[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Weird Tales June 1928.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
1. The Shadow on the Chimney
There was thunder in the air on the night I went to the desertedmansion atop Tempest Mountain to find the lurking fear. I was notalone, for foolhardiness was not then mixed with that love of thegrotesque and the terrible which has made my career a series of questsfor strange horrors in literature and in life. With me were twofaithful and muscular men for whom I had sent when the time came; menlong associated with me in my ghastly explorations because of theirpeculiar fitness.
We had started quietly from the village because of the reporters whostill lingered about after the eldritch panic of a month before—thenightmare creeping death. Later, I thought, they might aid me; but Idid not want them then. Would to God I had let them share the search,that I might not have had to bear the secret alone so long; to bearit alone for fear the world would call me mad or go mad itself at thedemon implications of the thing. Now that I am telling it anyway, lestthe brooding make me a maniac, I wish I had never concealed it. ForI, and I only, know what manner of fear lurked on that spectral anddesolate mountain.
In a small motor-car we covered the miles of primeval forest andhill until the wooded ascent checked it. The country bore an aspectmore than usually sinister as we viewed it by night and without theaccustomed crowds of investigators, so that we were often tempted touse the acetylene headlights despite the attention it might attract.It was not a wholesome landscape after dark, and I believe I wouldhave noticed its morbidity even had I been ignorant of the terrorthat stalked there. Of wild creatures there were none—they are wisewhen death leers close. The ancient lightning-scarred trees seemedunnaturally large and twisted, and the other vegetation unnaturallythick and feverish, while curious mounds and hummocks in the weedy,fulgurite-pitted earth reminded me of snakes and dead men's skullsswelled to gigantic proportions.
Fear had lurked on Tempest Mountain for more than a century. This Ilearned at once from newspaper accounts of the catastrophe which firstbrought the region to the world's notice. The place is a remote, lonelyelevation in that part of the Catskills where Dutch civilization oncefeebly and transiently penetrated, leaving behind as it receded onlya few ruined mansions and a degenerate squatter population inhabitingpitiful hamlets on isolated slopes. Normal beings seldom visitedthe locality till the state police were formed, and even now onlyinfrequent troopers patrol it. The fear, however, is an old traditionthroughout the neighboring villages; since it is a prime topic in thesimple discourse of the poor mongrels who sometimes leave their valleysto trade hand-woven baskets for such primitive necessities as they cannot shoot, raise, or make.
The lurking fear dwelt in the shunned and deserted Martense mansion,which crowned the high but gradual eminence whose liability to frequentthunderstorms gave it the name of Tempest Mountain. For over a hundredyears the antique, grove-circled stone house had been the subjectof stories incredibly wild and monstrously hideous; stories of asilent colossal creeping death which stalked abroad in summer. Withwhimpering insistence the squatters told tales of a demon which seizedlone wayfarers after dark, either carrying them off or leaving themin a frightful state of gnawed dismemberment; while sometimes theywhispered of blood-t