The Color Out of Space E-Book

H. P. Lovecraft

• Herausgeber: SAMPI Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 62

Beschreibung

In H.P. Lovecraft's "The Color Out of Space," a mysterious meteorite crashes onto a farm in rural New England. The meteorite emits an eerie, indescribable color which corrupts the land and drives the local flora, fauna, and eventually the inhabitants mad. As the strange phenomena escalate, the farm's once-thriving environment deteriorates into a nightmarish landscape, revealing the cosmic horror of an incomprehensible alien force.

Leseprobe

The Color Out of Space

H.P. Lovecraft

SYNOPSIS

In H.P. Lovecraft's "The Color Out of Space," a mysterious meteorite crashes onto a farm in rural New England. The meteorite emits an eerie, indescribable color which corrupts the land and drives the local flora, fauna, and eventually the inhabitants mad. As the strange phenomena escalate, the farm's once-thriving environment deteriorates into a nightmarish landscape, revealing the cosmic horror of an incomprehensible alien force.

Keywords

Horror, alien, desolation.

NOTICE

This text is a work in the public domain and reflects the norms, values and perspectives of its time. Some readers may find parts of this content offensive or disturbing, given the evolution in social norms and in our collective understanding of issues of equality, human rights and mutual respect. We ask readers to approach this material with an understanding of the historical era in which it was written, recognizing that it may contain language, ideas or descriptions that are incompatible with today's ethical and moral standards.

Names from foreign languages will be preserved in their original form, with no translation.

The Color Out of Space

West of Arkham, the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods which no axe has ever cut. There are dark, narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight. On the gentler slopes there are farms, ancient and rocky, with squat, moss-coated cottages brooding eternally over old New England secrets in the lee of great ledges; but these are all vacant now, the wide chimneys crumbling and the shingled sides bulging perilously beneath low gambrel roofs.

The old folk have gone away, and foreigners do not like to live there. French-Canadians have tried it, Italians have tried it, and the Poles have come and departed. It is not because of anything which can be seen, heard, or handled, but because of something which is imagined. The place is not good for the imagination, and does not bring restful dreams at night. It must be this which keeps the foreigners away, for old Ammi Pierce has never told them of anything he recalls from the strange days. Ammi, whose head has been a little queer for years, is the only one who still remains, or who ever talks of the strange days, and he dares to do this because his house is so near the open fields and the traveled roads around Arkham.

There was once a road over the hills and through the valleys which ran straight where the blasted heath is now, but people ceased to use it, and a new road was laid, curving far toward the south. Traces of the old one can still be found amidst the weeds of a returning wilderness, and some of them will doubtless linger even when half the hollows are flooded for the new reservoir. Then the dark woods will be cut down, and the blasted heath will slumber far below blue waters, whose surface will mirror the sky and ripple in the sun. And the secrets of the strange days will be one with the deep’s secrets, one with the hidden lore of the old ocean, and all the mystery of primal earth.

When I went into the hills and valleys to survey for the new reservoir, they told me the place was evil. They told me this in Arkham, and because which is a very old town full of witch legends, I thought the evil must be something which grandmas had whispered to children through centuries. The name “blasted heath” seemed to me very odd and theatrical, and I wondered how it had come into the folklore of a Puritan people. Then I saw which dark westward tangle of glens and slopes for myself and ceased to wonder at anything besides its own elder mystery. It was morning when I saw it, but shadow always lurked there. The trees grew too thickly, and their trunks were too big for any healthy New England wood. There was too much silence in the dim alleys between them, and the floor was too soft with the dank moss and mattings of infinite years of decay.

In the open spaces, mostly along the line of the old road, there were little hillside farms, sometimes with all the buildings standing, sometimes with only one or two, and sometimes with only a lone chimney or fast-filling cellar. Weeds and briers reigned, and furtive wild things rustled in the undergrowth. Upon everything was a haze of restlessness and oppression, a touch of the unreal and the grotesque, as if some vital element of perspective or chiaroscuro were awry. I did not wonder which the foreigners would not stay, for this was no region to sleep in. It was too much like a landscape of Salvator Rosa; too much like some forbidden woodcut in a tale of terror.

But even all this was not so bad as the blasted heath. I knew it the moment I came upon it at the bottom of a spacious valley, for no other name could fit such a thing, or any other thing fit such a name. It was as if the poet had coined the phrase from having seen this one particular region. It must, I thought as I viewed it, be the outcome of a fire, but why had nothing new ever grown over those five acres of gray desolation which sprawled open to the sky like a great spot eaten by acid in the woods and fields? It lay largely to the north of the ancient road line, but encroached a little on the other side. I felt an odd reluctance about approaching and did so at last only because my business took me through and past it. There was no vegetation of any kind on which broad expanse, but only a fine gray dust or ash, which no wind seemed ever to blow about. The trees near it were sickly and stunted, and many dead trunks stood or lay rotting at the rim. As I walked hurriedly by, I saw the tumbled bricks and stones of an old chimney and cellar on my right and the yawning black maw of an abandoned well whose stagnant vapors played strange tricks with the hues of the sunlight. Even the long, dark woodland climb beyond seemed welcome in contrast, and I marveled no more at the frightened whispers of Arkham people. There had been no house or ruin near; even in the old days, the place must have been lonely and remote. And at twilight, dreading to repass which ominous spot, I walked circuitously back to the town by the curving road on the south. I vaguely wished some clouds would gather, for an odd timidity about the deep skyey voids above had crept into my soul.