The apartment was now getting warmer and warmer, and at about 5 a. m. the doctor went to the bathroom, ordering me to bring him all the ice I could get at the all-night drugstores and cafeterias. As I returned from my trips and lay the ice before the closed bathroom door, I could hear the doctor shouting, “More, more!”
Then another warm day came, and the shops opened one by one. I asked Esteban to help the doctor with the ice while I would go and find the pump spare parts and the workmen, but instructed by his mother, he absolutely refused.
Finally, I hired a man whom I met in the street to keep bringing the ice from a little shop. The hours went by in vain as I was telephoning different companies and running from place to place to find the right spare part. Finally, at about 1:30 p. m., I returned to my boarding house with the necessary equipment and two intelligent mechanics. I had done all I could, and hoped I was in time.
But the house was in black terror. Unthinkable stench was coming from under the doctor’s closed door. The man I had hired, it seemed, had run away screaming soon after his second delivery of ice. The doctor’s door was locked from the inside, and there was no sound except of slow dripping.
I spoke with Mrs. Herrero and the workmen, and at first, despite our fear, we decided to break down the door, but the landlady found a way to turn the key from the outside with some wire. We had opened the doors and windows of all the other rooms, and now, with our noses covered by handkerchiefs, we entered the doctor’s room.
A kind of dark, slimy trail led from the open bathroom door to the hall, and then to the desk, where there was a terrible little pool. Something was written there in pencil on a piece of paper – the doctor’s last words. Then the trail led to the couch and ended unspeakably.
What was, or had been, on the couch – I cannot describe. But here is what I saw on that paper before I burned it while the landlady and two mechanics rushed from that hellish place to the nearest police station. The sickening words seemed unbelievable, yet I confess that I believed them then. I honestly do not know if I believe them now. There are things about which it is better not to talk, and all I can say is that now I hate the smell of ammonia and can faint at a draught of unusually cool air.
“The end,” it was written on the paper, “is here. No more ice – the man saw me and ran away. Warmer every minute, and the tissues can’t last. I think you understood what I said about the will and the nerves, and the preserved body after the organs stopped working. It was a good idea, but it couldn’t last forever. I didn’t realize it. Dr. Torres had understood it, but the shock killed him. He couldn’t stand what he had to do when he got my letter. He had put me in a strange, dark place and nursed me back, but the organs would never work again. So it had to be done my way – artificial preservation – because, you see, I died that time, eighteen years ago.”
The tree on the hill
Southeast of Hampden, near the Salmon River, there is a range of rocky hills on which no one lives. The canyons are too deep and the slopes are too steep for anyone except the cows and sheep. The last time I visited Hampden, the region known as Hell’s Acres was part of the Blue Mountain Forest Reserve. There are no roads linking this place with the outside world, and the local people will tell you that it is indeed an evil spot. There is a local superstition that the area is haunted, but by what or by whom no one seems to know. Natives do not go walking in those hills because they believe the stories told by the Nez Perce Indians, who have avoided the region for generations, because, according to them, it is a playground of devils from the Outside. These tales made me very curious.
My first visit – and my last, thank God! – to those hills was while Theunis and I were living in Hampden the summer of 1938. He was writing an article on Egyptian mythology, and I was walking alone much of the time. We lived in a small house on Beacon Street.
On the morning of June 23rd, I was walking in those strangely shaped hills, which at first had seemed very ordinary. I must have been about seven miles south of Hampden before I noticed anything unusual. I was climbing a grassy slope of a deep canyon when I saw an area totally without any vegetation. It went southward over many hills and valleys. At first I thought the spot had been burned in the previous fall, but after examining the ground, I found no signs of a fire. The nearby slopes and ravines looked terribly scarred as if some gigantic torch had blasted them, burning all vegetation. And yet there was no sign of a fire…
I moved on over rich, black soil in which no grass grew. As I went for the center of this deserted area, I began to notice a strange silence. There were no birds, no rabbits, and even the insects seemed to have left the place. I stood on a little hill and tried to guess at the size of that strange region. Then I saw the lone tree.
It stood on a hill, which was higher than the other hills, and attracted the attention because it was so unexpected. I had seen no trees for miles: many bushes grew in the ravines, but there had been no big trees. It was strange to find one standing on that hill.
I crossed two canyons before I came to it, and a surprise waited for me. It was not a pine tree, nor a fir tree, nor an ash tree. I had never, in all my life, seen a tree which I could compare with it – for which I am thankful!
More than anything it looked like an oak. It had a huge, twisted trunk, a yard in diameter, and the large branches began spreading about seven feet from the ground. The leaves were round and strangely alike in size and design. It might have been a tree from a painting, but I swear to God it was real. I will always know that it was real, despite what Theunis said later.
I remember that I looked at the sun and thought it was about ten o’clock in the morning, but I did not look at my watch. The day was getting warm, and I sat for a while in the welcome shade of the huge tree. Then I noticed the grass that grew under it – another strange phenomenon when I remembered the deserted area through which I had passed. A wild maze of hills and ravines surrounded me on all sides, although the hill on which I sat was rather higher than any other within miles. I looked far to the east and I jumped to my feet, startled and amazed. Through a blue haze in the distance I could see the Bitterroot Mountains! There is no other range of snow-capped peaks[11] within three hundred miles of Hampden, and I knew that I shouldn’t be seeing them at all from this hill. For several minutes I looked at the peaks, and then I became sleepy. I lay in the grass under the tree. I put down my camera, took off my hat, and relaxed, staring at the sky through the green leaves. Finally, I closed my eyes.
Then a curious thing happened to me: I saw a cloudy vision of something unfamiliar. I thought I saw a great temple by a sea where three suns shone in the pale red sky. The temple, or a vast tomb, was of a strange color – a nameless blue-violet shade. Large beasts flew in the cloudy sky, and I seemed to hear the flapping of their heavy wings. I went nearer the stone temple, and a huge doorway appeared in front of me. Within that doorway were shadows that seemed to try to suck me inside that awful darkness. I thought I saw three burning eyes in the void of the doorway, and I screamed with mortal fear. In that depth, I knew, was a living hell even worse than death. I screamed again. The vision faded.
I saw the round leaves and the blue sky again. Trembling and covered in cold sweat, I tried to get up. I wanted to run away, to run from that evil tree on the hill, but then I calmed down and thought it was absurd. Never had I dreamed anything so realistic, so horrifying. What had caused the vision? I had been reading several of Theunis’ books on ancient Egypt… I wiped my forehead and decided that it was time for lunch.
Then I had an idea. I would take a few photos of the tree, for Theunis. They might interest him. Perhaps I would tell him about the dream… Opening