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longer be diverted. Both were plainer and more hideous in the great pillared
hall than anywhere else, and carried a vague impression of being far below,
even in this dark nether world of subterrene mystery. Before trying any of the
black archways for steps leading further down, the doctor cast his beam of
light about the stone-flagged floor. It was very loosely paved, and at
irregular intervals there would occur a slab curiously pierced by small holes
in no definite
file:///F|/rah/H.%20P.%20Lovecraft/The%20Case...0Dexter%20Ward%20by%20H_%20P_%
20Lovecraft.txt (52 of 67) [5/21/03 1:11:41 AM]
file:///F|/rah/H.%20P.%20Lovecraft/The%20Case%20of%20Charles%20Dexter%20Ward%2
0by%20H_%20P_%20Lovecraft.txt arrangement, while at one point there lay a very
long ladder carelessly flung down. To this ladder, singularly enough, appeared
to cling a particularly large amount of the frightful odour which encompassed
everything. As he walked slowly about it suddenly occurred to Willett that
both the noise and the odour seemed strongest above the oddly pierced slabs,
as if they might be crude trap-doors leading down to some still deeper region
of horror. Kneeling by one, he worked at it with his hands, and found that
with extreme difficulty he could budge it.
At his touch the moaning beneath ascended to a louder key, and only with vast
trepidation did he persevere in the lifting of the heavy stone. A stench
unnameable now rose up from below, and the doctor's head reeled dizzily as he
laid back the slab and turned his torch upon the exposed square yard of gaping
blackness.
If he had expected a flight of steps to some wide gulf of ultimate
abomination, Willett was destined to be disappointed; for amidst that foetor
and cracked whining he discerned only the brick-faced top of a cylindrical
well perhaps a yard and a half in diameter and devoid of any ladder or other
means of descent.
As the light shone down, the wailing changed suddenly to a series of horrible
yelps; in conjunction with which there came again that sound of blind, futile
scrambling and slippery thumping. The explorer trembled, unwilling even to
imagine what noxious thing might be lurking in that abyss, but in a moment
mustered up the courage to peer over the rough-hewn brink; lying at full
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
length and holding the torch downward at arm's length to see what might lie
below. For a second he could distinguish nothing but the slimy, moss-grown
brick walls sinking illimitably into that half-tangible miasma of murk and
foulness and anguished frenzy; and then he saw that something dark was leaping
clumsily and frantically up and down at the bottom of the narrow shaft, which
must have been from twenty to twenty-five feet below the stone floor where he
lay. The torch shook in his hand, but he looked again to see what manner of
living creature might be immured there in the darkness of that unnatural well;
left starving by young Ward through all the long month since the doctors had
taken him away, and clearly only one of a vast number prisoned in the kindred
wells whose pierced stone covers so thickly studded the floor of the great
vaulted cavern. Whatever the things were, they could not lie down in their
cramped spaces; but must have crouched and whined and waited and feebly leaped
all those hideous weeks since their master had abandoned them unheeded.
But Marinus Bicknell Willett was sorry that he looked again; for surgeon and
veteran of the dissecting-room though he was, he has not been the same since.
It is hard to explain just how a single sight of a tangible object with
measurable dimensions could so shake and change a man; and we may only say
that there is about certain outlines and entities a power of symbolism and
suggestion which acts frightfully on a sensitive thinker's perspective and
whispers terrible hints of obscure cosmic relationships and unnameable
realities behind the protective illusions of common vision. In that second
look Willett saw such an outline or entity, for during the next few instants
he was undoubtedly as stark raving mad as any inmate of Dr. Waite's private
hospital. He dropped the electric torch from a hand drained of muscular power
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