moment. giddy I put out my hand to steady her, at that she gave a loud scream and scrambling to her feet

ran from the room. For a moment I stayed there, kneeling and holding the brandy flask. I was utterly puzzled and astonished. Could she be afraid of me? But no, why should she? I could only conclude that her nerves were badly shaken and that she was temporarily unhinged. Upstairs I heard a door bang, loudly, and I knew that she had taken refuge in her room. I put the flask down on the table. My attention was distracted by a noise in the direction of the back door. I went toward it and listened. It appeared to be shaken as though some of the creatures struggled with it silently, but it was far too strongly constructed and hung to be easily moved. Out in the gardens rose a continuous sound. It might have been mistaken by a casual listener for the

grunting and squealing of a herd of pigs. But as I stood there, it came to me that there was sense and meaning to all those swinish noises. Gradually I seemed able to trace a semblance in it to human speech, gluttonous and sticky as though each articulation were made with difficulty. Yet nevertheless, I was becoming convinced that it was no mere medley of sounds, but a rapid interchange of ideas. By this time it had grown quite dark in the passages, and from these came all the varied cries and groans, of which an old house is so full after nightfall. It is no doubt because things are then quieter, and one has more leisure to hear. Also, there may be something in the theory that the sudden change of temperature,

at sundown, affects the structure of the house somewhat, causing it to contract and settle, as it were, for the night. However, this is as may be, but on that night in particular I would gladly have been quit of so many eerie noises. It seemed to me that each crack and creek was the coming of one of those things along the dark corridors, though I knew in my heart that this could not be, for I had seen myself that all the doors were secure. Gradually, however, these sounds grew on my nerves to such an extent,

that, were it only to punish my cowardice, I felt I must make the round of the basement again, and if anything were there, face it. And then I would go up to my study, for I knew sleep was out of the question, with the house surrounded by creatures, half beasts, half something else, and entirely unholy. Taking the kitchen lamp down from its hook, I made my way from cellar to cellar, and room to room, through pantry and coal hole along passages, and into the hundred and one little blind alleys and hidden nooks that form the basement of the old house. Then, when I knew I had been in every corner and cranny large enough to conceal aught of any size, I made my way to the stairs.

With my foot on the first step, I paused. It seemed to me I heard a movement apparently from the buttery. which is to the left of the staircase. It had been one of the first places I searched, and yet I felt certain my ears had not deceived me. My nerves were strong now, and with hardly any hesitation I stepped up to the door holding the lamp above my head. In a glance I saw that the place was empty, safe for the heavy stone slabs supported by brick pillars, and I was about to leave it, convinced that I had been mistaken, when in turning my life, light was flashed back from two bright spots outside the window and high up.

For a few moments I stood there staring. Then they moved, revolving slowly and throwing out alternate scintillations of green and red. At least so it appeared to me. I knew then that they were eyes. Slowly I traced the shadowy outline of one of the things. It appeared to be holding onto the bars of the window, and its attitude suggested climbing. I went nearer to the window and held the light higher. There was no need to be afraid of the creature.

The bars were strong, and there was little danger of its being able to move them. And then suddenly, in spite of the knowledge that the brute could not reach to harm me, I had a return of the horrible sensation of fear that had assailed me on that night, a week previously. It was the same feeling of helpless, shuddering fright. I realized dimly that the creature's eyes were looking. looking into mine with a steady, compelling stare. I tried to turn away but could not. I seemed now to see the window through a mist. Then I thought other eyes came and peered, and yet others,

until a whole galaxy of malignant, staring orbs seemed to hold me in thrall. My head began to swim and throb violently. Then I was aware of a feeling of acute physical pain in my left hand. It grew more severe and forced, literally forced my attention. With a tremendous effort I glanced down, and with that the spell that had held me was broken. I realized then that I had in my agitation unconsciously caught hold of the hot lamp glass and burnt my hand badly. I looked up to the window again. The misty appearance had gone, and now I saw that it was crowded with dozens of bestial faces.

With a sudden access of rage, I raised the lamp and hurled it full at the window. It struck the glass, smashing a pain, then passed between two of the bars out into the garden, scattering burning oil as it went. I heard several loud cries of pain, and as my sight became accustomed to the dark, I discovered that the creatures had left the window. Pulling myself together, I groped for the door, and having found it made my way, upstairs, stumbling at each step. I felt dazed as though I had received a blow on the head. At the same time, my hand smarted badly, and I was full of a nervous, dull rage against those things. Reaching my study, I lit the candles. As they burnt up, their rays were reflected

from the rack of firearms on the sidewalk. At the sight I remembered that I had their power, which, as I had proved earlier, seemed as fatal to those monsters as to more ordinary animals, and I determined I would take the offensive. First of all, I bound up my hand for the pain was fast becoming intolerable. After that it seemed easier, and I crossed the room to the rifle stand. There I selected a heavy rifle, an old and tried weapon, and having procured ammunition, I made my way up into one of the small towers with which the house, is crowned. From there I found that I could see nothing. The gardens presented a dim blur of shadows,

a little blacker, perhaps, where the tree stood. That was all, and I knew that it was useless to shoot down into all that darkness. The only thing to be done was to wait for the moon to rise. Then I might be able to do a little execution. In the meantime I sat still and kept my ears open. and the gardens were comparatively quiet now, and only an occasional grunt or squeal came up to me. I did not like this silence. It made me wonder on what devilry the creatures were bent. Twice I left the tower and took a walk through the house,

but everything was silent. Once I heard a noise from the direction of the pit as though more earth had fallen. Following this and lasting for some fifteen minutes, there was a commotion among the denizens of the grids of the grids. gardens. This died away, and after that all was again quiet. About an hour later, the moon's light showed above the distant horizon. From where I sat I could see it over the trees, but it was not until it rose clear of them that I could make out any of the details in the garden below. Even then, I could see none of the brutes.

Until, happening to crane forward, I saw several of them lying prone up against the wall of the house. What they were doing I could not make out. It was, however, a chance too good to be ignored and taking aim. I fired at the one directly beneath. There was a shrill scream, and as the smoke cleared away, I saw that it had turned on its back and was writhing feebly. Then it was quiet. The others had disappeared. Immediately after this, I heard a loud squeal in the direction of the pit. It was answered a hundred times from every part of the garden. This gave me some notion of the number of the creatures, and I began to feel that the whole affair was becoming even more serious than I had imagined.

As I sat there silent and watchful, the thought came to me. Why was all this? What were these things? What did it mean? Then my thoughts flew back to that vision, though even now I doubt whether it was a vision of the plain of silence. What did that mean? I wondered, and that thing in the arena? Lastly, I thought of the house I had seen in that faraway place, that house so like this in every detail of external structure that it might have been modeled from it, or this from that.

I had never thought of that. At this moment there came another long squeal from the pit, followed a second later by a couple of shorter ones, and once the garden was filled with answering cries. I stood up quickly and looked over the parapet. In the moonlight it seemed as though the shrubberies were alive. They tossed hither and tither as though shaken by a strong, irregular wind, while a continuous rustling and a noise of scampering feet rose up to meet me. Several times I saw the moonlight gleam on running white figures among the bushes.

and twice I fired. The second time my shot was answered by a short squeal of pain. A minute later, the gardens lay silent. From the pit came a deep hoarse babble of swine talk. At time angry cries smote the air and they would be answered by multitudinous gruntings. It occurred to me that they were holding some kind of a council, perhaps to discuss the problem of entering the house. Also, I thought that they seemed much enraged, probably by my successful shots.

It occurred to me that now would be a good time to make a final survey of our defenses. This I proceeded to do it once, visiting the whole of the basement again and examining each of the doors. Luckily, they are all, like the back one, built of solid iron-studded oak. Then I went upstairs to the study. I was more anxious about this door. It is palpably of a more modern make than the others, and though a stout piece of work it has little of their ponderous strength. I must explain here that there is a small raised lawn on this side of the house

upon which this door opens, the windows of the study being barred on this account. All the other entrances, excepting the Great Gateway which is never opened, are in the lower story. End of Chapter 6. Recording by John Van Stan. Savannah, Georgia. Chapter 7 of the House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. This Librevox recording is in the public domain.

The Attack I spent some time puzzling how to strengthen the study door. Finally, I went down to the kitchen and with some trouble brought up several heavy pieces of timber. These I wedged up slantwise against it from the floor. nailing them top and bottom. For half an hour, I worked hard, and at last got it shored to my mind. Then, feeling easier, I resumed my coat, which I had laid aside, and proceeded to attend to one or two matters before returning to the tower. It was whilst thus employed that I heard a fumbling at the door, and the latch was tried. Keeping silence, I waited.

Soon I heard several of the creatures outside. They were grunting to a little. one another softly. Then for a minute there was quietness. Suddenly there sounded a quick low grunt and the door creaked under a tremendous pressure. It would have burst inward but for the supports I had placed. The strain ceased as quickly as it had begun and there was more talk. Presently one of the things squealed softly and I heard the sound of others approaching. There was a short confabulation, then again silence, and I realized that they had called several more to assist. Feeling that now was the supreme moment, I stood ready with my rifle presented. If the door gave, I would at least slay as many as possible. Again came the

low signal and once more the door cracked under a huge force. For a minute, perhaps, the pressure was kept up and I waited, nervously, expecting each moment to see the door come down with a crash. But no, the struts held, and the attempt proved abortive. Then, more of their horrible grunting talk. And whilst it lasted, I thought I distinguished the noise of fresh arrivals. After a long discussion during which the door was several times shaken, they became quiet once more, and I knew that they were going to make a third attempt to break it down. I was almost in despair.

The props had been severely tried in the two previous attacks, and I was sorely afraid that this would prove too much for them. At that moment, like an inspiration. A thought flashed into my troubled brain. Instantly, for it was no time to hesitate, I ran from the room and up stair after stare. This time it was not to one of the towers that I went, but out onto the flat-legged roof itself. Once there I raced across to the parapet, that walls were round and looked down. As I did so, I heard the short, grunted signal, and even up there caught the crying of the door under the assault.

There was not a moment to lose, and leaning over I aimed, quickly and fired. The report rang sharply and almost blending with it came the loud splut of the bullet striking its mark. From below rose a shrill wail, and the door ceased its groaning. Then, as I took my weight from off the parapet, a huge piece of the stone coping slid from under me and fell with a crash among the disorganized throng beneath. Several horrible shrieks quavered through the night air, and then I heard a sound of scampering feet. Cautiously, I looked over. In the moonlight I could see the great coping stone lying right across the threshold of the door. I thought I saw something under it, several things. White, but I could not be sure.

And so a few minutes passed. As I stared, I saw something come round out of the shadow of the house. It was one of the things. It went up to the stone silently and bent down. I was unable to see what it did. In a minute it stood up. It had something in its talons which it put to its mouth and tore at. For the moment I did not realize. Then slowly I comprehended, the thing was stooping again. It was horrible. I started to load my rifle when I looked again.

The monster was tugging at the stone, moving it to one side. I lent the rifle on the coping and pulled the trigger. The brute collapsed on its face and kicked slightly. Simultaneously, almost with the report, I heard another sound, that of breaking glass. Waiting only to recharge my weapon, I ran from the roof and down the first two flights of stairs. Here I paused to listen. As I did so, there came another tinkle of falling glass.

It appeared to come from the floor below. Excitedly, I sprang down the steps and guided by the rattle of the window sash, reached the door of one of the empty bedrooms at the back of the house. I thrust it open. The room was but dimly illuminated by the moonlight, most of the light being blotted out by moving figures at the window. Even as I stood, one crawled through into the room, leveling my weapon, I fired point-blank at it, filling the room with a deafening bang. When the smoke cleared, I saw that the room was empty and the window free. The room was much lighter. The night air blew in coldly through the shattered panes.

Down below in the night I could hear a soft moaning and a confused murmur of swine voices. Stepping to one side of the window, I reloaded and then stood there waiting. Presently I heard a scuffling noise, from where I stood in the shadow I could see without being seen. Nearer came the sounds, and then I saw something come up above the sill and clutch at the broken window frame. It caught a piece of the woodwork, and now I could make out that it was a hand and end. arm. A moment later the face of one of the swine creatures rose into view. Then, before I could use my rifle or do anything, there came a sharp crack, crack! And the window frame gave way under the weight of the thing. Next instant, a squashing thud and a loud

outcry told me that it had fallen to the ground. With a savage hope that it had been killed, I went to the window. The moon had gone behind a cloud so that I could see nothing, though a steady hum of jabbering just beneath where I stood indicated that there were several more of the brutes close at hand. As I stood there, looking down, I marveled how it had been possible for the creatures to climb so far, for the wall is comparatively smooth, while the distance to the ground must be at least eighty feet. All at once, as I bent peering, I saw something indistinctly that cut the gray shadow of the house side with a black line. It passed the window to the left, at a distance of about two feet. Then I remembered that it was a gutter pipe that had been put there some years ago to carry off the rainwater.

I had forgotten about it. I could see now how the creatures had managed to reach the window. Even as the solution came to me, I heard a faint slithering, scratching noise, and I knew that another of the brutes was coming. I waited some odd moments, then leant out of the window and felt the pipe. To my delight. I found that it was quite loose, and I managed using the rifle barrel as a crowbar to lever it out from the wall. I worked quickly.

Then taking hold with both hands, I wrenched the whole concern away and hurled it down, with the thing still clinging to it into the garden. For a few moments longer, I waited there listening, but after the first general outcry, I heard nothing. I knew now that there was no more reason to fear an attack from this quarter. I had removed the only means of reaching the window, and as none of the other windows had any adjacent water pipes to tempt the climbing powers of the monsters, I began to feel more confident of escaping their clutches.

Leaving the room I made my way down to the study. I was anxious to see how the door had withstood the test of that last assault. Entering, I lit two of the candles and then turned to the door. One of the large props had been displaced, and on that side the door had been forced inward some six inches. It was providential that I had managed to drive the brutes away just when I did, and that coping stone. I wondered vaguely how I had managed to dislodge it. I had not noticed it loose as I took my shot, and then as I stood up it had slipped away from beneath me. I felt that I owed the dismissal of the attacking force more to its timely fall than to my rifle.

Then the thought came, but I had better seize this chance to shore up the door again. It was evident that the creatures had not returned since the fall of the coping stone, but who was to say how long they would keep away? There and then I set too at repairing the door, working hard and anxiously. First I went down to the basement and rummaging round, found several pieces of heavy oak planking. With these I returned to the study, and having removed the props, placed the planks up against the door. Then I nailed the heads of the struts to these and driving them well home at the bottoms, nailed them again there. Thus I made the door stronger than ever. For now it was solid with the backing of boards and would, I felt convinced

than to heavier pressure than hitherto without giving way. After that I lit the lamp which I had brought from the kitchen and went down to have a look at the lower windows. Now that I had seen an instance of the strength the creatures possessed, I felt considerable anxiety about the windows on the ground floor, in spite of the fact that they were so strongly barred. I went first to the buttery, having a vivid remembrance of my late adventure there. The place was chilly, and the wind, sowing in through the broken glass, produced an eerie note. Apart from the general air of dismalness, the place was as I had left it the night before. Going up to the window, I examined the bars closely, noting as I did so their comfortable

thickness. Still, as I looked more intently, it seemed to me that the middle bar was bent slightly from the straight. Yet it was but trifling, and it might have been so for years. I had never before noticed them particularly. I put my hand through the broken window and shook the bar. It was as firm as a rock. Perhaps the creatures had tried to start it, and finding it beyond their power ceased from the effort.

After that I went round to each of the windows in turn, examined. them with careful attention, but nowhere else could I trace anything to show that there had been any tampering. Having finished my survey, I went back to the study and poured myself out a little brandy, then to the tower to watch. End of Chapter 7, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia. Chapter 8 of the House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. This sleeper-box recording is in the public domain. After the attack. It was now about 3 a.m. and presently the eastern sky began to pale with the coming of dawn. Gradually the day came, and by its light I scanned the gardens

earnestly. But nowhere could I see any signs of the brutes. I leant over and glanced down to the foot of the wall to see whether the body of the thing I had shot the night before was still there. It was gone. I suppose that others of the monsters had removed it during the night. Then I went down onto the roof and crossed over the gap from which the coping stone had fallen. Reaching it I looked over. Yes. There was the stone as I had seen it last.

But there was no appearance of anything beneath it, nor could I see the creatures I had killed after its fall. Evidently they had also been taken away. I turned and went down to my stone. study. There I sat down wearily. I was thoroughly tired. It was quite light now, though the sun's rays were not as yet perceptibly hot. A clock chimed the hour of four. I awoke with a start and looked round hurriedly. The clock in the corner indicated that it was three o'clock. It was already afternoon. I must have slept for nearly eleven hours. With a jerky movement, I sat forward in the chair and listened. The house was perfect.

silently silent. Slowly I stood up and yawned. I felt desperately tired still and sat down again, wondering what it was that it waked me. It must have been the clock striking, I concluded presently, and was commencing to doze off when a sudden noise brought me back once more to life. It was the sound of a step, as of a person moving cautiously down the corridor toward my study. In an instant I was on my feet and grasping my rifle. Noiselessly I waited. Had the creatures broken in whilst I slept, even as I questioned the steps reached my door, halted momentarily, and then continued down the passage. Silently I tiptoed to the doorway and peeped out.

Then I experienced such a feeling of relief as must have reprieved criminal. It was my sister. She was going toward the stairs. I stepped into the hall and was about to call her when it occurred to me that it was very queer she should have crept past my, door in that stealthy manner. I was puzzled, and for one brief moment the thought occupied my mind that it was not she, but some fresh mystery of the house. Then as I caught a glimpse of her old petticoat, the thought passed as quickly as it had come, and I half laughed. There could be no

mistaking that ancient garment. Yet I wondered what she was doing and remembered her condition of mind on the previous day. I felt that it might be best to follow quietly, taking care not to alarm her, and see what she was going to do. If she behaved rationally well and good. If not, I should have to take steps to restrain her. I could run no unnecessary risks under the danger that threatened us. Quickly I reached the head of the stairs and paused a moment. Then I heard a sound that sent me leaping down at a mad rate.

It was the rattle of bolts being unshut. That foolish sister of mine was actually unbarring the back door. Just as her hand was on the last bolt I reached her. She had not seen me and the first thing she knew I had hold of her arm. She glanced up quickly like a frightened animal and screamed aloud. Come, Mary, I said sternly. What's the meaning of this nonsense? Do you mean to tell me you don't understand the danger?

That you try to throw our two lives away in this fashion? To this she replied nothing. Only trembled violently, gasping and sobbing as though the last extremity of fear. Through some minutes I reasoned with her, pointing out the need for caution and asking her to be brave. There was little to be afraid of now, I explained,

and I tried to believe that I spoke the truth. But she must be sensible, and not attempt to leave the house for a few days. At last I ceased in despair. It was no use talking to her. She was obviously not quite herself for the time being. Finally, I told her she had better go to her room if she could not behave rationally. Still, she took not any notice.

So without more ado, I picked her up in my arms and carried her there. At first she screamed wildly, but had relapsed into silent trembling by the time I reached the stairs. Arriving at her room, I laid her upon the bed. She lay there quietly enough, neither speaking nor sobbing, just shaking in a very egg of fear. I took a rug from a chair nearby and spread it over her. I could do nothing more for her, and so crossed to where pepper lay in a big basket. My sister had taken charge of him since his wound to nurse him, for it had proved more severe than I had thought, and I was pleased to note that,

in spite of her state of mind, she had looked after the old dog carefully. Stooping, I spoke to him, and in reply he licked my hand feebly. He was too ill to do more. He was too ill to do more. Then, going to bed, I bent over my sister and asked her how she felt. But she only shook the more, and much as it pained me. I had to admit that my presence seemed to make her worse. And so I left her, locking the door and pocketing the key. It seemed to be the only course to take. The rest of the day I spent between the tower and my study.

For food I brought up a loaf from the pantry, and on this, some claret I lived for that day. What a long, weary day it was. If only I could have gone out into the gardens as is my want. I should have been content enough, but to be cooped in this silent house with no companion save a madwoman and a sick dog, was enough to pray upon the nerves of the heartiest. And out in the tangled shrubberies that surrounded the house lurked, for all I could tell, those infernal swine creatures waiting their chance.

Was ever a man in such straits? Once in the afternoon and again later, I went to visit my sister. The second time I found her tending pepper, but at my approach she slid over unobtrusively to the far corner with a gesture that saddened me beyond belief. Poor girl! Her fear cut me intolerably, and I would not intrude on her unnecessarily. She would be better I trusted in a few days. Meanwhile, I could do nothing, and I judged it still needful, hard as it seemed, to keep her confined to a room.

One thing there was that I took for encouragement, she had eaten some of the food I had taken to her on my first visit. And so the day passed. As the evening drew on, the air grew chilly, and I began to make preparations for passing a second night in the tower, taking up two additional rifles and a heavy ulster. The rifles I loaded and laid alongside my other, as I intended to make things warm for any of the creatures who might show during the night. I had plenty of ammunition, and I thought to give the Brutes such a lesson as should show them the uselessness of attempting to force an entrance.

After that I made the round of the house again, paying particular attention to the props that supported the study door, then, feeling that I had done all that lay in my power to ensure our safety, I returned to the tower, calling in on my sister and Pepper for a final visit on the way. Pepper was asleep, but woke as I entered and wagged his tail in recognition. I thought he seemed slightly better. My sister was lying on the bed, though, whether asleep or not, I was unable to tell, and thus I left them.

reaching the tower I made myself as comfortable as circumstances would permit and settled down to watch through the night. Gradually darkness fell, and soon the details of the gardens were merged into shadows. During the first few hours I sat alert, listening for any sound that might help to tell me, if anything were stirring down below. It was far too dark for my eyes to be of much use. Slowly the hours passed without anything unusual happening. and the moon rose showing the gardens apparently empty and silent, and so through the night without disturbance or sound.

Toward morning I began to grow stiff and cold with my long vigil. Also I was getting very uneasy concerning the continued quietness on the part of the creatures. I mistrusted it, and would sooner, far, have had them attack the house openly. Then at least I should have known my danger and been able to meet it, but to wait like this, through a whole night, picturing all kinds of unknown devilment, was to jeopardize one's sanity. Once or twice the thought came to me that perhaps they had gone, but in my heart I found it impossible to believe that it was so.

End of Chapter 8. Recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia. Chapter 9 of The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. sleeper-box recording is in the public domain. In the cellars. At last, what with being tired and cold and the uneasiness that possessed me, I resolved to take a walk through the house, first calling in at the study for a glass of brandy to warm me. This I did, and while there I examined the door carefully, but found all as I had left it

a night before. The day was just breaking as I left the tower, though it was still too dark in the house. house to be able to see without a light, and I took one of the study candles with me on my round. By the time I had finished the ground floor, the daylight was creeping in, wanly, through the barred windows. My search had shown me nothing fresh. Everything appeared to be in order, and I was on the point of extinguishing my candle when the thought suggested itself to me to have another glance round the cellars. I had not, if I remember rightly, been into them since my hasty search on the evening of the attack.

For perhaps the half of a minute, I hesitated. I would have been very willing to forego the task, as indeed I am inclined to think any man well might. For all of the great, all-inspiring rooms in the house, the cellars are the hugest and weirdest. Great gloomy caverns of places, unlit by any ray of daylight. Yet I would not shirk the work. I felt that to do so would smack of sheer cowardice.

Besides, as I reassured myself, the cellars were really the most unlikely places in which to come across anything dangerous, considering that they can be entered only through a heavy oaken door, the key of which I carry always on my person. It is in the smallest of these places that I keep my wine, a gloomy hole close to the foot of the cellar stairs, and beyond which I have seldom proceeded. Indeed, save for rummaging round already mentioned, I doubt whether I had ever before been right through the cellars. As I unlocked the great door at the top of the steps, I paused, nervously a moment, at the strange desolate smell that assailed my nostrils. Then, throwing the barrel of my weapon forward, I descended slowly, into the darkness of the underground regions. Reaching the

bottom of the stairs I stood for a minute, and listened. All was silent, save for a faint drip-drip of water, falling drop by drop somewhere to my left. As I stood, I noticed how quietly the candle burnt. Never a flicker nor flare, so utterly windless was the place. Quietly I moved from cellar to cellar. I had but a very dim memory of their arrangement. The impressions left by my first were blurred. I had recollections of a succession of great cellars, and of one greater than the rest, the roof of which was upheld by pillars. Beyond that, my mind was hazy, and predominated by a sense of cold and darkness and shadows. Now, however, it was different, for, although nervous, I was sufficiently collected to be able to look about me and

note the structure and size of the different vaults I entered. Of course, with the amount of light given by my candle, it was not possible to examine each place minutely, but I was enabled to notice as I went along that the walls appeared to be built with wonderful precision and finish, while here and there an occasional massive pillar shot up to support the vaulted roof. Thus I came at last to the great cellar that I remembered. It is reached through a huge arched entrance on which I observed strange fantastic carvings, which threw queer shadows under the light of my candle. As I stood and examined these thoughtfully, it occurred to me how strange it was that I should be so little acquainted with my own house. Yet this may be easily understood when one

realizes the size of this ancient pile, and the fact that only my old sister and I live in it, occupying a few of the rooms such as our wants decide. Holding a light high, I passed on into the cellar, and, keeping to the right, paced slowly up until I reached the further end. I walked quietly, and looked cautiously about as I went. But, so far as the light showed, I saw nothing unusual. At the top I turned to the left, still keeping to the wall, and so continued, until I had traversed the hole of the vast chamber.

As I moved along, I noticed that the floor was composed of solid rock, in places covered with a damp mold and others bare, or almost so, save for thin coating of light gray dust. I had halted at the doorway. Now, however, I turned and made my way up to the center of the place, passing among the pillars and glancing to right and left as I moved. About halfway up the cellar I stubbed my foot against something that gave out a metallic sound. Stooping quickly I held the candle and saw that the object I had kicked was a large metal ring.

Bending lower I cleared the dust from around it and presently discovered that it was attached to a ponderous trap-door, black with age. Feeling excited and wondering to where it could lead, I laid my gun on the floor and sticking the candle in the trigger guard, took the ring in both hands, and pooled. The trap creaked loudly, the sound echoing vaguely through the huge place, and opened, heavily. Propping the edge on my knee, I reached for the candle and held it in the opening, moving it to right and left, but could see nothing. I was puzzled and surprised.

There were no signs of steps, nor even the appearance of there ever having been any. Nothing save in empty blackness. I might have been looking down into a bottomless, sideless well. Then even as I stared full of perplexity I seemed to hear far down, as though from untold depths, a faint whisper of sound. I bent my head quickly, moored into the opening, and listened intently. It may have been fancy, but I could have sworn to hearing a soft titter that grew into a hideous chuckling, faint,

and distance. Startled, I leapt backward, letting the trap fall, with a hollow clang that filled the place with echoes. Even then I seemed to hear that mocking, suggestive laughter. But this I knew must be my imagination. The sound I had heard was far too slight to penetrate through the cumberish trap. For a full minute I stood there quivering, glancing nervously behind and before, but the Great Cellar was silent as a grave, and gradually I shook off the frightened sensation.

With a calmer mind I became again curious to know into what that trap opened, but could not then summon sufficient courage to make a further investigation. One thing I felt, however, was that the trap ought to be secured. This I accomplished by placing upon it several large pieces of dressed stone, which I had noticed in my tour along the east wall. Then, after a final scrutiny of the rest of the place, I retraced my way through the cellars to the stairs, and so reached the daylight, with an infinite feeling of relief that the uncomfortable task was accomplished. End of Chapter 9, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia. Chapter 10 of The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson.

This sleeper-fox recording is in the public domain. The Time of Waiting The sun was now warm and shining brightly, forming a wondrous contrast to the dark and dismal cellars, and it was with comparatively light feelings that I made my way up to the tower to survey the gardens. There I found everything quiet, and after a few minutes, went down to Mary's room.

Here, having knocked and received a reply, I unlocked the door. My sister was sitting quietly on the bed as though waiting. She seemed quite herself again and made no attempt to move away as I approached. Yet I observed that she scanned my face anxiously as though in doubt, and but half assured in her mind that there was nothing to fear from me. To my questions as to how she felt she replied, sanely enough, that she was hungry and would like to go down to prepare breakfast if I did not mind. For a minute I meditated whether it would be safe to let her out.

finally I told her she might go on condition that she promised not to attempt to leave the house, or meddle with any of the outer doors. At my mention of the doors, a sudden look of fright crossed her face, but she said nothing save to give the required promise, and then left the room silently. Crossing the floor I approached Pepper. He had waked as I entered, but, beyond a slight yelp of pleasure and a soft wrapping with his tail, had kept quiet. Now, as I patted him, he made an attempt to stand up and succeeded, only to fall back on his side with a little yowl of pain. I spoke to him and bade him lie still. I was greatly

delighted with his improvement, and also with the natural kindness of my sister's heart, in taking such good care of him, and in spite of her condition of mind. After a while I left him and went downstairs to my study. In a little time, Mary appeared carrying a tray on which smoked a hot breakfast. As she entered the room, I saw her gaze fasten on the props that supported the study door. Her lips tightened, and I thought she paled slightly, but that was all. Putting the tray down at my elbow, she was leaving the room quietly when I called her back. She came, it seemed, a little timidly, as though startled, and I noted that her hand clutched at her apron nervously.

Come, Mary, I said. Cheer up. Things look brighter. I've seen none of the creatures since yesterday morning, early. She looked at me in a curiously puzzled manner as though not comprehending. Then intelligence swept into her eyes and fear. But she said nothing beyond an unintelligible murmur of acquiescence. After that I kept silence.

It was evident that any reference to the swine things was more than her shaken nerves could bear. Breakfast over I went up to the tower. Here, during the greater part of the day, I maintained a strict watch over the gardens. Once or twice I went down to the basement to see how my sister was getting along. Each time I found her quiet and curiously submissive. Indeed, on the last occasion she even ventured to address me on her own account, with regard to some household matter that needed attention. Though this was done with an almost extraordinary timidity,

I hailed it with happiness as being the first word voluntarily spoken since the critical moment, when I had caught her unbarring the back door to go out among those waiting brutes. I wondered whether she was aware of her attempt and how near a thing it had been, but refrained from questioning her thinking it best to let well alone. That night I slept in a bed, the first time for two nights.

In the morning I rose early and took a walk through the house. All was as it should be, and I went up to the tower to have a look at the gardens. Here again I found perfect quietness. At breakfast when I met Mary, I was greatly pleased to see that she had sufficiently regained command over herself, to be able to greet me in a perfectly natural manner. She talked sensibly and quietly, only keeping carefully from any mention of the past couple of days. In this I humored her to the extent of not attempting to lead the conversation in that direction. Earlier in the morning I had been to see Pepper.

He was mending rapidly and bade fair to be on his legs, in earnest in another day or two. Before leaving the breakfast table, I made some reference to his improvement. In the short discussions that followed, I was surprised. to gather from my sister's remark, that she was still under the impression that his wound had been given by the wildcat of my invention. It made me feel almost ashamed of myself for deceiving her. Yet the lie had been told to prevent her from being frightened. And then I had been sure that she must have known the truth later when those brutes had attacked the house. During the day I kept on alert spending much of my time as on the previous day in the tower. But not a sign could I see of the

swine creatures, nor hear any sound. Several times the thought had come to me that the things had at last left us. But up to this time I had refused to entertain the idea seriously. Now, however, I began to feel that there was reason for hope. It would soon be three days since I had seen any of the things. But still I intended to use the utmost caution. For all that I could tell, this protracted silence might be a ruse to tempt me from the house, perhaps right into their arms. The thought of such contingency was alone sufficient to make me circumspect. So it was that the fourth, fifth, and six days went by quietly without my making any attempt to leave the house. On the sixth day. I had the pleasure of seeing Pepper once more upon his feet, and though still very weak,

he managed to keep me company during the whole of that day. End of Chapter 10. Recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia. Chapter 11 of the House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. This Leiber Fox Recording is in the public domain. The Searching of the Gardens. How slowly the time went, and never had. a thing to indicate that any of the brutes still infested the gardens. It was on the ninth day that finally I decided to run the risk, if any, there were, and sally out.

With this purpose in view I loaded one of the shotguns carefully, choosing it as being more deadly than a rifle at close quarters, and then after a final scrutiny of the grounds from the tower I called Pepper to follow me, and made my way down to the basement. At the door I must confess to hesitating a moment. The thought of what might be awaiting me among the dark shrubberies was by no means calculated to encourage my resolution. It was but a second, though, and then I had drawn the bolts, and was standing on the path outside the door. Pepper followed, stopping at the doorstep to sniff suspiciously, and carrying his nose up and down the jams, as though following ascent. Then suddenly he turned sharply and started to run here and there in semicircles and he.

circles, all around the door, finally returning to the threshold. Here he began again to nose about. Hitherto I had stood watching the dog, yet all the time with half my gaze on the wild tangle of garden stretching round me. Now I went toward him and bending down, examined the surface of the door where he was smelling. I found that the wood was covered with a network of scratches, crossing and recrossing one another in inextricable confusion.

In addition to this, I noticed that the doorpost themselves were gnawed in places. Beyond these I could find nothing, and so standing up, I began to make the tour of the house wall. Pepper, as soon as I walked away, left the door and ran ahead, still nosing and sniffing as he went along. At times he stopped to investigate. Here it would be a bullet hole in the pathway, or perhaps a powder-stained wad. Anon it might be a piece of torn sod or a disturbed patch of weedy path, but save for such trifles he found nothing.

I observed him critically as he went along and could discover nothing of uneasiness in his demeanor to indicate that he felt the nearness of any of the creatures. By this I was assured that the gardens were empty, at least for the present of those hateful things. Pepper could not be easily deceived and it was a relief to feel. feel that he would know, and give me timely warning, if there were any danger. Reaching the place where I had shot that first creature, I stopped and made a careful scrutiny, but could see nothing. From there I went on to where the great coping stone had fallen. It lay on its side, apparently, just as it had been left when I shot the brute that was moving

it. A couple of feet to the right of the nearer end was a great dent in the ground showing where it had struck. The other end was still within the indentation, half in and half out. Going nearer, I looked at the stone more closely. What a huge piece of masonry it was! And that creature had moved it single-handed in its attempt to reach what lay below. I went round to the further end of the stone. Here I found that it was possible to see under it for a distance of nearly a couple of feet. Still, I could see nothing of the stricken creatures, and I felt much surprised. I had, as I have before said, guess that the remains had been removed. Yet I could not conceive that it had been done so thoroughly as not to leave some certain sign beneath the stone,

indicative of their fate. I had seen several of the broods struck down beneath it with such force that they must have been literally driven into the earth. and now not a vestige of them was to be seen, not even a blood-stain. I felt more puzzled than ever as I turned the matter over in my mind, but could think of no plausible explanation and so finally gave it up, as one of the many things that were unexplainable. From there I transferred my attention to the study door. I could see now even more plainly the effects of the tremendous strain to which it had been

objected, and I marveled how, even with the support afforded by the props, it had withstood the attacks so well. There were no marks of blows. Indeed, none had been given, but the door had been literally riven from its hinges by the application of enormous, silent force. One thing that I observed affected me profoundly. The head of one of the props had been driven right through a panel. This was of its self-sufficient to show how huge an effort the creatures had made to break down the door and how nearly they had succeeded. Leaving, I continued my tour around the house, finding little else of interest, save at the back, where I came across the piece of piping I had torn from the wall,

lying among the long grass, underneath the broken window. Then I returned to the house, and having re-bolted the back door went up to the tower. Here I spent the afternoon reading, and occasionally glancing down into the gardens. I had determined if the night passed quietly to go as far as the pit on the morrow. Perhaps I should be able to learn then something of what had happened. The day slipped away and the night came and went much as the last few nights had gone. When I rose, the morning had broken fine and clear and I determined to put my project into action. During breakfast I considered the matter carefully, after which I went to the study for my shotgun.

In addition, I loaded and slipped into my pocket a small but heavy pistol. I quite understood that if there were any danger it lay in the direction of the pit, and I intended to be prepared. Leaving the study, I went down to the back door, followed by Pepper. Once outside, I took a quick survey of the surrounding gardens and then set off toward the pit. On the way, I kept a sharp outlook, holding my gun handily. Pepper was running ahead, I noticed without any of a pit.

apparent hesitation. From this I augured that there was no imminent danger to be apprehended, and I stepped out more quickly in his wake. He had reached the top of the pit now, and was nosing his way along the edge. A moment later I was beside him looking down into the pit. For a moment I could scarcely believe that it was the same place, so greatly was it changed. The dark, wooded ravine of a fortnight ago with a foliage-hidden stream running sluggishly at the bottom existed no longer. Instead, my eyes showed me a ragged chasm, partly filled with a gloomy

lake of turbid water. All one side of the ravine was stripped of underwoods showing the bare rock. A little to my left, the side of the pit appeared to have collapsed altogether, forming a deep V-shaped cleft in the face of the rocky cliff. This rift ran from the upper edge of the ravine nearly down to the water, and penetrated into the pit-side to a distance of some forty feet. Its opening was at least six yards across, and from this it seemed to taper into about two. But what attracted my attention more than ever, the stupendous split itself, was a great hole, some distance down the cleft and right in the angle of the V. It was clearly defined and not unlike an arched doorway in shape, though lying as it did in the shadow, I could not see it

very distinctly. The opposite side of the pit still retained its verger, but so torn in places, and everywhere covered with dust and rubbish, that it was hardly distinguishable as such. My first impression that there had been a landslip was, I began to see not sufficient, of itself, to account for all the changes I witnessed. And the water? I turned suddenly, for I'd become aware that somewhere to my right there was a noise of running water. I could see nothing, but now that my attention had been caught, I distinguished easily that it came from somewhere at the east end of the pit.

Slowly I made my way in that direction, the sound growing planer as I advanced. Until in a little I stood right above it. Even then I could not perceive the cause until I knelt down and thought down, thrust my head over the cliff. Here the noise came up to me plainly, and I saw below me a torrent of clear water issuing from a small fissure in the pit side, and rushing down the rocks into the lake beneath. A little further along the cliff I saw another, and beyond that again, two smaller ones. These, then, would help to account for the quantity of water in the pit.

And if the fall of rock and earth had blocked the outlet of the stream at the bottom, There was little doubt, but that it was contributing a very large share. Yet, I puzzled my head to account for the generally shaken appearance of the place, these streamlets and that huge cleft further up the ravine. It seemed to me that more than the landslip was necessary to account for these. I could imagine an earthquake, or a great explosion, creating some such condition of affairs as existed, but of these there had been neither. Then I stood up quickly remembering that crash, and the cloud of dust that had followed

directly, rushing high into the air. But I shook my head unbelievingly. No, it must have been the noise of the falling rocks and earth I had heard of. Of course the dust would fly, naturally. Still, in spite of my reasoning, I had an uneasy feeling that this theory did not satisfy my sense of the probable. And yet, was any other that I could suggest likely to be half so plausible? Pepper had been sitting on the grass while I conducted my examination. Now as I turned up the north side of the ravine he rose and followed. Slowly in keeping a careful watch in all directions I made the circuit of the pit,

but found little else that I had not already seen. From the west end I could see the four waterfalls uninterruptedly. they were some considerable distance up from the surface of the lake, about fifty feet I calculated. For a little while longer I loitered about, keeping my eyes and ears open but still without seeing or hearing anything suspicious. The whole place was wonderfully quiet. Indeed, save for the continuous murmur of the water at the top end,

no sound of any description broke the silence. All this while, pepenter. had shown no signs of uneasiness. This seemed to me to indicate that for the time being at least there was none of the swine creatures in the vicinity. So far as I could see, his attention appeared to have been taken chiefly with scratching and sniffing among the grass at the edge of the pit. At times he would leave the edge and run along toward the house, as though following invisible tracks, but in all cases returning after a few minutes. I had little doubt, but that he was really tracing out the footsteps of the swine things. And the very fact that each one seemed to lead

him back to the pit appeared to me a proof that the brutes had all returned whence they came. At noon I went home for dinner. During the afternoon I made a partial search of the gardens accompanied by Pepper, but without coming upon anything to indicate the presence of the creatures. Once as we made our way through the shrubberies, Pepper rushed in among some bushes with a fierce yelp. At that I jumped back in sudden fright and threw my gun forward in readiness, only to laugh, nervously, as Pepper reappeared, chasing an unfortunate cat. Toward evening I gave up the search and returned to the house.

All at once, as we were passing a great clump of bushes on our right, Pepper disappeared, and I could hear him sniffing and growling among them in a suspicious manner. With my gun-barrel I parted the intervening shrubbery and looked inside. There was nothing to be seen, save that many of the branches were bent down and broken, as though some animal had made a lair there, at no very previous date. It was probably, I thought, one of the places occupied by some of the swine creatures on the night of the attack. Next day I resumed my search to the gardens, but without resorting, By evening I had been right through them, and now I knew, beyond the possibility of doubt,

that there were no longer any of the things concealed about the place. Indeed, I have often thought since that I was correct in my earlier surmise, that they had left soon after the attack. End of Chapter 11, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia. Chapter 12 of the House on the Borderland. by William Hope Hodgson. This Liebervox recording is in the public domain. The Subterranean Pit.

Another week came and went, during which I spent a great deal of my time about the pit mouth. I had come to the conclusion a few days earlier that the arched toll and the angle of the great rift was the place through which the swine things had made their exit, from some unholy place in the bowels of the world. How near the probable. truth this went, I was to learn later.

It may be easily understood that I was tremendously curious, though in a frightened way, to know to what infernal place that whole led. Though so far the idea had not struck me seriously of making an investigation. I was far too much imbued with a sense of horror of the swine creatures to think of venturing willingly, where there was any chance of coming into contact with them. Gradually, however, as time passed, this feeling grew insensibly less, so that when a few days later the thought occurred to me that it might be possible to clamber down and have a look into the hole, I was not so exceedingly averse to it as might have been imagined.

Still, I do not think even then that I really intended to try any such foolhardy adventure. For all that I could tell, it might be certain death to enter that doleful looking opening. and yet such is the pertinacity of human curiosity, that at last my chief desire was but to discover what lay beyond that gloomy entrance. Slowly as the day slid by my fear of the swine things became an emotion of the past, more unpleasant and credible memory than odd else. Thus a day came when, throwing thoughts and fancies adrift, I procured a rope from the house, and having made it fast to a stout tree at the top of the rift, and some little distance back from the pit edge,

let the other end down into the cleft until it dangled right across the mouth of the dark hole. Then, cautiously, and with many misgivings as to whether it was not a mad act that I was attempting, I climbed slowly down using the rope as a support until I reached the hole. Here, still holding on to the rope I stood and peered in. All was perfectly dark, and not a sound came to me. Yet a moment later it seemed that I could hear something. I held my breath and listened, but all was silent as the grave, and I breathed freely once more. At the same instant I heard the sound again.

It was like a noise of labored breathing, deep and sharp drawn. For a second I stood petrified, not able to move, but now the sound. had ceased again and I could hear nothing. As I stood there anxiously, my foot dislodged a pebble which fell inward, into the dark, with a hollow chink. At once the noise was taken up and repeated a score of times, each succeeding echo being fainter and seeming to travel away from me as though into remote distance. Then as the silence fell again I heard that stealthy breathing.

For each respiration I made I could hear in a moment. answering breath. The sounds appeared to be coming nearer, and then, I heard several others, but fainter and more distant. Why, I did not grip the rope and spring out, out of danger, I cannot say. It was as though I had been paralyzed. I broke out into a profuse sweat and tried to moisten my lips with my tongue. My throat had gone suddenly dry, and I coughed huskily.

It came back to me in a dozen horrible throaty tones mockingly. I peered helplessly into the gloom, but still not. Nothing showed. I had a strange, choky sensation, and again I coughed, dryly. Again the echo took it up rising and falling grotesquely and dying slowly into a muffled silence. Then suddenly a thought came to me and I held my breath. The other breathing stopped. I breathed again and once more it recommenced. But now I no longer feared. I knew that the strange sounds were not made by any lurking swine creature, but were simply the echo of my own respirations. Yet I had received such a fright that I was glad to scramble up the rift and haul up the rope.

I was far too shaken and nervous to think of entering that dark hole then, and so returned to the house. I felt more myself next morning, but even then I could not summon up sufficient courage to explore the place. All this time the water and in the pit had been creeping slowly up, and now stood but a little below the opening. At the rate at which it was rising it would be level with the floor in less than another week. And I realized that unless I carried out my investigation soon, I should probably never do so at all, as the water would rise and rise, until the opening itself was submerged. It may have been that this thought stirred me to act, but whatever it was, a couple of days later,

saw me standing at the top of the cleft, fully equipped for the task. This time I was resolved to conquer my shirking and go right through with the matter. With this intention I had brought, in addition to the rope, a bundle of candles, meaning to use them as a torch. Also, my double-barreled shotgun. In my belt I had a heavy horse pistol loaded with buckshot. As before, I fastened the rope to the tree. then having tied my gun across my shoulders with a piece of stout cord, I lowered myself over the

edge of the pit. At this movement, Pepper, who had been eyeing my actions, watchfully rose to his feet, and ran to me with a half bark, half whale, it seemed to me, of warning. But I was resolved on my enterprise and bade him lie down. I would much have liked to take him with me, but this was next to impossible in the existing circumstances. As my face dropped, level with the pit edge, he licked me right across the mouth. And then, seizing my sleeve between his teeth began to pull back strongly. It was very evident that he did not want me to go. Yet, having made up my mind, I had no intention of giving up the

attempt and with a sharp word to pepper, to release me. I continued my descent, leaving the poor old fellow at the top, barking and crying like a forsaken pup. Carefully I lowered myself from projection to projection. I knew that a slip might mean a wetting. Reaching the entrance I let go the rope and untied the gun from my shoulders. Then, with a last look at the sky, which I noticed was clouding over rapidly, I went forward a couple of paces so as to be shielded from the wind and lit one of the candles. Holding it above my head and grasping my gun firmly,

I began to move on slowly, throwing my glances in all directions. For the first minute I could hear the melancholy sound of Peppers howling coming down to me. Gradually, as I penetrated further into the darkness, it grew fainter until, in a little while I could hear nothing. The path tended downward somewhat and to the left. Thence it kept on, still running to the left, until I found that it was leading me right in the direction of the house. Very cautiously I moved onwards, stopping every few steps to listen. I had gone perhaps a hundred yards when suddenly it seemed to me that I caught a faint sound, somewhere along the passage behind me.

With my heart thudding heavily I listened. The noise grew plainer and appeared to be approaching rapidly. I could hear it distinctly now. It was the soft padding of running feet. In the first moments of fright I stood irresolute, not knowing whether to go forward or backward. Then, with a sudden realization, of the best thing to do. I backed up to the rocky wall on my right, and holding the candle above

my head, waited, gun in hand, cursing my foolhardy curiosity for bringing me into such a straight. I had not long to wait but a few seconds, before two eyes reflected back from the gloom the rays of my candle. I raised my gun, using my right hand only and aimed quickly. Even as I did so, something leapt out of the darkness with a blustering bark of joy. That woke the echoes. like thunder. It was Pepper. How he had contrived to scramble down the cleft I could not conceive. As I brushed my hand nervously over his coat, I noticed that he was dripping and concluded

that he must have tried to follow me and fallen into the water, from which he would not find it very difficult to climb. Having waited a minute or so to study myself, I proceeded along the way, Pepper following quietly. I was curiously glad to have the old fellow with. me. He was company, and somehow with him at my heels I was less afraid. Also, I knew how quickly as keen ears would detect the presence of any unwelcome creature, should there be such amid the darkness that wrapped us. For some minutes we went slowly along, the path still leading

straight toward the house. Soon I concluded we should be standing right beneath it, did the path but carry far enough. I led the way cautiously for another fifty yards or so. Then I stopped and held the light high, and reason enough I had to be thankful that I did so, for there, not three paces forward, the path vanished, and in place showed a hollow blackness that sent sudden fear through me. Very cautiously I crept forward and peered down but could see nothing. Then I crossed to the left of the passage to see whether there might be any continuation of the path. Here, right against the wall, I found that a narrow track—

Some three feet wide led onward. Carefully I stepped on to it, but had not gone far before I regret adventuring thereon, for after a few paces the already narrow way resolved itself into a mere ledge, with, on the one side, the solid unyielding rock towering up in a great wall to the unseen roof, and on the other that yawning chasm. I could not help reflecting how helpless I was should I be attacked, there, with no room to turn, and where even the recoil of my weapon might be sufficient to drive me headlong into the depths below. To my great relief a little further on, the track suddenly

broadened out again to its original breath. Gradually as I went onward I noticed that the path trended steadily to the right, and so after some minutes I discovered that I was not going forward, but simply circling the huge abyss. I had evidently come to the end of the great path, passage. Five minutes later I stood on the spot from which I had started, having been completely round what I guess now, to be a vast pit, the mouth of which must be at least a hundred yards across. For some little time I stood there, lost in perplexing thought. What does it all mean? Was the cry that had begun to reiterate through my brain. A sudden idea struck me, and I searched round for a piece of stone. Presently I found a bit of rock about the same.

size of a small loaf. Sticking the candle upright in a crevice on the floor, I went back from the edge somewhat, and, taking a short run, launched the stone forward into the chasm, my idea being to throw it far enough to keep it clear of the sides. Then I stooped forward and listened. But though I kept perfectly quiet for at least a full minute, no sound came back to me from out of the dark. I knew then that the depth of the hole must be immense. For the stone, had it struck anything, was large enough to have set the echoes of that weird place, whispering for an indefinite period.

Even as it was, the cavern had given back the sounds of my footfalls multitudinously. The place was awesome, and I would willingly have retraced my steps and left the mysteries of its solitudes unsolved. only to do so meant admitting defeat. Then a thought came, to try to get a view of the abyss. It occurred to me that if I placed my candles round the edge of the hole, I should be able to get at least some dim sight of the place. I found on counting that I had brought fifteen candles in the bundle,

my first intention having been, as I have already said, to make a torch of the lot. These I proceeded to place round the pit mouth with an interval of about twenty yards, between each. Having completed the circle, I stood in the passage and endeavored to get an idea of how the place looked, but I discovered immediately that they were totally insufficient for my purpose. They did little more than make the gloom visible. One thing they did, however, and that was they confirmed my opinion of the size of the opening, and although they showed me nothing that I wanted to see, yet the contrast they afforded to the heavy darkness pleased me curiously, it was as though fifteen tiny stars shone through the subterranean night.

Then, even as I stood, Pepper gave a sudden howl that was taken up by the echoes and repeated with vast leak variations, dying away slowly. With a quick movement, I held aloft the one candle that I had kept and glanced down at the dog at the same moment. I seemed to hear a noise, like a diabolical chuckle, rise up from the hitherto sire. depths of the pit. I started, then I recollected that it was probably, the echo of Pepper's howl. Pepper had moved away from me up the passage a few steps. He was nosing along the rocky floor, and I thought I heard him lapping.

I went toward him holding the candle low. As I moved, I heard my boot go sup, sup, and the light was reflected from something that glistened and crept past my feet swiftly toward the pit. I bent lower and looked. then gave vent to an expression of surprise. From somewhere higher up the path a stream of water was running quickly in the direction of the great opening and growing in size every second. Again Pepper gave vent to that deep-drawn howl, and running at me seized my coat and

attempted to drag me up the path toward the entrance. With a nervous gesture I shook him off and crossed quickly over to the left-hand wall. If anything were coming, I was going to have the wall at my back. Then as I stared anxiously up the pathway, my candle caught a gleam far up the passage. At the same moment I became conscious of a murmurous roar that grew louder, and filled the whole cavern with deafening sound. From the pit came a deep hollow echo like the sob of a giant. Then I had sprung to one side on the narrow ledge that ran round the abyss, and turning saw a great

wall of foam sweep past me and leaped tumultuously into the waiting chasm. A cloud of spray burst over me extinguishing my candle and wetting me to the skin. I still held my gun. The three nearest candles went out, but the further ones gave only a short flicker. After the first flush the flow of water eased down to a steady stream. Maybe a foot in depth, though I could not see this until I had procured one of the lighted candles, and with it started to reconnoiter. Pepper had fortunately followed me as I leapt for the edge, and now, very much subdued.

kept close behind. A short examination showed me that the water reached right across the passage and was running at a tremendous rate. Already, even as I stood there, it had deepened. I could make only a guess at what had happened. Evidently, the water in the ravine had broken into the passage by some means. If that were the case, it would go on increasing in volume until I should find it impossible to leave the place. The thought was frightening. It was evident that I must. must make my exit as hurriedly as possible. Taking my gun by the stock, I sounded the water. It was a little under knee-deep.

The noise it made plunging down into the pit was deafening. Then, with a call to pepper, I stepped out into the flood, using the gun as a staff. Instantly the water boiled up over my knees, and nearly to the tops of my thighs with the speed at which it was racing. For one short moment I nearly lost my footing, but the thought of what lay behind stimulated me to a fierce endeavor. and step by step I made headway. Of pepper I knew nothing at first.

I had all I could do to keep on my legs and was overjoyed when he appeared beside me. He was waiting manfully along. He is a big dog with longish thin legs and I suppose the water had less grasp on them than upon mine. Anyway, he managed a great deal better than I did, going ahead of me like a guide and unwittingly, or otherwise, helping somewhat to break the force of the water. On we went, step by step, struggling and gasping, until somewhere about a hundred yards had been safely traversed. Then, whether it was because I was taking less care, or that there was a slippery place on the rocky floor, I cannot say, but suddenly I slipped and fell on my face.

Instantly the water leapt over me in a cataract, hurling me down toward the bottomless hole at a frightful speed. Frantically I struggled, but it was impossible to get a footing. I was helpless, gasping and drowning. All at once, something gripped my coat and brought me to a standstill. It was pepper. Missing me, he must have raced back through the dark turmoil to find me and then caught and held me, until I was able to get to my feet. I have a dim recollection of having seen momentarily the gleams of several lights,

but of this I have never been quite sure. If my impressions are correct, I must have been washed down to the very brink of the that awful chasm, before Pepper managed to bring me to a standstill. And the lights, of course, could only have been the distant flames of the candles I had left burning. But as I have said, I am not by any means sure. My eyes were full of water, and I had been badly shaken. And there I was. Without my helpful gun, without light and sadly confused with the water deepening, depending solely upon my old friend Pepper to help me out of that hellish place. I was facing the torrent.

Naturally it was the only way in which I could have sustained my position a moment, for even Old Pepper could not have held me long against that terrific strain without assistance, however blind from me. Perhaps a minute passed during which it was touch and go with me, then gradually I recommenced my torturous way up the passage. And so began the grimest fight with death, from whichever I hope to emerge victorious, Slowly, furiously, almost hopelessly I strove, and that faithful pepper led me, dragged me

upward and onward until at last. Ahead I saw a gleam of blessed light. It was the entrance. Only a few yards further, and I reached the opening with the water surging and boiling hungrily around my loins. And now I understood the cause of the catastrophe. It was raining heavily, literally in torrents. The surface of the lake was level with the bottom of the open.

opening, nay, more than level it was above it. Evidently the rain had swollen the lake and caused this premature rise, for at the rate the ravine had been filling it would not have reached the entrance for a couple more days. Luckily the rope by which I had descended was streaming into the opening upon the in rushing waters. Seizing the end, I knotted it securely round Pepper's body, then summoning up the last remnant of my strength. I commenced to swarm up the side of the cliff. I reached the pit edge, in the last stage of exhaustion, yet I had to make one more effort and haul pepper to safety. Slowly and wearily I hauled on the rope. Once or twice it seemed that I should have to give up, for pepper is a weighty dog, and I was utterly done. Yet, to let go

would have meant certain death to the old fellow, and the thought spurred me to greater exertions. I have but a very hazy remembrance of the end. I recall pulling through moments that lagged strangely. I have also some recollection of seeing Pepper's muzzle appearing over the pit edge after what seemed an indefinite period of time. Then all grew suddenly dark. End of Chapter 12. Recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia.

Chapter 13 of the House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. This Sleeperbox recording is in the public domain. The trap in the great cellar. I suppose I must have swooned. For the next thing I remember, I opened my eyes and all was dusk. I was laying on my back with one leg doubled under the other, and pepper was licking my ears. I felt horribly stiff, and my leg was numb from the knee downward.

For a few moments I lay thus in a dazed condition. Then slowly I struggled to a sitting position. and looked about me. It had stopped raining, but the trees still dripped dismally. From the pit came a continuous murmur of running water. I felt cold and shivery. My clothes were sodden, and I ached all over. Very slowly the life came back into my numbed leg,

and after a little I essayed to stand up. This I managed at the second attempt, but I was very tottery and peculiarly weak. It seemed to me that I was going to be ill. and I made shift to stumble my way toward the house. My steps were erratic and my head confused. At each step that I took sharp pains shot through my limbs, I had gone perhaps some thirty paces when a cry from Pepper drew my attention,

and I turned stiffly toward him. The old dog was trying to follow me but could come no further owing to the rope with which I had hauled him up and still being tied round his body, the other end not having been unfastened from the tree. For a moment I fumbled with the knots, weakly, but they were wet and hard and I could do nothing. Then I remembered my knife, and in a minute the rope was cut. How I reached the house I scarcely know, and of the days that followed I remember still less. Of one thing I am certain that, had it not been for my sister's untiring love and nursing,

I had not been writing at this moment. When I recovered my senses, it was to find that I had been in bed. for nearly two weeks. Yet another week passed before I was strong enough to tot her out into the gardens. Even then I was not able to walk so far as the pit. I would have liked to ask my sister how high the water had risen, but felt it was wiser not to mention the subject to her. Indeed, since then I have made a rule never to speak to her about the strange things

that happened in this great old house. It was not until a couple of days later that I managed to get across to the pit. There I found that in my few weeks' absence there had been wrought a wondrous change. Instead of the three-parts filled ravine I looked out upon a great lake whose placid surface reflected a light coldly. The water had risen to within half a dozen feet of the pit edge. Only in one part was the lake disturbed and that was above the place where, far down under the silent waters, yon the entrance to the vast underground pit.

here there was a continuous bubbling and occasionally a curious sort of sobbing gurgle would find its way up from the depth. Beyond these there was nothing to tell of the things that were hidden beneath. As I stood there it came to me how wonderfully things had worked out. The entrance to the place whence the swine creatures had come was sealed up by a power that made me feel there was nothing more to fear from them. And yet with the feeling there was a sensation that now, I should never learn anything further of the place from which those dreadful things had come. It was completely shut off and concealed from human curiosity forever. Strange in the knowledge of that underground hell-hole, how opposite has been the naming of the

pit. One wonders how it originated and when. Naturally, one concludes that the shape and depth of the ravine would suggest the name pit. Yet is it not possible that it has all along held a deeper significance? A hint. Could one but have guessed of the greater, more stupendous pit that lies far down in the earth beneath this old house? Under this house? Even now the idea is strange and terrible to me, for I have proved beyond doubt that the pit yawns right below the house, which has evidently supported somewhere above the center of it upon a tremendous arched roof of solid rock.

It happened in this wise that, having occasion to go down to the cellars, the thought occurred to me to pay a visit to the great vault, where the trap is situated and see whether everything was as I had left it, reaching the place I walked slowly up the center, until I came to the trap. There it was, with the stones piled upon it just as I had seen it last. I had a lantern with me, and the idea came to me that now would be a good time to investigate whatever lay under the great oak slab. Placing the lantern on the floor, I tumbled the stones off the trap, and, grasping the ring,

pulled the door open. As I did so, the cellar became filled with the sound of a murmurous thunder that rose from far below. At the same time, a damp wind blew up into my face, bringing with it a load of fine spring. ray. Therewith I dropped the trap hurriedly with a half-frightened feeling of wonder. For a moment I stood puzzled. I was not particularly afraid. The haunting fear of the swine things had left me long ago. But I was certainly nervous and astonished. Then a sudden thought possessed me, and I raised the ponderous door with a feeling of excitement, leaving it standing upon its end. I seized the lantern and kneeling down, thrust it into the open.

As I did so, the moist wind and spray drove in my eyes, making me unable to see for a few moments. Even when my eyes were clear, I could distinguish nothing below me save darkness, and whirling spray. Seeing that it was useless to expect to make out anything with the light so high, I felt in my pockets for a piece of twine with which to lower it further into the opening. Even as I fumbled, the lantern slipped from my fingers and hurtled down into the darkness. For a brief instant I watched its fall and saw the light shine on a tumult of white foam some eighty or a hundred feet below me. Then it was gone. My sudden surmise was correct, and now I knew the cause of the wet and noise.

The great cellar was connected with the pit, by means of the trap which opened right above it. and the moisture was the spray rising from the water falling into the depths. In an instant I had an explanation of certain things that had hitherto puzzled me. Now I could understand why the noises, on the first night of the invasion, had seemed to rise directly from under my feet, and the chuckle that had sounded when I first opened the trap. Evidently some of the swine things must have been right beneath me. Another thought struck me.

Were the creatures all drowned? Would they drown? I remembered how unable I had been to find any traces to show that my shooting had been really fatal. Had they life as we understand life, or were they ghouls? These thoughts flashed through my brain as I stood in the dark searching my pockets for matches. I had the box in my hand now, and, striking a light, I stepped to the trap-door and closed it. Then I piled the stone. back upon it, after which I made my way out from the cellars.

And so I suppose the water goes on, thundering down into that bottomless hell pit. Sometimes I have an inexplicable desire to go down to the great cellar, open the trap and gaze into the impenetrable spray-damp darkness. At times the desire becomes almost overpowering in its intensity. It is not mere curiosity that prompts me, but more as though some are the unexplained influence were at work. Still, I never go and intend to fight down the strange longing and crush it, even as I would the unholy thought of self-destruction. This idea of some intangible force being exerted may seem reasonless, yet my instinct warns me that it is not so.

In these things, reason seems to me less to be trusted than instinct. One thought there is in closing that impresses itself upon me with ever-growing insistence. It is that I live in a very strange house, a very awful house, and I have begun to wonder whether I am doing wisely and staying here. Yet if I left, where could I go and still obtain the solitude and the sense of her presence, that alone make my old life bearable? Author's footnote, an apparently unmeaning interpolation. I can find a very much no previous reference in the manuscript to this matter. It becomes clearer, however, in the light of succeeding incidents. End author's footnote. End of Chapter 13, recording by John Van Stan,

Savannah, Georgia. Chapter 14 of the House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. The Sea of Sleep. For a considerable period after the last incident, which I have narrated in my diary, I had serious thoughts of leaving this house, and might have done so but for the great and wonderful thing of which I am about to write. How well I was advised in my heart when I stayed on here, spite of those visions and sights of unknown and unexplainable things. For had I not stayed, then I had not seen again the face of her I loved. Yes. Though few know it, none now save my sister Mary.

I have loved and, ah, me, lost. I would write down the story of those sweet old days, but it would be like the tearing of old wounds. Yet after that which has happened, what need have I to care? For she has come to me out of the unknown. Strangely, she warned me. Warned me passionately against this house, begged me to leave it, but admitted when I questioned her that she could not have come to. to me had I been elsewhere. Yet in spite of this, still she warned me earnestly, telling me that it was a place

long ago given over to evil, and under the power of grim laws of which none here have knowledge. And I, I just asked her again whether she would come to me elsewhere, and she could only stand silent. It was thus that I came to the place of the sea of sleep, so she termed it in her dear speech with me. I had stayed up in my study reading and must have dozed over the book. Suddenly I woke and sat upright with a start. For a moment I looked round with a puzzled sense of something unusual. There was a misty look about the room giving a curious softness to each table and chair and furnishing. Gradually the mistiness increased, growing as it were out of nothing. Then slowly a soft white light began to glow in the room.

The flames of the candles shone through it palely. I looked from side to side and found that I could still see each piece of furniture. But in a strangely unreal way, more as though the ghost of each table and chair had taken the place of the solid article. Gradually as I looked I saw them fade and fade, until slowly they resolved into nothingness. Now I looked again at the candles. They shone wanly and deep. even as I watched, grew more unreal and so vanished.

The room was filled now with a soft yet luminous, white twilight, like a gentle mist of light. Beyond this, I could see nothing. Even the walls had vanished. Presently I became conscious that a faint continuous sound pulsed through the silence that rapped me. I listened intently. It grew more distinct until it appeared to me that I harked to the breathings of some great sea. I cannot tell how long a space passed thus, but after a while it seemed that I could see through the mistiness, and slowly I became aware that I was standing upon the shore of an immense and silent sea. This shore was smooth and long, vanishing to right and left of me in extreme distances. In front swam a still immensity of

sleeping ocean. At times it seemed to me that I caught a faint glimmer of light under its surface, but of this I could not be sure. Behind me rose up to an extraordinary height, gaunt black cliffs. Overhead the sky was of a uniform cold gray color, the whole place being lit by a stupendous globe of pale fire that swam a little above the far horizon and shed a foam-like light above the quiet waters. Beyond the gentle murmur of the sea, an intense stillness prevailed. For a long while I stayed there, looking out across its strangeness. Then as I stared, it seemed that a bubble of white foam floated up out of the depths, and then, even now, I know not how it was. I was looking upon, nay, looking into the face

of her. Ah, into her face, into her soul. and she looked back at me with such a commingling of joy and sadness that I ran toward her blindly, crying strangely to her in a very agony of remembrance, of terror, and of hope to come to me. Yet, spite of my crying, she stayed out there upon the sea and only shook her head sorrowfully. But in her eyes was the old earth-light of tenderness that I had come to know before all things, ere we were parted. At her perverseness I grew desperate and assayed to wait out to her, yet, though I would, I could not.

Some things, some invisible barrier held me back, and I was feigned to stay where I was, and cry out to her in the fullness of my soul. Oh, my darling, my darling, but could say no more for the very intensity. And at that she came over swiftly and touched me. And it was as though heaven had opened. yet when I reached out my hands to her she put me from her with tenderly stern hands, and I was abashed. The fragments.

Author's footnote. Here the writing becomes undecipherable owing to the damaged condition of this part of the manuscript. Below I print such fragments as are legible. End, author's footnote. The legible portions of the mutilated leaves. through tears, noise of eternity in my ears.

We parted. She whom I love, Oh, my God. I was a great time dazed, and then I was alone in the blackness of the night. I knew that I had journeyed back once more to the known universe. Presently I emerged from that enormous darkness.

I had come among the stars. I had come among the stars. Vast time. The sun, far and remote. I entered into the gulf that separates our system from the outer suns. As I sped across the dividing dark, I watched steadily the ever-growing brightness and size of our sun. Once I glanced back to the stars and saw them shift, as it were, in my wake,

against the mighty background of night, so vast was the spirit. of my passing spirit. I drew nigher to our system, and now I could see the shine of Jupiter. Later I distinguished the cold, blue gleam of the earthlight. I had a moment of bewilderment. All about the sun there seemed to be bright objects, moving in rapid orbits. Inward, nigh to the savage glory of the sun.

There circled two darting points of light, and further off there flew a blue shining speck that I knew to be the Earth. It circled the sun in a space that seemed to be no more than an Earth minute. Nearer with great speed. I saw the radiances of Jupiter and Saturn spinning with incredible swiftness in huge orbits, and ever I drew more nigh and looked out upon this strange sight, the visible circling of the planets about the Mother Sun. It was as though time had been annihilated for me.

so that a year was no more to my unflash spirit than is a moment to an earth-bound soul. The speed of the planets appeared to increase, and presently I was watching the sun all ringed about with hair-like circles of different colored fire. The paths of the planets, hurtling at mighty speed about the central flame, the sun grew vast, as though it leapt to meet me. And now I was within the sun. circling of the outer planets and flitting swiftly, toward the place where the earth glimmering through the blue splendor of its orbit, as though a fiery mist, circled the sun at a monstrous

speed. Author's footnote, The severest scrutiny has not enabled me to decipher more of the damaged portion of the manuscript. It commences to be legible again with the chapter entitled, The Noise in the Night. End of author's footnote. End of Chapter 14, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia. Chapter 15 of the House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson.

This Liebervox recording is in the public domain. The noise in the night. And now I come to the strangest of all the strange happenings that have befallen me in this House of Mysteries. It occurred quite lately, within the month. and I have little doubt but that what I saw was in reality the end of all things. However, to my story. I do not know how it is, but up to the present I have never been able to write these things down directly they happened. It is as though I have to wait a time, recovering my just balance and digesting, as it were,

the things I have heard or seen. No doubt this is as it should be, for by waiting I see the incidents more true, truly in right of them in a calmer and more judicial frame of mind. This, by the way. It is now the end of November. My story relates to what happened in the first week of the month. It was night about eleven o'clock. Pepper and I kept one another company in the study.

That great old room of mine where I read and work. I was reading curiously enough the Bible. I have begun in these latter days to take a growing interest in that great and ancient book. Suddenly, a distant tremor shook the house, and there came a faint and distant, whirring, buzz that grew rapidly into a far, muffled, screaming. It reminded me in a queer, gigantic way, of the noise that a clock makes when the catch is released, and it is allowed to run down.

The sound appeared to come from some remote height, somewhere up in the night. There was no repetition of the shock. I looked across at Pepper. He was sleeping peacefully. Gradually the whirring noise decreased and there came a long silence. All at once a glow lit up the end window, which protrudes far out from the side of the house, so that from it one may look both east and west. I felt puzzled, and after a moment's hesitation walked across the room and pulled aside the blind.

As I did so, I saw the sun rise from behind the horizon. It rose with a steady, perceptible movement. I could see it travel upward. In a minute it seemed it had reached the tops of the trees through which I had watched it. Up, up! It was broad daylight now. Behind me I was conscious of a sharp mosquito-like buzzing. I glanced round and knew that it came from the clock.

Even as I looked, it marked off an hour. The minute-hand was moving round the dial faster than an ordinary second-hand. The hour hand had moved quickly from space to space. I had a numb sense of astonishment. A moment later, so it seemed, the two candles went out almost together. I turned swiftly back to the window, for I had seen the shadow of the window frames travelling along the floor toward me, as though a great lamp had been carried up past the window.

I saw now that the sun had risen high into the heavens and was visibly moving. It passed above the house with an extraordinary sailor. kind of motion. As the window came into shadow, I saw another extraordinary thing. The fine weather clouds were not passing easily across the sky. They were scampering as though a hundred mile an hour wind blew. As they passed, they changed their shapes a thousand times a minute as though riving with a strange life, and so were gone. And presently others came and whist away likewise. To the west I saw the sun drop with an incredible smooth, swivel. motion, eastward the shadows of every seen thing crept toward the coming grayness, and the movement

of the shadows was visible to me. A stealthy, writhing creep of the shadows of the wind-stirred trees. It was a strange sight. Quickly the room began to dark, and the sun slid down to the horizon, and seemed, as it were, to disappear from my sight almost with a jerk. Through the grayness of the swift evening, I saw the silver crescent of the moon fall. out of the southern sky toward the west. The evening seemed to merge into an almost instant night. Above me, the many constellations passed in a strange, noiseless, circling westward. The moon fell through that last thousand fathoms of the night golf and there was only the starlight. About this time, the buzzing in the corner ceased, telling me that the clock had run down.

A few minutes passed, and I saw the eastward sky lighten. A gray, sullen morning spread through all the darkness, and hid the march of the stars. Overhead there moved with a heavy, everlasting rolling, a vast, seamless sky of gray clouds, a cloud sky that would have seemed motionless through all the length of an ordinary Earth day. The sun was hidden from me, but for moment to moment the world would be. brighten and darken, brighton and darken, beneath waves of subtle light and shadow. The light shifted ever westward, and the night fell upon the earth. A vast rain seemed to come with it, and a wind of a most extraordinary loudness, as though the howling of a night-long gale

were packed into the space of no more than a minute. This noise passed almost immediately, and the clouds broke, so that once more I could see the sky. The stars were flying westward with an astounding speed. It came to me now for the first time, that, though the noise of the wind had passed, yet a constant blurred sound was in my ears. Now that I noticed it, I was aware that it had been with me all the time. It was the world noise. And then, even as I grasped that so much comprehension and there came the eastward light. No more than a few heartbeats and the sun rose swiftly. Through the trees I saw it, and then it was above the trees.

Up, up, it soared, and all the world was light. It passed with a swift, steady swing to its highest altitude and thence fell westward. I saw the day roll visibly over my head. A few light clouds flittered northward and vanished. The sun went down with one swift clear plunge and there was about me. For a few seconds. the darker growing gray of the gloaming. Southward and westward the moon was sinking rapidly.

The night had come already. A minute it seemed, and the moon fell those remaining fathoms of dark sky. Another minute or so, and the eastward sky glowed with the coming dawn. The sun leapt upon me with a frightening abruptness and soared ever more swiftly toward the zenith. Then suddenly a fresh thing came to my sight. A black thunder-cloud rushed up out of the south and seemed to leap all the arc of the sky in a single instant. As it came I saw that its advancing edge flapped like a monstrous black cloth in the heaven twirling and undulating rapidly with a horrid suggestiveness. In an instant all the air was full of rain, and a hundred lightning flashes seemed to flood downward as it were in one great shower.

In the same second of time the world noise was drowned in the world. the roar of the wind, and then my ears ached under the stunning impact of the thunder. And in the midst of this storm the night came, and then within the space of another minute the storm had passed, and there was only the constant blur of the world noise on my hearing. Overhead, the stars were sliding quickly westward. Something, mayhap's the particular speed to which they had attained, brought home to me for the first time, a keen realization of the knowledge that it was the world that revolved. I seemed to see suddenly the world,

a vast dark mass revolving visibly against the stars. The dawn and the sun seemed to come together so greatly had the speed of the world revolution increased. The sun drove up and one long, steady curve, past its highest point, and swept down into the western sky and disappeared. I was scarcely conscious of evening, so brief was it? Then I was watching the flying constellations and the westward hastening moon. In but a space of seconds so it seemed it was sliding swiftly downward through the night blue

and then was gone. And almost directly came the morning. And now there seemed to come a strange acceleration. The sun made one clean, clear sweep through the sky and disappeared behind the westward horizon, and the night came and went with a like haste. As the succeeding day opened and closed upon the world, I was aware of a sweat of snow suddenly upon the earth. The night came, and almost immediately the day. In the brief leap of the sun I saw that the snow had vanished, and then once more it was night.

Thus matters were, and even after the many incredible things that I have seen, I experienced all the time a most profound awe. To see the sun rise and set within a space of time to be measured by seconds, To watch, after a little the moon leap, a pale and ever-growing orb up into the night sky and glide, with a strange swiftness through the vast arc of blue. And presently, to see the sun follow springing out of the eastern sky as though in chase and then again the night, with the swift and ghostly passing of starry constellations was all too much to view believingly. Yet so it was.

The day slipping from dawn to dusk, and the night sliding swiftly into day ever rapidly and more rapidly. The last three passages of the sun had shown me a snow-covered earth, which, and night had seemed for a few seconds, incredibly weird under the fast-shifting light of the soaring and falling moon. Now, however, for a little space, the sky was hidden by a sea of swaying lead. and white clouds which lightened and blackened alternately with the passage of day and night. The clouds rippled and vanished, and there was once more before me the vision of the swiftly

leaping sun and nights that came and went like shadows. Faster and faster spun the world, and now each day and night was completed within the space of but a few seconds and still the speed increased. It was a little later that I noticed that the sun had begun to have the suspicion of a trail a fire behind it. This was due evidently to the speed at which it apparently traversed the heavens. And as the day spared each one quicker than the last, the sun began to assume the appearance of a vast flaming comet. Author's footnote, the recluse uses this as an illustration, evidently in the sense of the popular conception of a comet. End of author's footnote.

flaring across the sky at short periodic intervals. At night the moon presented with much greater truth, a comet-like aspect. A pale and singularly clear, fast-traveling shape of fire, trailing streaks of cold flame. The stars show now merely as fine hairs of fire against the dark. Once I turned from the window and glanced at Pepper, in the flash of a day I saw that he slept quietly,

and I moved once more to my watching. The sun was now bursting up from the eastern horizon like a stupendous rocket, seeming to occupy no more than a second or two in hurling from east to west. I could no longer perceive the passage of clouds across the sky, which seemed to have darkened somewhat. The brief nights appeared to have lost the proper darkness of night, so that the hair like fire of the flying stars showed but dimly. As the speed increased the sun began to be.

a sway very slowly in the sky from south to north, and then, slowly again from north to south. So amid a strange confusion of mind, the hours passed. All this, while had pepper slept. Presently, feeling lonely and distraught, I called to him softly, but he took no notice. Again I called, raising my voice slightly, still he moved not. I walked over to where he lay and touched him with my foot to rouse him. At the action, gentle though it was, he fell to pieces. And that is what happened. He literally and actually crumbled into a moldering heap of bones and dust. For the space of perhaps a minute I stared down at the shapeless heap that had once been pepper. I stood, feeling stunned. What can have happened? I asked myself, not at once grasping the

grim significance of that little hill of ash. Then, as I stirred the heap with my foot, it occurred to me that this could only happen in a great space of time. Years and years. Outside the weaving, fluttering light held the world. Inside, I stood trying to understand what it meant, what that little pile of dust and dry bones on the carpet meant. But I could not think coherently. I glanced away round the room and Now, for the first time, noticed how dusty and old the place looked. Dust and dirt everywhere, piled in little heaps in the corners and spread about upon the furniture. The very carpet itself was invisible beneath a coating of the same, all-pervading material.

As I walked, little clouds of the stuff rose up from under my footsteps and assailed my nostrils, with a dry, bitter odor that made me wheeze huskily. Suddenly, as my glance fell again upon Pepper's remains, I stood still and gave voice to my confusion, questioning aloud whether the years were indeed passing, whether this which I had taken to be a form of vision was in truth a reality. I paused. A new thought had struck me. Quickly but with steps which for the first time I noticed tottered, I went across the room to the great pier-glass and looked in. It was too covered with grime to give back any reflection, and with trembling hands I began to rub off the dirt. Presently, I could see myself.

The thought that had come to me was confirmed instead of the great hail man, who scarcely looked fifty. I was looking at a bent, decrepit man whose shoulders stooped and whose face was wrinkled with the years of a century. The hair, which a few short hours ago, had been nearly cold. black, was now silvery white. Only the eyes were bright. Gradually I traced in that ancient man a faint resemblance to myself of other days. I turned away and tottered to the window. I knew now that I was old and the knowledge seemed to confirm my trembling walk. For little space I stared moodly out into the blurred vista of changeful landscape. Even in that short time a year passed, and with a petulant gesture I left the window. As I did so, I noticed that my hand shook

with the palsy of old age, and a short sobbed choked its way through my lips. For a little while I paced tremulously between the window and the table, my gaze wandering hither and tither uneasily. How dilapidated the room was! Everywhere lay the thick dust. Thick, sleep, and black. The fender was a shape of rust. The chains that held the brass clock weights had rusted through long ago, and now the weights lay on the floor beneath themselves two cones of their degree. As I glanced about, it seemed to me that I could see the very furniture of the room rotting and decaying before my eyes. Nor was this fancy on my part, for all at once the bookshelf along the sidewalk collapsed, with a cracking and rending of the room.

rotten wood, precipitating its contents upon the floor and filling the room with a smother of dusty atoms. How tired I felt. As I walked, it seemed that I could hear my dry joints creak and crack at every step. I wondered about my sister. Was she dead as well as pepper? All had happened so quickly and suddenly. This must be indeed. the beginning of the end of all things. It occurred to me to go to look for her, but I felt too weary. And then she had been so queer about these happenings of late. Of late.

I repeated the words and laughed feebly, mirthlessly, as the realization was born in upon me that I spoke of a time, half a century gone, half a century, It might have been twice as long. I moved slowly to the window and looked out once more across the world. I can best describe the passage of day and night at this period as a sort of gigantic, ponderous, flicker. Moment by moment. The acceleration of time continued so that at nights now I saw the moon,

only as a swaying trail of palish fire that varied from. a mere line of light to a nebulous path, and then dwindled again, disappearing periodically. The flicker of the days and nights quickened. The days had grown perceptively darker and a queer quality of dusk lay, as it were, in the atmosphere. The nights were so much lighter that the stars were scarcely to be seen, saving here and there an occasional hair-like line a fire that seemed to sway a little with the moon. Quicker and even quicker ran the flicker of day and night, and suddenly it seemed, I was aware that the flicker had died out, and instead there reigned a comparatively steady

light, which was shed upon all the world, from an eternal river of flame that swung up and down, north and south, in stupendous, mighty swings. The sky was now grown very much darker, and there was in the blue of it a heavy gloom, as though a vast blackness peered through it upon the earth. Yet there was in it also a strange, and awful clearness, and emptiness.

Periodically I had glimpses of a ghostly track of fire that swayed thin and darkly toward the sun's stream, vanished and reappeared. It was the scarcely visible moon stream. Looking out at the landscape, I was conscious again of a blurring sort of flitter that came either from the light of the ponderous swinging sunstream, or was the result of the incredibly rapid changes of the earth's surface. In every few moments, so it seemed the snow would lie suddenly upon the world

and vanish as abruptly as though an invisible giant flitted a white sheet off and on the earth. Time fled, and the weariness that was mine grew insupportable. I turned from the window and walked once across the room, the heavy dust, deadening the sound of my footsteps. Each step that I took seemed a greater effort than the one before. An intolerable ache knew me in every joint and limb as I trod, my way with a weary uncertainty. By the opposite wall, I came to a weak pause and wondered dimly.

What was my intent? I looked to my left and saw my old chair. The thought of sitting in it brought a faint sense of comfort to my bewildered wretchedness. Yet because I was so weary and old and tired, I would scarcely brace my mind to do anything but stand and wish myself past those few yards. I rocked as I stood. The floor even seemed a place for rest, but the dust lay so thick and sleepy and black. I turned with a great effort of will and made toward my chair.

I reached it with a groan of thankfulness. I sat down. Everything about me appeared to be growing dim. It was also strained. and unthought of. Last night I was a comparatively strong, though elderly man. And now, only a few hours later. I looked at the little dust heap that had once been pepper.

Hours! And I laughed, a feeble, bitter laugh, a shrill, cackling laugh, that shocked my dimming senses. For a while I must have. have dozed. Then I opened my eyes with a start. Somewhere across the room there had been a muffled noise of something falling. I looked and saw vaguely a cloud of dust hovering above a pile of debris. Nearer the door something else tumbled with a crash. It was one of the cupboards, but I was tired and took little notice. I closed my eyes and sat there in a state of drowsy, semi-unconsciousness. once or twice as though coming through thick mists i heard noises faintly then i must have slept end of chapter fifteen recording by john van stan savannah georgia

chapter sixteen of the house on the borderland by william hope hodgson this sleeper-vox recording is in the public domain the awakening i awoke with a start for a moment i wondered where i was Then memory came to me. The room was still lit with that strange light, half sun, half moonlight. I felt refreshed, and the tired weary ache had left me. I went slowly across to the window and looked out. Overhead the river of flame drove up and down, north and south, in a dancing semicircle of fire, as a mighty sleigh in the loom of time it seemed, in a sudden. fancy of mine, to be beating home the picks of the years, for so vastly had the passage of time

been accelerated that there was no longer any sense of the sun passing from east to west. The only apparent movement was the north and south beat of the sunstream, that had become so swift now as to be better described as a quiver. As I peered out, there came to me a sudden, inconsequent memory of that last journey among the outer worlds. I remembered the sudden vision that had come to me as I neared the solar system of the fast whirling planets about the sun, as though the governing quality of time had been held in abeyance, and the machine of a universe allowed to run down an eternity in a few moments or hours. The memory passed along with a, but partially comprehended, suggestion that I had

been permitted a glimpse into further time spaces. I stared out again seemingly at the quake of the sunstream. The speed seemed to increased even as I looked. Several lifetimes came and went as I watched. Suddenly it struck me with a sort of grotesque seriousness that I was still alive. I thought of pepper and wondered how it was that I had not followed his fate. He had reached the time of his dying and had passed, probably through sheer lengths of years. And he was I, alive, hundreds of thousands of centuries after my rightful period of years. For a time I mused absently. Yesterday.

I stopped suddenly. Yesterday. There was no yesterday. The yesterday of which I spoke had been swallowed up in the abyss of years. Ages gone. I grew dazed with much thinking. Presently I turned from the window and glanced around the room. It seemed different, strangely and utterly different.

Then I knew what it was that made it appear so strange. It was bare. There was not a piece of furniture in the room, not even a solitary fitting of any sort. Gradually my amazement went as I remembered that this was but the inevitable end of the process of decay, which I had witnessed commencing before my sleep. Thousands of years, millions of years! Over the floor was spread a deep layer of dust that reached halfway up to the window seat. It had grown immeasurably whilst I slept and represented the dust of untold ages.

Undoubtedly, atoms of the old decayed furniture helped to swell its bulk, and somewhere among it all mouldered the long-ago dead. pepper. All at once, it occurred to me that I had no recollection of wading knee-deep through all that dust after I awoke. True, an incredible age of years had passed since I approached the window, but that was evidently as nothing compared with the countless spaces of time that I conceived had vanished whilst I was sleeping. I remembered now that I had fallen asleep sitting in my old chair. Had it gone? I glanced toward where it had stood.

Of course there was no chair to be seen. I could not satisfy myself whether it had disappeared after my waking or before. If it had mouldered under me, surely I should have been waked by the collapse. Then I remembered that the thick dust, which covered the floor, would have been sufficient to soften my fall so that it was quite possible. I had slept upon the dust for a million years or more. As these thoughts wandered through my brain, I glanced again casually to where the chair had stood. Then for the first time I noticed that there were no marks in the dust of my footprints between it and the window. But then ages of years had passed since I had awakened.

Tens of thousands of years! My look rested thoughtfully again upon the place where once had been. had stood my chair. Suddenly, I passed from abstraction to intentness. For there in its standing place I made out a long undulation rounded off with the heavy dust. Yet it was not so much hidden but that I could tell what it caused it. I knew, and shivered at the knowledge, that it was a human body.

Age is dead, lying there beneath the place where I had slept. It was lying on its right side, its back turned toward. me. I could make out and trace each curve and outline softened and molded as it were in the black dust. In a vague sort of way I tried to account for its presence there. Slowly, I began to grow bewildered as the thought came to me that it lay just about where I must have fallen when the chair collapsed. Gradually, an idea began to form itself within my brain. A thought that shook my spirit. It seemed hideous and insupportable, yet it grew upon me steadily until it became a conviction. The body under that coating, that shroud of dust, was neither more nor less than my

own dead shell. I did not attempt to prove it. I knew it now and wondered I had not known it all along. I was a bodiless thing. A while I stood, trying to adjust my thoughts to this new problem. In time, how many thousands of years I know not, I attained to some degree of quietude, sufficient to enable me to pay attention to what was transpiring around me. Now I saw that the elongated mound had sunk, collapsed, level with the rest of the spreading dust,

and fresh atoms impalpable had settled above that mixture of grave powder, which the aeons had ground. A long while I stood, turned from the window. Gradually I grew more collected while the world slipped across the centuries into the future. Presently I began a survey of the room. Now I saw that time was beginning its destructive work even on the strange old building. That it had stood through all the years was it seemed to me proof that it was something different from any other house. I do not think somehow that I had thought of its decaying.

Though why I could not have said. It was not until I had meditated upon the matter for some considerable time that I fully realized that the extraordinary space of time through which it had stood was sufficient to have utterly pulverized the very stones of which it was built, had they and taken from any earthly quarry. Yes, it was undoubtedly mouldering now. All the plaster had gone from the walls, even as the woodwork of the room had gone, many ages before. While I stood in contemplation a piece of glass

from one of the small diamond-shaped panes dropped, with a dull tap, amid the dust upon the sill behind me, and crumbled into a little heap of powder. As I turned from contemplating it I saw light, between a couple of the stones that formed the outer wall. Evidently the mortar was falling away. After a while I turned once more to the window and peered out. I discovered now that the speed of time had become enormous.

The lateral quiver of the sun stream had grown so swift as to cause the dancing semicircle of flame to merge into and disappear in a sheet of fire. That covered half the southern sun's side. sky from east to west. From the sky I glanced down to the gardens. They were just a blur of a paleish, dirty green. I had a feeling that they stood higher than in the old days, a feeling that they were nearer my window, as though they had risen bodily. Yet they were still a long way below me, for the rock, over the mouth of the pit on which this house stands, arches up to a great height.

It was later that I noticed a change in the constant color of the gardens. The pale, dirty green was growing ever paler and paler, toward white. At last, after a great space they became grayish white and stayed thus for a very long time. Finally, however, the grayness began to fade, even as had the green into a dead white. And this remained constant and unchanged. And by this I knew that at last snow lay upon all the northern world. And so by millions of years, time winged onward through eternity to the end. The end of which in the old earth days I had thought remotely and in hazily speculative fashion.

And now it was approaching in a manner of which none had ever dreamed. I recollect that. About this time I began to have a lively, though morbid curiosity. as to what would happen when the end came. But I seemed strangely without imaginings. All this while, the steady process of decay was continuing. The few remaining pieces of glass had long ago vanished, and every now and then a soft thud,

and a little cloud of rising dust would tell of some fragment of fallen mortar or stone. I looked up again to the fiery sheet that quaked in the heavens above me, and far down into the southern sky. As I looked, the impression was borne in upon me that it had lost some of its fiery brilliancy, that it was duller, deeper hued. I glanced down once more to the blurred white of the world's scape. Sometimes, my look returned to the burning sheet of dulling flame

that was and yet hid the sun. At times, I glanced behind me into the growing dusk of the great, silent room with its eon carpet of sleeping dust. So I watched through the fleeting ages, lost in soul-wearing thoughts and wanderings, and possessed with a new weariness. End of Chapter 16, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia. Chapter 17 of the House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson.

This Lebervox recording is in the public domain. The slowing rotation. It might have been a million years later that I perceived beyond possibility of doubt, that the fiery sheet that lit the world was indeed darkening. Another vast space went by, and the whole enormous flame had sunk to a deep copper color. Gradually it darkened from copper to copper red, and from this at times, to a deep, heavy purplish tint, with— in it a strange loom of blood.

Although the light was decreasing, I could perceive no diminishment in the apparent speed of the sun. It still spread itself in that dazzling veil of speed. The world, so much of it as I could see, had assumed a dreadful shade of gloom, as though in the very deed the last day of the world's approached. The sun was dying. Of that there could be little doubt, and still the earth. earth world onward through space and all the eons. At this time, I remember an extraordinary

sense of bewilderment took me. I found myself later wandering mentally amid an odd chaos of fragmentary modern theories and the old biblical story of the world's ending. Then, for the first time there flashed across me the memory that the sun within its system of planets was and had been traveling through space at an incredible speed, abruptly the question rose, Where? For a very great time I pondered this matter, but finally with a certain sense of the futility of my puzzlings,

I let my thoughts wander to other things. I grew to wondering how much longer the house would stand. Also I queried to myself, whether I should be doomed to stay bodily upon the, earth through the dark time that I knew was coming. From these thoughts I fell again to speculations upon the possible direction of the sun's journey through space. And so another great while passed. Gradually as time fled, I began to feel the chill of a great winter. Then I remembered that with the sun dying, the cold must be necessarily extraordinarily intense. Slowly, slowly as the eons

slipped into eternity, the earth sank into a heavier and redder gloom. The dull flame in the firmament took on a deeper tint, very somber and turbid. Then at last, it was born upon me that there was a change. The fiery gloomy curtain of flame that hung quaking overhead and down away into the southern sky began to thin and contract, and in it as one sees the fast vibration. of a jarred harp string. I saw once more the sun stream quivering, giddily, north and south.

Slowly the likeness to a sheet of fire disappeared, and I saw plainly the slowing beat of the sunstream. Yet even then the speed of its swing was inconceivably swift, and all the time the brightness of the fiery arc grew ever duller. Underneath the world loomed dimly, an indistinct ghostly region. Overhead the river of flame swayed slower and even slower, until at last it swung to the north and south and great ponderous beats. That lasted through seconds. A long space went by, and now each sway of the great belt lasted nigh a minute,

so that after a great while I ceased to distinguish it as a visible movement, and the streaming fire ran in a steady river of dull flame, across the deadly-looking sky. An indefinite period passed, and it seemed that the arc of fire became less sharply defined. It appeared to me to grow more attenuated, and I thought blackish streaks showed occasionally. Presently as I watched the smooth onward flow ceased, and I was able to perceive that there came a momentary but regular darkening of the world. This grew until once more night descended in the world.

in short but periodic intervals upon the wearying earth. Longer and longer became the nights, and the days equaled them, so that at last the day and the night grew to the duration of seconds in length, and the sun showed once more like an almost invisible coppery red-colored ball, with the glowing mistiness of its flight. Corresponding to the dark lines, showing at times in its trail, there were now distinct to be seen on the half-visible sun itself great dark belts. Year after year flashed into the past, and the days and nights spread into minutes. The sun had ceased to have the appearance of a tale and now rose and set, a tremendous globe

of a glowing copper-bronce hue, in parts ringed with blood-red bands, in others with the dusky ones that I have already mentioned. These circles, both red and black, were a varying form. thickness. For a time I was at a loss to account for their presence. Then it occurred to me that it was scarcely likely that the sun would cool evenly all over, and that these markings would do probably to differences in temperature in the various areas. The red representing those parts where the heat was still fervent, and the black, those portions which were already comparatively cool.

It struck me as a peculiar thing that the sun should cool. and evenly defined rings, until I remembered that possibly they were but isolated patches, to which the enormous rotatory speed of the sun had imparted a belt-like appearance. The sun itself was very much greater than the sun I had known in the old world days, and from this I argued that it was considerably nearer. At nights, the moon. Author's footnote, no further mention is made of the moon. From what is said here it is evident that our satellite had greatly increased

its distance from the earth. Possibly at a later age it may even have broken loose from our attraction. I cannot but regret that no light is shed on this point. End authors' footnote. Still showed, but small and remote, and the light she reflected was so dull and weak, that she seemed little more than the small dim ghost of the olden moon, I had known. Gradually the days and nights lengthened out until they equal to space somewhat less than one of the old earth hours, the sun rising and setting like a great ruddy bronze disc, crossed with ink-black bars.

About this time I found myself able once more to see the gardens, with clearness. For the world had now grown very still and changeless. Yet I am not correct in saying gardens, for there were no good. gardens, nothing that I knew were recognized. In place thereof I looked out upon a vast plain stretching away into the distance. A little to my left, there was a low range of hills. Everywhere there was a uniform white covering of snow in places rising into hummocks and ridges. It was only now that I recognized how really great had been the snowfall. In places it was vastly deep, as was witnessed by a great up-leaping wave-shaped hill away to my right, though it is not

impossible that this was due in part to some rise in the surface of the ground. Strangely enough, the range of low hills to my left, already mentioned, was not entirely covered with the universal snow. Instead I could see their bare, dark sides, showing in several places, and everywhere and always there reigned an incredible death silence and desolation. the immutable, awful quiet of a dying world. All this time, the days and nights were lengthening perceptibly. Already each day occupied maybe some two hours from dawn to dusk.

At night I had been surprised to find that there were very few stars overhead and these small, though of an extraordinary brightness, which I attributed to the peculiar but clear blackness of the night-time. Away to the north, I could discern a nebulous, sort of mistiness, not unlike in appearance a small portion of the Milky Way, it might have been an extremely remote star cluster. Or, the thought came to me suddenly. Perhaps it was the side-reel universe that I had known, and now left far behind, forever, a small dimly glowing mist of stars, far in the depths of space. Still, the days and nights lengthened slowly, each time the sun rose

duller than it had set, and the dark belts increased in breadth. About this time there happened a fresh thing. The sun, earth, and sky were suddenly darkened, and apparently blotted out for a brief space. I had a sense, a certain awareness. I could learn little by sight, that the earth was enduring a very great fall of snow. Then in an instant the veil that had obscured everything vanished, and I looked out once more. A marvelous sight met my mind. gaze, the hollow in which this house with its garden stands was brimmed with snow." Author's footnote, conceivably frozen air. End author's footnote.

It lift over the sill of my window. Everywhere it lay a great level stretch of white, which caught and reflected gloomily the somber, coppery glows of the dying sun. The world had become a shadowless plain. From horizon to horizon. I glanced up at the sun. It shone with an extraordinary dull clearness. I saw it now, as one who until then had seen it,

only through a partially obscuring medium. All about it the sky had become black, with a clear, deep blackness, frightful in its nearness, and its unmeasured deep, and its utter unfriendliness. For a great time I looked into it, it newly and shaken and fearful. It was so near. Had I been a child, I might have expressed some of my sensation and distress by saying that the sky had lost its roof. Later I turned and

beard about me into the room. Everywhere it was covered with a thin shroud of the all-pervading white. I could see it but dimly, by reason of the somber light that now lit the world. It appeared to cling to the ruined walls, and the thick soft dust of the years that covered the floor knee-deep was nowhere visible. The snow must have blown in through the open framework of the windows, yet in no place had it drifted but lay everywhere about the great old room smooth and level. Moreover, there had been no wind these many thousand years, but there was the snow. Author's footnote. See previous footnote. This would explain the snow within the room. And author's footnote, as I have told. And all the earth was silent, and there was a cold such as no living man can ever have known. The earth was now illuminated by day with the most doleful light, beyond my power to describe.

It seemed as though I looked at the great plain through the medium of a bronze-tinted sea. It was evident that the Earth's rotatory movement was departing steadily. The end came, all at once. The night had been the longest yet, and when the dying sun showed at last above the world's edge, I had grown so wearied of the dark that I greeted it as a friend. It rose steadily, until about twenty degrees above the horizon. Then it stopped suddenly, and after a strange retrogramming, movement hung motionless, a great shield in the sky.

Author's footnote, I am confounded that neither here nor later on does the recluse make any further mention of the continued north and south movement, apparent, of course, of the sun from solstice to solstice. End of author's footnote. Only the circular rim of the sun showed bright. Only this, and one thin streak of light near. the equator. Gradually, even this thread of light died out, and now all that was left of our great and glorious sun was a vast dead disk, rimmed with a thin circle of bronze-red light.

End of Chapter 17. Recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia. Chapter 18 of the House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. This Sleeper-Vox recording was in the public domain. The Green Star The world was held in a savage gloom. Cold and intolerable. Outside all was quiet. Quiet!

From the dark room behind me came the occasional soft. Thud! Author's footnote. At this time the sound-carrying atmosphere must have been either incredibly attenuated, or more probably non-existent. In the light of this it cannot be supposed that these are any other noises would have been apparent to living ears, to hearing as we in the material body understand that sense. End of author's footnote.

A falling matter. Fragments of rotting stone. So time passed, and night grasped the world, wrapping it in wrappings of impenetrable blackness. There was no night sky, as we know it. Even the few straggling stars had vanished conclusively. I might have been in a shuttered room without a light for all that I could see. Only in the impalpableness of gloom opposite burnt that vast,

encircling hair of dull fire. Beyond this, there was no ray in all the vastitude of night that surrounded me, save that far in the north that soft, mist-like glow still shone. Silently, years moved on. What period of time passed I shall never know. It seemed to me waiting there that eternities came and went stealthily. And still I watched. I could see only the glow of the sun's edge at times.

For now it had commenced to come and go, lighting up a while, and again becoming extinguished. All at once, during one of these periods of life, a sudden flame cut across the night, a quick glare that lit up the dead earth shortly, giving me a glimpse of its flat, lonesomeness. The light appeared to come from the sun, shooting out from somewhere near its center diagonally.

A moment I gazed, startled. Then the leaping flame sank, and the gloom fell again. but now it was not so dark, and the sun was belted by a thin line of vivid white light. I stared intently. Had a volcano broken out on the sun? Yet I negative the thought as soon as formed. I felt that the light had been far too intensely white

and large for such a cause. Another idea there was that suggested itself to me. It was that one of the inner planets had fallen into the sun, becoming incandescent under that impact. This theory appealed to me as being more plausible, and accounting more satisfactorily for the extraordinary size and brilliance of the blaze that had lit up the dead world so unexpectedly. Full of interest and emotion I stared across the darkness

at that line of white fire, cutting the night. One thing it told me unmistakably, the sun was yet rotating at an enormous speed. author's footnote I can only suppose that the time of the earth's yearly journey had ceased to bear its present relative proportion to the period of the sun's rotation End of author's footnote

Thus I knew that the years were still fleeting at an incalculable rate Though so far as the earth was concerned Life and Light and Time Were things belonging to a period lost in the long-gone ages After that one burst of flame, the light had shone only as an encircling band of bright fire. Now, however, as I watched, it began slowly to sink into a ruddy tint and, later to a dark, copper-red color much as the sun had done. Presently it sank to a deeper hue and in a still further space of time.

It began to fluctuate, having periods of glowing and anon dying. Thus, after a great while, it disappeared. Long before this, the smouldering edge of the sun had deadened into blackness, and so in that supremely future time the world, dark and intensely silent, rode on its gloomy orbit around the ponderous mass of the dead sun. My thoughts at this period can be scarcely described. At first they were chaotic and wanting in coherence. but later as the ages came and went my soul seemed to imbibe the very essence of the oppressive solitude and dreariness that held the earth. With this feeling there came a wonderful clearness of thought, and I realized despairingly that the world might wander forever through that enormous night.

For a while the unwholesome idea filled me with a sensation of overbearing desolation, so that I could have cried like a child. In time, however, this feeling grew almost insensibly less, and an unreasoning hope possessed me. Patently I waited. From time to time the noise of dropping particles behind in the room came dully to my ears. Once I heard a loud crash, and turned instinctively to look, forgetting for the moment the impenetrable night in which every detail was submerged. In a while my gaze sought the heavens.

turning unconsciously toward the north. Yes, the nebulous glow still showed. Indeed, I could have almost imagined that it looked somewhat plainer. For a long time I kept my gaze fixed upon it, feeling in my lonely soul that its soft haze was in some way a tie with the past. Strange, the trifles from which one can suck comfort, and yet had I but known. But I shall come to that in its proper time, for a very long space I watched, without experiencing

any of the desire for sleep that would so soon have visited me in the old earth days. How I should have welcomed it, if only to have passed the time away from my perplexities and thoughts. Several times the comfortless sound of some great peace of masonry falling disturbed my meditations, and once it seemed I could hear whispering in the room. behind me. Yet it was utterly useless to try to see anything. Such blackness as existed scarcely can be conceived. It was palpable and hideously brutal to the senses as though something dead pressed up against me, something soft and icily cold. Under all this, there grew up

within my mind a great and overwhelming distress of uneasiness that left me but to drop me into an uncomfortable brooding. I felt that I must fight against it. And presently hoping to distract my thoughts, I turned to the window and looked up toward the north in search of the nebulous whiteness, which still I believe to be the far and misty glowing of the universe we had left. Even as I raised my eyes, I was thrilled with a feeling of wonder. For now the hazy light had resolved into a single great star, of vivid green. As I stared astonished, the thought flashed into my mind that the earth must be travelling toward the star, not a way, as I imagined.

Next, that it could not be the universe the earth had left, but possibly an outlying star belonging to some vast star cluster hidden in the enormous depths of space. With a sense of commingled awe and curiosity I watched it. wondering what new thing was to be revealed to me. For a while, vague thoughts and speculations occupied me, during which my gaze dwelt insatiably upon that one spot of light in the otherwise pit-like darkness. Hope grew up within me, banishing the oppression of despair

that had seemed to stifle me. Wherever the earth was traveling, it was at least going once more toward the realms of light. Light! One must spend an eternity-wrapped in soundless night to understand the full horror of being without it. Slowly, but surely, the star grew upon my vision until in time. It shone as brightly as had the planet Jupiter in the old Earth days. With increased size, its color became more impressive,

reminding me of a huge emerald, scintillating rays of fire across the world. Years fled away in silence, and the green star. grew into a great splash of flame in the sky. A little later I saw a thing that filled me with amazement. It was the ghostly outline of a vast crescent in the night, a gigantic new moon, seeming to be growing out of the surrounding gloom. Utterly bemused, I stared at it.

It appeared to be quite close, comparatively, and I puzzled to understand how the earth had come so near to it without my having seen it before. The light thrown by the star grew stronger, and presently I was aware that it was possible to see the earthscape again, though indistinctly. A while I stared, trying to make out whether I could distinguish any detail of the world's surface, but I found the light insufficient. In a little I gave up the attempt and glanced once more toward the star.

Even in the short space that my attention had been diverted, it had increased the light considerably, and seemed now to my bewildered sight, about a quarter of the size of the full moon. The light it threw was extraordinarily powerful, yet its color was so abominably unfamiliar that such of the world as I could see showed unreal, more as though I looked out upon a landscape of shadow than aught else. All this time the great crescent was increasing in brightness, and began now to shine with a perceptible shade of green. Steadily the star increased in size and brilliancy until it showed,

fully as large as half a moon. And it grew greater and brighter, so did the vast crescent throw out more and more light, though of an ever-deepening hue of green. Under the combined blaze of their radiances, the wilderness that stretched before me became steadily more visible. Soon I seemed able to stare across the whole world. which now appeared beneath the strange light terrible in its cold and awful flat dreariness. It was a little later that my attention was drawn to the fact that the great star of green flame was slowly sinking out of the north toward the east. At first I could scarcely believe that I saw aright,

but soon there could be no doubt that it was so. Gradually it sank, and as it fell the vast crescent of glowing green began to dwindle and dwindle, until it became a mere arc of light against the livid-colored sky. Later it vanished, disappearing in the self-same spot from which I had seen it slowly emerge. By this time, the star had come to within some thirty degrees of the hidden horizon. In size it could now have rivaled the moon at its fool, though even yet I could not distinguish its disc. This fact led me to conceive that it was still an extraordinary distance away, and this being so I knew that its size must be huge, beyond the conception of man to understand or imagine. Suddenly as I watched, the lower edge of the star vanished, cut by a straight, dark line. A minute, or a century, passed, and it dipped lower until the half of it had disappeared from sight.

Far away out on the green plain, I saw a monstrous shadow blotting it out and advancing swiftly. Only a third of the star was visible now. Then, like a flash, the solution of this extraordinary phenomenon revealed itself to me. The star was sinking behind the enormous mass of the dead sun, or rather the sun, obedient to its attraction, was rising toward it. author's footnote. A careful reading of the manuscript suggests that either the sun is traveling on an orbit of great eccentricity, or else that it was approaching the green star on a lessening orbit. And at this moment I conceive it to be finally torn directly from its oblique course by the gravitational pool of the immense star. End of author's footnote. With the earth following in its trail, as these thoughts explain,

expanded in my mind the star vanished, being completely hidden by the tremendous bulk of the sun. Over the earth there fell once more the brooding night. With the darkness came an intolerable feeling of loneliness and dread. For the first time I thought of the pit and its inmates. After that there rose in my memory the still more terrible thing that had haunted the shores of the sea of sleep and lurked in the shadows of this old building. Where were they? I wondered, and shivered with miserable thoughts. For time, fear held me, and I prayed, wildly and incoherently, for some ray of light with which to dispel the cold

blackness that enveloped the world. How long I waited it is impossible to say, certainly for a very great period, then all at once I saw. saw a loom of light shine out ahead. Gradually it became more distinct. Suddenly a ray of vivid green flashed across the darkness. At the same moment I saw a thin line of livid flame far in the night. An instant it seemed, and it had grown into a great clot of fire, beneath which the world lay bathed in a blaze of emerald green light.

Steadily it grew, until presently the whole of the green star had come into sight again. but now it could be scarcely called a star, for it had increased to vast proportions, being incomparably greater than the sun had been in the olden time. Then as I stared I became aware that I could see the edge of the lifeless sun glowing like a great crescent moon. Slowly its lighted surface broadened out to me until half of its diameter was visible, and the star began to drop away on my right. time passed and the earth moved on slowly traversing the tremendous face of the dead sun.

Author's footnote, It will be noticed here that the earth was slowly traversing the tremendous face of the dead sun. No explanation is given of this and we must conclude either that the speed of time has slowed or else that the earth was actually progressing on its orbit at a rate slow when measured by existing standards. A careful study of the manuscript, however, leads me to conclude that the speed of time had been steadily decreasing for a very considerable period. End of author's footnote. Gradually, as the earth traveled forward, the star fell still more to the right, until at last. It shone on the back of the house, sending a flood of broken rays in through the skeleton-like walls.

Glancing upward, I saw that much of the ceiling had vanished. vanished, enabling me to see that the upper stories were even more decayed. The roof had evidently gone entirely, and I could see the green effulgence of the starlight shining in slantingly. End of Chapter 18, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia. Chapter 19 of the House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. This Lieberbox recording is in the public domain. The End of the Solar System

From the abutment where once had been the windows, through which I had watched that first fatal dawn, I could see that the sun was hugely greater than it had been, when first the star lit the world. So great was it that its lower edge seemed almost to touch the far horizon. Even as I watched I imagined that it drew closer. The radiance of green that lit the frozen earth grew steadily brighter. for long space things were. Then, on a sudden, I saw that the sun was changing shape and growing smaller,

just as the moon would have done in past time. In a while only a third of the illuminated part was turned toward the earth. The star bore away on the left. Gradually as the world moved on, the star shone upon the front of the house once more, while the sun showed only as a great bow of green fire. An instant it seemed, and the sun had vanished. The star was still fully visible. Then the earth moved into the black shadow of the sun, and all was night.

Night, black, starless, and intolerable. Filled with demultuous thoughts I watched across the night, waiting. Years it may have been, and then in the dark house behind me, the clotted stillness of the world was broken. I seemed to hear a soft pattern. adding of many feet and a faint, inarticulate whisper of sound grew on my senses. I looked round to the blackness and saw a multitude of eyes. As I stared, they increased, and appeared to come toward me. For an instant, I stood, unable to move, then a hideous swine noise.

Author's footnote. See First Footnote, Chapter 18. End of Author's Footnote. Rose up into the night, and at that I leapt from the window, out onto the frozen world. I have a confused notion of having run a while, and after that I just waited, waited. Several times, I heard shrieks, but always as though from a distance, except for these sounds I had no idea of the whereabouts of the house. Time moved onward. I was conscious of little save a sensation of cold and hopelessness and fear. In age it seemed, and there came a glow that told me of the coming light. It grew tardily.

Then, with a loom of unearthly glory, the first ray from the green star struck over the edge of the dark sun, and lit the world. It fell upon a great ruined structure some two hundred yards away. It was the house. Staring I saw a fearsome sight, over its walls crawled a legion of unholy things, almost covering the old building, from tottering towers to base.

I could see them plainly. They were the swine creatures. The world moved out into the light of the star, and I saw that. Now it seemed to stretch across a quarter of the heavens. The glory of its livid light was so tremendous that it appeared to fill the sky with quivering flames. Then I saw the sun. It was so close that half of its diameter

lay below the horizon, and as the world circled across its face it seemed to tower right up into the sky, a stupendous dome of emerald-colored fire. From time to time I glanced toward the house, but the swine things seemed unaware of my proximity. Years appeared to pass slowly. The earth had almost reached the center of the sun's disk, the light from the green sun, as now it must be called, shown through the interstices that. gapped the moldered walls of the old house, giving them the appearance of being wrapped in green flames. The swine creatures still crawled about the walls.

Suddenly, there rose a loud roar of swine voices, and up from the center of the roofless house shot a vast column of blood-red flame. I saw the little twisted towers and turrets flash into fire, yet still preserving their twisted crookedness. The beams of the green sun beat upon the house. and intermingled with its lurid glows so that it appeared a blazing furnace of red and green fire. Fascinated. I watched. Until an overwhelming sense of coming danger drew my attention. I glanced up and at once it was born upon me that the sun was closer, so close in fact that it seemed to

overhang the world. Then I know not how. I was caught up into strange high. lights, floating like a bubble in the awful effulgence. Far below me I saw the earth, with the burning house leaping into an ever-growing mountain of flame. Round about it the ground appeared to be glowing, and in places heavy wreaths of yellow smoke assented from the earth. It seemed as though the world were becoming ignited from that one plague-spot of fire. Faintly I could see the swine things.

They appeared quite unharmed. Then the ground seemed to cave in suddenly in the house with its load of foul creatures, disappeared into the depths of the earth, sending a strange, blood-colored cloud into the heights. I remembered the hell pit under the house. In a while I looked round. The huge bulk of the sun rose high above me. The distance between it and the earth grew rapidly less. Suddenly the earth appeared to shoot forward.

In a moment it had traversed the space between it and the sun. I heard no sound, but out from the sun's face gushed an ever-growing tongue of dazzling flame. It seemed to leap almost to the distant green sun, shearing through the emerald light a very cataract of blinding fire. It reached its limit and sank, and on the sun glowed a vast splash of burning white. The grave of the earth. The sun was very close to me now. Presently I found that I was rising higher until at last I rode above it, in the emptiness. The green sun was now so huge that its breath seemed to fill up all the sky ahead.

I looked down and noted that the sun was passing directly beneath me. A year may have gone by, or a century, and I was left suspended alone. The sun showed far in front a black, circular mass, again. the molten splendor of the great green orb. Near one edge I observed that a lurid glow had appeared, marking the place where the earth had fallen. By this I knew that the long-dead sun was still revolving, though with great slowness. A far to my right, I seemed to catch at times a faint glow of whitish light. For a great time I was uncertain whether to put this down to fancy or not. Thus for a while I stared with fresh wanderings, until at last I knew that it was no

imaginary thing, but in reality. It grew brighter, and presently there slid out of the green a pale globe of softest white. It came nearer, and I saw that it was apparently surrounded by a robe of gently glowing clouds. Time passed. I glanced toward the diminishing sun. It showed only as a dark blot on the face of the green sun. As I watched, I saw it grow smaller, steadily as though rushing toward the superior orb at an immense speed. Intently I stared, what would happen? I was conscious of extraordinary emotions as I realized that it would strike the green sun.

It grew no bigger than a pea, and I looked with my whole sun. soul to witness the final end of our system. That system which had borne the world through so many eons with its multitudinous sorrows and joys, and now. Suddenly, something crossed my vision, cutting from sight all vestige of the spectacle I watched with such soul interest. What happened to the dead sun I did not see. But I have no reason, in the light of that which I saw afterward, do disbelieve that it fell into the strange fire of the green sun, and so perished. And then suddenly an extraordinary question rose in my mind, whether this stupendous globe of green fire might not be the vast central sun,

the great sun round which our universe and countless others revolve. I felt confused. I thought of the probable end of the dead sun, and another suggestion. came dumbly. Do the dead stars make the green sun their grave? The idea appealed to me with no sense of grotesqueness, but rather as something both possible and probable. End of Chapter 19. Recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia. Chapter 20 of the House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. This Lieberbox recording is in the public domain.

the celestial globes for a while many thoughts crowded my mind so that i was unable to do aught save stare blindly before me i seemed whelmed in a sea of doubt and wonder and sorrowful remembrance it was later that i came out of my bewilderment i looked about dazedly thus i saw so extraordinary a sight that for a while i could scarcely bleakily i could scarcely believe I believe I was not still wrapped in the visionary tumult of my own thoughts. Out of the raining green had grown a boundless river of softly shimmering globes. Each one enfolded in a wondrous fleece of pure cloud. They reached both above and below me to an unknown distance, and not only hid the shining of the green sun, but supplied, in place thereof a tender glow of light that suffused itself around me, like unto nothing I have ever seen before or since.

In a little I noticed that there was about these spheres a sort of transparency, almost as though they were formed of clouded crystal, within which burned of radiance, gentle and subdued. They moved on, past me, continually, floating onward at no great speed, but rather as though they had eternity before them. A great while I watched, and. could perceive no end to them. At times I seemed to distinguish faces amid the cloudiness, but strangely indistinct as though partly real and partly formed of the mistiness to which they showed.

For a long time I waited passively with a sense of growing content. I had no longer that feeling of unutterable loneliness, but felt rather that I was less alone than I had been for copas of years. This feeling of contentment increased so that I would have been satisfied to float in company with those celestial globules forever. Ages slipped by, and I saw the shadowy faces, with increased frequency, also with greater plainness. Whether this was due to my soul having become more attuned to its surroundings, I cannot tell. Probably it was so. But however this may be, I am a sure now, only of the fact that I became steadily more conscious of a new mystery about me, telling me that I had indeed penetrated within the borderland of some unthought-of-region,

some subtle, intangible place, or form of existence. The enormous stream of luminous spheres continued to pass me at an unvarying rate, countless millions, and still they came, showing no signs. of ending, nor even diminishing. Then as I was born silently upon the unbuying ether, I felt a sudden irresistible forward movement toward one of the passing globes. An instant and I was beside it. Then I slid through into the interior without experiencing the least resistance of any description.

For a short while I could see nothing, and waited curiously. All at once I became aware that a sound brooky. the inconceivable stillness. It was like the murmur of a great sea at calm, a sea breathing in its sleep. Gradually the mist that obscured my sight began to thin away, and so, in time, my vision dwelt once again upon the silent surface of the sea of sleep. For little I gazed and could scarcely believe I saw aright. I glanced round. There was the great globe of pale fire, swimming as I had seen. seen it before, a short distance above the dim horizon.

To my left far across the sea I discovered presently a faint line as of thin haze, which I guessed to be the shore where my love and I had met, during those wonderful periods of soul-wandering that had been granted to me in the old earth days. Another a troubled memory came to me of the formless thing that had haunted the shores of the sea of sleep. the guardian of that silent, echoless place. These and other details I remembered and knew without doubt

that I was looking out upon that same sea. With the assurance, I was filled with an overwhelming feeling of surprise and joy, and shaken expectancy, conceiving it possible that I was about to see my love again. Intently I gazed around, but could catch no sight of her. At that, for little, I felt hopeless. Fervently I prayed and ever appeared anxiously. How still was the sea. Down far beneath me I could see the many trails of changeful fire that had drawn my attention formerly.

Vaguely I wondered what caused them. Also I remembered that I had intended to ask my dear one about them as well as many other matters, and I had been forced to leave her before the half that I had wished to say was said. My thoughts came back with a leap. I was conscious that something had touched me. I turned quickly. God, thou wert indeed gracious. It was she.

She looked up into my eyes with an eager longing, and I looked down to her with all my soul. I should like to have held her, but the glorious purity of her face kept me afar. Then out of the winding mist she put her dear arms. Her whisper came to me soft as the rustle of a passing cloud. Dearest, she said. That was all but I had heard, and in a moment I held her to me as I prayed.

Forever. In a little she spoke of many things, and I listened. Willingly would I have done so through all the ages that are to come. At times I whispered back. and my whispers brought to her spirit face once more an indescribably delicate tint, the bloom of love. Later I spoke more freely, and to each word she listened and made answer delightfully, so that already I was in paradise.

She and I, and nothing, save the silent, spacious void to see us, and only the quiet waters of the sea of sleep to hear us. long before the floating multitude of cloud enfolded spheres had vanished into nothingness. Thus, we looked upon the face of the slumberous deeps and were alone. Alone. God! I would be thus alone in the hereafter, and yet be never lonely. I had her, and greater than this she had me.

I. Eon aged me. and on this thought and some others I hope to exist through the few remaining years that may yet lie between us. End of Chapter 20, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia. Chapter 21 of the House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. This Leberbox recording is in the public domain. The Dark Sun How long our souls lay in the arms of joy, I cannot say.

But all at once I was willing. waked from my happiness by a diminution of the pale and gentle light that lit the sea of sleep. I turned toward the huge white orb with a premonition of coming trouble. One side of it was curving inward as though a convex black shadow were sweeping across it. My memory went back. It was thus that the darkness had come before our last parting. I turned toward my love inquiringly. With a sudden knowledge of woe, I noticed how wan.

and unreal she had grown, even in that brief space. Her voice seemed to me to come from a distance. The touch of her hands was no more than the gentle pressure of a summer wind and grew less perceptible. Already quite half of the immense globe was shrouded. A feeling of desperation seized me. Was she about to leave me? Would she have to go as she had gone before? I questioned her, anxiously, frightenely, and she nestling closer explained than that strange far-away voice that it was imperative she should leave me, before the sun of darkness, as she termed it, blotted out the light. At this confirmation of my fears I was overcome with despair and could only look voicelessly across the quiet plains of the silent sea.

How swiftly the darkness spread across the face of the white orb, yet in reality the time must have been long beyond human comprehension. At last, only a crescent of pale fire lit the now-dim sea of sleep. All this while she had held me, but with so soft a caress that I had been scarcely conscious of it. We waited there together, she and I, speechless for very sorrow. In the dimming light her face showed shadowy, blending into the dusky mistiness that encircled us. Then when a thin, curved line of soft light was all that lit the sea, she released me, pushing me from her tenderly. Her voice sounded in my ears.

I may not stay longer, dear one. It ended in a sob. She seemed to float away from me, and became invisible. Her voice came to me out of the shadows faintly, apparently from a great distance. A little while It died away remotely In a breath The sea of sleep darkened into night

Far to my left I seemed to see for a brief instant A soft glow It vanished And in the same moment I became aware that I was no longer Above the still sea But once more suspended

In infinite space with the green sun now eclipsed by a vast dark sphere before me. Utterly bewildered I stared almost unseeingly at the ring of green flames leaping above the dark edge. Even in the chaos of my thoughts I wondered dully at their extraordinary shapes. A multitude of questions assailed me. I thought more of her I had so lately seen than of the sight before me. My grief and thoughts of the future filled me. was I doomed to be separated from her always.

Even in the old earth days, she had been mine only for a little while. Then she had left me, as I thought, forever. Since then I had seen her but these times upon the sea of sleep. A feeling of fierce resentment filled me, and miserable questionings. Why could I not have gone with my love? What reason to keep us apart? Why had I to wait alone while she slumbered through the years on the still bosom of the sea of sleep?

The sea of sleep! My thoughts turned inconsequentially out of their channel of bitterness to fresh, desperate questionings. Where was it? Where was it? I seemed to have but just parted from my love upon its quiet surface, and it had gone utterly. It could not be far away, and the white orb which I had seen hidden in the shadow of the sun-darkness. My sight dwelt upon the green sun, eclipsed. What had it eclipsed?

Was there a vast dead star circling it? Was the central sun, as I had come to regard it, a double star? The thought had come almost unpidden, yet, why should it not be so? My thoughts went back to the white orb. Strange, that it should have been. I stopped. An idea had come suddenly. The white orb and the green sun.

Were they one and the same? My imagination wandered backward, and I remembered the luminous globe to which I had been so unaccountably attracted. It was curious that I should have forgotten it even momentarily. Where were the others? I reverted again to the globe I had entered. I thought for a time and matters became clearer.

I conceived that by entering that impalpable globule, I had passed at once into some further and until then invisible dimension. There the great sun was still visible, but as a stupendous sphere of pale white light, almost as though its ghost showed and not its material part. A long time I mused on the subject, I remembered how on entering the sphere I had immediately lost all sight of the others. For a still further period I continued to revolve the different details in my mind.

In a while my thoughts turned to other things. I came more into the present and began to look about me, seeingly. For the first time I perceived that innumerable rays of a subtle violet hue pierced the strange semi-darkness in all directions. They radiated from the fiery rim of the green sun. They seemed to grow upon my vision so that in a little while I saw that they were countless. The night was filled with them, spreading outward from the green sun fan-wise. I concluded that I was enabled to see them by reason of the sun's glory being cut off by the eclipse.

They reached right out into space and vanished. Gradually as I looked, I became a little. aware that fine points of intensely brilliant light traverse the rays. Many of them seemed to travel from the green sun into the distance. Others came out of the void, toward the sun. But one and all each kept strictly to the ray in which it travelled. Their speed was inconceivably great, and it was only when they neared the green sun, or, as they left it, that I could see them as separate specks of light.

Further from the sun, they became thin lines of vivid fire within the violet. The discovery of these rays, and the moving sparks, interested me extraordinarily. To where did they lead in such countless profusion? I thought of the world's in space. And those sparks? Messengers! Possibly the idea was fantastic, but I was not conscious of its being so. Messengers!

Messengers from the central sun! An idea evolved itself slowly. Was the green sun the abode of some vast intelligence? The thought was bewildering. Visions of the unnameable rose vaguely. Had I indeed come upon the dwelling place of the eternal? For a time I repelled the thought dumbly. It was too stupendous.

Yet? Huge vague thoughts had birth within me. I felt suddenly terribly naked, and an awful nearness shook me. And heaven! Was that an illusion? My thoughts came and went erratically. The sea of sleep and she. Heaven!

I came back with a bound to the present. Somewhere out of the void beneath me there rushed an immense, dark body, huge, and silent. It was a dead star, hurling onward to the burying place of the stars. It drove between me and the central suns, blotting them out from my vision and plunging me into an impenetrable night. An age, and I saw again the violet rays. A great while later, eons it must have been. A circular glow grew in the sky ahead and I saw the edge of the receding star, showing darkly against it. Thus I I knew that it was nearing the central suns. Presently I saw the bright ring of the green sun shone plainly against the night.

The star had passed into the shadow of the dead sun. After that I just waited. The strange years went slowly and ever I watched intently. The thing I had expected came at last. Suddenly, awfully. A vast flare of dazzling light, a streaming burst of white flame. a streaming burst of white flame across the dark void. For an indefinite while it soared outward,

a gigantic mushroom of fire. It ceased to grow, then, as time went by, it began to sink backward slowly. I saw now that it came from a huge, glowing spot near the center of the dark sun. Mighty flames, still soared outward from this. Yet, spite of its size, the grave of the stone,

of the star was no more than the shining of Jupiter upon the face of an ocean when compared with the inconceivable mass of the dead sun. I may remark here once more that no words will ever convey to the imagination the enormous balk of the two central suns. End of Chapter 21, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia. Chapter 22 of the House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. This sleeper-vox recording is in the public domain. The dark nebula. Years melted into the past, centuries, eons.

The light of the incandescent star sank to a furious red. It was later that I saw the dark nebula. At first an impalpable cloud away to my right. It grew steadily to a clot of blackness in the night. How long I watched it is impossible to say. For time as we count it was a thing of the past. It came closer, a shapeless monstrosity of darkness, tremendous. It seemed to slip across the night, sleepily, a very hell fog.

Slowly it slid nearer and passed into the void between me and the central suns. It was as though a curtain had been drawn. drawn before my vision. A strange tremor of fear took me, and a fresh sense of wonder. The green twilight that had reigned for so many millions of years had now given place to impenetrable gloom. Motionless I peered about me. A century fled, and it seemed to me that I detected occasional dull glows of red passing me at intervals. earnestly I gazed and presently seemed to see circular masses that showed muddily red within the clouded blackness. They appeared to be growing out of the nebulous murk.

A while, and they became plainer to my accustomed vision, I could see them now, with a fair amount of distinctness, ruddy-tinged spheres similar in size to the luminous globes that I had seen so long previously. They floated past me, continually. Gradually, a peculiar uneasiness seized me. I became aware of a growing feeling of repugnance and dread. It was directed against those passing orbs and seemed born of intuitive knowledge rather than of any real cause or reason. Some of the passing globes were brighter than others, and it was from one of these that a face looked suddenly, a face human in its outline, but so tortured with woe, that I stared aghast. I had not thought there was such sorrow as I saw there.

I was conscious of an added sense of pain, on perceiving that the eyes which glared so wildly were sightless. A while longer I saw it. Then it had passed on into the surrounding gloom. After this I saw others, all wearing that little. look of hopeless sorrow and blind. A long time went by and I became aware that I was nearer to the orbs than I had been. At this I grew uneasy, though I was less in fear of those strange globules than I had been, before seeing their sorrowful inhabitants, for sympathy had tempered my fear.

Later, there was no doubt but that I was being carried closer to the red spheres, and presently I floated among them. In a while. I perceived one bearing down upon me. I was helpless to move from its path. In a minute it seemed it was upon me, and I was submerged in a deep red mist. This cleared, and I stared confusedly across the immense breath of the plain of silence.

It appeared just as I had first seen it. I was moving forward, steadily across its surface. Away ahead shone the vast, blood-red ring. Author's footnote, Without doubt, the flame-edged mass of the dead central sun, seen from another dimension. End of author's footnote.

That lit the place. All around was spread the extraordinary desolation of stillness that had so impressed me during my previous wanderings across its starkness. Presently, I saw rising up into the ruddy gloom the distant peaks of the mighty amphitheatre of mountains, where, untold ages before I had been shown my first glimpse of the terrors that underlie many things. And where vast and silent, watched by a thousand mute gods, stands the replica of this house of mysteries. This house that I had seen swallowed up in that hellfire ere the earth had kissed the sun, and vanished forever.

Though I could see the crests of the mountain amphitheatre, yet it was a great while before their lower portions became visible. Possibly this was due to the strange ruddy haze that seemed to cling to the surface of the plain. However be this as it may, I saw them at last. In a still further space of time I had come so close to the mountains that they appeared to overhang me. Presently I saw the great rift, opened before me, and I drift, I drifted into it, without

volition on my part. Later I came out upon the breadth of the enormous arena. There at an apparent distance of some five miles stood the house, huge, monstrous and silent, lying in the very center of that stupendous amphitheatre. So far as I could see it had not altered in any way, but looked as though it were only yesterday that I had seen it. Around, the grim, dark mountains frowned down upon me from their lofty silences. Far away to my right.

Away up among inaccessible peaks loomed the enormous bulk of the great beast god. Higher I saw the hideous form of the dread goddess rising up through the red gloom thousands of fathoms above me. To the left I made out the monstrous eyeless thing, grey and inscrutable. Further off reclining on its lofty edge the livid ghoul shape showed, a splash of sinister colour among the dark mountains. Slowly I moved out across the great arena, floating. As I went I made out the dim forms of many other lurking horrors that peopled those supreme heights. Gradually, I neared the house, and my thoughts flashed back across the abyss of years.

I remembered the dread specter of the place, a short while passed, and I saw that I was being wafted directly toward the enormous mass of that silent building. About this time, I became aware, in an indifferent sort of way, of a growing sense of numbness that robbed me of the fear which I should otherwise have felt an approaching that awesome pile. As it was, I viewed it calmly. Much as a man views calamity through the haze of his tobacco smoke. In a little while, I had come so close to the house as to be able to distinguish many of the details about it. The longer I looked, the more was I confirmed in my long-ago impressions of its entire

similitude to this strange house. Save in its enormous size, I could find nothing unlike. Suddenly, as I stared at a great feeling of amazement filled me, I had come opposite to that part where the outer door leading into the study is situated. There lying right across the threshold lay a great length of coping-stone. identical save in size and color with the piece I had dislodged in my fight with the pit creatures. I floated nearer, and my astonishment increased as I noticed that the door was broken partly from its hinges precisely in the manner that my study door had been forced inward

by the assaults of the swine things. The sight started a train of thoughts, and I began to trace dimly that the attack on this house might have a far deeper significance than I had hitherto imagined. I remembered how long ago in the old earth-days. I had half suspected that in some unexplainable manner this house in which I live was unrepore, to use a recognized term, with that other tremendous structure, away in the midst of that incomparable plain. Now, however, it began to be borne upon me, that I had but vaguely conceived what the

of my suspicion meant, I began to understand, with a more than human clearness, that the attack I had repelled was in some extraordinary manner connected with an attack upon that strange edifice. With a curious inconsequence my thoughts abruptly left the matter to dwell wonderingly upon the peculiar material out of which the house was constructed. It was, as I have mentioned earlier, of a deep green color. Yet now that I had come so close to it, I perceived that it fluctuated at times, though slightly, glowing and fading,

much as do the fumes of phosphorus when rubbed upon the hand in the dark. Presently my attention was distracted from this by coming to the great entrance. Here, for the first time, I was afraid. For all in a moment the huge doors swung back and I drifted in between them helplessly. Inside all was blackness, impalpable.

In an instant I had crossed the threshold, and the great doors closed silently shutting me in that lightless place. For a while I seemed to hang motionless, suspended amid the darkness. Then I became conscious that I was moving again, where I could not tell. Suddenly, far down beneath me. me. I seemed to hear a murmurous noise of swine laughter. It sank away and the succeeding

silence appeared clogged with horror. Then a door opened somewhere ahead. A white haze of light filtered through and I floated slowly into a room that seemed strangely familiar. All at once there came a bewildering screaming noise that deafened me. I saw a blurred vista A visions flaming before my sight. My senses were dazed through the space of an eternal moment. Then my power of seeing came back to me. The dizzy, hazy feeling passed. And I saw clearly.

End of Chapter 22, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia. Chapter 23 of the House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. This Liebervox recording is in the public domain. Pepper. I was seated in my chair, back again in this old study. My glance wandered round the room. For a minute it had a strange, quivery appearance. Unreal and unsubstantial.

This disappeared, and I saw that nothing was altered in any way. I looked toward the end window. The blind was up. I rose to my feet shakily, as I did so a slight noise in the direction. direction of the door attracted my attention. I glanced toward it. For a short instant it appeared to me that it was being closed, gently. I stared and saw that I must have been mistaken. It seemed closely shut. With a succession of efforts I trod my way to the window and looked out. The sun was just rising, lighting up the tangled wilderness of gardens. For perhaps a minute I

stood and stared. I passed my hand confusedly across my forehead. Presently amid the chaos of my senses a sudden thought came to me. I turned quickly and called to pepper. There was no answer, and I stumbled across the room in a quick access of fear. As I went I tried to frame his name, but my lips were numb. I reached the table and stooped down to him, with a catching at my heart. He was lying in the shadow of the table, and I had not been to see him distinctly from the window. Now, as I stooped, I took my breath shortly. There was no Pepper.

Instead, I was reaching toward an elongated little heap of gray, ash-like dust. I must have remained in that half-stooped position for some minutes. I was dazed, stunned. Pepper had really passed into the land of shadow. End of Chapter 23. Recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia. Chapter 24 of the House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. This Libra Fox recording is in the public domain.

The Footsteps in the Garden. Pepper is dead. Even now, at times, I seem scarcely able to realize that this is so. It is many weeks since I came back from that strange, terrible journey through space and time. Sometimes in my sleep I dream about it and go through in my imagination the whole of that fearsome happening. When I wake my thoughts dwell upon it.

That sun, those sons, were they indeed the great central suns around which the whole universe of the unknown heavens revolves? Who shall say? And the bright globules floating forever. in the light of the green sun. And the sea of sleep on which they float? How unbelievable it all is! If it were not for Pepper,

I should even after the many extraordinary things that I have witnessed, be inclined to imagine that it was but a gigantic dream. Then there is that dreadful dark nebula with its multitudes of red spheres, moving all ways within the shadow of the dark sun, sweeping along on its stupendous orbit, wrapped eternally in gloom, and the faces that peered out in me.

God, do they, and does such a thing really exist? There is still that little heap of grey ash on my study floor. I will not have it touched. At times when I am calmer, I have wondered what became of the air. outer planets of the solar system. It has occurred to me that they may have broken loose from the sun's attraction and whirled away into space. This is, of course, only a surmise. There are

so many things about which I wonder. Now that I am writing, let me record that I am certain there is something horrible about to happen. Last night a thing occurred which has filled me with an even greater terror than did the pit fear. I will write it down now. I will write it down now. and, if anything more happens, endeavor to make a note of it at once. I have a feeling that there is more in this last affair than in all those others. I am shaky and nervous, even now as I write. Somehow I think death is not very far away. Not that I fear death as death is understood.

Yet there is that in the air which bids me fear, an intangible cold horror. I felt it last night. It was thus. Last night, I was sitting here in my study writing. The door leading into the garden was half open. At times the metallic rattle of a dog's chain sounded faintly. It belongs to the dog I have bought since Pepper's death. I will not have him in the house.

Not after Pepper. Still, I have felt it better to have a dog about the place. They are wonderful creatures. I was much engrossed in my work, and the time passed quickly. Suddenly I heard a soft noise on the path outside in the garden. Pat, pat, pat, it went with a stealthy, curious sound. I sat upright with a quick movement and looked out through the open door. Again the noise came.

Pat, pat, pat. It appeared to be approaching. With a slight feeling of nervousness, I stared into the gardener. but the night hid everything. Then the dog gave a long howl, and I started. For a minute, perhaps, I peered intently, but could hear nothing. After a little I picked up the pen which I had laid down and recommenced my work. The nervous feeling had gone, for I imagine that the sound I had heard was nothing more than the dog rocking round his kennel at the length of his chain. A quarter of an hour may have passed. Then all at once the dog howled again, and with such a plaintively sorrowful

note that I jumped to my feet, dropping my pen and inking the page on which I was at work. Curse that dog, I muttered, noting what I had done. Then even as I said the words there sound again that queer pad, pad, pad, pad. It was horribly close, almost by the door, I thought. I knew now that it could not be the dog. His chain would not allow him to come so near. The dog's growl came again, and I noted subconsciously the taint of fear in it. Outside on the window-sill I could see Tip, my sister's pet cat. As I looked, it sprang to its feet its tail swelling visibly.

For an instant it stood thus, seeming to stare fixedly at something in the direction of the door. Then quickly it began to back along the sill until reaching the wall at the end it could go no further. There it stood, rigid as though frozen in an attitude of extraordinary terror. Frightened and puzzled I seized the stick from the corner and went toward the door silently, taking one of the candles with me. I had come to within a few paces of it when suddenly a peculiar sense of fear thrilled through me, a fear palpitant and real. whence I knew not nor why. So great was the feeling of terror that I wasted no time but retreated

straightway, walking backward and keeping my gaze fearfully on the door. I would have given much to rush at it, fling it too, and shoot the bolts, for I have had it repaired and strengthened so that now it is far stronger than ever it has been. Like Tip, I continued my almost unconscious progress backward until the wall brought me up. At that I started, nervously, and glanced round apprehensively. As I did so, my eyes dwelt momentarily on the rack of firearms, and I took a step toward them but stopped with a curious feeling that they would be needless. Outside in the gardens, the dog moaned, strangely.

Suddenly from the cat there came a fierce long screech. I glanced jerkily in its direction. Something luminous and ghostly encircled it and grew upon my vision. It resolved into a glowing hand. hand, transparent with a lambent greenish flame flickering over it. The cat gave a last awful catter-wall, and I saw it smoke and blaze. My breath came with a gasp, and I lent against the wall. Over that part of the window there spread a smudge green and fantastic. It hid the thing from me, though the glare of fire shone through, dully, a stench of burning stolen to the room.

Pad, pad, pad, pad. Something passed down. the garden path and a faint moldy odor seemed to come in through the open door and mingle with the burnt smell. The dog had been silent for a few moments. Now I heard him yowl sharply as though in pain. Then he was quiet, save for an occasional subdued whimper of fear. A minute went by, then the gate on the west side of the gardens slammed distantly. After that, nothing. even the dog's whine. I must have stood there some minutes. Then a fragment of courage stole into my heart, and I made a frightened rush at the door,

dashed it to, and bolted it. After that, for a full half-hour, I sat helpless, staring before me rigidly. Slowly my life came back to me, and I made my way shakily upstairs to bed. That is all. End of Chapter 24. Recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia. Chapter 25 of the House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. This Leberfox recording is in the public domain.

The Thing from the Arena. This morning, early, I went through the gardens but found everything as usual. Near the door I examined the path for footprints yet here again. There was nothing to tell me whether or not I'd treat. dreamed last night. It was only when I came to speak to the dog that I discovered tangible proof that something did happen. When I went to his kennel he kept inside, crouching up in one corner, and I had to coax him to get him out. When finally he consented to come it was in a strangely cowed and subdued manner. As I patted him, my attention was

attracted to a greenish patch on his left flank. On his left flank, on his examining it, I found that the fur and skin had been apparently burnt off, where the flesh showed raw and scorched. The shape of the mark was curious, reminding me of the imprint of a large talon or hand. I stood up thoughtful. My gaze wandered toward the study window. The rays of the rising sun shimmered on the smoky patch in the lower corner, causing it to fluctuate from green to red oddly. Ah, that was undoubtedly another proof, and suddenly the horrible thing I saw last night rose in my mind.

I looked at the dog again. I knew the cause now of that hateful-looking wound on his side. I knew also that what I had seen last night had been a real happening, and a great discomfort filled me. Pepper, Tip, and now this poor animal. I glanced at the dog again and noticed that he was licking at his wound. Poor brute, I muttered, and bent to pat his head. At that he got up on his feet, nosing and licking my hand wistfully.

Presently I left him, having other matters to which to attend. After dinner I went to see him again. He seemed quiet and disinclined to leave his kennel. From my sister I have learned that he has refused all food to-day. She appeared a little puzzled when she told me, though quite unsuspicious of anything of which to be afraid. The day has passed uneventfully enough. After tea I went again to have a look at the dog. He seemed moody and somewhat restless, yet, persisted in remaining in his kennel.

Before locking up for the night I moved his kennel out away from the wall so that I shall be able to watch it from the small window tonight. The thought came to me to bring him into the house for the house for the house. night, but consideration has decided me to let him remain out. I cannot say that this house is in any degree, less to be feared than the gardens. Pepper was in the house, and yet. It is now two o'clock. Since eight I have watched the kennel from the small side window in my study, yet nothing has occurred, and I am too tired to watch longer. I will go to bed. During the night I was restless. This is unusual for me, but toward morning I obtained a few hours sleep. I rose early and after breakfast visited the dog.

He was quiet, but morose, and refused to leave his kennel. I wish there was some horse doctor near here. I would have the poor brute looked to. All day he has taken no food, but has shown an evident desire for water, lapping it up greedily. I was relieved to observe this. The evening has come, and I am in my same. study. I intend to follow my plan of last night and watch the kennel. The door leading into the garden

is bolted securely. I am consciously glad there are bars to the windows. Night. Midnight has gone. The dog has been silent up to the present. Through the side window on my left that can make out dimly the outlines of the kennel. For the first time, the dog moves and I hear the rattle of his chain. I look out quickly as I stare, the dog moves again restlessly, and I see a small patch of luminous light shine from the interior of the kennel. It vanishes. Then the dog stirs again, and once more the gleam comes. I am puzzled. The dog is quiet, and I can see the luminous thing plainly.

It shows distinctly. There is something familiar about the shape of it. For a moment I wonder. Then it comes to me that it is not unlike the four fingers and thumb of a hand. Like a hand, and I remember the contour of that fearsome wound on the dog's side. It must be the wound, I see. It is luminous at night. Why?

The minutes passed. My mind is filled with this fresh thing. Suddenly I hear a sound out in the gardens. How it thrills through me it is approaching. Pad, pad, pad! A prickly sensation traverses my spine and seems to creep across my scalp. The dog moves in his kennel and whimpers frightnedly. He must have turned round for now I can no longer see the outline of his shining wound.

Outside the gardens are silent once more, and I listen fearfully. A minute passes and another. Then I hear the padding sound again. It is quite close and appears to be coming down the gravel-dial. path. The noise is curiously measured and deliberate. It ceases outside the door and I rise to my feet and stand motionless. From the door comes a slight sound. The latch is being slowly raised. A singing noise is in my ears and I have a sense of pressure about the head. The latch drops with a sharp click into the catch. The noise startles me afresh, jarring horribly on my tense nerves.

After that I stand for a long while amid an ever-growing quietness. All at once my knees begin to tremble and I have to sit quickly. An uncertain period of time passes and gradually I begin to shake off the feeling of terror that has possessed me. Yet still I sit. I seem to have lost the power of movement. I am strangely tired and inclined to doze. My eyes open and closed and presently I find. I find myself falling asleep and waking in fits and starts.

It is sometime later that I am sleepily aware that one of the candles is guttering. When I wake again it has gone out and the room is very dim under the light of the one remaining flame. The semi-darkness troubles me little. I have lost that awful sense of dread and my only desire seems to be to sleep. Sleep. Suddenly, although there is no noise, I am awake, wide awake. I am acutely conscious of the nearness of some mystery, of some overwhelming presence. The very air seems pregnant with terror.

I sit huddled and just listen intently. Still there is no sound. Nature herself seems dead. Then the oppressive stillness is broken by a little Eldridge scream of wind. that sweeps round the house and dies away remotely. I let my gaze wander across the half-lighted room, by the great clock in the far corner as a dark, tall shadow. For a short instant I stare frightenedly, then I see that it is nothing,

and I am momentarily relieved. In the time that follows, the thought flashes through my brain. Why not leave this house? This house of mystery and terror? Then, as though in answer there's sweet. sweeps up across my sight of vision of the wondrous sea of sleep. The sea of sleep where she and I have been allowed to meet after the years of separation and sorrow. And I know that I shall stay on here whatever happens.

Through the side window, I note the somber blackness of the night. My glance wanders away and round the room resting on one shadowy object and another. Suddenly I turn and look at the window on my right as I do. So I breathe quickly and bent forward with a frightened gaze at something outside the window, but close to the bars. I am looking at a vast, misty swine face, over which fluctuates a flamboyant flame of a greenish hue. It is the thing from the arena. The quivering mouth seems to drip with a continual phosphorescent slaver.

The eyes are staring straight into the room with an inscrutable expression, thus I sit rigidly, frozen. The thing has begun to move. It is turning slowly in my direction. Its face is coming round toward me. It sees me. Two huge inhumanly human eyes are looking through the dimness at me. I am cold with fear.

Yet even now I am keenly conscious and note, in an irrelevant way that the distant stars are blotted out by the mass of the giant face. A fresh horror has come to me. I am rising from my chair without the least intention. I am on my feet, and something is impelling me toward the door that leads out into the gardens. I wish to stop, but cannot. Some immutable power is opposed to my will, and I go slowly, forward, unwilling, and resistant.

My glance flies round the room helplessly and stops at the window. The great swine face has disappeared, and I hear again. and that stealthy pat-pad, pad. It stops outside the door, the door toward which I am being compelled. There succeeds a short, intense silence. Then there comes a sound. It is the rattle of the latch being slowly lifted.

At that I am filled with desperation. I will not go forward another step. I make a vast effort to return, but it is as though I press back upon an invisible wall. I groan out loud and the agony of my fear and the sound of my voice is frightening. Again comes that rattle and I shiver glamily. I try, I fight and struggle to hold back, back, but it is of no use. I am at the door, and, in a mechanical way, I watch my hand go forward to undo the topmost bolt.

It does so, entirely without my volition, even as I reach up toward the bolt. the door is violently shaken, and I get a sickly whiff of mouldy air, which seems to drive in through the interstices of the doorway. I draw the bolt back slowly, fighting, dumbly the while. It comes out of its socket with a click, and I begin to shake agishly. There are two more, one at the bottom of the door, the other. A massive affair is placed about the middle. For perhaps a minute I stand with my arms hanging side.

slackly by my sides. The influence to meddle with the fastenings of the door seems to have gone. All at once there comes the sudden rattle of iron at my feet. I glance down quickly and realized with an unspeakable terror that my foot is pushing back the lower bolt. An awful sense of helplessness assails me. The bolt comes out of its hole with a slight ringing sound, and I stagger on my feet, grasping at the great central bolt for support. A minute passes. an eternity, then another. My God, help me. I am being forced to work upon the last fastening.

I will not. Better to die than open to the terror that is on the other side of the door. Is there no escape? God help me. I have jerked the bolt half out of its socket. My lips amid a hoarse screbe of terror. The boldest three parts drawn now, and still my unconscious hands work toward my doom. Only a fraction of steel between my soul and that.

Twice I scream out in the supreme agony of my fear. Then with a mad effort I tear my hands away. My eyes seem blinded. A great blackness is falling upon me. Nature has come to my rescue. I feel my knees giving. There is a loud, quick thudding upon the door and I am falling. Falling.

I must have lain there. at least a couple of hours. As I recover, I am aware that the other candle has burnt out, and the room is in an almost total darkness. I cannot rise to my feet, for I am cold and filled with a terrible cramp. Yet my brain is clear, and there is no longer the strain of that unholy influence. Cautiously, I get upon my knees and feel for the central cramp. bolt. I find it and push it securely back into its socket. Then the one at the bottom of the door.

By this time I am able to rise to my feet and so manage to secure the fastening at the top. After that I go down upon my knees again and creep away among the furniture in the direction of the stairs. By doing this, I am safe from observation from the window. I reach the opposite door and as I leave the study cast one nerve. glance over my shoulder toward the window. Out in the night I seem to catch a glimpse of something impalpable. But it may be only a fancy. Then I am in the passage and on the stairs. Reaching my bedroom I clamper into bed all cloth as I am, and pull the bedclothes over me. There after a while I begin to regain a little confidence. It is impossible to sleep, but I am grateful for

added warmth of the bedclose. Presently I try to think over the happenings of the past night, but, though I cannot sleep, I find that it is useless to attempt consecutive thought. My brain seems curiously blank. Toward morning I begin to toss uneasily. I cannot rest, and after a while I get out of bed and pace the floor. The wintry dawn is beginning to creep through the windows and shows the bare discomfort of the old room. Strange that, through all these years it has never occurred to me how dismal the place really is.

And so a time passes. From somewhere downstairs a sound comes up to me. I go to the bedroom door and listen. It is merry, bustling about the great old kitchen, getting the breakfast ready. I feel little interest. I am not hungry. My thoughts, however, continue to dwell upon her. How little the weird happenings in this house seem to trouble her.

Except in the incident of the pit creatures, she has seemed unconscious of anything unusual occurring. She is old, like myself, yet how little we have to do with one another. Is it because we have nothing in common, or only that being old we care less for society than quietness? These and other matters pass through my mind as I meditate, and help to distract my attention for a while. from the oppressive thoughts of the night. After a time, I go to the window, and, opening it, look out. The sun is now above the horizon and the air, though cold, is sweet and crisp.

Gradually my brain clears and a sense of security for the time being comes to me. Somewhat happier I go downstairs and out into the garden to have a look at the dog. As I approach the kennel I am greeted by the same moldy sten. that assailed me at the door last night. Shaking off a momentary sense of fear, I call to the dog, but he takes no heat. And after calling once more, I throw a small stone into the kennel.

At this he moves uneasily, and I shout his name again, but do not go closer. Presently, my sister comes out and joins me and trying to coax him from the kennel. In a little the poor beast rises and shambles out lurching queerly. In the daylight he stands swaying from side to side and blinking stupidly.

I look and note that the horrid wound is larger, much larger, and seems to have a whitish fungoyed appearance. My sister moves to fondle him, but I detain her, and explain that I think it will be better not to go to near him for a few days, as it is impossible to tell what may be the matter with him, and it is well to be cautious. A minute later she leaves me, coming back with a basin of odd scraps of food. This she places on the ground near the dog, and I push it into his reach, with the aid of a branch broken from one of the shrubs. Yet, though the meat should be tempting, he takes no notice of it, but retires to his kennel.

There is still water in his drinking vessel, so after a few moments, talk. We go back to the house. I can see that my sister is much puzzled as to what is the matter with the animal, yet it would be madness even to hint the truth to her. The day slips away uneventfully, and night comes on. I have determined to repeat my experiment of last night. I cannot say that it is wisdom. Yet my mind is made up. Still, however, I have taken precautions, for I have driven stout nails in, at the back of each of the three bolts,

that secure the door opening from the study into the gardens. This will at least prevent a recurrence of the danger I ran last night. From ten to about two-thirty I watch. But nothing occurs, and finally, I stumble off to bed where I am soon asleep. End of Chapter 25. Recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia. Chapter 26 of the House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. This Lieberbox recording is in the public dome.

main. The luminous speck. I awake suddenly. It is still dark. I turn over once or twice in my endeavors to sleep again, but I cannot sleep. My head is aching slightly, and by turns I am hot and cold. In a little I give up the attempt and stretch out my hand for the matches. I will light my candle and read a while. Perhaps I shall be able to sleep after a time. For a few moments I grope, then my hand touches the box, but as I open it I am startled to see a phosphorescent speck of fire shining amid the darkness. I put out my other hand and touch it. It is on my wrist. With a feeling of vague alarm I strike a light hurriedly and look, but can see nothing save a tiny scratch.

Fancy, I mutter with a half-sigh of relief. Then the match burns my finger and I drop it quickly. As I fumble for another the thing shines out again. I know now that it is no fancy. This time I light the candle and examine the place more closely. There is a slight, greenish discoloration round the scratch. I am puzzled and worried. Then a thought comes to me.

I remember the morning after the thing appeared. I remember that the dog licked my hand. It was this one, with the scratch on it. Though I have not been even conscious of the abasement until now, a horrible fear has come to me. It creeps into my brain. The dog's wound shines at night. With a dazed feeling I sit down on the side of the bed and try to think,

but cannot. My brain seems numbed with the sheer horror of this new fear. Time moves on unheeded. Once I rouse up and try to persuade myself that I am mistaken, but it is no use. In my heart I have no doubt. Hour after hour I sit in the darkness and silence and shiver, hopelessly. The day has come and gone, and it is night again. This morning early I shot the dog and buried it away among the bushes.

My sister is startled and frightened, but I am desperate. Besides, it is better so. The foul growth had almost hidden its left side. And I, the place on my wrist has enlarged perceptibly. Several times I have caught myself muttering prayers. Little things learned as a child. God, almighty God, help me. I shall go mad.

Six days and I have eaten nothing. It is night and I am sitting in my chair. A God! I wonder. Have any ever felt the horror of life that I have come to know? I am swathed in terror. I feel the ever-burning of this dread growth. It has covered all my right arm inside, and is beginning to creep up my neck.

Tomorrow it will eat into my face. I shall become a terrible mass of living corruption. There is no escape. yet a thought has come to me born of a sight of the gun-rack on the other side of the room i have looked again with the strangest of feelings the thought grows upon me god thou knowest thou must know that death is better i better a thousand times than this this "'Jesus, forgive me, but I cannot live. "'Canot. "'Can not. I dare not.

"'I am beyond all hope. "'There is nothing else left. "'It will at least spare me that final horror. "'I think I must have been dozing. "'I am very weak and, oh, so miserable. "'So miserable and tired. "'Tired. The rustle of the paper tries my brain.

My hearing seems preternaturally sharp. I will sit a while and think. Hush! I hear something. Down, down in the cellars. It is a creaking sound. My God. It is the opening of the great oak trap.

What can be doing that? The scratching of my pen defends me. I must listen. There are steps on the stairs. Strange padding steps that come up and nearer. Jesus, be merciful to me. An old man. There is something fumbling at the door handle.

Oh, God, help me now. Jesus, the door is opening. Slowly. Something. That is all. Author's footnote. From the unfinished word it is possible on the manuscript to trace a faint line of ink which suggests that the pen is trailed away over the paper, possibly through fright and weakness. End of author's footnote.

End of Chapter 26. Recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia. Chapter 27 of the House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. This Sleeper-Vox recording is in the public domain. Conclusion. I put down the manuscript and glanced across at Tonneson. He was sitting, staring out into the dark. I waited a minute, then I spoke.

Well, I said. He turned slowly and looked at me. His thoughts seemed to have gone out of him into a great distance. Was he mad? I asked, and indicated the manuscript with a half nod. Tonneson stared at me unseeingly a moment. Then his wits came back to him and suddenly he comprehended my question. No, he said.

I opened my lips to offer a contradictory opinion for my sense of the saneness of things would not allow me to take the story literally. Then I shut them again without saying anything. Somehow the certainty in Tonneson's voice affected my doubts. I felt all at once, assured, though I was by no means convinced as yet. After a few moments silence, Tonneson rose stiffly and began to undress. He seemed disinclined to talk, so I said nothing, but followed his example.

I was weary, though still full of the story I had just read. Somehow as I rolled into my blankets, there crept into my mind a memory of the old gardens as we had seen them. I remembered the odd fear that the place had conjured up in our own. hearts, and it grew upon me with conviction that Tonneson was right. It was very late when we rose, nearly midday for the greater part of the night had been spent in reading the manuscript. Tonneson was grumpy, and I felt out of sorts. It was a somewhat dismal day, and there was a touch of chilliness in the air. There was no mention of going out fishing on either of our parts.

We got dinner, and after that, just sat and smoked in silence. Presently, Tonneson asked for the manuscript. I handed it to him, and he spent most of the afternoon in reading it through by himself. It was while he was thus employed that a thought came to me. What do you say to having another look at? I nodded my head downstream. Tonneson looked up, Nothing, he said abruptly, and somehow I was lessened.

annoyed, then relieved at his answer. After that I left him alone. A little before tea-time, he looked up at me curiously. Sorry, old chap, if I was a bit short with you just now. Just now, indeed, he had not spoken for the last three hours. But I would not go there again, and he indicated with his head, for anything that you could offer me. And he put down that history of a man's terror and he put down that history of a man's terror and hope and despair. The next morning we rose early and went for our custom swim. We had partly shaken off the depression of the previous day,

and so took our rods when we had finished breakfast and spent the day at our favorite sport. After that day we enjoyed our holiday to the utmost, though both of us looked forward to the time when our driver should come, for we were tremendously anxious to inquire of him and through him among the people of the tiny hamlet, whether any of them could give us information about that strange garden, lying away by itself, in the heart of an almost unknown tract of country.

At last the day came on which we expected the driver to come across for us. He arrived early while we were still abed, and the first thing we knew he was at the opening of the tent inquiring whether we had had good sport. We replied in the affirmative, and then both together almost in the same breath. We asked the question. that was uppermost in our minds. Did he know anything about an old garden and a great pit, and a lake situated some miles away down the river?

Also, had he ever heard of a great house thereabouts? No, he did not and had not. Yet stay he had heard a rumor, once upon a time, of a great old house, standing alone out in the wilderness. But if he remembered rightly it was a place given over to the fairies, Or if that had not been so, he was certain that there had been something quare about it. And anyway, he had heard nothing of it for a very long while. Not since he was quite a gassoon.

No, he could not remember anything particular about it. Indeed, he did not know he remembered anything at all, at all, until we questioned him. Look here, said Tonson, finding that this was about all that he could tell us. Just take a walk round the village while we dress and find out something if you can. With a nondescript salute the man departed on his errand, while we made haste to get into our clothes, after which we began to prepare breakfast. We were just sitting down to it when he returned. It's howl in bed what the lazy devils is, sir, he said with a repetition of the salute,

and an appreciative eye to the good things spread out on our provision chest which we utilized. as a table. Oh, we'll sit down, replied my friend, and have something to eat with us, which the man did without delay. After breakfast, Tonneson sent him off again on the same errand while we sat and smoked. He was away some three-quarters of an hour, and when he returned, it was evident that he had found out something. It appeared that he had gotten to conversation with an ancient man of the village who probably

knew more, though it was little enough, of the strange house than any other person living. The substance of this knowledge was that, in the ancient man's youth, and goodness knows how long back that was, there had stood a great house in the center of the gardens, where now was left only that fragment of ruin. This house had been emptied for a great while, years before his, the ancient man's birth. It was a place shunned by the people of the village, as it had been shunned by their fathers before them. There were many things said about it, and all were of evil. No one ever went near it either by day or night. In the village it was a synonym of all that is unholy and dreadful. And then one day a man,

a stranger, had ridden through the village and turned off down the river in the direction of the house, as it was always termed by the villagers. Some hours afterwards he had ridden back, taking the track by which he had come toward Ardahan. Then, for three months or so, not Nothing was hurt. At the end of that time he reappeared, but now he was accompanied by an elderly woman and a large number of donkeys laden with various articles. They had passed through the village without stopping and gone straight down the bank of the river in the direction of the house. Since that time, no one, save the man whom they had chartered to bring over monthly supplies of necessaries from Ardahan, had ever seen either of them. And him, none had ever induced to talk.

evidently he had been well paid for his trouble the years had moved onward uneventfully enough in that little hamlet the man making his monthly journeys regularly one day he had appeared as usual on his customary errand he had passed through the village without exchanging more than a surly nod with the inhabitants and gone on toward the house usually it was evening before he made the return journey on this occasion however he had reappeared in the village a few hours later in an extraordinary state of excitement and with the astounding information that the house had disappeared bodily and that a stupendous pit now yawned in the place where it had stood this news it appears so excited the curiosity of the villagers that they overcame their fears and marched en masse to the place there they found everything just as described by the carrier. This was all that we could learn. Of the author of the manuscript who he was and whence he came, we shall never know. His identity is, as he seems to have desired, buried forever. That same day we left the lonely village of Crichton. We have never been there since. Sometimes in my dreams I see that enormous pit, surrounded as it is on all sides by wild trees and bushes, and the noise of the water rises upwards and blends in my sleep, with other and lower noises, while overall

hangs the eternal shroud of spray. End of Chapter 27, recording by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia. Chapter 28 of the House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. This sleeper-fox recording is in the public domain. Grief. Author's footnote. These stanzas I found in pencil, upon a piece of full scap gummed in behind the fly-leaf of the manuscript. They have all the appearance of having been written at an earlier date than the manuscript. End author's footnote. Fierce hunger reigns within my breast. I had not dreamt that this whole world, crushed in the hand of God,

could yield such bitter essence of unrest, such pain as sorrow now hath hurled, out of its dreadful heart unsealed. Each sobbing breath is but a cry. My heart strokes knell of agony, and my whole brain has but one thought, that never more through life shall I, save in the ache of memory, touch hands with thee who now art not.

Through the whole void of night I search, so dumbly crying out to thee, But thou are not, and knight's vast throne becomes in all stupendous church, With star-bells kneeling unto me, who in all space am most alone. And hungered, to the shore I creep, perchance some comfort waits on me, From the old sea's eternal heart. But lo, from all the solemn deep, Far voices out of miss, Mystery seemed questioning why we are apart.

Wherever I go, I am alone, Who once through thee had all the world? My breast is one whole raging pain, For that which was, and now is flown, Into the blank where life is hurled, Where all is not, nor is again. End of chapter 28. End of the House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson.