{"collection":"ritual-magic","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_72966/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_72966","id":"gutenberg_72966","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/72966","summary":null,"tags":["Category: American Literature","Category: Crime, Thrillers and Mystery","Category: Science-Fiction & Fantasy","Category: Short Stories","Cults -- Fiction","Horror tales","Occultism -- Fiction","Red Hook (New York, N.Y.) -- Fiction","Short stories"],"text":"[Source: Weird Tales, March 1952]\n\n\n\n\nThe Horror at Red Hook\n\nBy H. P. Lovecraft\n\n\n_\"The nightmare horde slithered away, led by the abominable naked\nphosphorescent thing that now strode insolently, bearing in its arms\nthe glassy-eyed corpse of the corpulent old man._\n\n_\"There are sacraments of evil as well as of good about us, and we\nlive and move to my belief in an unknown world, a place where there\nare caves and shadows and dwellers in twilight.  It is possible that\nman may sometimes return on the track of evolution, and it is my\nbelief that an awful lore is not yet dead.\"_\n\n_--Arthur Machen_\n\n\nI\n\nNot many weeks ago, on a street corner in the village of Pascoag,\nRhode Island, a tall heavily built, and wholesome looking pedestrian\nfurnished much speculation by a singular lapse of behavior.  He had,\nit appears, been descending the hill by the road from Chepachet; and\nencountering the compact section, had turned to his left into the\nmain thoroughfare where several modest business blocks convey a touch\nof the urban.  At this point, without visible provocation, he\ncommitted his astonishing lapse; staring queerly for a second at the\ntallest of the buildings, before him, and then, with a series of\nterrified, hysterical shrieks, breaking into a frantic run which\nended in a stumble and fall at the next crossing.  Picked up and\ndusted off by ready hands, he was found to be conscious, organically\nunhurt, and evidently cured of his sudden nervous attack.  He\nmuttered some shamefaced explanations involving a strain he had\nundergone, and with downcast glance turned back, up the Chepachet\nroad, trudging out of sight, without once looking behind him.  It was\na strange incident to befall so large, robust, normal-featured, and\ncapable-looking a man, and the strangeness was not lessened by the\nremarks of a bystander who had recognized him as the boarder of a\nwell-known dairyman on the outskirts of Chepachet.\n\nHe was, it developed, a New York police-detective named Thomas F.\nMalone, now on a long leave of absence under medical treatment after\nsome disproportionately arduous work on a gruesome local case which\naccident had made dramatic.  There had been a collapse of several old\nbrick buildings during a raid in which he had shared, and something\nabout the wholesale loss of life, both of prisoners and of his\ncompanions, had peculiarly appalled him.  As a result, he had\nacquired an acute and anomalous horror of any buildings even remotely\nsuggesting the ones which had fallen in, so that in the end mental\nspecialists forbade him the sight of such things for an indefinite\nperiod.  A police surgeon with relatives in Chepachet had put forward\nthat quaint hamlet of wooden Colonial houses as an ideal spot for the\npsychological convalescence; and thither the sufferer had gone,\npromising never to venture among the brick-lined streets of larger\nvillages till duly advised by the Woonsocket specialist with whom he\nwas put in touch.  This walk to Pascoag for magazines had been a\nmistake, and the patient had paid in fright, bruises, and humiliation\nfor his disobedience.\n\nSo much the gossips of Chepachet and Pascoag knew; and so much, also,\nthe most learned specialists believed.  But Malone had at first told\nthe specialists much more, ceasing only when he saw that utter\nincredulity was his portion.  Thereafter he held his peace,\nprotesting not at all when it was generally agreed that the collapse\nof certain squalid brick houses in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn,\nand the consequent death of many brave officers, had unseated his\nnervous equilibrium.  He had worked too hard, all said, in trying to\nclean up those nests of disorder and violence; certain features were\nshocking enough, in all conscience, and the unexpected tragedy was\nthe last straw.  This was a simple explanation which everyone could\nunderstand, and because Malone was not a simple person he perceived\nthat he had better let it suffice.  To hint to unimaginative people\nof a horror beyond all human conception--a horror of houses and\nblocks and cities leprous and cancerous with evil dragged from elder\nworlds--would be merely to invite a padded cell instead of a restful\nrustication, and Malone was a man of sense despite his mysticism.  He\nhad the Celt's far vision of weird and hidden things, but the\nlogician's quick eye for the outwardly unconvincing; an amalgam which\nhad led him far afield in the forty-two years of his life, and set\nhim in strange places for a Dublin University man born in a Georgian\nvilla near Phoenix Park.\n\nAnd now, as he reviewed the things he had seen and felt and\napprehended, Malone was content to keep unshared the secret of what\ncould reduce a dauntless fighter to a quivering neurotic; what could\nmake old brick slums and seas of dark, subtle faces a thing of\nnightmare and eldritch portent.  It would not be the first time his\nsensations had been forced to bide uninterpreted--for was not his\nvery act of plunging into the polyglot abyss of New York's underworld\na freak beyond sensible explanation?  What could he tell the prosaic\nof the antique witcheries and grotesque marvels discernible to\nsensitive eyes amidst the poison cauldron where all the varied dregs\nof unwholesome ages mix their venom and perpetuate their obscene\nterrors?  He had seen the hellish green flame of secret wonder in\nthis blatant, evasive welter of outward greed and inward blasphemy,\nand had smiled gently when all the New Yorkers he knew scoffed at his\nexperiment in police work.  They had been very witty and cynical,\nderiding his fantastic pursuit of unknowable mysteries and assuring\nhim that in these days New York held nothing but cheapness and\nvulgarity.  One of them had wagered him a heavy sum that he could\nnot--despite many poignant things to his credit in the _Dublin\nReview_--even write a truly interesting story of New York low life;\nand now, looking back, he perceived that cosmic irony had justified\nthe prophet's words while secretly confuting their flippant meaning.\nThe horror, as glimpsed at last, could not make a story--for like the\nbook cited by Poe's German authority, \"er l\u00e4sst sich nicht lesen\"--it\ndoes not permit itself to be read.\n\n\n\n\nII\n\nTo Malone the sense of latent mystery in existence was always\npresent.  In youth he had felt the hidden beauty and ecstasy of\nthings, and had been a poet; but poverty and sorrow and exile had\nturned his gaze in darker directions, and he had thrilled at the\nimputations of evil in the world around.  Daily life had for him come\nto be a fantasmagoria of macabre shadow-studies; now glittering and\njeering with concealed rottenness as in Aubrey Beardsley's best\nmanner, now hinting terrors behind the commonest shapes and objects\nas in the subtler and less obvious work of Gustave Dor\u00e9.  He would\noften regard it as merciful that most persons of high intelligence\njeer at the inmost mysteries; for, he argued, if superior minds were\never placed in fullest contact with the secrets preserved by ancient\nand lowly cults, the resultant abnormalities would soon not only\nwreck the world, but threaten the very integrity of the universe.\nAll this reflection was no doubt morbid, but keen logic and a deep\nsense of humor ably offset it.  Malone was satisfied to let his\nnotions remain as half-spied and forbidden visions to be lightly\nplayed with; and hysteria came only when duty flung him into a hell\nof revelation too sudden and insidious to escape.\n\nHe had for some time been detailed to the Butler Street station in\nBrooklyn when the Red Hook matter came to his notice.  Red Hook is a\nmaze of hybrid squalor near the ancient waterfront opposite\nGovernor's Island, with dirty highways climbing the hill from the\nwharves to that higher ground where the decayed lengths of Clinton\nand Court Streets lead off toward the Borough Hall.  Its houses are\nmostly of brick, dating from the first quarter of the middle of the\nnineteenth century, and some of the obscurer alleys and byways have\nthat alluring antique flavor which conventional reading leads us to\ncall \"Dickensian.\"  The population is a hopeless tangle and enigma;\nSyrian, Spanish, Italian, and Negro elements impinging upon one\nanother, and fragments of Scandinavian and American belts lying not\nfar distant.  It is a babel of sound and filth, and sends out strange\ncries to answer the lapping of oily waves at its grimy piers and the\nmonstrous organ litanies of the harbor whistles.  Here long ago a\nbrighter picture dwelt, with clear-eyed mariners on the lower streets\nand homes of taste and substance where the larger houses line the\nhill.  One can trace the relics of this former happiness in the trim\nshapes of the buildings, the occasional graceful churches and the\nevidences of original art and background in bits of detail here and\nthere--a worn flight of steps, a battered doorway, a wormy pair of\ndecorative columns or pilasters, or a fragment of once green space\nwith bent and rusted iron railing.  The houses are generally in solid\nblocks, and now and then a many-windowed cupola arises to tell of\ndays when the households of captains and ship-owners watched the sea.\n\nFrom this tangle of material and spiritual putrescence the\nblasphemies of an hundred dialects assail the sky.  Hordes of\nprowlers reel shouting and singing along the lanes and thoroughfares,\noccasional furtive hands suddenly extinguish lights and pull down\ncurtains, and swarthy, sin-pitted faces disappear from windows when\nvisitors pick their way through.  Policemen despair of order or\nreform, and seek rather to erect barriers protecting the outside\nworld from the contagion.\n\nThe clang of the patrol is answered by a kind of spectral silence,\nand such prisoners as are taken are never communicative.  Visible\noffenses are as varied as the local dialects, and run the gamut from\nthe smuggling of rum and prohibited aliens through diverse stages of\nlawlessness and obscure vice to murder and mutilation in their most\nabhorrent guises.  That these visible affairs are not more frequent\nis not to the neighborhood's credit, unless the power of concealment\nbe an art demanding credit.  More people enter Red Hook than leave\nit--or at least, than leave it by the landward side--and those who\nare not loquacious are the likeliest to leave.\n\n\n\nMalone found in this state of things a faint stench of secrets more\nterrible than any of the sins denounced by citizens and bemoaned by\npriest and philanthropists.  He was conscious, as one who united\nimagination with scientific knowledge, that modern people under\nlawless conditions tend uncannily to repeat the darkest instinctive\npatterns of primitive half-ape savagery in their daily life and\nritual observances; and he had often viewed with an anthropologist's\nshudder the chanting, cursing processions of blear-eyed and\npock-marked young men which wound their way along in the dark small\nhours of morning.  One saw groups of these youths incessantly;\nsometimes in leering vigils on street corners, sometimes in doorways\nplaying eerily on cheap instruments of music, sometimes in stupefied\ndozes or indecent dialogues around cafeteria tables near Borough\nHall, and sometimes in whispering converse around dingy taxicabs\ndrawn up at the high stoops of crumbling and closely shuttered old\nhouses.  They chilled and fascinated him more than he dared confess\nto his associates on the force, for he seemed to see in them some\nmonstrous thread of secret continuity; some fiendish, cryptical and\nancient pattern utterly beyond and below the sordid mass of facts and\nhabits and haunts listed with such conscientious technical care by\nthe police.  They must be, he felt inwardly, the heirs of some\nshocking and primordial tradition; the sharers of debased and broken\nscraps from cults and ceremonies older than mankind.  Their coherence\nand definiteness suggested it, and it showed in the singular\nsuspicion of order which lurked beneath their squalid disorder.  He\nhad not read in vain such treatises as Miss Murray's Witch Cult in\nWestern Europe; and knew that up to recent years there had certainly\nsurvived among peasants and furtive folk a frightful and clandestine\nsystem of assemblies and orgies descended from dark religions\nantedating the Aryan World, and appearing in popular legends as Black\nMasses and Witches' Sabbaths.  That these hellish vestiges of old\nTuranian-Asiatic magic and fertility-cults were even now wholly dead\nhe could not for a moment suppose, and he frequently wondered how\nmuch older and how much blacker than the very worst of the muttered\ntales some of them might really be.\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\nIt was the case of Robert Suydam which took Malone to the heart of\nthings in Red Hook.  Suydam was a lettered recluse of ancient Dutch\nfamily, possessed originally of barely independent means, and\ninhabiting the spacious but ill-preserved mansion which his\ngrandfather had built in Flatbush when that village was little more\nthen a pleasant group of Colonial cottages surrounding the steepled\nand ivy-clad Reformed Church with its iron-railed yard of\nNetherlandish gravestones.  In this lonely house, set back from\nMartense Street amidst a yard of venerable trees, Suydam had read and\nbrooded for some six decades except for a period a generation before,\nwhen he had sailed for the Old World and remained there out of sight\nfor eight years.  He could afford no servants, and would admit but\nfew visitors to his absolute solitude; eschewing close friendships\nand receiving his rare acquaintances in one of the three ground-floor\nrooms, which he kept in order--a vast, high-ceiled library whose\nwalls were solidly packed with tattered books of ponderous, archaic,\nand vaguely repellent aspect.  The growth of the town and its final\nabsorption in the Brooklyn district had meant nothing to Suydam, and\nhe had come to mean less and less to the town.  Elderly people still\npointed him out on the streets, but to most of the recent population\nhe was merely a queer, corpulent old fellow whose unkempt white hair,\nstubbly beard, shiny black clothes and gold-headed cane earned him an\namused glance and nothing more.  Malone did not know him by sight\ntill duty called him to the case, but had heard of him indirectly as\na really profound authority on medieval superstition, and had once\nidly meant to look up an out-of-print pamphlet of his on the Kabbalah\nand the Faustus legend, which a friend had quoted from memory.\n\nSuydam became a \"case\" when his distant and only relatives sought\ncourt pronouncements on his sanity.  Their action seemed sudden to\nthe outside world, but was really undertaken only after prolonged\nobservation and sorrowful debate.  It was based on certain odd\nchanges in his speech and habits; wild references to impending\nwonders, and unaccountable hauntings of disreputable Brooklyn\nneighborhoods.  He had been growing shabbier and shabbier with the\nyears, and now prowled about like a veritable mendicant; seen\noccasionally by humiliated friends in subway stations, or loitering\non the benches around Borough Hall in conversation with groups of\nswarthy, evil-looking strangers.  When he spoke it was to babble of\nunlimited powers almost within his grasp, and to repeat with knowing\nleers such mystical words of names as \"Sephiroth,\" \"Ashmodai\" and\n\"Samael.\"  The court action revealed that he was using up his income\nand wasting his principal in the purchase of curious tomes imported\nfrom London and Paris, and in the maintenance of a squalid basement\nflat in the Red Hook district where he spent nearly every night,\nreceiving odd delegations of mixed rowdies and foreigners, and\napparently conducting some kind of ceremonial service behind the\ngreen blinds of secretive windows.  Detectives assigned to follow him\nreported strange cries and chants and prancing of feet filtering out\nfrom these nocturnal rites, and shuddered at their peculiar ecstasy\nand abandon despite the commonness of weird orgies in that sodden\nsection.  When, however, the matter came to a hearing, Suydam managed\nto preserve his liberty.  Before the judge his manner grew urbane and\nreasonable, and he freely admitted the queerness of demeanor and\nextravagant cast of language into which he had fallen through\nexcessive devotion to study and research.  He was, he said, engaged\nin the investigation of certain details of European tradition which\nrequired the closest contact with foreign groups and their songs and\nfolk dances.  The notion that any low secret society was preying upon\nhim, as hinted by his relatives, was obviously absurd; and showed how\nsadly limited was their understanding of him and his work.\nTriumphing with his calm explanations, he was suffered to depart\nunhindered; and the paid detectives of the Suydams, Corlears and Van\nBrunts were withdrawn in resigned disgust.\n\nIt was here that an alliance of Federal inspectors and police, Malone\nwith them, entered the case.  The law had watched the Suydam action\nwith interest, and had in many instances been called upon to aid the\nprivate detectives.  In this work it developed that Suydam's new\nassociates were among the blackest and most vicious criminals of Red\nHook's devious lanes, and that at least a third of them were known\nand repeated offenders in the matter of thievery, disorder, and the\nimportation of illegal immigrants.  Indeed, it would not have been\ntoo much to say that the old scholar's particular circle coincided\nalmost perfectly with the worst of the organized cliques which\nsmuggled ashore certain nameless and unclassified Asian dregs wisely\nturned back by Ellis Island.  In the teeming rookeries of Parker\nPlace--since renamed--where Suydam had his basement flat, there had\ngrown up a very unusual colony of unclassified slant-eyed folk who\nused the Arabic alphabet but were eloquently repudiated by the great\nmass of Syrians in and around Atlantic Avenue.  They could all have\nbeen deported for lack of credentials, but legalism is slow-moving,\nand one does not disturb Red Hook unless publicity forces one to.\n\nThese creatures attended a tumbledown stone church, used Wednesdays\nas a dance hall, which reared its Gothic buttresses near the vilest\npart of the waterfront.  Clergy throughout Brooklyn denied the place\nall standing and authenticity, and policemen agreed with them when\nthey listened to the noises it emitted at night.  Malone used to\nfancy he heard terrible cracked bass notes from a hidden organ far\nunderground when the church stood empty and unlighted, whilst all\nobservers dreaded the shrieking and drumming which accompanied the\nvisible services.  Suydam, when questioned, said he thought the\nritual was some remnant of Nestorian Christianity tinctured with the\nShamanism of Tibet.  Most of the people, he conjectured, were of\nMongoloid stock, originating somewhere in or near Kurdistan--and\nMalone could not help recalling that Kurdistan is the land of the\nYezidees, last survivors of the Persian devil-worshippers.  However\nthis may have been, the stir of the Suydam investigation made it\ncertain that these unauthorized newcomers were flooding Red Hook in\nincreasing numbers; entering through some marine conspiracy unreached\nby revenue officers and harbor police, overrunning Parker Place and\nrapidly spreading up the hill, and welcomed with curious fraternalism\nby the other assorted denizens of the region.  Their squat figures\nand characteristic squinting physiognomies grotesquely combined with\nflashy American clothing, appeared more and more numerously among the\nloafers and nomad gangsters of the Borough Hall section; till at\nlength it was deemed necessary to compute their number, ascertain\ntheir sources and occupations, and find if possible a way to round\nthem up and deliver them to the proper immigration authorities.  To\nthis task Malone was assigned by agreement of Federal and city\nforces, and as he commenced his canvass of Red Hook he felt poised\nupon the brink of nameless terrors, with the shabby, unkempt figure\nof Robert Suydam as archfiend and adversary.\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\nPolice methods are varied and ingenious.  Malone, through\nunostentatious rambles, carefully casual conversations, well-timed\noffers of hip-pocket liquor, and judicious dialogues with frightened\nprisoners, learned many isolated facts about the movement whose\naspect had become so menacing.  The newcomers were indeed Kurds, but\nof a dialect obscure and puzzling to exact philology.  Such of them\nas worked lived mostly as dock-hands and unlicensed peddlers, though\nfrequently serving in Greek restaurants and tending corner\nnewsstands.  Most of them, however, had no visible means of support;\nand were obviously connected with underworld pursuits, of which\nsmuggling and bootlegging were the least indescribable.  They had\ncome in steamships, apparently tramp freighters, and had been\nunloaded by stealth on moonless nights in rowboats which stole under\na certain wharf and followed a hidden canal and house Malone could\nnot locate, for the memories of his informants were exceedingly\nconfused, while their speech was to a great extent beyond even the\nablest interpreters; nor could he gain any real data on the reasons\nfor their systematic importation.  They were reticent about the exact\nspot from which they had come, and were never sufficiently off guard\nto reveal the agencies which had sought them out and directed their\ncourse.  Indeed, they developed something like acute fright when\nasked the reason for their presence.  Gangsters of other breeds were\nequally taciturn, and the most that could be gathered was that some\ngod or great priesthood had promised them unheard-of powers and\nsupernatural glories and rulerships in a strange land.\n\nThe attendance of both newcomers and old gangsters at Suydam's\nclosely guarded nocturnal meetings was very regular, and the police\nsoon learned that the erstwhile recluse had leased additional flats\nto accommodate such guests as knew his password; at last occupying\nthree entire houses and permanently harboring many of his queer\ncompanions.  He spent but little time now at his Flatbush home,\napparently going and coming only to obtain and return books; and his\nface and manner had attained an appalling pitch of wildness.  Malone\ntwice interviewed him, but was each time bruskly repulsed.  He knew\nnothing, he said, of any mysterious plots or movements; and had no\nidea how the Kurds could have entered or what they wanted.  His\nbusiness was to study undisturbed the folk-lore of all the immigrants\nof the district; a business with which policemen had no legitimate\nconcern.  Malone mentioned his admiration for Suydam's old brochure\non the Kabbalah and other myths, but the old man's softening was only\nmomentary.  He sensed an intrusion, and rebuffed his visitor in no\nuncertain way; till Malone withdrew disgusted, and turned to other\nchannels of information.\n\n\n\nWhat Malone would have unearthed could he have worked continuously on\nthe case, we shall never know.  As it was, a stupid conflict between\ncity and Federal authority suspended the investigation for several\nmonths, during which the detective was busy with other assignments.\nBut at no time did he lose interest, or fail to stand amazed at what\nbegan to happen to Robert Suydam.  Just at the time when a wave of\nkidnappings and disappearances spread its excitement over New York,\nthe unkempt scholar embarked upon a metamorphosis as startling as it\nwas absurd.  One day he was seen near Borough Hall with clean-shaved\nface, well-trimmed hair, and tastefully immaculate attire, and on\nevery day thereafter some obscure improvement was noticed in him.  He\nmaintained his new fastidiousness without interruption, added to it\nan unwonted sparkle of eye and crispness of speech, and began little\nby little to shed the corpulence which had so long deformed him.  Now\nfrequently taken for less than his age, he acquired an elasticity of\nstep and buoyancy of demeanor to match the new tradition, and showed\na curious darkening of the hair which somehow did not suggest dye.\nAs the months passed, he commenced to dress less and less\nconservatively, and finally astonished his few friends by renovating\nand redecorating his Flatbush mansion, which he threw open in a\nseries of receptions, summoning all the acquaintances he could\nremember, and extending a special welcome to the fully forgiven\nrelatives who had lately sought his restraint.  Some attended through\ncuriosity, others through duty; but all were suddenly charmed by the\ndawning grace and urbanity of the former hermit.  He had, he\nasserted, accomplished most of his allotted work; and having just\ninherited some property from a half-forgotten European friend, was\nabout to spend his remaining years in a brighter second youth which\nease, care and diet had made possible to him.  Less and less was he\nseen at Red Hook, and more and more did he move in the society to\nwhich he was born.  Policemen noted a tendency of the gangsters to\ncongregate at the old stone church and dancehall instead of at the\nbasement flat in Parker Place, though the latter and its recent\nannexes still overflowed with noxious life.\n\n\n\nThen two incidents occurred--wide enough apart, but both of intense\ninterest in the case as Malone envisaged it.  One was a quiet\nannouncement in the _Eagle_ of Robert Suydam's engagement to Miss\nCornelia Gerritsen of Bayside, a young woman of excellent position,\nand distantly related to the elderly bridegroom-elect; whilst the\nother was a raid on the dance-hall church by city police, after a\nreport that the face of a kidnapped child had been seen for a second\nat one of the basement windows.  Malone had participated in this\nraid, and studied the place with much care when inside.  Nothing was\nfound--in fact, the building was entirely deserted when visited--but\nthe sensitive Celt was vaguely disturbed by many things about the\ninterior.  There were crudely painted panels he did not like--panels\nwhich depicted sacred faces with peculiarly worldly and sardonic\nexpressions, and which occasionally took liberties that even a\nlayman's sense of decorum could scarcely countenance.  Then, too, he\ndid not relish the Greek inscription on the wall above the pulpit; an\nancient incantation which he had once stumbled upon in Dublin college\ndays, and which read, literally translated: \"O friend and companion\nof night, thou who rejoicest in the baying of dogs and spilt blood,\nwho wanderest in the midst of shades among the tombs; who longest for\nblood and bringest terror to mortals, Gorge, Mormo, thousand-faced\nmoon, look favorably on our sacrifices!\"\n\nWhen he read this he shuddered, and thought vaguely of the cracked\nbass organ-notes he fancied he had heard beneath the church on\ncertain nights.  He shuddered again at the rust around the rim of a\nmetal basin which stood on the altar, and paused nervously when his\nnostrils seemed to detect a curious and ghastly stench from somewhere\nin the neighborhood.  That organ memory haunted him, and he explored\nthe basement with particular assiduity before he left.  The place was\nvery hateful to him; yet after all, were the blasphemous panels and\ninscriptions more than mere crudities perpetrated by the ignorant?\n\n\n\nBy the time of Suydam's wedding the kidnapping epidemic had become a\npopular newspaper scandal.  Most of the victims were young children\nof the lowest classes, but the increasing number of disappearances\nhad worked up a sentiment of the strongest fury.  Journals clamored\nfor action from the police, and once more the Butler Street station\nsent its men over Red Hook for clues, discoveries, and criminals.\nMalone was glad to be on the trail again, and took pride in a raid on\none of Suydam's Parker Place houses.  There, indeed, no stolen child\nwas found, despite the tales of screams and the red sash picked up in\nthe areaway; but the paintings and rough inscriptions on the peeling\nwalls of most of the rooms, and the primitive chemical laboratory in\nthe attic, all helped to convince the detective that he was on the\ntrack of something tremendous.  The paintings were appalling--hideous\nmonsters of every shape and size, and parodies on human outlines\nwhich cannot be described.  The writing was in red, and varied from\nArabic to Greek, Roman, and Hebrew letters.  Malone could not read\nmuch of it, but what he did decipher was portentous and cabalistic\nenough.  One frequently repeated motto was in a sort of Hebraized\nHellenistic Greek, and suggested the most terrible demon-evocations\nof the Alexandrian decadence:\n\n\nHEL.  HELOYM.  SOTHER.  EMMANVEL.  SABOATH.  AGLA.  TETRAGRAMMATION.\nAGYROS.  OTHEOS.  ISCHYROS.  ATHANATOS.  IEHOVA.  VA.  ADONAL.  SADY.\nHOMOVSION.  MESSIAS.  ESCHEREHEYE.\n\n\nCircles and pentagrams loomed on every hand, and told indubitably of\nthe strange beliefs and aspirations of those who dwelt so squalidly\nhere.  In the cellar, however, the strangest thing was found--a pile\nof genuine gold ingots covered carelessly with a piece of burlap, and\nbearing upon their shining surfaces the same weird hieroglyphics\nwhich also adorned the walls.  During this raid the police\nencountered only a passive resistance from the squinting Orientals\nthat swarmed from every door.  Finding nothing relevant, they had to\nleave all as it was; but the precinct captain wrote Suydam a note,\nadvising him to look closely to the character of his tenants, and\nproteg\u00e9s in view of the growing public clamor.\n\n\n\n\nV\n\nThen came the June wedding and the great sensation; Flatbush was gay\nfor the hour about high noon, and pennanted motors thronged the\nstreet near the old Dutch church where an awning stretched from door\nto highway.  No local event ever surpassed the Suydam-Gerritsen\nnuptials in tone and scale, and the party which escorted the bride\nand groom to the Cunard pier was, if not exactly the smartest, at\nleast a solid page from the Social Register!  At 5 o'clock adieux was\nwaved, and the ponderous liner edged away from the long pier, slowly\nturned its nose seaward, discarded its tug, and headed for widening\nwater spaces that led to Old World wonders.  By night the outer\nharbor was cleared, and late passengers watched the stars twinkling\nabove an unpolluted ocean.\n\nWhether the tramp steamer or the scream was first to gain attention,\nno one can say.  Probably they were simultaneous, but it is of no use\nto calculate.  The scream came from the Suydam stateroom, and the\nsailor who broke down the door could perhaps have told frightful\nthings if he had not forthwith gone completely mad--as it is, he\nshrieked more loudly than the first victims, and thereafter ran\nsimpering about the vessel till caught and put in irons.  The ship's\ndoctor who entered the stateroom and turned on the lights a moment\nlater did not go mad, but told nobody what he saw till afterward,\nwhen he corresponded with Malone in Chepachet.  It was\nmurder--strangulation--but one need not say that the claw-mark on\nMrs. Suydam's throat could not have come from her husband's or any\nother human hand, or that upon the white wall there flickered for an\ninstant in hateful red a legend which, later copied from memory,\nseems to have been nothing less than the fearsome Chaldee letters of\nthe word \"LILITH.\"  One need not mention these things because they\nvanished so quickly--as for Suydam, one could at least bar others\nfrom the room until one knew what to think oneself.  The doctor has\ndistinctly assured Malone that he did not see IT.  The open porthole,\njust before he turned on the lights, was clouded for a second with a\ncertain phosphorescence, and for a moment there seemed to echo in the\nnight outside the suggestion of a faint and hellish tittering; but no\nreal outline met the eye.  As proof, the doctor points to his\ncontinued sanity.\n\nThen the tramp steamer claimed all attention.  A boat put off, and a\nhorde of swart, insolent ruffians in officers' dress swarmed aboard\nthe temporarily halted Cunarder.  They wanted Suydam or his\nbody--they had known of his trip, and for certain reasons were sure\nhe would die.  The captain's deck was almost a pandemonium; for at\nthe instant, between the doctor's report from the stateroom and the\ndemands of the men from the tramp, not even the wisest and gravest\nseaman could think what to do.  Suddenly the leader of the visiting\nmariners, an Arab with a hatefully negroid mouth, pulled forth a\ndirty, crumpled paper and handed it to the captain.  It was signed by\nRobert Suydam, and bore the following odd message:\n\n\n_In case of sudden or unexpected accident or death on my part, please\ndeliver me or my body unquestioningly into the hands of the bearer\nand his associates.  Everything, for me, and perhaps for you, depends\non absolute compliance.  Explanations can come later--do not fail me\nnow._\n\n_Robert Suydam._\n\n\nCaptain and doctor looked at each other, and the latter whispered\nsomething to the former.  Finally they nodded rather helplessly and\nled the way to the Suydam stateroom.  The doctor directed the\ncaptain's glance away as he unlocked the door and admitted the\nstrange seamen, nor did he breathe easily, till they filed out with\ntheir burden after an unaccountably long period of preparation.  It\nwas wrapped in bedding from the berths, and the doctor was glad that\nthe outlines were not very revealing.  Somehow the men got the thing\nover the side and away to their tramp steamer without uncovering it.\n\nThe Cunarder started again, and the doctor and ship's undertaker\nsought out the Suydam stateroom to perform what last services they\ncould.  Once more the physician was forced to reticence and even to\nmendacity, for a hellish thing had happened.  When the undertaker\nasked him why he had drained off all of Mrs. Suydam's blood, he\nneglected to affirm that he had not done so; nor did he point to the\nvacant bottle-spaces on the rack, or to the odor in the sink which\nshowed the hasty disposition of the bottles' original contents.  The\npockets of those men--if men they were--had bulged damnably when they\nleft the ship.  Two hours later, and the world knew by radio all that\nit ought to know of the horrible affair.\n\n\n\n\nVI\n\nThat same June evening, without having heard a word from the sea,\nMalone was very busy among the alleys of Red Hook.  A sudden stir\nseemed to permeate the place, and as if apprized by \"grapevine\ntelegraph\" of something singular, the denizens clustered expectantly\naround the dance-hall church and the houses in Parker Place.  Three\nchildren had just disappeared--blue-eyed Norwegians from the streets\ntoward Gowanus--and there were rumors of a mob forming among the\nsturdy Viking of that section.  Malone had for weeks been urging his\ncolleagues to attempt a general clean-up; and at last, moved by\nconditions more obvious to their common sense than the conjectures of\na Dublin dreamer, they had agreed upon a final stroke.  The unrest\nand menace of this evening had been the deciding factor, and just\nabout midnight a raiding party recruited from three stations\ndescended upon Parker Place and its environs.  Doors were battered\nin, stragglers arrested, and candle-lighted rooms forced to disgorge\nunbelievable throngs of mixed foreigners in figured robes, miters and\nother inexplicable devices.  Much was lost in the m\u00eal\u00e9e for objects\nwere thrown hastily down unexpected shafts, and betraying odors\ndeadened by the sudden kindling of pungent incense.  But spattered\nblood was everywhere, and Malone shuddered whenever he saw a brazier\nor altar from which the smoke was still rising.\n\nHe wanted to be in several places at once, and decided on Suydam's\nbasement flat only after a messenger had reported the complete\nemptiness of the dilapidated dance-hall church.  The flat, he\nthought, must hold some clue to a cult of which the occult scholar\nhad so obviously become the center and leader; and it was with real\nexpectancy that he ransacked the musty rooms, noted their vaguely\ncharnal odor, and examined the curious books, instruments, gold\ningots, and glass-stoppered bottles scattered carelessly here and\nthere.  Once a lean, black-and-white cat edged between his feet and\ntripped him, overturning at the same time a beaker half full of red\nliquid.  The shock was severe, and to this day Malone is not certain\nof what he saw; but in dreams he still pictures that cat as it\nscuttled away with certain monstrous alterations and peculiarities.\n\n\n\nThen came the locked cellar door, and the search for something to\nbreak it down.  A heavy stool stood near, and its tough seat was more\nthan enough for the antique panels.  A crack formed and enlarged, and\nthe whole door gave way--but from the other side; whence poured a\nhowling tumult of ice-cold wind with all the stenches of the\nbottomless pit, and whence reached a sucking force not of earth or\nheaven, which, coiling sentiently about the paralyzed detective,\ndragged him through the aperture and down unmeasured spaces filled\nwith whispers and wails, and gusts of mocking laughter.\n\nOf course it was a dream.  All the specialists have told him so, and\nhe has nothing tangible to prove the contrary.  Indeed, he would\nrather have it thus; for then the sight of old brick slums and dark\nforeign faces would not eat so deeply into his soul.  But at the time\nit was all horribly real, and nothing can ever efface the memory of\nthose nighted crypts, those titan arcades, and those half-formed\nshapes of hell that strode gigantically in silence holding half-eaten\nthings whose still surviving portions screamed for mercy or laughed\nwith madness.  Odors of incense and corruption joined in sickening\nconcert, and the black air was alive with the cloudy, semi-visible\nbulk of shapeless elemental things with eyes.  Somewhere dark sticky\nwater was lapping at onyx piers, and once the shivery tinkle of\nraucous little bells pealed out to greet the insane titter of a naked\nphosphorescent thing which swam into sight, scrambled ashore, and\nclimbed up to squat leeringly on a carved golden pedestal in the\nblack ground.\n\nAvenues of limitless night seemed to radiate in every direction, till\none might fancy that here lay the root of a contagion destined to\nsicken and swallow cities, and engulf nations in the fetor of hybrid\npestilence.  Here cosmic sin had entered, and festered by unhallowed\nrites had commenced the grinning march of death that was to rot us\nall to fungus abnormalities too hideous for the grave's holding.\nSatan here held his Babylonish court, and in the blood of stainless\nchildhood the leprous limbs of phosphorescent Lilith were laved.\nIncubi and succubae howled praise to Hecate, and headless mooncalves\nbleated to the Magna Mater.  Goats leaped to the sound of thin\naccursed flutes, and AEgipans chased endlessly after misshapen fauns\nover rocks twisted like swollen toads.  Moloch and Ashtaroth were not\nabsent; for in this quintessence of all damnation the bounds of\nconsciousness were let down, and man's fancy lay open to vistas of\nevery realm of horror and every forbidden dimension that evil had\npower to mold.  The world and nature were helpless against such\nassaults from unsealed wells of night, nor could any sign or prayer\ncheck the Walpurgissage of horror which had come when a sage with the\nhateful locked and brimming coffer of transmitted demon-lore.\n\nSuddenly a ray of physical light shot through these fantasms, and\nMalone heard the sound of oars amidst the blasphemies of things that\nshould be dead.  A boat with a lantern in its prow darted into sight,\nmade fast to an iron ring in the slimy stone pier, and vomited forth\nseveral dark men bearing a long burden swathed in bedding.  They took\nit to the naked phosphorescent thing on the carved gold pedestal, and\nthe thing tittered and pawed the bedding.  Then they unswathed it,\nand propped upright before the pedestal the gangrenous corpse of a\ncorpulent old man with stubby beard and unkempt white hair.  The\nphosphorescent thing tittered again, and the men produced bottles\nfrom their pockets and anointed its feet with red, whilst they\nafterward gave the bottles to the thing to drink from.\n\nAll at once, from an arcaded avenue leading endlessly away, there\ncame the demoniac rattle and wheeze of a blasphemous organ, choking\nand rumbling out of the mockeries of hell in cracked, sardonic bass.\nIn an instant every moving entity was electrified; and forming at\nonce into a ceremonial procession, the nightmare horde slithered away\nin quiet of the sound--goat, satyr, and AEgipan, incubus, succuba,\nand lemur, twisted toad and shapeless elemental, dog-faced howler and\nsilent strutter in darkness--all led by the abominable naked\nphosphorescent thing that had squatted on the carved golden throne;\nand that now strode insolently bearing in its arms the glassy-eyed\ncorpse of the corpulent old man.  The strange dark man danced in the\nrear, and the whole column skipped and leaped with Dionysiac fury.\nMalone staggered after them a few steps, delirious and hazy, and\ndoubtful of his place in this or any world.  Then he turned,\nfaltered, and sank down on the cold damp stone, gasping and shivering\nas the demon organ croaked on, and the howling and drumming and\ntinkling of the mad procession grew fainter and fainter.\n\nVaguely he was conscious of chanted horrors, and shocking croakings\nafar off.  Now and then a wail or whine of ceremonial devotion would\nfloat to him through the black arcade, whilst eventually there rose\nthe dreadful Greek incantation whose text he had read above the\npulpit of that dance-hall church.\n\n\"O friend and companion of night thou who rejoicest in the baying of\ndogs (here a hideous howl burst forth) and spilt blood (here nameless\nsounds vied with morbid shriekings), who wanderest in the midst of\nshades among the tombs (here a whistling sigh occurred), who longest\nfor blood and bringest terror to mortals (short, sharp cries from\nmyriad throats), Gorgo (repeated as response), Mormo (repeated with\necstasy), thousand-faced moon (sighs and flute notes), look favorably\non our sacrifices!\"\n\nAs the chant closed, a general shout went up, and hissing sounds\nnearly drowned the croaking of the cracked bass organ.  Then a gasp\nas from many throats, and a babel of barked and bleated\nwords--\"Lilith, Great Lilith, behold the Bridegroom!\"  More cries, a\nclamor of rioting, and the sharp, clicking footfalls of a running\nfigure.  The footfalls approached, and Malone raised himself to his\nelbow to look.\n\n\n\nThe luminosity of the crypt, lately diminished, had now slightly\nincreased; and in that devil-light there appeared the fleeing form of\nthat which should not flee or feel or breathe--the glassy-eyed,\ngangrenous corpse of the corpulent old man, now needing no support,\nbut animated by some infernal sorcery of the rite just closed.  After\nit raced the naked, tittering, phosphorescent thing that belonged on\nthe carven pedestal, and still farther behind panted the dark men,\nand all the dread crew of sentient loathsomenesses.  The corpse was\ngaining on its pursuers, and seemed bent on a definite object,\nstraining with every rotting muscle toward the carved golden\npedestal, whose necromantic importance was evidently so great.\nAnother moment and it had reached its goal, whilst the trailing\nthrong labored on with more frantic speed.  But they were too late,\nfor in one final spurt of strength which ripped tendon from tendon\nand sent its noisome bulk floundering to the floor in a state of\njellyish dissolution, the staring corpse which had been Robert Suydam\nachieved its object and its triumph.  The push had been tremendous,\nbut the force had held out; and as the pusher collapsed to a muddy\nblotch of corruption the pedestal he had pushed tottered, tipped, and\nfinally careened from its onyx base into the thick waters below,\nsending up a parting gleam of carven gold as it sank heavily to\nundreamable gulfs of lower Tartarus.  In that instant, too, the whole\nscene of horror faded to nothingness before Malone's eyes; and he\nfainted amidst a thunderous crash which seemed to blot out all the\nevil universe.\n\n\n\n\nVII\n\nMalone's dream, experienced in full before he knew of Suydam's death\nand transfer at sea, was curiously supplemented by some oddities of\nthe case; though that is no reason why anyone should believe it.  The\nthree old houses in Parker Place, doubtless long rotten with decay in\nits most insidious form, collapsed without visible cause while half\nthe raiders and most of the prisoners were inside; and both of the\ngreater number were instantly killed.  Only in the basements and\ncellars was there much saving of life, and Malone was lucky to have\nbeen deep below the house of Robert Suydam.  For he really was there,\nas no one is disposed to deny.  They found him unconscious by the\nedge of the night-black pool, with a grotesquely horrible jumble of\ndecay and bone, identifiable through dental work as the body of\nSuydam, a few feet away.  The case was plain, for it was hither that\nthe smugglers' underground canal led; and the men who took Suydam\nfrom the ship had brought him home.  They themselves were never\nfound, or identified; and the ship's doctor is not yet satisfied with\nthe certitudes of the police.\n\nSuydam was evidently a leader in extensive man-smuggling operations,\nfor the canal to his house was but one of several subterranean\nchannels and tunnels in the neighborhood.  There was a tunnel from\nthis house to a crypt beneath the dance-hall church; a crypt\naccessible from the church only through a narrow secret passage in\nthe north wall, and in whose chambers some singular and terrible\nthings were discovered.  The croaking organ was there, as well as a\nvast arched chapel with wooden benches and a strangely figured altar.\nThe walls were lined with small cells, in seventeen of which--hideous\nto relate--solitary prisoners in a state of complete idiocy were\nfound chained, including four mothers with infants of disturbingly\nstrange appearance.  These infants died soon after exposure to the\nlight; a circumstance which the doctors thought rather merciful.\nNobody but Malone, among those who inspected them, remembered the\nsomber question of old Delrio: \"An sint unquan daemones incubi et\nsuccubae, et an ex tali, congressu proles nasci queat?\"\n\nBefore the canals were filled up they were thoroughly dredged, and\nyielded forth a sensational array of sawed and split bones of all\nsizes.  The kidnapping epidemic, very clearly, had been traced home;\nthough only two of the surviving prisoners could by any legal thread\nbe connected with it.  These men are now in prison, since they failed\nof conviction as accessories in the actual murders.  The carved\ngolden pedestal or throne so often mentioned by Malone as of primary\noccult importance was never brought to light, though at one place\nunder the Suydam house the canal, was observed to sink into a well\ntoo deep for dredging.  It was choked up at the mouth and cemented\nover when the cellars of the new houses were made, but Malone often\nspeculates on what lied beneath.  The police, satisfied that they had\nshattered a dangerous gang of maniacs and alien smugglers, turned\nover to the Federal authorities the unconvicted Kurds, who before\ntheir deportation were conclusively found to belong to the Yezidee\nclan of devils-worshippers.  The tramp ship and its crew remain an\nelusive mystery, though cynical detectives are once more ready to\ncombat its smuggling and rum-running ventures.  Malone thinks these\ndetectives show a sadly limited perspective in their lack of wonder\nat the myriad unexplainable details, and the suggestive obscurity of\nthe whole case; though he is just as critical of the newspapers,\nwhich saw only a morbid sensation and gloated over a minor sadist\ncult when they might have proclaimed a horror from the universe's\nvery heart.  But he is content to rest silent in Chepachet, calming\nhis nervous system and praying that time may gradually transfer his\nterrible experience from the realm of present reality to that of\npicturesque and semi-mythical remoteness.\n\nRobert Suydam sleeps beside his bride in Greenwood Cemetery.  No\nfuneral was held over the strangely released bones, and relatives are\ngrateful for the swift oblivion which overtook the case as a whole.\n\nThe scholar's connection with the Red Hook horrors, indeed, was never\nemblazoned by legal proof; since his death forestalled the inquiry he\nwould otherwise have faced.  His own end is not much mentioned, and\nthe Suydams hope that posterity may recall him only as a gentle\nrecluse who dabbled in harmless magic and folk-lore.\n\nAs for Red Hook--it is always the same.  Suydam came and went; a\nterror gathered and faded; but the evil spirit of darkness and\nsqualor broods on amongst the mongrels in the old brick houses; and\nprowling bands still parade on unknown errands past windows where\nlights and twisted faces unaccountably appear and disappear.  Age-old\nhorror is a hydra with a thousand heads, and the cults of darkness\nare rooted in blasphemies deeper than the well of Democritus.  The\nsoul of the beast is omnipresent and triumphant, and Red Hook's\nlegions of blear-eyed, pockmarked youths still chant and curse and\nhowl as they file from abyss to abyss, none knows whence or whither,\npushed on by blind laws of biology which they may never understand.\nAs of old more people enter Red Hook than leave it on the landward\nside, and there are already rumors of new canals running underground\nto certain centers of traffic in liquor and less mentionable things.\n\nThe dance-hall church is now mostly a dance-hall, and queer faces\nhave appeared at night at the windows.  Lately a policeman expressed\nthe belief that the filled-up crypt has been dug out again, and for\nno simply explainable purpose.  Who are we to combat poisons older\nthan history and mankind?  Apes danced in Asia to those horrors, and\nthe cancer lurks secure and spreading where furtiveness hides in rows\nof decaying brick.\n\nMalone does not shudder without cause--for only the other day an\nofficer overheard a swarthy squinting hag teaching a small child some\nwhispering patois in the shadow of an areaway.  He listened, and\nthought it very strange when he heard her repeat over and over again:\n\n\"O friend and companion of night thou who rejoicest in the baying of\ndogs and spilt blood, who wanderest in the midst of shades among the\ntombs, who longest for blood and bringest terror to mortals, Gorgo,\nMormo, thousand-faced moon, look favorably on our sacrifices!\"","title":"The horror at Red Hook","tradition":"ritual-magic","translated_text":null,"word_count":8289}