October 20, 2025 • 26 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:35):
Mind.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
We welcome to a half hour of mind web short
stories from.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
The world of Specanto fiction. This is Michael Anson with
a mind web story The Lurking Fears, and other stories
by H. P. Lovecraft. This is titled Beyond the Wall
of Sleep. I have often wondered if the majority of
(01:13):
mankind ever paused to reflect upon the occasionally titanic significance
of dreams and of the obscure world to which they belong.
Whilst the greater number of our nocturnal visions are perhaps
no more than faint and fantastic reflections of our waking experiences,
there are still a certain remainder whose in mundane and
ethereal character from it of no ordinary interpretation, and whose
(01:34):
vaguely exciting and disquieting effect suggests possible minute glimpses into
a sphere of mental existence no less important than physical life,
yet separated from that life by an all but impassable barrier.
From my experience, I can not doubt but that man,
when loss to terrestrial consciousness, is indeed sojourning in another
and uncorporeal life, of far different nature from the life
(01:56):
we know, and of which only the slightest and most
distinct memories linger after waking. From those blurred and fragmentary memories,
we may infer much yet prove little. We may guess
that in dreams life, matter and vitality, as the Earth knows,
such things are not necessarily constant, and the time and
(02:17):
space do not exist as our waking selves comprehend them.
Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our
truer life, and that our vein presence on the tyrequious
globe is itself a secondary or merely virtual phenomenon. It
was from a youthful rubbery filled with speculations of this sort,
(02:39):
that I arose one afternoon in the winter of nineteen
hundred nineteen o one, when to the state institution in
which I served as an intern was brought the man
whose case has ever since haunted me so unceasingly. His name,
as given on the records, was Joe Slater or Slater.
Joe Slater, who came to the institution in the vigilant
custody of four state police, who was described as a
(03:01):
highly dangerous character, certainly presented no evidence of his perilous
disposition when I first beheld him, Though well above the
middle stature and of somewhat brawny frame. He was given
an absurd appearance of harmless stupidity by the pale, sleepy
blueness of his small, watery eyes, the scantiness of his
neglected and never shaven growth of yellow beard, and the
listless drooping of his heavy nether lip. His age was unknown,
(03:24):
since among his kind neither family records nor permanent family
ties exist. But from the baldness of his hat in front,
and from the decayed condition of his teeth, the head
surgeon wrote him down as a man of about forty.
From the medical and court documents we learned all that
could be gathered of his case. This man, a vagabond
hunter and trapper, had always been strange in the eyes
of his primitive associates, yet habitually slept at night beyond
(03:47):
the ordinary time, and upon waking would often talk of
unknown things in a manner so bizarre as to inspire
fear even in the hearts of an unimaginative populace. Not
that his form of language was at all a knew usable,
for he never spoke save in the debase by Twive
this environment. But the tone and tenor of his utterances
were of such mysterious wildness that none might listen without apprehension.
(04:12):
He himself was generally as terrified and baffled as his auditors,
and within an hour after awakening would forget all that
he had said, or at least all that had caused
him to say what he did, relapsing into a bovine,
half amiable normality like that of other ill dwellers. As
Slater grew older, it appeared as matudinal aberrations had gradually
(04:32):
increased in frequency and violence till about a month before
his arrival at the institution had occurred the shocking tragedy
which caused his arrest by the authorities. One day near
noon after a profound sleep begun in the whiskey debouche
at about five of the previous afternoon, the man had
roused himself most suddenly with euulations so horrible and unearthly
(04:53):
that they brought several neighbors to his cabin, a filthy
sty where he dwelt with a family as indescribable as himself.
Rushing out into the snow, he had flung his arms
aloft and commenced a series of leaps directly upward in
the air. The while shouting his determination to reach some big,
big cabin with brightness in the roof and walls and
floor in the loud queer music far away. As two
(05:15):
men of moderate size ought to restrain him, he had
struggled with moniacal force and fury, screaming of his desire
and need to find and kill a certain thing that
shines and shakes and laughs at length. After temporarily felling
one of his detainers with a sudden blow, he had
flung himself upon the other, and at the moniac ecstasy
of bloodthirstiness, shrieking fiendishly that he would jump high in
(05:37):
the air and burn his way through anything that stopped him.
Families and neighbors had now fled in the panic, and
when the more courageous of them returned, Slayter was gone,
creeping behind an unrecognizable pulp like thing that had been
a living man but an hour before. None of the
mountaineers had dared to pursue him, and it's likely that
they would have welcomed his death from the cold. But
(05:59):
when several mornings later they heard his screams from a
distant ravine, they realized that he had somehow managed to
survive and that his removal in one way or another
would be necessary. Then had followed an armed searching party,
whose purpose, whatever it may have been, originally became that
of a sheriff's posse, after one of the seldom popular
state troopers had, by accident observed the questioned and finally
(06:20):
joined the seekers. On the third day, Slater was found
unconscious in the hollow of a tree and taken to
the nearest jail, where alienists from Albany examined in this
and as the senses returned to them, he told a
simple story. He had, he said, gone to sleep one
afternoon about sundown, after drinking much liquor. He had awakened
(06:40):
to find himself standing bloody handed in the snow before
his cabin, the mangled corpse of his neighbor, Peter Slater
at his feet. Horrified, he had taken to the woods
in a vague effort to escape from the scene of
what must have been his crime. Beyond these things, he
seemed to know nothing, nor could the expert questioning of
his interrogators bring out a single additional fire act. That night,
(07:02):
Slater slept quietly, and the next morning he awakened with
no singular feature save a certain alteration of expression. Doctor Bernard,
who had been watching the patient, thought he noticed in
the pale blue eyes a certain gleam of peculiar quality,
and in the flexed lips and all but imperceptible tightening,
as if of intelligent determination. But when questioned, Slater relapsed
(07:23):
into the habitual vacancy of the mountaineer and only reiterated
what he had said on the preceding day. On the
third morning occurred the first of the man's mental attacks.
After some show of uneasiness and sleep, he burst forth
into a frenzy so powerful that the combined efforts of
four men were needed to bind him in a strait jacket.
The Aglianists listened with keen attention to his words, since
(07:45):
their curiosity had been aroused to a high pitch by
the suggestive, yet mostly conflicting and incoherent stories of his
family and neighbors. Slater raved for upward of fifteen minutes,
babbling in his backwards dialect of green edifices of light,
oceans of space, strange music, and shadowy mountains and valleys,
(08:06):
but most of all that he dwell upon some mysterious,
blazing entity that shook and laughed and mocked at him.
This vast, vague personality seemed to have done him a
terrible wrong, and to kill it in triumphant revenge was
his paramount desire. In order to reach it, he said,
he would soar through abysses of emptiness, burning every obstacle
(08:27):
that stood in his way. Thus ran his discourse, until
with great suddenness he ceased. The fire of madness died
from his eyes, and in dull wonder he looked at
his questioners and asked why he was bound. Doctor Barney
unbuckled the leather harness and did not restore it till night,
when he succeeded in persuading Slater to donnate of his
own volition for his own good. The man had now
(08:47):
admitted that he sometimes talked queerly, though he knew not why.
Within a week two more attacks appeared, But from then
the doctors learned little on the source of Slatter's visions.
They voculated at length, for since he could neither read
nor write, and had apparently never heard a legend or
fairy tale, his gorgeous imagery was quite inexplicable that it
(09:09):
could not come from any known myth or romance was
made especially clear by the fact that the unfortunate lunatic
expressed himself only in his own simple manner. He raved
of things he did not understand, and could not interpret,
things which he claimed to have experienced, but which he
could not have learned through any normal or connected narration.
(09:30):
The alienists soon agreed that abnormal dreams were the foundation
of the trouble, dreams whose vividness could for a time
completely dominate the waking mind of this basically inferior man.
With due formality. Slater was tried for murder, acquitted on
the ground of insanity, and committed to the institution, wherein
I held so humble a post. I have said that
(09:51):
I am a constant speculator concerning dream life, and from
this he may judge of the eagerness with which I
applied myself to the study of the new patient. As
soon as I had fully ascertained the facts of his case,
he seemed to sense a certain friendliness in me, born
no doubt of the interest I could not conceal in
the gentle manner in which I questioned him, not that
he ever recognized me during his attacks, when I hung
(10:12):
breathlessly upon his chaotic but cosmic word pictures. But he
knew me in his quiet hours, when he would sit
by his barred window, weaving baskets of straw and willow,
and perhaps pining for the mountain freedom he could never
again enjoy. By degrees, I commenced to feel an overwhelming
wonder at the mad and fantastic conceptions of Joe Slater.
(10:33):
The man himself was pitiably inferior in mentality and language alike,
but his glowing Titanic visions, though described in a barbarous,
disjointed jargon, were assuredly things which only a superior or
even exceptional brain could conceive. How I often asked myself,
how could the stolid imagination of a catskill degenerate conjure
upsites whose very possession argued a lurking spark of genius.
(10:58):
How could any backwoods dullard him gained so much as
an idea of those glittering realms of supernatural radiance in
space about which Slater rented in his furious delirium. More
and more I inclined to the belief that in the
pitiful personality cringed before me lay the disordered nucleus of
something beyond my comprehension, something infinitely beyond the comprehension of
(11:20):
my more experienced but less imaginative medical and scientific colleagues,
And yet I could extract nothing definite from the man.
The sum of all my investigation was that, in a
kind of semi corporeal dream life, Slater wandered or floated
through a resplendent and prodigious valleys, meadows, garden cities, and
palaces of light, in a region unbounded and unknown de
(11:44):
man that there he was no peasant or degenerate, but
a creature of importance in livid life, moving proudly and dominantly,
and checked only by a certain deadly enemy, who seemed
to be a being of visible yet ethereal structure, and
who did not appear to be of human shape. Since
Slater never referred to it as a man, or as
ought save a thing, this thing had done Slater some
(12:07):
hideous but unnamed wrong, which the maniac, if MANIACI were
yearned to avenge. From the manner in which Slater alluded
to their dealings, I judged that he, in the luminous thing,
had met unequal terms. That in his dream existence, the
man was himself a luminous thing of the same race
as his enemy. This impression was sustained by his frequent
(12:29):
references to flying, true space, and burning all that impeded
his progress. If these conceptions were formulated in rustic words
wholly inadequate to convey them, a circumstance which drove me
to the conclusion that if a dream world indeed existed,
oral language was not its medium for the transmission of thought.
Could it be that the dream soul inhabiting this inferior
(12:52):
body was desperately struggling to speak things which the simple
and halting tongue of dullness could not utter? Could it
be that I was face to face with intellectual emanations
which would explain the mystery, if I could but learn
to discover and read them. I did not tell the
older physicians of these things, for middle ages skeptical, cynical,
and disinclined to accept new ideas. Besides, the head of
(13:14):
the institution had but lately warned me in his paternal way,
that I was overworking, that my mind needed a rest.
It had long been my belief that human thought consists
basically of atomic or molecular motion convertible into ether waves
or radiant energy like heat light in the electricity. This
belief had early led me to contemplate the possibility of
(13:35):
telepathy or mental communication by means of suitable apparatus, and
I had, in my college days prepared a set of
transmitting and receiving instruments somewhat similar to the cumbers's devices
employed in wireless telegraphy at that crude pre radio period.
These I had tested with a fellow student, but achieving
no result, had soon packed them away with other scientific
godds and ends for possible future use. Now, in my
(13:57):
intense desire to probe into the dream life of Joe
was later, I sought these instruments again, and spent several
days in repairing room for action. When they were complete,
once more, I missed no opportunity for their trial. At
each outburst of Slatter's violence, I would fit the transmitter
to his forehead and the receiver to my own, constantly
making delicate adjustments for various ypothetical wavelengths of intellectual energy.
(14:19):
I had but little notion of how the thought impressions would,
if successfully conveyed, arouse an intelligent response in my brain,
but I felt certain that I could detect and interpret
them Accordingly, I continued my experiments, though in forming no
one of their nature. It was on the twenty first
of February that the thing occurred. As I look back
(14:40):
across the years, I realized how unreal it seems, and
sometimes wonderful old doctor Fenton was not right when he
charged it all to my excited imagination. I recalled that
he listened with great kindness and patience when I told him,
but afterward gave me a nerve powder and arranged for
the half year's vacation on which I departed the next week.
That fateful night, I was wildly agitated and perturbed, for
(15:01):
despite the excellent care he had received, Joe Slater was
unmistakably dying. Perhaps it was his modern freedom that he missed,
or perhaps the turmoil in his brain had grown too
acute for his rather's luggish physique, But at all events,
the flame of vitality flickered low in the decadent body.
He was drowsy near the end, and his darkness fell.
He dropped off into a troubled sleep. I did not
(15:24):
strap on the strait jacket, as was customary when he slept,
since I saw that he was too feeble to be dangerous,
even if he awoke in mental disorder once more before
passing away. But I did place upon his head and
mine the two ends of my cosmic radio, hoping against
hope for a first and last message from the dream world.
In the brief time remaining in the cell with us
(15:45):
was one nurse, a mediocre fellow, who did not understand
the purpose of the apparatus or think to inquire into
my course. As the hours wore on, I saw his
head droop awkwardly in sleep, but I did not disturb him.
I myself glow by the rhythmical breathing of the healthy,
and the dying man must have nodded a little later.
The sound of weird lyric melody was what aroused me. Chords, vibrations,
(16:08):
and harmonic ecstasies echoed passionately on every hand, while on
my ravished site burst the stupendous spectacle of ultimate beauty. Walls, columns,
and architraves of living fire blaze effotently around the spot
where I seemed to float in air, extending upward to
an infinitely high vaulted dome of indescribable splendor, blending with
(16:31):
this display of glacial magnificence, or rather supplanting it at
times in kaleidoscopic rotation, were glimpses of wide plains and
graceful valleys, high mountains, and inviting grottos, covered with every
lovely attribute of scenery which my delighted eyes could conceive of,
yet formed wholly of some glowing ethereal plastic entity, which
inconsistency partook as much of spirit as of matter. As
(16:55):
I gazed, I perceived that my own brain held the
heat of these enchanting metamorphisies. For each vista which appeared
to me was the one my changing mind most wished
to behold. Amidst this ilusion realm, I dwelt not as
a stranger, for each sight and sound was familiar to me,
just as it had been uncountered yonds of eternity before,
(17:16):
and would be for like eternities to come. Then the
resplendent era of my brother of Light drew near and
held colloquy with me, soul to soul, with silence and
perfect interchange of thought. The hour was one of approaching triumph,
For was not my fellow being escaping at last from
a degrading periodic bondage, escaping forever and preparing to follow
(17:36):
the accursive depressor even under the uttermost fields of ether,
that upon it might be wrought a flaming cosmic vengeance
which would shake the spheres. We floated thus for a
little time, when I perceived a slight blurring and fading
of the objects around us, as though some force were
recalling me to Earth, where I least wished to go.
(17:56):
The form near me seemed to feel a change also,
for it, July brought its discourse toward a conclusion in itself,
prepared to quit, the scene fading from my sight at
a rate somewhat less rapid than that of the other objects.
A few more thoughts were exchanged, and I knew that
the luminous One and I were being recalled the bondage,
though for my brother of light it would be the
last time. The sorry planet shell, being well nigh spent
(18:19):
in less than an hour, my fellow would be free
to pursue the oppressor along the Milky Way, and passed
the hither stars to the very confines of infinity. A
well defined shock separates my final impression of the fading
scene of light from my sudden and somewhat chained faced.
Awakening and straightening up in my chairs, I saw the
dying figure and the couch move hesitantly. Joe Slater was
(18:42):
indeed awaking, though probably for the last time. As I
looked more closely, I saw that in the sallow cheeks
showing spots of color which had never before been present.
The lips, too seemed unusual, being tightly compressed, as if
by the force of the stronger character than had been Slater's.
The whole face was only began to grow tense, and
the head turned restlessly closed eyes. I did not rouse
(19:06):
the sleeping nurse, but readjusted the slightly disarranged headband of
my telepathic radio, intend to catch any parting message the
dreamer might have to deliver. All at once, the head
turned sharply in my direction, and the eyes fell open,
causing me to stare in blank amazement at what I beheld.
The man who had been Joe Slater was gazing at
me with a pair of luminous, expanding eyes whose blue
(19:27):
seemed subtly to have deepened. Neither mania nor degeneracy was
visible in that gaze, and I felt beyond a doubt
that I was viewing the face behind which lay an
active mind of high order. At this juncture, my brain
became aware of a steady external influence operating upon it.
I closed my eyes to concentrate my thoughts more profoundly,
(19:47):
and was rewarded by the positive knowledge that my long
sought mental message had come at last. Each transmitted idea
formed rapidly in my mind, and though no actual language
was employed, my habitual association of conception and expression was
so great that I seemed to be receiving the message
in ordinary English. Joe Slater is dead, came the sole,
(20:11):
petrifying voice of an agency from beyond the wall of sleep.
My opened eyes sought the couch of pain and curious horror,
but the blue eyes were still calmly gazing, and the
countenance was still intelligently animated. He is better dead, for
he was unfit to bear the active intellect of cosmic entity.
(20:32):
His gross body could not undergo the needed adjustments between
ethereal life and planet life. He was too much an animal,
too little a man. Yet it is through his deficiency
that you have come to discover me. For the cosmic
and planet souls rightly should never meet. He has been
in my torment, and you are in a prison for
forty two of your terrestrial years. I am an entity
(20:56):
like that which yourself become in the freedom of meaningless sleep.
I am your brother of light, and have floated with
you in the Efphalgian valleys. It has not permitted me
to tell your waking earth self of your real self.
But we are all roamers of vast spaces, and travelers
in many ages. Next year I may be dwelling in
(21:18):
the Egypt, which you call ancient, or in the cruel
empire of tussan Chan, which is to come three thousand years. Hence,
you and I have drifted to the worlds that reel
about the red Arcturus, and dwelt in the bodies of
the insect philosophers that crawl proudly over the fourth moon
of Jupiter. How little does the Earth self know life
(21:39):
and its extent? How little indeed ought it to know
for its own tranquility of the oppressor. I cannot speak
you on Earth, have unwittingly felt its distant presence, you
who without knowing idly gave the blinking beacon the name Algol,
the demon star. It is to me and conquer the
(22:01):
oppressor that I have vain least driven for eons, held
back by bodily encumbrances. Tonight I go as an nemesis,
bearing just and blazingly cataclysmic vengeance. Watch me in the
sky close by the Demon's star. I cannot speak longer,
for the body of Joe Slater grows cold and rigid,
(22:22):
and the coarse brains are ceasing to vibrate. As I
wish you have been my only friend on this planet,
the only soul to sense and seek for me. Within
the repellent form which lies in this couch, we shall
meet again, perhaps in the shining mists of a Rhyan's sword,
perhaps an oblique plateau in prehyst or gasia, perhaps in
(22:45):
unremembered dreams tonight, perhaps in some other form an eon. Hence,
when the solar system shall have been swept away. At
this point, the thought waves abruptly ceased, and the pale
eye of the dreamer, or can I say, dead man,
commenced to glaze ficially. In a half stupor. I crossed
(23:05):
over to the couch and felt of his wrist, but
found it cold, stiff, and pulseless. The sallow cheeks paled again,
and the thick lips fell. Upon disclosing the repulsively rotten
fangs of Joe's slater, I shivered, pulled a blanket over
the hideous face, and awakened the nurse. Then I left
the cell and went silently to my room. I had
an instant and unaccountable craving for a sleep, whose dreams
(23:28):
I should not remember the climax. What plain tale of
science can boast of such a rhetorical effect. I have
merely set down certain things appealing to me as facts,
allowing you to construe them as you will. As I
have already admitted, my superior, old doctor Fanton, denies the
reality of everything I have related. He vows that I
(23:50):
was broken down with nervous strain and badly in need
of a long vacation on full pay, which he so
generously gave me. He assures me on his professional honor,
that Joe Slight was but a low grade paranoiac whose
fantastic notions must have come from the crude, hereditary folk
tales which circulated an even the most decadent of communities.
(24:10):
All this, he tells me, Yet I cannot forget what
I saw in the sky and the night after Slater died.
Lest you think me a biased witness, another pen must
add this final testimony, which may perhaps apply the climax
you expect. I will quote the following account of the
star nova Percy verbatim from the pages of that eminent
(24:32):
astronomical authority, Professor Garrett P. Servis. On February twenty second,
nineteen hundred and one, a marvelous new star was discovered
by doctor Anderson of Edinburgh, not very far from Algall.
No star had been visible at that point before. Within
twenty four hours the stranger had become so bright that
(24:52):
it outshone Capella. In a week or two it had
visibly faded, and in the course of a few months
it was hardly discernible with the.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
N I could eye.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
You've heard Beyond the Wall of Sleep by HP Lovecraft
from his book The Lurking Fear and Other Stories. List
is Michael Hansen. Technical operation for this program by Dan
Schmidt Mike Webbs is a production of WHA Radio in Madison,
a service of the University of Wisconsin Extension
Mind.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
We welcome to a half hour of mind web short
stories from.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
The world of Specanto fiction. This is Michael Anson with
a mind web story The Lurking Fears, and other stories
by H. P. Lovecraft. This is titled Beyond the Wall
of Sleep. I have often wondered if the majority of
(01:13):
mankind ever paused to reflect upon the occasionally titanic significance
of dreams and of the obscure world to which they belong.
Whilst the greater number of our nocturnal visions are perhaps
no more than faint and fantastic reflections of our waking experiences,
there are still a certain remainder whose in mundane and
ethereal character from it of no ordinary interpretation, and whose
(01:34):
vaguely exciting and disquieting effect suggests possible minute glimpses into
a sphere of mental existence no less important than physical life,
yet separated from that life by an all but impassable barrier.
From my experience, I can not doubt but that man,
when loss to terrestrial consciousness, is indeed sojourning in another
and uncorporeal life, of far different nature from the life
(01:56):
we know, and of which only the slightest and most
distinct memories linger after waking. From those blurred and fragmentary memories,
we may infer much yet prove little. We may guess
that in dreams life, matter and vitality, as the Earth knows,
such things are not necessarily constant, and the time and
(02:17):
space do not exist as our waking selves comprehend them.
Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our
truer life, and that our vein presence on the tyrequious
globe is itself a secondary or merely virtual phenomenon. It
was from a youthful rubbery filled with speculations of this sort,
(02:39):
that I arose one afternoon in the winter of nineteen
hundred nineteen o one, when to the state institution in
which I served as an intern was brought the man
whose case has ever since haunted me so unceasingly. His name,
as given on the records, was Joe Slater or Slater.
Joe Slater, who came to the institution in the vigilant
custody of four state police, who was described as a
(03:01):
highly dangerous character, certainly presented no evidence of his perilous
disposition when I first beheld him, Though well above the
middle stature and of somewhat brawny frame. He was given
an absurd appearance of harmless stupidity by the pale, sleepy
blueness of his small, watery eyes, the scantiness of his
neglected and never shaven growth of yellow beard, and the
listless drooping of his heavy nether lip. His age was unknown,
(03:24):
since among his kind neither family records nor permanent family
ties exist. But from the baldness of his hat in front,
and from the decayed condition of his teeth, the head
surgeon wrote him down as a man of about forty.
From the medical and court documents we learned all that
could be gathered of his case. This man, a vagabond
hunter and trapper, had always been strange in the eyes
of his primitive associates, yet habitually slept at night beyond
(03:47):
the ordinary time, and upon waking would often talk of
unknown things in a manner so bizarre as to inspire
fear even in the hearts of an unimaginative populace. Not
that his form of language was at all a knew usable,
for he never spoke save in the debase by Twive
this environment. But the tone and tenor of his utterances
were of such mysterious wildness that none might listen without apprehension.
(04:12):
He himself was generally as terrified and baffled as his auditors,
and within an hour after awakening would forget all that
he had said, or at least all that had caused
him to say what he did, relapsing into a bovine,
half amiable normality like that of other ill dwellers. As
Slater grew older, it appeared as matudinal aberrations had gradually
(04:32):
increased in frequency and violence till about a month before
his arrival at the institution had occurred the shocking tragedy
which caused his arrest by the authorities. One day near
noon after a profound sleep begun in the whiskey debouche
at about five of the previous afternoon, the man had
roused himself most suddenly with euulations so horrible and unearthly
(04:53):
that they brought several neighbors to his cabin, a filthy
sty where he dwelt with a family as indescribable as himself.
Rushing out into the snow, he had flung his arms
aloft and commenced a series of leaps directly upward in
the air. The while shouting his determination to reach some big,
big cabin with brightness in the roof and walls and
floor in the loud queer music far away. As two
(05:15):
men of moderate size ought to restrain him, he had
struggled with moniacal force and fury, screaming of his desire
and need to find and kill a certain thing that
shines and shakes and laughs at length. After temporarily felling
one of his detainers with a sudden blow, he had
flung himself upon the other, and at the moniac ecstasy
of bloodthirstiness, shrieking fiendishly that he would jump high in
(05:37):
the air and burn his way through anything that stopped him.
Families and neighbors had now fled in the panic, and
when the more courageous of them returned, Slayter was gone,
creeping behind an unrecognizable pulp like thing that had been
a living man but an hour before. None of the
mountaineers had dared to pursue him, and it's likely that
they would have welcomed his death from the cold. But
(05:59):
when several mornings later they heard his screams from a
distant ravine, they realized that he had somehow managed to
survive and that his removal in one way or another
would be necessary. Then had followed an armed searching party,
whose purpose, whatever it may have been, originally became that
of a sheriff's posse, after one of the seldom popular
state troopers had, by accident observed the questioned and finally
(06:20):
joined the seekers. On the third day, Slater was found
unconscious in the hollow of a tree and taken to
the nearest jail, where alienists from Albany examined in this
and as the senses returned to them, he told a
simple story. He had, he said, gone to sleep one
afternoon about sundown, after drinking much liquor. He had awakened
(06:40):
to find himself standing bloody handed in the snow before
his cabin, the mangled corpse of his neighbor, Peter Slater
at his feet. Horrified, he had taken to the woods
in a vague effort to escape from the scene of
what must have been his crime. Beyond these things, he
seemed to know nothing, nor could the expert questioning of
his interrogators bring out a single additional fire act. That night,
(07:02):
Slater slept quietly, and the next morning he awakened with
no singular feature save a certain alteration of expression. Doctor Bernard,
who had been watching the patient, thought he noticed in
the pale blue eyes a certain gleam of peculiar quality,
and in the flexed lips and all but imperceptible tightening,
as if of intelligent determination. But when questioned, Slater relapsed
(07:23):
into the habitual vacancy of the mountaineer and only reiterated
what he had said on the preceding day. On the
third morning occurred the first of the man's mental attacks.
After some show of uneasiness and sleep, he burst forth
into a frenzy so powerful that the combined efforts of
four men were needed to bind him in a strait jacket.
The Aglianists listened with keen attention to his words, since
(07:45):
their curiosity had been aroused to a high pitch by
the suggestive, yet mostly conflicting and incoherent stories of his
family and neighbors. Slater raved for upward of fifteen minutes,
babbling in his backwards dialect of green edifices of light,
oceans of space, strange music, and shadowy mountains and valleys,
(08:06):
but most of all that he dwell upon some mysterious,
blazing entity that shook and laughed and mocked at him.
This vast, vague personality seemed to have done him a
terrible wrong, and to kill it in triumphant revenge was
his paramount desire. In order to reach it, he said,
he would soar through abysses of emptiness, burning every obstacle
(08:27):
that stood in his way. Thus ran his discourse, until
with great suddenness he ceased. The fire of madness died
from his eyes, and in dull wonder he looked at
his questioners and asked why he was bound. Doctor Barney
unbuckled the leather harness and did not restore it till night,
when he succeeded in persuading Slater to donnate of his
own volition for his own good. The man had now
(08:47):
admitted that he sometimes talked queerly, though he knew not why.
Within a week two more attacks appeared, But from then
the doctors learned little on the source of Slatter's visions.
They voculated at length, for since he could neither read
nor write, and had apparently never heard a legend or
fairy tale, his gorgeous imagery was quite inexplicable that it
(09:09):
could not come from any known myth or romance was
made especially clear by the fact that the unfortunate lunatic
expressed himself only in his own simple manner. He raved
of things he did not understand, and could not interpret,
things which he claimed to have experienced, but which he
could not have learned through any normal or connected narration.
(09:30):
The alienists soon agreed that abnormal dreams were the foundation
of the trouble, dreams whose vividness could for a time
completely dominate the waking mind of this basically inferior man.
With due formality. Slater was tried for murder, acquitted on
the ground of insanity, and committed to the institution, wherein
I held so humble a post. I have said that
(09:51):
I am a constant speculator concerning dream life, and from
this he may judge of the eagerness with which I
applied myself to the study of the new patient. As
soon as I had fully ascertained the facts of his case,
he seemed to sense a certain friendliness in me, born
no doubt of the interest I could not conceal in
the gentle manner in which I questioned him, not that
he ever recognized me during his attacks, when I hung
(10:12):
breathlessly upon his chaotic but cosmic word pictures. But he
knew me in his quiet hours, when he would sit
by his barred window, weaving baskets of straw and willow,
and perhaps pining for the mountain freedom he could never
again enjoy. By degrees, I commenced to feel an overwhelming
wonder at the mad and fantastic conceptions of Joe Slater.
(10:33):
The man himself was pitiably inferior in mentality and language alike,
but his glowing Titanic visions, though described in a barbarous,
disjointed jargon, were assuredly things which only a superior or
even exceptional brain could conceive. How I often asked myself,
how could the stolid imagination of a catskill degenerate conjure
upsites whose very possession argued a lurking spark of genius.
(10:58):
How could any backwoods dullard him gained so much as
an idea of those glittering realms of supernatural radiance in
space about which Slater rented in his furious delirium. More
and more I inclined to the belief that in the
pitiful personality cringed before me lay the disordered nucleus of
something beyond my comprehension, something infinitely beyond the comprehension of
(11:20):
my more experienced but less imaginative medical and scientific colleagues,
And yet I could extract nothing definite from the man.
The sum of all my investigation was that, in a
kind of semi corporeal dream life, Slater wandered or floated
through a resplendent and prodigious valleys, meadows, garden cities, and
palaces of light, in a region unbounded and unknown de
(11:44):
man that there he was no peasant or degenerate, but
a creature of importance in livid life, moving proudly and dominantly,
and checked only by a certain deadly enemy, who seemed
to be a being of visible yet ethereal structure, and
who did not appear to be of human shape. Since
Slater never referred to it as a man, or as
ought save a thing, this thing had done Slater some
(12:07):
hideous but unnamed wrong, which the maniac, if MANIACI were
yearned to avenge. From the manner in which Slater alluded
to their dealings, I judged that he, in the luminous thing,
had met unequal terms. That in his dream existence, the
man was himself a luminous thing of the same race
as his enemy. This impression was sustained by his frequent
(12:29):
references to flying, true space, and burning all that impeded
his progress. If these conceptions were formulated in rustic words
wholly inadequate to convey them, a circumstance which drove me
to the conclusion that if a dream world indeed existed,
oral language was not its medium for the transmission of thought.
Could it be that the dream soul inhabiting this inferior
(12:52):
body was desperately struggling to speak things which the simple
and halting tongue of dullness could not utter? Could it
be that I was face to face with intellectual emanations
which would explain the mystery, if I could but learn
to discover and read them. I did not tell the
older physicians of these things, for middle ages skeptical, cynical,
and disinclined to accept new ideas. Besides, the head of
(13:14):
the institution had but lately warned me in his paternal way,
that I was overworking, that my mind needed a rest.
It had long been my belief that human thought consists
basically of atomic or molecular motion convertible into ether waves
or radiant energy like heat light in the electricity. This
belief had early led me to contemplate the possibility of
(13:35):
telepathy or mental communication by means of suitable apparatus, and
I had, in my college days prepared a set of
transmitting and receiving instruments somewhat similar to the cumbers's devices
employed in wireless telegraphy at that crude pre radio period.
These I had tested with a fellow student, but achieving
no result, had soon packed them away with other scientific
godds and ends for possible future use. Now, in my
(13:57):
intense desire to probe into the dream life of Joe
was later, I sought these instruments again, and spent several
days in repairing room for action. When they were complete,
once more, I missed no opportunity for their trial. At
each outburst of Slatter's violence, I would fit the transmitter
to his forehead and the receiver to my own, constantly
making delicate adjustments for various ypothetical wavelengths of intellectual energy.
(14:19):
I had but little notion of how the thought impressions would,
if successfully conveyed, arouse an intelligent response in my brain,
but I felt certain that I could detect and interpret
them Accordingly, I continued my experiments, though in forming no
one of their nature. It was on the twenty first
of February that the thing occurred. As I look back
(14:40):
across the years, I realized how unreal it seems, and
sometimes wonderful old doctor Fenton was not right when he
charged it all to my excited imagination. I recalled that
he listened with great kindness and patience when I told him,
but afterward gave me a nerve powder and arranged for
the half year's vacation on which I departed the next week.
That fateful night, I was wildly agitated and perturbed, for
(15:01):
despite the excellent care he had received, Joe Slater was
unmistakably dying. Perhaps it was his modern freedom that he missed,
or perhaps the turmoil in his brain had grown too
acute for his rather's luggish physique, But at all events,
the flame of vitality flickered low in the decadent body.
He was drowsy near the end, and his darkness fell.
He dropped off into a troubled sleep. I did not
(15:24):
strap on the strait jacket, as was customary when he slept,
since I saw that he was too feeble to be dangerous,
even if he awoke in mental disorder once more before
passing away. But I did place upon his head and
mine the two ends of my cosmic radio, hoping against
hope for a first and last message from the dream world.
In the brief time remaining in the cell with us
(15:45):
was one nurse, a mediocre fellow, who did not understand
the purpose of the apparatus or think to inquire into
my course. As the hours wore on, I saw his
head droop awkwardly in sleep, but I did not disturb him.
I myself glow by the rhythmical breathing of the healthy,
and the dying man must have nodded a little later.
The sound of weird lyric melody was what aroused me. Chords, vibrations,
(16:08):
and harmonic ecstasies echoed passionately on every hand, while on
my ravished site burst the stupendous spectacle of ultimate beauty. Walls, columns,
and architraves of living fire blaze effotently around the spot
where I seemed to float in air, extending upward to
an infinitely high vaulted dome of indescribable splendor, blending with
(16:31):
this display of glacial magnificence, or rather supplanting it at
times in kaleidoscopic rotation, were glimpses of wide plains and
graceful valleys, high mountains, and inviting grottos, covered with every
lovely attribute of scenery which my delighted eyes could conceive of,
yet formed wholly of some glowing ethereal plastic entity, which
inconsistency partook as much of spirit as of matter. As
(16:55):
I gazed, I perceived that my own brain held the
heat of these enchanting metamorphisies. For each vista which appeared
to me was the one my changing mind most wished
to behold. Amidst this ilusion realm, I dwelt not as
a stranger, for each sight and sound was familiar to me,
just as it had been uncountered yonds of eternity before,
(17:16):
and would be for like eternities to come. Then the
resplendent era of my brother of Light drew near and
held colloquy with me, soul to soul, with silence and
perfect interchange of thought. The hour was one of approaching triumph,
For was not my fellow being escaping at last from
a degrading periodic bondage, escaping forever and preparing to follow
(17:36):
the accursive depressor even under the uttermost fields of ether,
that upon it might be wrought a flaming cosmic vengeance
which would shake the spheres. We floated thus for a
little time, when I perceived a slight blurring and fading
of the objects around us, as though some force were
recalling me to Earth, where I least wished to go.
(17:56):
The form near me seemed to feel a change also,
for it, July brought its discourse toward a conclusion in itself,
prepared to quit, the scene fading from my sight at
a rate somewhat less rapid than that of the other objects.
A few more thoughts were exchanged, and I knew that
the luminous One and I were being recalled the bondage,
though for my brother of light it would be the
last time. The sorry planet shell, being well nigh spent
(18:19):
in less than an hour, my fellow would be free
to pursue the oppressor along the Milky Way, and passed
the hither stars to the very confines of infinity. A
well defined shock separates my final impression of the fading
scene of light from my sudden and somewhat chained faced.
Awakening and straightening up in my chairs, I saw the
dying figure and the couch move hesitantly. Joe Slater was
(18:42):
indeed awaking, though probably for the last time. As I
looked more closely, I saw that in the sallow cheeks
showing spots of color which had never before been present.
The lips, too seemed unusual, being tightly compressed, as if
by the force of the stronger character than had been Slater's.
The whole face was only began to grow tense, and
the head turned restlessly closed eyes. I did not rouse
(19:06):
the sleeping nurse, but readjusted the slightly disarranged headband of
my telepathic radio, intend to catch any parting message the
dreamer might have to deliver. All at once, the head
turned sharply in my direction, and the eyes fell open,
causing me to stare in blank amazement at what I beheld.
The man who had been Joe Slater was gazing at
me with a pair of luminous, expanding eyes whose blue
(19:27):
seemed subtly to have deepened. Neither mania nor degeneracy was
visible in that gaze, and I felt beyond a doubt
that I was viewing the face behind which lay an
active mind of high order. At this juncture, my brain
became aware of a steady external influence operating upon it.
I closed my eyes to concentrate my thoughts more profoundly,
(19:47):
and was rewarded by the positive knowledge that my long
sought mental message had come at last. Each transmitted idea
formed rapidly in my mind, and though no actual language
was employed, my habitual association of conception and expression was
so great that I seemed to be receiving the message
in ordinary English. Joe Slater is dead, came the sole,
(20:11):
petrifying voice of an agency from beyond the wall of sleep.
My opened eyes sought the couch of pain and curious horror,
but the blue eyes were still calmly gazing, and the
countenance was still intelligently animated. He is better dead, for
he was unfit to bear the active intellect of cosmic entity.
(20:32):
His gross body could not undergo the needed adjustments between
ethereal life and planet life. He was too much an animal,
too little a man. Yet it is through his deficiency
that you have come to discover me. For the cosmic
and planet souls rightly should never meet. He has been
in my torment, and you are in a prison for
forty two of your terrestrial years. I am an entity
(20:56):
like that which yourself become in the freedom of meaningless sleep.
I am your brother of light, and have floated with
you in the Efphalgian valleys. It has not permitted me
to tell your waking earth self of your real self.
But we are all roamers of vast spaces, and travelers
in many ages. Next year I may be dwelling in
(21:18):
the Egypt, which you call ancient, or in the cruel
empire of tussan Chan, which is to come three thousand years. Hence,
you and I have drifted to the worlds that reel
about the red Arcturus, and dwelt in the bodies of
the insect philosophers that crawl proudly over the fourth moon
of Jupiter. How little does the Earth self know life
(21:39):
and its extent? How little indeed ought it to know
for its own tranquility of the oppressor. I cannot speak
you on Earth, have unwittingly felt its distant presence, you
who without knowing idly gave the blinking beacon the name Algol,
the demon star. It is to me and conquer the
(22:01):
oppressor that I have vain least driven for eons, held
back by bodily encumbrances. Tonight I go as an nemesis,
bearing just and blazingly cataclysmic vengeance. Watch me in the
sky close by the Demon's star. I cannot speak longer,
for the body of Joe Slater grows cold and rigid,
(22:22):
and the coarse brains are ceasing to vibrate. As I
wish you have been my only friend on this planet,
the only soul to sense and seek for me. Within
the repellent form which lies in this couch, we shall
meet again, perhaps in the shining mists of a Rhyan's sword,
perhaps an oblique plateau in prehyst or gasia, perhaps in
(22:45):
unremembered dreams tonight, perhaps in some other form an eon. Hence,
when the solar system shall have been swept away. At
this point, the thought waves abruptly ceased, and the pale
eye of the dreamer, or can I say, dead man,
commenced to glaze ficially. In a half stupor. I crossed
(23:05):
over to the couch and felt of his wrist, but
found it cold, stiff, and pulseless. The sallow cheeks paled again,
and the thick lips fell. Upon disclosing the repulsively rotten
fangs of Joe's slater, I shivered, pulled a blanket over
the hideous face, and awakened the nurse. Then I left
the cell and went silently to my room. I had
an instant and unaccountable craving for a sleep, whose dreams
(23:28):
I should not remember the climax. What plain tale of
science can boast of such a rhetorical effect. I have
merely set down certain things appealing to me as facts,
allowing you to construe them as you will. As I
have already admitted, my superior, old doctor Fanton, denies the
reality of everything I have related. He vows that I
(23:50):
was broken down with nervous strain and badly in need
of a long vacation on full pay, which he so
generously gave me. He assures me on his professional honor,
that Joe Slight was but a low grade paranoiac whose
fantastic notions must have come from the crude, hereditary folk
tales which circulated an even the most decadent of communities.
(24:10):
All this, he tells me, Yet I cannot forget what
I saw in the sky and the night after Slater died.
Lest you think me a biased witness, another pen must
add this final testimony, which may perhaps apply the climax
you expect. I will quote the following account of the
star nova Percy verbatim from the pages of that eminent
(24:32):
astronomical authority, Professor Garrett P. Servis. On February twenty second,
nineteen hundred and one, a marvelous new star was discovered
by doctor Anderson of Edinburgh, not very far from Algall.
No star had been visible at that point before. Within
twenty four hours the stranger had become so bright that
(24:52):
it outshone Capella. In a week or two it had
visibly faded, and in the course of a few months
it was hardly discernible with the.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
N I could eye.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
You've heard Beyond the Wall of Sleep by HP Lovecraft
from his book The Lurking Fear and Other Stories. List
is Michael Hansen. Technical operation for this program by Dan
Schmidt Mike Webbs is a production of WHA Radio in Madison,
a service of the University of Wisconsin Extension
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