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

glory of the sun, there circled two darting points of light, and, further off, there flew a blue, shining speck, that I knew to be the Earth. It circled the sun in a space that seemed to be no more than an Earth-minute.

… nearer with great speed. I saw the radiances of Jupiter and Saturn, spinning, with incredible swiftness, in huge orbits. And ever I drew more nigh, and looked out upon this strange sight⁠—the visible circling of the planets about the mother sun. It was as though time had been annihilated for me; so that a year was no more to my unfleshed spirit, than is a moment to an earthbound soul.

The speed of the planets appeared to increase; and, presently, I was watching the sun, all ringed about with hairlike circles of different colored fire⁠—the paths of the planets, hurtling at mighty speed, about the central flame.⁠ ⁠…

… the sun grew vast, as though it leapt to meet me.⁠ ⁠… And now I was within the circling of the outer planets, and flitting swiftly, toward the place where the Earth, glimmering through the blue splendor of its orbit, as though a fiery mist, circled the sun at a monstrous speed.⁠ ⁠…3

XV The Noise in the Night

And now, I come to the strangest of all the strange happenings that have befallen me in this house of mysteries. It occurred quite lately⁠—within the month; and I have little doubt but that what I saw was in reality the end of all things. However, to my story.

I do not know how it is; but, up to the present, I have never been able to write these things down, directly they happened. It is as though I have to wait a time, recovering my just balance, and digesting⁠—as it were⁠—the things I have heard or seen. No doubt, this is as it should be; for, by waiting, I see the incidents more truly, and write of them in a calmer and more judicial frame of mind. This by the way.

It is now the end of November. My story relates to what happened in the first week of the month.

It was night, about eleven o’clock. Pepper and I kept one another company in the study⁠—that great, old room of mine, where I read and work. I was reading, curiously enough, the Bible. I have begun, in these later days, to take a growing interest in that great and ancient book. Suddenly, a distinct tremor shook the house, and there came a faint and distant, whirring buzz, that grew rapidly into a far, muffled screaming. It reminded me, in a queer, gigantic way, of the noise that a clock makes, when the catch is released, and it is allowed to run down. The sound appeared to come from some remote height⁠—somewhere up in the night. There was no repetition of the shock. I looked across at Pepper. He was sleeping peacefully.

Gradually, the whirring noise decreased, and there came a long silence.

All at once, a glow lit up the end window, which protrudes far out from the side of the house, so that, from it, one may look both east and west. I felt puzzled, and, after a moment’s hesitation, walked across the room, and pulled aside the blind. As I did so, I saw the sun rise, from behind the horizon. It rose with a steady, perceptible movement. I could see it travel upward. In a minute, it seemed, it had reached the tops of the trees, through which I had watched it. Up, up⁠—It was broad daylight now. Behind me, I was conscious of a sharp, mosquitolike buzzing. I glanced ’round, and knew that it came from the clock. Even as I looked, it marked off an hour. The minute hand was moving ’round the dial, faster than an ordinary second hand. The hour hand moved quickly from space to space. I had a numb sense of astonishment. A moment later, so it seemed, the two candles went out, almost together. I turned swiftly back to the window; for I had seen the shadow of the window-frames traveling along the floor toward me, as though a great lamp had been carried up past the window.

I saw now, that the sun had risen high into the heavens, and was still visibly moving. It passed above the house, with an extraordinary sailing kind of motion. As the window came into shadow, I saw another extraordinary thing. The fine-weather clouds were not passing, easily, across the sky⁠—they were scampering, as though a hundred-mile-an-hour wind blew. As they passed, they changed their shapes a thousand times a minute, as though writhing with a strange life; and so were gone. And, presently, others came, and whisked away likewise.

To the west, I saw the sun, drop with an incredible, smooth, swift motion. Eastward, the shadows of every seen thing crept toward the coming greyness. And the movement of the shadows was visible to me⁠—a stealthy, writhing creep of the shadows of the wind-stirred trees. It was a strange sight.

Quickly, the room began to darken. The sun slid down to the horizon, and seemed, as it were, to disappear from my sight, almost with a jerk. Through the greyness of the swift evening, I saw the silver crescent of the moon, falling out of the southern sky, toward the west. The evening seemed to merge into an almost instant night. Above me, the many constellations passed in a strange, “noiseless” circling, westward. The moon fell through that last thousand fathoms of the night-gulf, and there was only the starlight.⁠ ⁠…

About this time, the buzzing in the corner ceased; telling me that the clock had run down. A few minutes passed, and I saw the eastward sky lighten. A grey, sullen morning spread through all the darkness, and hid the march of the stars. Overhead, there moved, with a heavy, everlasting rolling, a vast, seamless sky of grey clouds⁠—a cloud-sky that would have seemed motionless, through