Horrible Imaginings

DIARY IN THE SNOW

Jan. 6: Two hours since my arrival at Lone Top, and I’m still sitting in front of the fire, soaking in the heat. The taxi ride was hellishly cold and the breathtaking half-mile tramp through the drifts with John completed my transformation to an icicle. The driver from Terrestrial told me this was one of the loneliest spots in Montana, and it surely looked like it—miles and miles of tenantless, starlit snow with mysterious auroral splotches and ghostly beams flickering to the north—a beautiful, if frightening sight.

And I’ve even turned the cold to account! It suggested to me that I put my monsters on a drearily frigid planet, one that is circling a dead or dying sun. That will give them a motivation for wanting to invade and capture the Earth. Good!

Well, here I am—a jobless man with a book to write. My friends (such as they are, or were) never believed I’d take this step, and when they finally saw I was in earnest, they tried to convince me I was a fool. And toward the end I was afraid I’d lose my nerve, but then—it was as if forces beyond my knowledge or control were packing my bag, insulting my boss, and buying my ticket. A very pleasant illusion, after weeks of qualms and indecision!

How wonderful to be away from people and newspapers and advertisements and movies—all that damnable intellectual static! I confess I had a rather unpleasant shock when I first came in here and noticed the big radio standing right between the fireplace and window. How awful it would be to have that thing blatting at you in this cabin, with no place to escape except the tiny storeroom. It would be worse than the city! But so far John hasn’t turned it on, and I have my fingers crossed.

John is a magnificent host—understanding as well as incomparably generous. After getting me coffee and a snack, and setting out the whiskey, he’s retired to the other armchair and busied himself with some scribbling of his own.

Well, in a moment I’ll talk as much as he wants to (if he wants to) though I’m still reverberating from my trip. I feel as if I’d been catapulted out of an intolerable clangor and discord into the heart of quietness. It gives me a crazy, lightheaded feeling, like a balloon that touches the earth only to bounce upward again.

Better stop here though. I’d hate to think of how quiet a quietness would have to be, in order to be as much quieter than this place, as this is quieter than the city!

A man ought to be able to listen to his thoughts out here—really hear things.

Just John, and me—and my monsters!

Jan. 7: Wonderful day. Crisp, but no wind, and a flood of yellow sunlight to put a warmth and dazzle into the snow banks. John showed me all around the place this morning. It’s a snug little cabin he’s got, and a good thing too!—because it’s quite as lonely as it seemed last night. No houses in sight, and I’d judge there hasn’t been anything down the road since my taxi—the marks where it turned around stand out sharply. John says a farmer drives by, though, every two days—he has an arrangement with him for getting milk and other necessities.

You can’t see Terrestrial, there are hills in the way. John tells me that power and telephone wires have never gotten closer than six miles. The radio runs on storage batteries. When the drifts get bad he has to snowshoe all the way into Terrestrial.

I confess I feel a little awestruck at my own temerity—a confirmed desk-worker like myself plunging into a truly rugged environment like this. But John seems to think nothing of it. He says I’ll have to learn to snowshoe. I had my first lesson this morning and cut a ludicrous figure. I’ll be virtually a prisoner until I learn my way around. But any price is worth paying to get away from the thought-destroying din and soul-killing routine of the city!

And there’s a good side to the enforced isolation—it will make me concentrate on my book.

Well, that does it. I’ve popped the word, and now I’ll have to start writing the thing itself—and am I scared! It’s been so long since I’ve finished anything of my own—even attempted it. So damned long. I’d begun to be afraid (begun, hell!) that I’d never do anything but take notes and make outlines—outlines that became more and more complicated and lifeless with the years. And yet there were those early fragments of writing from my school days that ought to have encouraged me. Even much later, when I’d developed some literary judgement, I used to think those fragments showed flashes of real promise—until I burned them. They should have given me courage—at any rate, something should have—but whatever promising ideas I’d have in the morning would be shredded to tatters by that horrible hackwriting job by the time night came.

And now that I have taken the plunge, it seems hilariously strange that I should have been driven to it by an idea for a fantasy story. The very sort of writing I’ve always jeered at—childish playing around with interplanetary space and alien monsters. The farthest thing you could imagine from my wearisome outlines, which eventually got so filled up with character analysis (or even—Heaven help me—psychoanalysis) and dismal authentic backgrounds and “my own experience” and just heaps of social and political “significance” that there wasn’t room for anything else. Yes, it does seem ludicrously paradoxical that, instead of all those profound and “important” things, it should have been an idea about black-furred, long-tentacled monsters on another planet, peering unwinkingly at the earth and longing for its warmth and life, that so began to sing in my mind, night and day, that I finally got the strength to sweep aside all those miserable little fences against insecurity I’d been so painfully long in building—and take a chance!

John says it’s natural and wholesome for a beginning writer to turn to fantasy. And he’s certainly made a go of that type of writing himself. (But he’s built up his ability as courageously and doggedly through the years as he has this cabin. In comparison, I have a long, long way to go.)

In any case, my book won’t be a cheap romance of the fabulous, despite its “cosmic” background. And when you get down to that, what’s wrong with a cosmic background? I’ve lived a long time now with my monsters and devoted a lot of serious thought to them. I’ll make them real.

That night: I just had an exhilaratingly eerie experience. I’d stepped outside for a breather and a look at the snow and stars, when my attention was caught by a beam of violet light some distance away. Though not exactly bright, it had a jewelly gleam and seemed to go up into the sky as far as I could see, without losing any of its needlelike thinness—a very perplexing thing. It was moving around slowly as if it were questing for something. For a shivery moment I had the feeling it came from the stars and was looking for me.

I was about to call John when it winked out. I’m sorry he didn’t see it. He tells me it must have been an auroral manifestation, but it certainly didn’t look anywhere near that far away—I believe auroras are supposed to be high in the stratosphere, where the air is as rarified as in a fluorescent tube—and besides I always thought they were blotchy. However, I suppose he must be right—he tells me he’s seen some very queer ones in past years, and of course my own experience of them is practically nil.

I asked him if there mightn’t be some secret military research going on nearby—perhaps with atomic power or some new kind of searchlight or radar beam—but he scouted the idea.

Whatever it was, it stimulated my imagination. Not that I need it! I’m almost worried by the degree to which my mind has come alive during my few hours at Lone Top. I’m afraid my mind is becoming too keen, like a knife with such a paper-thin edge that it keeps curling over whenever you try to cut something….

Jan. 9: At last, after several false starts, I’ve made a real beginning. I’ve pictured my monsters holding conclave at the bottom of a fantastically deep crack or canyon in their midnight planet. Except for a thin, jagged-edged ribbon of stars overhead, there is no light—their hoard of radiation is so depleted that ages ago they were forced to stop wasting any of it on the mere luxury of vision. But their strange eyes have become accommodated to starlight (though even they, wise as they are, do not know how to get any real warmth out of it) and they can perceive each other vaguely—great woolly, spidery shapes crouched on the rocks or draped along the ragged walls. It is unimaginably cold there—their insulating fur is bathed in a frigidity akin to that of interstellar space. They communicate by means of though—infrequent, well-shaped thoughts, for even thinking uses up energy. They recall their glorious past—their spendthrift youth, their vigorous prime. They commemorate the agony of their eon-long battle against the cold. They reiterate their savage and unshakable determination to survive.

It’s a good piece of writing. Even honest John says so, although twitting me sardonically for writing such a wild sort of tale after many years of politely scorning his fantastic stories.

But it was pretty bad for a while there, when I was making those false starts—I began to see myself crawling back in defeat to the grinning city. I can confess now that for years I’ve been afraid that I never had any real creative ability, that my promising early fragments were just a freak of childhood. Children show flashes of all sorts of odd abilities which they lose when they grow up—eidetic imagery, maybe even clairvoyance, things of that sort. What people praised in those first little stories of mine was a rich human sympathy, an unusually acute insight into adult human motives. And what I was afraid of was that all this had been telepathy, an unconscious picking up of snatches of thought and emotion from the adult minds around me—things that sounded very genuine and impressive when written down, especially by a child, but that actually required no more creative ability than taking dictation. I even developed an acute worry that some day I’d find myself doing automatic writing! Odd, what nonsensical fears an artist’s mind will cook up when it’s going through a dry period—John says it’s true of the whole fraternity.

At any rate, the book I’m now writing disposes in a laughably complete fashion of that crazy theory. A story about fabulous monsters on a planet dozens of light-years away can’t very well be telepathy!

I suppose it was the broadcast last night that started me thinking again about that silly old notion. The broadcast wasn’t silly though—a singularly intelligent discussion of future scientific possibilities—atomic energy, brain waves, new methods of radio transmission, that sort of thing—and not popularized for an oafish audience, thank God. Must be a program of some local university—John says now will I stop disparaging all educational institutions not located in the east!

My first apprehensions about the radio turned out to be completely groundless—I ought to have known that John isn’t the sort of person to go in for soap operas and jazz. He uses the instrument intelligently—just a brief daily news summary (not a long-winded “commentary”), classical music when available, and an occasionally high-grade lecture or round-table discussion. Last night’s scientific broadcast was new to him though—he was out at the time and didn’t recognize the station from my description.

I’m rather indebted to that program. I think it was while listening to it that the prologue of my story “jelled.” Some chance word or thought provided a crystallization point for my ideas. My mind had become sufficiently fatigued—probably a reaction to my earlier over-keenness—for my churning ideas to settle into place. At any rate, I was suddenly so tired and groggy that I hardly remembered the finish of the program or John coming in or my piling off to bed. John said I looked out on my feet. He thought I’d taken a bit too much, but I referred him to the impartial judgement of the whiskey bottle, and its almost unchanged level refuted the base calumny!

In the morning I woke up fresh as a youngster and ripped off the prologue as if I’d been in the habit of turning out that much writing daily for the past ten years!

Had another snowshoe lesson today and didn’t do much better—I grudge all time spent away from my book. John says I really ought to hurry up and learn, in case anything should happen to him while we were cut off from Terrestrial—small chance with reliable John! The radio reports a big blizzard farther east, but so far it hasn’t touched us—the sun is bright, the sky dark blue. A local cold snap is predicted.

But what do I care how long I’m confined to the cabin. I have begun to create my monsters!

That night: I’m vindicated! John has just seen my violet beam, confirmed its non-auroral nature, and gone completely overboard as to its nearness—he claimed at first that it was actually hitting the cabin!

He was approaching from the south when he saw it—apparently striking the roof in a corruscation of ghostly violet sparks. He hurried up, calling to me excitedly. It was a moment before I heard him—I’d just caught the mumbly beginning of what seemed to be another of those interesting scientific broadcasts (must be a series) and was trying to tune in more clearly and having a hard time, the radio being mulish or my own manipulations inadequate.

By the time I got outside the beam had faded. We spent several chilly minutes straining our eyes in all directions, but saw nothing except the stars.

John admits now that the beam seeming to strike the roof must have been an optical illusion, but still stoutly insists that it was fairly near. I have become the champion of the auroral theory! For, thinking it over, I can see that the chances are it is some bizarre auroral phenomenon—Arctic and Antarctic explorers, for instance, have reported all sorts of peculiar polar lights. It is very easy to be deceived as to distance in this clear atmosphere, as John himself has said.

Or else—who knows?—it might be some unusual form of static electricity, something akin to St. Elmo’s fire.

John has been trying to tune in on the program I started to catch, but no soap. There seems to be a lot of waily static in that sector of the dial. He informs me in his sardonic way that all sorts of unusual things have begun to happen since my arrival!

John has given up in disgust and is going to bed. I think I’ll follow his example, though I may have another try at the radio first—my old dislike of the brute is beginning to fade, now that it’s my only link with the rest of the world.

Next morning—the 10th: We’ve got the cold snap the radio predicted. I don’t notice much difference, except it took longer to get the place warm and everything was a little tightened up. Later on I’m going to help John split firewood—I insisted on it. He enquired with mild maliciousness whether I’d succeeded where he failed at catching the tail-end of that scientific broadcast—said the last thing he heard going to sleep was moany static. I admitted that, as far as I knew, I hadn’t—sleep must have struck the sledge-hammer blow it favors in this rugged locality while I was still twisting the dial; my memories of getting to bed are rather blurry, though I vaguely recall John sleepily snarling at me, “For God’s sake turn down the radio.”

We did run across one more odd phenomenon, though—or something that could pass for an odd phenomenon with a little grooming. In the middle of breakfast I noticed John looking intently over my shoulder. I turned and after a moment saw that it was something in the frost on the window by the radio. On closer examination we were considerably puzzled.

There was a queer sinuous pattern in the frost. It was composed of several parallel rows of tiny, roughly triangular humps with faint, hairlike veins going out to either side, all perceptibly thicker than the rest of the frost. I’ve never seen frost deposited in a pattern like it. The nearest analogy that occurs to me—not a very accurate one—is a squid’s tentacle. For some reason there comes to my mind that description in King Lear of a demon glimpsed peering down from a cliff: “Horns whelk’d and wav’d like the enridged sea.” I got the impression the pattern had been formed by an object even colder than the frost resting lightly against the glass, though that of course is impossible.

I was surprised to hear John say he thought the pattern was in the glass itself, but by scraping off a portion of the frost he did reveal a very faint bluish or lavender pattern which was rather similar.

After discussing various possibilities, we’ve decided that the cold snap—one of the most sudden in years, John says—brought out a latent imperfection in the glass, touching off some change in molecular organization that absorbed enough heat to account for the difference in thickness of the frost. The same change producing the faint lavender tint—if it wasn’t there before.

I feel extraordinarily happy and mentally alive today. All these “odd phenomena” I’ve been noting down don’t really amount to a hoot, except to show that a sense of strangeness, a delightful feeling of adventurous expectancy, has come back into my life—something I thought the city had ground out of me forever, with its blinkered concentration on “practical” matters, its noisy and faddish narrow-mindedness.

Best of all, there is my book. I have another scene all shaped in my mind.

Before supper: I’ve struck a snag. I don’t know how I’m going to get my monsters to Earth. I got through the new scene all right—it tells how the monsters have for ages been greedily watching the Earth and several other habitable planets that are nearby (in light-years). They have telescopes which do not depend on lenses, but amplify the starlight just as a radio amplifies radio waves or a public address system the human voice. Those telescopes are extraordinarily sensitive—there are no limits to what can be accomplished by selection and amplification—they can see houses and people—they tune in on wave-lengths that are not distorted by our atmosphere—they catch radio-type as well as visual-type waves, and hear our voices—they make use of modes of radiation which our scientists have not yet discovered and which travel at many times the speed of the slower modes, almost instantaneously.

But all this intimate knowledge of our daily life, this interplanetary voyeurism, profits them not in the least, except to whet their appetites to a bitter frenzy. It does not bring them an iota of warmth; on the contrary, it is a steady drain on their radiation bank. And yet they continue to spy minutely on us… watching… waiting… for the right moment.

And that’s where the rub comes. Just what is this right moment they are waiting for? How the devil are they ever going to accomplish the trip? I suppose if I were a seasoned science-fiction writer this difficulty wouldn’t even faze me—I’d solve it in a wink by means of space-ships or the fourth dimension, or what not. But none of those ideas seem right to me. For instance, a few healthy rocket blasts would use up what little energy they have left. I want something that’s really plausible.

Oh well, mustn’t worry about that—I’ll get an idea sooner or later. The important thing is that the writing continues to hold up strongly. John picked up the last few pages for a glance, sat down to read them closely, gave me a sharp look when he’d finished, remarked, “I don’t know what I’ve been writing science-fiction for, the past fifteen years,” and ducked out to get an armful of wood. Quite a compliment.

Have I started on my real career at last? I hardly dare ask myself, after the many disappointments and blind alleys of those piddling, purposeless city years. And yet even during the blackest periods I used to feel that I was being groomed for some important or at least significant purpose, that I was being tested by moods and miseries, being held back until the right moment came.

An illusion?

Jan. 11: This is becoming very interesting. More odd patterns in the frost and glass this morning—a new set. But at twenty below it’s not to be wondered that inorganic materials get freakish. What an initial drop in temperature accomplished, a further sudden drop might very well repeat. John is quite impressed by it though, and inclined to theorize about obscure points in physics. Wish I could recall the details of last night’s scientific broadcast—I think something was said about low temperature phenomena that might have a bearing on cases like this. But I was dopey as usual and must have dozed through most of it—rather a shame, because the beginning was very intriguing: something about wireless transmission of power and the production of physical effects at far distant points, the future possibilities of some sort of scientific “teleportation.” John refers sarcastically to my “private university”—he went to bed early again and missed the program. But he says he half woke at one time and heard me listening to “a lot of nightmarish static” and sleepily implored me either to tune it better or shut it off. Odd—it seemed clear as a bell to me, at least the beginning did, and I don’t remember him shouting at all. Probably he was having a nightmare. But I must be careful not to risk disturbing him again. It’s funny to think of a confirmed radio-hater like myself in the role of an offensively noise-hungry “fan.”

I wonder, though, if my presence is beginning to annoy John. He seemed jumpy and irritable all morning, and suddenly decided to get worried about my pre-bedtime dopeyness. I told him it was the natural result of the change in climate and my unaccustomed creative activity. I’m not used to physical exertion either, and my brief snowshoeing lessons and woodchopping chores, though they would seem trivial to a tougher man, are enough to really fag my muscles. Small wonder if an overpowering tiredness hits me at the end of the day.

But John said he had been feeling unusually sleepy and sluggish himself toward bedtime, and advanced the unpleasant hypothesis of carbon monoxide poisoning—something not to be taken lightly in a cabin sealed as tightly as this. He immediately subjected stove and fireplace to a minute inspection and carefully searched both chimneys for cracks or obstructions, inside and out. Despite the truly fiendish cold—I went outside to try and help him, arid got a dose of it—brr! The surrounding trackless snowfields looked bright and inviting, but to a man afoot—unless he were a seasoned winter veteran—lethal!

Everything proved to be in perfect order, so our fears were allayed. But John continued to rehearse scare stories of carbon monoxide poisoning, such as the tragic end of Andre’s balloon expedition to the Arctic, and remained fidgety and restless—and all of a sudden he decided to snowshoe into Terrestrial for some spare radio parts and other unnecessary oddments. I asked him wasn’t the bi-weekly trudge down to meet the farmer’s car enough for him, and why in any case pick the coldest day of the year? But he merely snorted, “That all you know about our weather?” and set out. I’m a bit bothered, though he certainly must know how to take care of himself.

Maybe my presence does upset him. After all, he’s lived alone here for years, except for infrequent trips—practically a hermit. Having someone living with him may very well disorder his routine of existence—and of creative work—completely. Added to that, I’m another writer—a dangerous combination. It’s quite possible that, despite our friendship (friendship would have nothing to do with it), I get on his nerves. I must have a long talk with him when he returns and sound him out on this—indirectly, of course.

But now to my monsters. They have a scene that is crying out in my brain to be expressed.

Later: The snag in my writing is developing into a brick wall. I can’t seem to figure out any plausible way of getting my monsters to Earth. There’s a block in my mind whenever I try to think in that direction. I certainly hope it’s not going to be the way it was with so many of my early stories—magnificently atmospheric prologues that bogged down completely as soon as I was forced to work out the mechanics of the plot; and the more impressive and evocative the beginning, the more crushing the fall—and the more likely it would be to hinge on some trifling detail that persisted in thwarting my inventiveness, such as how to get two characters introduced to each other or how does the hero make a living.

Well, I won’t let it defeat me this time! I’ll go right ahead with the later portion of the story, and then sooner or later I’ll just have to think through the snag.

I thought I had the thing licked when I started this noon. I pictured the monsters with a secret outpost established on Earth. Using Earth’s energy resources, they are eventually able to work out a means of transporting their entire race here—or else dragging off the Earth and Sun to their own dead solar system and sacred home planet across the trackless light-years of interstellar space, like Prometheus stealing fire from heaven, humanity being wiped out in the process.

But, as should have been obvious to me, that still leaves the problem of getting the outpost here.

The section about the outpost looks very good though. Of course the pioneer monsters will have to keep their presence hidden from humanity while they “try out” our planet, become acclimated to Earth, develop resistance to inimical bacteria strains, et cetera, and measure up man from close range, deciding on the best weapons to use against him when the time for extermination arrives.

For it won’t be entirely a one-sided struggle. Man won’t be completely powerless against these creatures. For instance, he could probably wipe out the outpost if he ever discovered its existence. But of course that won’t happen.

I envisage a number of shivery scenes—people getting glimpses of the monsters in far, lonely places—seeing spidery, shadowy shapes in deep forests—coming on hurriedly deserted mountain lairs or encampments that disturbingly suggest neither human beings nor animals—strange black swimmers noted by boats off the usual steamship lanes—engineers and scientists bothered by inexplicable drains on power lines and peculiar thefts of equipment—a vague but mounting general dread—the “irrational” conviction that we are being listened to and spied on, “measured for our coffins”—eventually, as the creatures grow bolder, dark polypous forms momentarily seen scuttling across city roofs or clinging to high walls in the more poorly lighted sections, at night—black furry masks pressed for an instant against windowpanes—

Yes, it should work out very nicely.

I wish John would get back though. It’s almost dark, and still no sign of him. I’ve popped out several times for a look-see, but there’s nothing except his snowshoe tracks going over the hill. I confess I’m getting a bit edgy. I suppose I’ve frightened myself with my own story—it wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened to a writer. I find myself looking quickly at the window, or listening for strange sounds, and my imagination insists on playing around unpleasantly with the “odd phenomena” of the past few days—the violet auroral beam, the queer patterns in the frost, my silly notions about telepathic powers. My mental state is extraordinarily heightened and I have the illusion, both pleasurable and frightening, of standing at the doorway of an unknown alien realm and being able to rend the filmy curtain with a twitch of my finger if I choose.

But such nervousness is only natural, considering the isolation of the place and John’s delay. I certainly hope he isn’t going to snowshoe back in the dark—at a temperature like this any accident or misjudgement might have fatal consequences. And if he did get into trouble I wouldn’t be any help to him.

As I get things ready for supper, I keep the radio going. It provides a not unpleasant companionship.

Jan. 12: We had quite a high old time last night. John popped in well past the supper hour—he’d gotten a ride with his farmer. He had a bottle of fantastically high-proof rum with him (he says when you have to pack your liquor, you want as much alcohol and as little water as possible) and after supper we settled down for a long palaver. Oddly I had trouble getting into the spirit of the evening. I was restless and wanted to be fiddling with my writing, or the radio, or something. But the liquor helped to lull such nervous impulses, and after a while we opened our minds to each other and talked about everything under the sun.

One thing I’m glad we settled: any ideas I had about my presence annoying John are pure moonshine. He’s pleased to have a comrade out here, and the fact that he’s doing me a big favor really makes him feel swell. (It’s up to me not to disappoint his generosity.) And if any further proof were needed, he’s started a new story this morning (said he’s been mulling it in his mind the past couple of days—hence his restlessness) and is typing away at it like sixty!

I feel very normal and down-to-earth this morning. I realize now that during the past few days I have been extraordinarily keyed up, both mentally and imaginatively. It’s rather a relief to get over a mental binge like that (with the aid of physical binge!) but also faintly depressing—a strange bloom rubbed off things. I find my mind turning to practical matters, such as where am I going to sell my stories and how am I going to earn a living writing when my small savings give out? John and I talked about it for quite a while.

Well, I suppose I should be getting to my writing, though for once I’d rather knock around in the snow with John. The weather’s moderated.

Jan. 13—evening: Got to face it—my writing has bogged down completely. It’s not just the snag—I can’t write anything on the story. I’ve torn up so damn many half pages! Not a single word rings true, or even feels true while I’m writing it—it’s all fakey. My monsters are miserable puppets or papier-mâch and moth-eaten black fur.

John says not to worry, but he can talk that way—his story is going great guns; he put in a herculean stint of typing today and just now rolled into bed after a couple of quick drinks.

I took his advice yesterday, spent most of the day outdoors, practicing snowshoeing, chopping wood, et cetera. But it didn’t make me feel a bit keener this morning.

I don’t think I should have congratulated myself on getting over my “mental binge.” It was really my creative energy. Without it, I’m no good at all. It’s as if I had been “listening” for my story and contact had been suddenly broken off. I remember having the same experience with some of my earlier writing. You ring and ring, but the other end of the line has gone dead.

I don’t think the drinking helps either. We had another bottle session last night—good fun, but it dulls the mind, at least mine. And I don’t believe John would have stopped at a couple even this evening, if I hadn’t begged off.

I think John is worried about me in a friendly way-considers me a mild neurotic case and dutifully plies me with the more vigorous animal activities, such as snowshoeing and boozing. I catch a clinical look in his eyes, and then there’s the way he boosts the “healthy, practical outlook” in our conversations, steers them away from morbid topics.

Of course I’m somewhat neurotic. Every creative artist is. And I did get a bit up in the air when we had our carbon monoxide scare—but so did he! Why the devil should he try to inhibit my imagination? He must know how important it is to me, how crucial, that I finish this story.

Mustn’t force myself, though. That’s the worst thing. I ought to turn in, but I don’t feel a bit sleepy. John’s snoring—damn him!

I think I’ll fish around on the radio—keep it turned low. I’d like to catch another of those scientific programs—they stimulate my imagination. Wonder where they come from? John brought a couple of papers and I looked through the radio sections, but couldn’t find the station.

Jan. 14: I’d give a good deal to know just what’s happening here. More odd humpy patterns this morning—there’s been another cold snap—and they weren’t altogether in the frost. But first there was that crazy dual sleepwalking session. There may be something in John’s monoxide theory—at any rate some theory is needed.

Late last night I awoke sitting up, still fully clothed, with John shaking me. There was a frozen, purposeful look on his face, but his eyes were closed. It was a few moments before I could make him stop pushing at me. At first he was confused, almost antagonistic, but after a while he woke up completely and told me that he had been having a fearful nightmare.

It began, he said, with an unpleasant moaning, wailing sound that had been torturing his ears for hours. Then he seemed to wake up and see the room, but it was changed—it was filled with violet sparks that showered and fell and rose again, ceaselessly. He felt an extreme chill, as of interstellar space. He was seized by the fear that something horrible was trying to get into the cabin. He felt that somehow I was letting it in, unknowingly, and that he must get to me and make me stop, but his limbs were held down as if by huge weights. He remembers making an agonizing, protracted effort.

For my part, I must have fallen asleep at the radio. It was turned on low, but not tuned to any station.

The sources of his nightmare are pretty obvious: the violet auroral beam, the “nightmarish” (prescient!) static of a few evenings ago, the monoxide fear, his partially concealed worry about me, and finally the rather heavy drinking we’ve both been doing. In fact, the whole business is nothing so terribly out of the way, except for the tracks—and how, or why, they should tie in with the sleepwalking session I haven’t the ghost of an idea.

They were the same pattern as before, but much thicker—great ridgy welts of ice. And I had the odd illusion that they exuded a cold more intense than that of the rest of the frost. When we had scraped them away—a difficult job—we saw that the glass reproduced the pattern more distinctly and in a more pronounced hue. But strangest of all, we have traced what certainly seems to be a faint continuation on the inner windowsill, where the tracks take the form of a cracking and disintegration of the paint—it flakes off at a touch and the flakes, faintly lavender, crumble to powder. We also think we’ve found another continuation on the back of the chair by the window, though that is problematic.

What can have produced them is completely beyond us. Conceivably one of us might have “faked” them in some bizarre sleepwalking state, but how?—there’s no object in the cabin that could produce that sinuous, chainy pattern with hairlike border. And even if there were, how could we possibly use it to produce a ridged pattern? Or is it possible that John is engineering an elaborate practical joke—no, it couldn’t be anything like that!

We carefully inspected the other windows, including the one in the storeroom, but found no similar patterns.

John is planning to remove the pane eventually and submit it to a physicist for examination. He is very worked up about the thing. I can’t quite make him out. He almost seems frightened. A few minutes ago he vaguely suggested something about our going into Terrestrial and rooming there for a few days.

But that would be ridiculous. I’m sure there’s nothing inexplicable about this business. Even the matter of the tracks must have some very simple explanation that we would see at once if we were trained physicists.

I, for one, am going to forget all about it. My mind’s come alive on the story again and I’m itching to write. Nothing must get in the way.

After supper: I feel strangely nervous, although my writing is going well again, thank God! I think I’ve licked the snag! I still don’t see how I’m going to get my monsters to the Earth, but I have the inward conviction that the right method will suddenly pop into my mind when the time comes. Irrational, but the feeling is strong enough to satisfy me completely.

Meanwhile I’m writing the sections immediately before and after the first monster’s arrival on Earth—creeping up on the event from both sides! The latter section is particularly effective. I show the monster floundering around in the snow (he naturally chooses to arrive in a cold region, since that would be the least unlike the climate of his own planet). I picture his temporary bewilderment at Earth’s radiation storms, his awkward but swift movements, his hurried search for a suitable hiding place. An ignorant oaf glimpses him or his tracks, tells what he has seen, is laughed at for a superstitious fool. Perhaps, though, the monster is forced to kill someone….

Odd that I should see all that so clearly and still be completely blind as to the section immediately preceding. But I’m convinced I’ll know tomorrow!

John picked up the last pages, put them down after a moment. “Too damned realistic!” he observed.

I should be pleased, and yet now that I’m written out for the day I suddenly find myself apprehensive and—yes—frightened. My tired, overactive mind persists in playing around in a morbid way with the events of last night. I tell myself I’m just frightening myself with my story, “pretending” that it’s true—as an author will—and carrying the pretense a little too far.

But I’m very much afraid that there’s more to it than that—some actual thing or influence that we don’t understand.

For instance, on rereading my previous entries in this diary, I find that I have omitted several important points—as if my unconscious mind were deliberately trying to suppress them.

For one thing, I failed to mention that the color in the glass and on the windowsill was identical with that of the violet beam.

Perhaps there is a natural connection—the beam a bizarre form of static electricity and the track its imprint, like lightning and the marks it produces.

This hint of a scientific explanation ought to relieve me, I suppose, but it doesn’t.

Secondly, there’s the feeling that John’s nightmare was somehow partly real.

Thirdly, I said nothing about our instant fear, as soon as we first saw the patterns in the frost, that they had been produced by some, well, creature, though how a creature could be colder than its environment, I don’t know. John said nothing, but I knew he had exactly the same idea as I: that a groping something had rested its chilled feeler against the windowpane.

The fear reached its highest pitch this morning. We still hadn’t opened our minds to each other, but as soon as we had examined the tracks, we both started, as if by unspoken agreement, to wander around. It was like that scene reproduced so often in movies—two rivals are looking for the girl who is the object of their affections and who has coyly gone off somewhere. They begin to amble around silently, upstairs and down, indoors and out. Every once in a while they meet, start back a bit, nod, and pass each other by without a word.

That’s how it was with John and me and our “creature.” It wasn’t at all amusing.

But we found nothing.

I can tell that John is as bothered by all this as I am. However, we don’t talk about it—our ideas aren’t of the sort that lend themselves to reasonable conversation.

He says one thing—that he wants to see me in bed first tonight. He’s taking no chances of a repetition of the events that led up to the sleepwalking session. I’m certainly agreeable—I don’t relish an experience like that any more than he does.

If only we weren’t so damnably isolated! Of course, we could always get into Terrestrial at a pinch—unless a blizzard cut us off. The weatherman hints at such a possibility in the next few days.

John has kept the radio going all day, and I must confess I’m wholeheartedly grateful. Even the inanest program creates an illusion of social companionship and keeps the imagination from wandering too far.

I wish we were both in the city.

Jan. 15: This business has taken a disagreeable turn. We are planning to get out today.

There is a hostile, murderous being in the cabin, or somehow able to enter it at will without disturbing a locked door and tight-frozen windows. It is something unknown to science and alien to life as we know it. It comes from some realm of eternal cold.

I fully understand the extraordinary implications of those words. I would not put them down if I did not think they were true.

Or else we are up against an unknown natural force that behaves so like a hostile, murderous being that we dare not treat it otherwise.

We are waiting for the farmer’s car, will ride back with him. We considered making the trip afoot, setting out at once, but John’s injury and my inexperience decided us against it.

We have had another sleepwalking session, only this one did not end so innocuously.

It began, so far as we are able to reconstruct, with John’s nightmare, which was an exact repetition of the one he had the night before, except that all the feelings, John says, were intensified.

Similarly, my first conscious sensations were of John shaking me and pushing at me. Only this time the room was in darkness, except for red glints from the fireplace.

Our struggle was much more violent. A chair was overturned. We slewed around, slammed against the wall, the radio slid to the floor with a crash.

Then John quieted. I hurried to light the lamp.

As I turned back, I heard him grunt with pain.

He was staring stupidly at his right wrist.

Encircling it like a double bracelet, deeply indenting it, were marks, like those in the frost.

The indented flesh was purplish and caked with frozen blood.

The flesh to either side of the indentation was white, cold to my touch, and covered with fine hairlike marks of the same violet hue as in the beam and the glass.

It was a minute before the crystals of blood melted.

We disinfected and bandaged the wound. Swabbing with the disinfectant had no effect on the violet hairlines.

Then we searched the cabin without result, and while waiting for morning, decided on our present plans.

We have tried and tried to reconstruct what else happened. Presumably I got up in my sleep—or else John pulled me out of bed—but then… ?

I wish I could get rid of the feeling that I am unconsciously in league with the being or force that injured John—trying to let it in.

Strangely, I am just as eager as yesterday to get at my writing. I have the feeling that once I got started, I would be past the snag in no time. Under the circumstances, the feeling disgusts me. Truly, creative ability fattens on horror in a most inhuman fashion.

The farmer’s car should be here any minute. It looks dark outside. I wish we could get a weather broadcast but the radio is out of commission.

Later: Can’t possibly get away today. A tremendous blizzard literally burst on us a few minutes after I finished writing the last entry. John tells me he was almost certain it was coming, but hoped it would miss us at the last moment. No chance of the farmer now.

The fury of the storm would frighten me, were it not for the other thing. The beams creak. The wind screams and roars, sucking heat out of the place. A freakishly heavy gust just no\v came down the fireplace chimney, scattering embers. We are keeping a bigger fire in the stove, which draws better. Though barely sunset, we can see nothing outside, except the meager reflections of our lights on the blasts and eddies of snow.

John has been busy repairing the radio, despite his bad hand—we must find out how long the storm is expected to last. Although I know next to nothing of the mechanism, I have been helping him by holding things.

Now that we have no alternative but to stay here, we feel less panicky. Already the happenings of last night are beginning to seem incredible, remote. Of course, there must be some unknown force loose in this vicinity, but now that we are on guard, it is unlikely that it can harm us again. After all, it has only showed itself while we were both asleep, and we are planning to stay awake tonight—at least one of us. John wants to watch straight through. I protested because of his wounded hand, but he says it doesn’t hurt much—just a dull throb. It isn’t badly swollen. He says it still feels as though it were faintly anaesthetized by ice.

On the whole the storm and the sense of physical danger it brings have had a stimulating effect on me. I feel eager to be doing something. That inappropriate urge to be working at my story keeps plaguing me.

Evening: About to turn in for a while. All of a sudden feel completely washed up. But, thank Heaven, the radio is going at last. Some ultra-inane program, but it steadies me. Weather report that the blizzard may be over tomorrow. John is in good spirits and on the alert. The axe—best weapon we can muster—leans against his chair.

Next day—Must put down coherent record events just as happened. May need it—though even if accused, don’t see how they can explain how I made the marks.

Must stay in cabin! Blizzard means certain death. It can be escaped from—possibly.

Mustn’t panic again. Think I escaped serious frostbite. No question about sprained or badly strained ankle. No one could get to Terrestrial. Crazy for me to try. Merest luck I found the cabin. Must keep myself in hand. Must! Even if it is here watching me.

To begin, last night. First—confused dreams snow and black spidery monsters—reflection of my book. Second—sleepwalking—blackness and violet sparks—John—violent surging movements—falling through space—breath of searing cold—crash—sudden pain—flood of white sparks—blackout.

Third—this morning. Weak—terribly feverish—staring at wall—pattern in grain of wood—familiar—pattern jumped to nearer surface—John’s head and back—no surprise or horror, at first—muttered, “John’s sick too. Gone to sleep on the floor, like me.”—recognized pattern.

Worked over him an hour—longer—hopeless—skull eaten in—hair dissolved—falls to powder at touch—violet lines—track twisted downward—shirt eaten through—spine laid bare—flesh near track snow white and icy to touch, much colder than cabin—trembling all the while, partly from cold—blizzard still raging—both fires out—got them going—searched cabin—John’s body into storeroom—covered—coffee—crazy itch to write—tried to work on smashed radio—had to keep doing something—hands moving faster and faster—began to tremble—more and more—threw on clothes—strapped on snowshoes—out into the blizzard—full force of wind—knocked down twice—tried to go on by crouching—snowshoes tangled—down a third time—pain—struggled like something’d caught me—more pain—lay still—face lashed by ice—had to get back—crawled—crawled forever—no feeling—glimpsed open door of cabin, behind me—made it—

I must keep control of myself. I must keep my thoughts logical. Reconstruct!

John asleep. What made him sleep? Meanwhile, am I letting the thing in? How? He starts up suddenly. Struggles with the thing and me. Knocks me down. Is caught like Laocoon. Strikes with the axe. Misses. Hits the radio. No chance for a second blow. Squeezed, frozen, corroded to death.

Then? I was helpless. Why did it stop?

Is it sure of me and saving me for tonight? Or does it need me? At times I have the crazy feeling that the story I have been writing is true—that one of my monsters killed John—that I am trying to help them reach the Earth.

But that’s mental weakness—an attempt to rationalize the incredible. This is not fantasy—it’s real I must fight any such trends toward insanity.

I must make plans. As long as the blizzard lasts, I’m trapped here. It will try to get me tonight. I must keep awake. When the blizzard lifts, I can try smoke signals. Or, if my ankle improves, attempt it to Terrestrial along the road. The farmer ought to be coming by, though John did say that when the roads are blocked—

John—

If only I weren’t so completely alone. If only I had the radio.

Later: Got the radio going! A miracle of luck—I must have absorbed more knowledge than I realized, helping fix it yesterday. My fingers moved nimbly, as if they remembered more than my conscious mind, and pretty soon I had all the smashed parts replaced with spares.

It was good to hear those first voices.

The blizzard will end tonight, it is predicted.

I feel considerably reassured. I fully realize the dangers of the coming night, but I believe that with luck I’ll be able to escape them.

My emotions are exhausted. I think I can face whatever comes, coolly and calmly.

I would be completely confident except for that persistent, unnerving feeling that a segment of my unconscious mind is under the control of something outside myself.

My chief fear is that I will yield to some sudden irrational impulse, such as the urge to write, which at times becomes incomprehensibly intense-I feel I must complete the “snag section” of my story.

Such impulses may be traps, to get me off guard.

I’ll listen to the radio. Hope I find a good, steadying program.

That fantastic urge to finish my story!

The spider-creature noted that contact had been reestablished and coolly asked for more power, although it meant draining the last reserves. It would not do to undershoot the mark this time—there was not enough left for another attempt.

They should succeed, however. The interfering biped had been eliminated, and the other biped was responding beautifully.

How long this moment had been anticipated! How many eons had been spent waiting for the emergence of sufficiently intelligent animals on that faraway planet and their development of adequate radiation exciters—maddeningly slow processes even with telepathic urging! How long, too, at the end, it had taken to select and mold one of the bipeds into a suitably sensitive subject! For a while it had seemed that he was going to escape them by hiding among the crude thought-storms of his duller fellows, but at last he had been tempted into the open. Conditions were right for the establishment of that delicate admixture of physical and mental radiations which opened the door between the stars and built the web across the cosmic chasms.

And now the spider-creature was halfway across that web. Five times already he had crossed it, only to be repulsed at the very end. He must not fail this time. The fate of the world hung on it.

The tractable biped’s mind was becoming restive, though not as yet to an alarming degree. Because his conscious mind could not bear the reality of what he was doing, the biped was inscribing it as a fictional account—his customary rationalization.

And now the spider-creature was across the bridge. His transmuted flesh tingled as it began to reassemble, shuddered at the first radiation blasts of this raw, hot planet. It was like being reborn.

The biped’s mind was in turmoil. Obviously the crasser, planet-tethered portion of it was straining to gain control and would soon over-power the more sensitive segment—but not soon enough. Dispassionately the spider-creature scanned it and noted: an almost unendurable horror, the intent to set fire to its habitation with an inflammable oil in an effort to injure the invader (that was good—it would destroy evidence), and the further intent to flee as soon as it regained control of its body (that must be prevented—the biped must be overtaken and eliminated; its story would not be believed, but alive it constituted a danger, nevertheless).

The spider-creature broke free, its crossing accomplished. As the mental portion of it underwent the final transformation, it felt its control of the biped’s mind snap and it prepared for pursuit.

At that first moment of exultation, however, it felt a twinge of pity for the small, frantic, doomed animal that had helped alter so signally the destiny of its planet.

It could so easily have saved itself. It had only to have resisted one of the telepathic promptings. It had only to have maintained its previous detestation of the voice of the herd. It had only not to have undone the work of defensive sabotage its comrade, in dying, had achieved. It had only not to have repaired the radio.

That, however, was not to be. About two miles from the cabin, the group following Alderman’s footprints came upon his body in the snow. The expression on his frozen face was sufficient in itself to prove his insanity. One stiff hand, half buried in the snow, clutched the notebook containing the “diary.” On the back of the other, which was clapped to his frosted eyes, was something that, although furnishing more fuel for the delusions of morons like Evans, provides the educated and scientific intellect with a clue as to the source of one of the more bizarre details in Alderman’s fabrication.