Delphi Complete Works of H. P. Lovecraft(643)

“She’s probably going to stay with one of her horrible groups of devotees. I hope she’ll go west and get a divorce — anyhow, I’ve made her promise to keep away and let me alone. It was horrible, Dan — she was stealing my body — crowding me out — making a prisoner of me. I laid low and pretended to let her do it, but I had to be on the watch. I could plan if I was careful, for she can’t read my mind literally, or in detail. All she could read of my planning was a sort of general mood of rebellion — and she always thought I was helpless. Never thought I could get the best of her . . . but I had a spell or two that worked.”

Derby looked over his shoulder and took some more whiskey.

“I paid off those damned servants this morning when they got back. They were ugly about it, and asked questions, but they went. They’re her kind — Innsmouth people — and were hand and glove with her. I hope they’ll let me alone — I didn’t like the way they laughed when they walked away. I must get as many of Dad’s old servants again as I can. I’ll move back home now.

“I suppose you think I’m crazy, Dan — but Arkham history ought to hint at things that back up what I’ve told you — and what I’m going to tell you. You’ve seen one of the changes, too — in your car after I told you about Asenath that day coming home from Maine. That was when she got me — drove me out of my body. The last thing of the ride I remember was when I was all worked up trying to tell you what that she-devil is. Then she got me, and in a flash I was back at the house — in the library where those damned servants had me locked up — and in that cursed fiend’s body . . . that isn’t even human. . . . You know, it was she you must have ridden home with . . . that preying wolf in my body. . . . You ought to have known the difference!”

I shuddered as Derby paused. Surely, I had known the difference — yet could I accept an explanation as insane as this? But my distracted caller was growing even wilder.

“I had to save myself — I had to, Dan! She’d have got me for good at Hallowmass — they hold a Sabbat up there beyond Chesuncook, and the sacrifice would have clinched things. She’d have got me for good . . . she’d have been I, and I’d have been she . . . forever . . . too late. . . . My body’d have been hers for good. . . . She’d have been a man, and fully human, just as she wanted to be. . . . I suppose she’d have put me out of the way — killed her own ex-body with me in it, damn her, just as she did before — just as she, he, or it did before. . . .”

Edward’s face was now atrociously distorted, and he bent it uncomfortably close to mine as his voice fell to a whisper.

“You must know what I hinted in the car — that she isn’t Asenath at all, but really old Ephraim himself. I suspected it a year and a half ago, but I know it now. Her handwriting shews it when she’s off guard — sometimes she jots down a note in writing that’s just like her father’s manuscripts, stroke for stroke — and sometimes she says things that nobody but an old man like Ephraim could say. He changed forms with her when he felt death coming — she was the only one he could find with the right kind of brain and a weak enough will — he got her body permanently, just as she almost got mine, and then poisoned the old body he’d put her into. Haven’t you seen old Ephraim’s soul glaring out of that she-devil’s eyes dozens of times . . . and out of mine when she had control of my body?”

The whisperer was panting, and paused for breath. I said nothing, and when he resumed his voice was nearer normal. This, I reflected, was a case for the asylum, but I would not be the one to send him there. Perhaps time and freedom from Asenath would do its work. I could see that he would never wish to dabble in morbid occultism again.

“I’ll tell you more later — I must have a long rest now. I’ll tell you something of the forbidden horrors she led me into — something of the age-old horrors that even now are festering in out-of-the-way corners with a few monstrous priests to keep them alive. Some people know things about the universe that nobody ought to know, and can do things that nobody ought to be able to do. I’ve been in it up to my neck, but that’s the end. Today I’d burn that damned Necronomicon and all the rest if I were librarian at Miskatonic.

“But she can’t get me now. I must get out of that accursed house as soon as I can, and settle down at home. You’ll help me, I know, if I need help. Those devilish servants, you know . . . and if people should get too inquisitive about Asenath. You see, I can’t give them her address. . . . Then there are certain groups of searchers — certain cults, you know — that might misunderstand our breaking up . . . some of them have damnably curious ideas and methods. I know you’ll stand by me if anything happens — even if I have to tell you a lot that will shock you. . . .”