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In the Vault
Lovecraft, Howard Phillips
Published:
1924
Type(s):
Short Fiction, Horror
Source:
http://en.wikisource.org
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About Lovecraft:
Howard Phillips Lovecraft was an American author of fantasy, horror
and science fiction. He is notable for blending elements of science fiction
and horror; and for popularizing "cosmic horror": the notion that some
concepts, entities or experiences are barely comprehensible to human
minds, and those who delve into such risk their sanity. Lovecraft has be-
come a cult figure in the horror genre and is noted as creator of the
"Cthulhu Mythos," a series of loosely interconnected fictions featuring a
"pantheon" of nonhuman creatures, as well as the famed Necronomicon,
a grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore. His works typically had a
tone of "cosmic pessimism," regarding mankind as insignificant and
powerless in the universe. Lovecraft's readership was limited during his
life, and his works, particularly early in his career, have been criticized as
occasionally ponderous, and for their uneven quality. Nevertheless,
Lovecraft’s reputation has grown tremendously over the decades, and he
is now commonly regarded as one of the most important horror writers
of the 20th Century, exerting an influence that is widespread, though of-
ten indirect. Source: Wikipedia
Also available on Feedbooks for Lovecraft:
•
(1926)
•
(1931)
•
(1928)
•
(1926)
•
(1916)
•
(1934)
•
(1927)
•
(1931)
•
(1930)
•
(1936)
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There is nothing more absurd, as I view it, than that conventional associ-
ation of the homely and the wholesome which seems to pervade the psy-
chology of the multitude. Mention a bucolic Yankee setting, a bungling
and thick-fibred village undertaker, and a careless mishap in a tomb, and
no average reader can be brought to expect more than a hearty albeit
grotesque phase of comedy. God knows, though, that the prosy tale
which George Birch's death permits me to tell has in it aspects beside
which some of our darkest tragedies are light.
Birch acquired a limitation and changed his business in 1881, yet never
discussed the case when he could avoid it. Neither did his old physician
Dr. Davis, who died years ago. It was generally stated that the affliction
and shock were results of an unlucky slip whereby Birch had locked
himself for nine hours in the receiving tomb of Peck Valley Cemetery, es-
caping only by crude and disastrous mechanical means; but while this
much was undoubtedly true, there were other and blacker things which
the man used to whisper to me in his drunken delirium toward the last.
He confided in me because I was his doctor, and because he probably felt
the need of confiding in someone else after Davis died. He was a bachel-
or, wholly without relatives.
Birch, before 1881, had been the village undertaker of Peck Valley; and
was a very calloused and primitive specimen even as such specimens go.
The practices I heard attributed to him would be unbelievable today, at
least in a city; and even Peck Valley would have shuddered a bit had it
known the easy ethics of its mortuary artist in such debatable matters as
the ownership of costly "laying-out" apparel invisible beneath the
casket's lid, and the degree of dignity to be maintained in posing and ad-
apting the unseen members of lifeless tenants to containers not always
calculated with sublimest accuracy. Most distinctly Birch was lax, insens-
itive, and professionally undesirable; yet I still think he was not an evil
man. He was merely crass of fibre and function- thoughtless, careless,
and liquorish, as his easily avoidable accident proves, and without that
modicum of imagination which holds the average citizen within certain
limits fixed by taste.
Just where to begin Birch's story I can hardly decide, since I am no
practiced teller of tales. I suppose one should start in the cold December
of 1880, when the ground froze and the cemetery delvers found they
could dig no more graves till spring. Fortunately the village was small
and the death rate low, so that it was possible to give all of Birch's inan-
imate charges a temporary haven in the single antiquated receiving
tomb. The undertaker grew doubly lethargic in the bitter weather, and
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seemed to outdo even himself in carelessness. Never did he knock to-
gether flimsier and ungainlier caskets, or disregard more flagrantly the
needs of the rusty lock on the tomb door which he slammed open and
shut with such nonchalant abandon.
At last the spring thaw came, and graves were laboriously prepared
for the nine silent harvests of the grim reaper which waited in the tomb.
Birch, though dreading the bother of removal and interment, began his
task of transference one disagreeable April morning, but ceased before
noon because of a heavy rain that seemed to irritate his horse, after hav-
ing laid but one mortal tenement to its permanent rest. That was Darius
Peck, the nonagenarian, whose grave was not far from the tomb. Birch
decided that he would begin the next day with little old Matthew Fen-
ner, whose grave was also near by; but actually postponed the matter for
three days, not getting to work till Good Friday, the 15th. Being without
superstition, he did not heed the day at all; though ever afterward he re-
fused to do anything of importance on that fateful sixth day of the week.
Certainly, the events of that evening greatly changed George Birch.
On the afternoon of Friday, April 15th, then, Birch set out for the tomb
with horse and wagon to transfer the body of Matthew Fenner. That he
was not perfectly sober, he subsequently admitted; though he had not
then taken to the wholesale drinking by which he later tried to forget cer-
tain things. He was just dizzy and careless enough to annoy his sensitive
horse, which as he drew it viciously up at the tomb neighed and pawed
and tossed its head, much as on that former occasion when the rain had
vexed it. The day was clear, but a high wind had sprung up; and Birch
was glad to get to shelter as he unlocked the iron door and entered the
side-hill vault. Another might not have relished the damp, odorous
chamber with the eight carelessly placed coffins; but Birch in those days
was insensitive, and was concerned only in getting the right coffin for
the right grave. He had not forgotten the criticism aroused when Hannah
Bixby's relatives, wishing to transport her body to the cemetery in the
city whither they had moved, found the casket of Judge Capwell beneath
her headstone.
The light was dim, but Birch's sight was good, and he did not get As-
aph Sawyer's coffin by mistake, although it was very similar. He had, in-
deed, made that coffin for Matthew Fenner; but had cast it aside at last as
too awkward and flimsy, in a fit of curious sentimentality aroused by re-
calling how kindly and generous the little old man had been to him dur-
ing his bankruptcy five years before. He gave old Matt the very best his
skill could produce, but was thrifty enough to save the rejected
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specimen, and to use it when Asaph Sawyer died of a malignant fever.
Sawyer was not a lovable man, and many stories were told of his almost
inhuman vindictiveness and tenacious memory for wrongs real or fan-
cied. To him Birch had felt no compunction in assigning the carelessly
made coffin which he now pushed out of the way in his quest for the
Fenner casket.
It was just as he had recognised old Matt's coffin that the door
slammed to in the wind, leaving him in a dusk even deeper than before.
The narrow transom admitted only the feeblest of rays, and the overhead
ventilation funnel virtually none at all; so that he was reduced to a pro-
fane fumbling as he made his halting way among the long boxes toward
the latch. In this funereal twilight he rattled the rusty handles, pushed at
the iron panels, and wondered why the massive portal had grown so
suddenly recalcitrant. In this twilight too, he began to realise the truth
and to shout loudly as if his horse outside could do more than neigh an
unsympathetic reply. For the long-neglected latch was obviously broken,
leaving the careless undertaker trapped in the vault, a victim of his own
oversight.
The thing must have happened at about three-thirty in the afternoon.
Birch, being by temperament phlegmatic and practical, did not shout
long; but proceeded to grope about for some tools which he recalled see-
ing in a corner of the tomb. It is doubtful whether he was touched at all
by the horror and exquisite weirdness of his position, but the bald fact of
imprisonment so far from the daily paths of men was enough to exasper-
ate him thoroughly. His day's work was sadly interrupted, and unless
chance presently brought some rambler hither, he might have to remain
all night or longer. The pile of tools soon reached, and a hammer and
chisel selected, Birch returned over the coffins to the door. The air had
begun to be exceedingly unwholesome; but to this detail he paid no at-
tention as he toiled, half by feeling, at the heavy and corroded metal of
the latch. He would have given much for a lantern or bit of candle; but
lacking these, bungled semi-sightlessly as best he might.
When he perceived that the latch was hopelessly unyielding, at least to
such meagre tools and under such tenebrous conditions as these, Birch
glanced about for other possible points of escape. The vault had been
dug from a hillside, so that the narrow ventilation funnel in the top ran
through several feet of earth, making this direction utterly useless to con-
sider. Over the door, however, the high, slit-like transom in the brick
facade gave promise of possible enlargement to a diligent worker; hence
upon this his eyes long rested as he racked his brains for means to reach
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