may reproduce themselves in the brain of superstition - but they were there
before. They are transcripts, types - the archtypes are in us, and eternal.
How else should the recital of that which we know in a waking sense to be
false come to affect us all? Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such
objects, considered in their capacity of being able to inflict upon us bodily
injury? O, least of all! These terrors are of older standing. They date beyond
body - or without the body, they would have been the same... That the kind of
fear here treated is purely spiritual - that it is strong in proportion as it
is objectless on earth, that it predominates in the period of our sinless
infancy - are difficulties the solution of which might afford some probable
insight into our ante-mundane condition, and a peep at least into the
shadowland of pre-existence.
- Charles Lamb: Witches and Other Night-Fears
I.
When a traveller in north central Massachusetts takes the wrong fork at the
junction of Aylesbury pike just beyond Dean's Corners he comes upon a lonely and
curious country.
The ground gets higher, and the brier-bordered stone walls press closer and
closer against the ruts of the dusty, curving road. The trees of the frequent
forest belts seem too large, and the wild weeds, brambles and grasses attain a
luxuriance not often found in settled regions. At the same time the planted
fields appear singularly few and barren; while the sparsely scattered houses
wear a surprisingly uniform aspect of age, squalor, and dilapidation.
Without knowing why, one hesitates to ask directions from the gnarled solitary
figures spied now and then on crumbling doorsteps or on the sloping, rock-strewn
meadows.Those figures are so silent and furtive that one feels somehow
confronted by forbidden things, with which it would be better to have nothing to
do. When a rise in the road brings the mountains in view above the deep woods,
the feeling of strange uneasiness is increased. The summits are too rounded and
symmetrical to give a sense of comfort and naturalness, and sometimes the sky
silhouettes with especial clearness the queer circles of tall stone pillars with
which most of them are crowned.
Gorges and ravines of problematical depth intersect the way, and the crude
wooden bridges always seem of dubious safety. When the road dips again there are
stretches of marshland that one instinctively dislikes, and indeed almost fears
at evening when unseen whippoorwills chatter and the fireflies come out in
abnormal profusion to dance to the raucous, creepily insistent rhythms of
stridently piping bull-frogs. The thin, shining line of the Miskatonic's upper
reaches has an oddly serpent-like suggestion as it winds close to the feet of
the domed hills among which it rises.
No comments:
Post a Comment