Lovecraft, H P & Heald, Hazel - The Horror In The Burying Ground

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The Horror in the Burying-Ground

by H. P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald

Written 1933 to 1935

Published May 1937 in Weird Tales, Volume 29, Number 5, Pages 596-606.

When the state highway to Rutland is closed, travellers are forced to take the Stillwater

road past Swamp Hollow. The scenery is superb in places, yet somehow the route has

been unpopular for years. There is something depressing about it, especially near

Stillwater itself. Motorists feel subtly uncomfortable about the tightly shuttered

farmhouse on the knoll just north of the village, and about the white-bearded half-wit

who haunts the old burying-ground on the south, apparently talking to the occupants of

some of the graves.

Not much is left of Stillwater, now. The soil is played out, and most of the people have

drifted to the towns across the distant river or to the city beyond the distant hills. The

steeple of the old white church has fallen down, and half of the twenty-odd straggling

houses are empty and in various stages of decay. Normal life is found only around Peck's

general store and filling-station, and it is here that the curious stop now and then to ask

about the shuttered house and the idiot who mutters to the dead.

Most of the questioners come away with a touch of distaste and disquiet. They find the

shabby loungers oddly unpleasant and full of unnamed hints in speaking of the long-past

events brought up. There is a menacing, portentous quality in the tones which they use to

describe very ordinary events—a seemingly unjustified tendency to assume a furtive,

suggestive, confidential air, and to fall into awesome whispers at certain points—which

insidiously disturbs the listener. Old Yankees often talk like that; but in this case the

melancholy aspect of the half-mouldering village, and the dismal nature of the story

unfolded, give these gloomy, secretive mannerisms an added significance. One feels

profoundly the quintessential horror that lurks behind the isolated Puritan and his strange

repressions—feels it, and longs to escape precipitately into clearer air.

The loungers whisper impressively that the shuttered house is that of old Miss Sprague—

Sophie Sprague, whose brother Tom was buried on the seventeenth of June, back in '86.

Sophie was never the same after that funeral—that and the other thing which happened

the same day—and in the end she took to staying in all the time. Won't even be seen now,

but leaves notes under the back-door mat and has her things brought from the store by

Ned Peck's boy. Afraid of something—the old Swamp Hollow burying-ground most of

all. Never could be dragged near there since her brother—and the other one—were laid

away. Not much wonder, though, seeing the way crazy Johnny Dow rants. He hangs

around burying-ground all day and sometimes at night, and claims he talks with Tom—

and the other. Then he marches by Sophie's house shouts things at her—that's why she

began to keep the shutters closed. He says things are coming from somewhere to get her

The Horror in the Burying-Ground

some time. Ought to be stopped, but one can't be too hard on poor Johnny. Besides, Steve

Barbour always had his opinions.

Johnny does his talking to two of the graves. One of them is Tom Sprague's. The other, at

the opposite end of the graveyard, is that of Henry Thorndike, who was buried on the

same day. Henry was the village undertaker—the only one in miles—and never liked

around Stillwater. A city fellow from Rutland—been to college full of book learning.

Read queer things nobody else ever heard and mixed chemicals for no good purpose.

Always trying to invent something new—some new-fangled embalming-fluid or some

foolish kind of medicine. Some folks said he had tried to be a doctor but failed in his

studies and took to the next best profession. Of course, there wasn't much undertaking to

do in a place like Stillwater, but Henry farmed on the side.

Mean, morbid disposition—and a secret drinker if you could judge by the empty bottles

in his rubbish heap. No wonder Tom Sprague hated him and blackballed him from the

Masonic lodge, and warned him off when he tried to make up to Sophie. The way he

experimented on animals was against Nature and Scripture. Who could forget the state

that collie dog was found in, or what happened to old Mrs. Akeley's cat? Then there was

the matter of Deacon Leavitt's calf, when Tom had led a band of the village boys to

demand an accounting. The curious thing was that the calf came alive after all in the end,

though Tom had found it as stiff as a poker. Some said the joke was on Tom, but

Thorndike probably thought otherwise, since he had gone down under his enemy's fist

before the mistake was discovered.

Tom, of course, was half drunk at the time. He was a vicious brute at best, and kept his

poor sister half cowed with threats. That's probably why she is such a fear-racked

creature still. There were only the two of them, and Tom would never let her leave

because that meant splitting the property. Most of the fellows were too afraid of him to

shine up to Sophie—he stood six feet one in his stockings—but Henry Thorndike was a

sly cuss who had ways of doing things behind folk's backs. He wasn't much to look at,

but Sophie never discouraged him any. Mean and ugly as he was, she'd have been glad if

anybody could have freed her from her brother. She may not have stopped to wonder how

she could get clear of him after he got her clear of Tom.

Well, that was the way things stood in June of '86. Up to this point, the whispers of the

loungers at Peck's store are not so unbearably portentous; but as they continue, the

element of secretiveness and malign tension grows. Tom Sprague, it appears, used to go

to Rutland on periodic sprees, his absences being Henry Thorndike's great opportunities.

He was always in bad shape when he got back, and old Dr. Pratt, deaf and half blind

though he was, used to warn him about his heart, and about the danger of delirium

tremens. Folks could always tell by the shouting and cursing when he was home again.

It was on the ninth of June—on a Wednesday, the day after young Joshua Goodenough

finished building his new-fangled silo—that Tom started out on his last and longest spree.

He came back the next Tuesday morning and folks at the store saw him lashing his bay

stallion the way he did when whiskey had a hold of him. Then there came shouts and

The Horror in the Burying-Ground

shrieks and oaths from the Sprague house, and the first thing anybody knew Sophie was

running over to old Dr. Pratt's at top speed.

The doctor found Thorndike at Sprague's when he got there, and Tom was on the bed in

his room, with eyes staring and foam around his mouth. Old Pratt fumbled around and

gave the usual tests, then shook his head solemnly and told Sophie she had suffered a

great bereavement—that her nearest and dearest had passed through the pearly gates to a

better land, just as everybody knew he would if he didn't let up on his drinking.

Sophie kind of sniffled, the loungers whisper, but didn't seem to take on much. Thorndike

didn't do anything but smile—perhaps at the ironic fact that he, always an enemy, was

now the only person who could be of any use to Thomas Sprague. He shouted something

in old Dr. Pratt's half-good ear about the need of having the funeral early on account of

Tom's condition. Drunks like that were always doubtful subjects, and any extra delay—

with merely rural facilities—would entail consequences, visual and otherwise, hardly,

acceptable to the deceased's loving mourners. The doctor had muttered that Tom's

alcoholic career ought to have embalmed him pretty well in advance, but Thorndike

assured him to the contrary at the same time boasting of his own skill, and of the superior

methods he had devised through his experiments.

It is here that the whispers of the loungers grow acutely disturbing. Up to this point the

story is usually told by Ezra Davenport, or Luther Fry, if Ezra is laid up with chilblains,

as he is apt to be in winter; but from there on old Calvin Wheeler takes up the thread, and

his voice has a damnably insidious way of suggesting hidden horror. If Johnny Dow

happens to be passing by there is always a pause, for Stillwater does not like to have

Johnny talk too much with strangers.

Calvin edges close to the traveller and sometimes seizes a coat-lapel with his gnarled,

mottled hand while he half shuts his watery blue eyes.

"Well, sir," he whispers, "Henry he went home an' got his undertaker's fixin's—crazy

Johnny Dow lugged most of 'em, for he was always doin' chores for Henry—an' says as

Doc Pratt an' crazy Johnny should help lay out the body. Doc always did say as how

thought Henry talked too much—a-boastin' what a fine workman he was, an' how lucky it

was that Stillwater had a reg'lar undertaker instead of buryin' folks jest as they was, like

they do over to Whitby.

"'Suppose,' says he, 'some fellow was to be took with some them paralysin' cramps like

you read about. How'd a body like when they lowered him down and begun shovelin' the

dirt back? How'd he like it when he was chokin' down there under the new headstone,

scratchin' an' tearin' if he chanced to get back the power, but all the time knowin' it wasn't

no use? No, sir, I tell you it's a blessin' Stillwater's got a smart doctor as knows when a

man's dead and when he ain't, and a trained undertaker who can fix a corpse so he'll stay

put without no trouble.'

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摘要：

TheHorrorintheBurying-GroundTheHorrorintheBurying-GroundbyH.P.LovecraftandHazelHealdWritten1933to1935PublishedMay1937inWeirdTales,Volume29,Number5,Pages596-606.WhenthestatehighwaytoRutlandisclosed,travellersareforcedtotaketheStillwaterroadpastSwampHollow.Thesceneryissuperbinplaces,yetsomehowtheroute...

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