The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson (distant reading TXT) 📕

The House on the Borderland

By William Hope Hodgson.

Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint Foreword Dedication Author’s Introduction to the Manuscript The House on the Borderland I: The Finding of the Manuscript II: The Plain of Silence III: The House in the Arena IV: The Earth V: The Thing in the Pit VI: The Swine-Things VII: The Attack VIII: After the Attack IX: In the Cellars X: The Time of Waiting XI: The Searching of the Gardens XII: The Subterranean Pit XIII: The Trap in the Great Cellar XIV: The Sea of Sleep The Fragments XV: The Noise in the Night XVI: The Awakening XVII: The Slowing Rotation XVIII: The Green Star XIX: The End of the Solar System XX: The Celestial Globes XXI: The Dark Sun XXII: The Dark Nebula XXIII: Pepper XXIV: The Footsteps in the Garden XXV: The Thing from the Arena XXVI: The Luminous Speck XXVII: Conclusion Grief Endnotes Colophon Uncopyright Imprint

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Foreword

From the Manuscript discovered in 1877 by Messrs. Tonnison and Berreggnog in the Ruins that lie to the south of the Village of Kraighten, in the west of Ireland. Set out here, with Notes.

Dedication

To my father

(Whose feet tread the lost aeons)

Open the door,
And listen!
Only the wind’s muffled roar,
And the glisten
Of tears ’round the moon.
And, in fancy, the tread
Of vanishing shoon⁠—
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 shoon that tread the lost aeons:
To the sound that bids you to die.
Hush and hark! Hush and Hark!”

Shoon 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 MS. itself⁠—You must picture me, when 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.

Then, conceive of me comfortably a-seat for the evening, and the little, squat book and I, companions for some close, solitary hours. And the change that came upon my judgments! The emergence of a half-belief. From a seeming fantasia there grew, to reward my unbiased concentration, a cogent, coherent scheme of ideas that gripped my interest more securely than the mere bones of the account or story, whichever it be, and I confess to an inclination to use the first term. I found a greater story within the lesser⁠—and the paradox is no paradox.

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 all 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.

One final impression, and I will cease from troubling. I cannot but look upon the account of the Celestial Globes as a striking illustration (how nearly had I said “proof”!) of the actuality of our thoughts and emotions among the Realities. For, without seeming to suggest the annihilation of the lasting reality of Matter, as the hub and framework of the Machine of Eternity, it enlightens one with conceptions of the existence of worlds of thought and emotion, working in conjunction with, and duly subject to, the scheme of material creation.

William Hope Hodgson

December 17, 1907

The House on the Borderland I The Finding of the Manuscript

Right away in the west of Ireland lies a tiny hamlet called Kraighten. 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,