Beyond the Wall of Sleep
by H. P. Lovecraft
Written 1919
Published October 1919 in Pine Cones, Vol. 1, No. 6, p. 2-10
I have often wondered if the majority of mankind ever pause 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 - Freud to
the contrary with his puerile symbolism - there are still a certain remainder
whose immundane and ethereal character permit of no ordinary interpretation, and
whose 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
cannot doubt but that man, when lost to terrestrial consciousness, is indeed
sojourning in another and uncorporeal life of far different nature from the life
we know, and of which only the slightest and most indistinct 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 that time and 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 vain presence on the
terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon.
It was from a youthful revery filled with speculations of this sort that I arose
one afternoon in the winter of 1900-01, when to the state psychopathic
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 Slaader, and his appearance was that of the typical denizen of the
Catskill Mountain region; one of those strange, repellent scions of a primitive
Colonial peasant stock whose isolation for nearly three centuries in the hilly
fastnesses of a little-traveled countryside has caused them to sink to a kind of
barbaric degeneracy, rather than advance with their more fortunately placed
brethren of the thickly settled districts. Among these odd folk, who correspond
exactly to the decadent element of "white trash" in the South, law and morals
are non-existent; and their general mental status is probably below that of any
other section of native American people.
Joe Slater, who came to the institution in the vigilant custody of four state
policemen, and who was described as a 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, since among his kind neither family records nor permanent family ties
exist; but from the baldness of his head 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. He had habitually slept at night beyond
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 unusual, for he never spoke
save in the debased patois of his environment; but the tone and tenor of his
utterances were of such mysterious wildness, that none might listen without
apprehension. 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 the other hilldwellers.
As Slater grew older, it appeared, his matutinal aberrations had gradually
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 a whiskey
debauch at about five of the previous afternoon, the man had roused himself most
suddenly, with ululations so horrible and unearthly 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 and the loud queer music far away". As two men of moderate size
sought to restrain him, he had struggled with maniacal 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 in a demoniac ecstasy of
blood-thirstiness, shrieking fiendishly that he would "jump high in the air and
burn his way through anything that stopped him".
Family and neighbors had now fled in a panic, and when the more courageous of
them returned, Slater was gone, leaving 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 is likely that they would have welcomed his death
from the cold; but 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, then questioned, and finally 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 him as soon as his
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 to find
himself standing bloody-handed in the snow before his cabin, the mangled corpse
of his neighbor Peter Slader 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 fact.
That night Slater slept quietly, and the next morning he awakened with no
singular feature save a certain alteration of expression. Doctor Barnard, who
had been watching the patient, thought he noticed in the pale blue eyes a
certain gleam of peculiar quality, and in the flaccid lips an all but
imperceptible tightening, as if of intelligent determination. But when
questioned, Slater relapsed 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 in sleep, he burst forth into a frenzy so powerful that the
combined efforts of four men were needed to bind him in a straightjacket. The
alienists listened with keen attention to his words, since 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 backwoods dialect of green edifices of light,
oceans of space, strange music, and shadowy mountains and valleys. But most of
all did 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 that stood in his way. Thus ran his discourse, until with the greatest
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. Dr. Barnard unbuckled
the leather harness and did not restore it till night, when he succeeded in
persuading Slater to ...
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