“Beyond the Wall of Sleep”
"Beyond the Wall of Sleep" was one of several stories Lovecraft wrote and published toward the end of 1919. This one was submitted not to his usual mainstays at this point (The Vagrant, the United Amateur, etc) but to another minor magazine called Pine Cones. Pine Cones was one of several publishers that would print only one or two Lovecraft stories over the next few years in between his regular contributions to those earlier mentioned. This pattern would continue until 1924 when Lovecraft would be introduced to Weird Tales.
Unlike the previous stories, this is one that I've already read, though not since my teens. I wish I could say I recall "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" fondly, but unfortunately I remember it as the first time in my life that I looked up from a book with a dazed, haunted look in my eyes and muttered "What the fuck did I just read?" Its possible that this story isn't as bad as I remember, so I'll do my best to approach it neutrally and not let my preconceptions color the experience. But, I don't think it’s going to help.
“I have an exposition of sleep come upon me.”
The story opens with a quote from Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The line is spoken by Bottom, a simple country bumpkin who earlier in the play was the victim of fairy enchantment during his sleep. It’s a well chosen quote for reasons that will soon become clear.
“I have frequently wondered if the majority of mankind ever pause to reflect upon the occasionally titanic significance of dreams, and of the obscure world to which they belong. Whilst the greater number of our nocturnal visions are perhaps no more than faint and fantastic reflections of our waking experiences—Freud to the contrary with his puerile symbolism—there are still a certain remainder whose immundane and ethereal character permits of no ordinary interpretation, and whose vaguely exciting and disquieting effect suggests possible minute glimpses into a sphere of mental existence no less important than physical life, yet separated from that life by an all but impassable barrier.”
I think most people probably stop and wonder where dreams come from at at least one point in their lives.
Not a fan of Sigmund Freud, I see. I'd pat you on the back Lovecraft, if you hadn't done that as part of a monstrous run-on sentence. Also, you're dead, so patting you on the back would be awkward anyway.
“From my experience I cannot doubt but that man, when lost to terrestrial consciousness, is indeed sojourning in another and uncorporeal life of far different nature from the life we know; and of which only the slightest and most indistinct memories linger after waking. From those blurred and fragmentary memories we may infer much, yet prove little. We may guess that in dreams life, matter, and vitality, as the earth knows such things, are not necessarily constant; and that time and space do not exist as our waking selves comprehend them. Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon.”
An even better quote to open this story, and one that could have precluded some of this exposition:
“Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awoke, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.”
That's from one of the early Daoist sages.
The Shakespeare quote IS a good fit, as I noted, but I think this one captures the essence of Lovecraft's dream mythology (and of the intended focus of this story in particular) much better.
“It was from a youthful reverie filled with speculations of this sort that I arose one afternoon in the winter of 1900–1901, when to the state psychopathic institution in which I served as an interne was brought the man whose case has ever since haunted me so unceasingly. His name, as given on the records, was Joe Slater, or Slaader, and his appearance was that of the typical denizen of the Catskill Mountain region; one of those strange, repellent scions of a primitive colonial peasant stock whose isolation for nearly three centuries in the hilly fastnesses of a little-travelled countryside has caused them to sink to a kind of barbaric degeneracy, rather than advance with their more fortunately placed brethren of the thickly settled districts. Among these odd folk, who correspond exactly to the decadent element of “white trash” in the South, law and morals are non-existent; and their general mental status is probably below that of any other section of the native American people.”
...yeah, so far this isn't going any better than I remember.
What's really bizarre - even moreso than Lovecraft's virulently classist view of the hillfolk - is that he would choose to stress their supposed barbarism as soon as Slater is introduced. The vulgarity of Slater's people is apparently really important for the reader to know about in gruesome detail, and comes before anything about Slater personally, or even about why he was brought in. So, will the story justify the amount of attention lavished on hillfolk savagery? I sure hope so, because otherwise this whole paragraph is just an irrelevant, angry rant at the expense of a poor and largely disenfranchised segment of Americana with no connection to the story.
Also, "the native American people." I'm assuming he means besides the ACTUAL Native Americans, who's mental status doesn't count because they're not white.
“Joe Slater, who came to the institution in the vigilant custody of four state policemen, and who was described as a highly dangerous character, certainly presented no evidence of his perilous disposition when first I beheld him. Though well above the middle stature, and of somewhat brawny frame, he was given an absurd appearance of harmless stupidity by the pale, sleepy blueness of his small watery eyes, the scantiness of his neglected and never-shaven growth of yellow beard, and the listless drooping of his heavy nether lip. His age was unknown, since among his kind neither family records nor permanent family ties exist; but from the baldness of his head in front, and from the decayed condition of his teeth, the head surgeon wrote him down as a man of about forty.”
Howie - can I call you Howie? - I'm pretty sure that even hillbillies can keep track of how old they are. They're farmers, you know? The passing of seasons is kind of important to them.
Also, "permanent family ties" don't exist among the Catskill tribes. How...is that even supposed to work? Do they sleep in random caves each night without recollection of who they've met before? Are they solitary predators who guard their hunting grounds fiercely against others of their kind except in mating season?
“From the medical and court documents we learned all that could be gathered of his case. This man, a vagabond, hunter, and trapper, had always been strange in the eyes of his primitive associates. He had habitually slept at night beyond the ordinary time, and upon waking would often talk of unknown things in a manner so bizarre as to inspire fear even in the hearts of an unimaginative populace. Not that his form of language was at all unusual, for he never spoke save in the debased patois of his environment; but the tone and tenor of his utterances were of such mysterious wildness, that none might listen without apprehension. He himself was generally as terrified and baffled as his auditors, and within an hour after awakening would forget all that he had said, or at least all that had caused him to say what he did; relapsing into a bovine, half-amiable normality like that of the other hill-dwellers.”
Wait, the other hillbillies described him in those terms? "He speaks the same degenerated pseudo-English that we do, your honor." "Well, after that he just went back to being a half-retarded cow person; y'know, like the rest of us."
Anyway. Joe Slater is a hunter who's had some kind of sleep disorder and dream-related mania for most of his life.
“As Slater grew older, it appeared, his matutinal aberrations had gradually increased in frequency and violence; till about a month before his arrival at the institution had occurred the shocking tragedy which caused his arrest by the authorities. One day near noon, after a profound sleep begun in a whiskey debauch at about five of the previous afternoon, the man had roused himself most suddenly; with ululations so horrible and unearthly that they brought several neighbours to his cabin—a filthy sty where he dwelt with a family as indescribable as himself.”
You sure have an awful lot of descriptions for this "indescribable" person, Howie.
If this had been written by anyone else, I'd say the whiskey binge was a nice touch. A subtle implication of how Slater's life has been going downhill as his mental health deteriorated, eventually driving him to alcoholism to deal with his night terrors, and the stress and loneliness of being surrounded by people who don't understand him. Unfortunately, its much more likely that five o'clock whiskey marathons are just how all country people get to sleep in Lovecraft's world.
“Rushing out into the snow, he had flung his arms aloft and commenced a series of leaps directly upward in the air; the while shouting his determination to reach some ‘big, big cabin with brightness in the roof and walls and floor, and the loud queer music far away’. As two men of moderate size sought to restrain him, he had struggled with maniacal force and fury, screaming of his desire and need to find and kill a certain ‘thing that shines and shakes and laughs’. At length, after temporarily felling one of his detainers with a sudden blow, he had flung himself upon the other in a daemoniac ecstasy of bloodthirstiness, shrieking fiendishly that he would ‘jump high in the air and burn his way through anything that stopped him’. Family and neighbours had now fled in a panic, and when the more courageous of them returned, Slater was gone, leaving behind an unrecognisable pulp-like thing that had been a living man but an hour before. None of the mountaineers had dared to pursue him, and it is likely that they would have welcomed his death from the cold; but when several mornings later they heard his screams from a distant ravine, they realised that he had somehow managed to survive, and that his removal in one way or another would be necessary. Then had followed an armed searching party, whose purpose (whatever it may have been originally) became that of a sheriff’s posse after one of the seldom popular state troopers had by accident observed, then questioned, and finally joined the seekers.”
Possessed!Slater is awfully articulate for a mindless savage, but maybe that's down to the Black Lodge spirit having a better vocabulary than him.
Good thing there was a "semi-popular" state trooper who happened to wander into the posse. Otherwise they'd have probably all walked themselves off a cliff without adult supervision.
“On the third day Slater was found unconscious in the hollow of a tree, and taken to the nearest gaol; where alienists from Albany examined him as soon as his senses returned. To them he told a simple story. He had, he said, gone to sleep one afternoon about sundown after drinking much liquor. He had awaked to find himself standing bloody-handed in the snow before his cabin, the mangled corpse of his neighbour Peter Slader at his feet. Horrified, he had taken to the woods in a vague effort to escape from the scene of what must have been his crime. Beyond these things he seemed to know nothing, nor could the expert questioning of his interrogators bring out a single additional fact. That night Slater slept quietly, and the next morning he wakened with no singular feature save a certain alteration of expression. Dr. Barnard, who had been watching the patient, thought he noticed in the pale blue eyes a certain gleam of peculiar quality; and in the flaccid lips an all but imperceptible tightening, as if of intelligent determination. But when questioned, Slater relapsed into the habitual vacancy of the mountaineer, and only reiterated what he had said on the preceding day.”
"Alienist" is an old fashioned word for "psychiatrist."
Apparently, when he tightens his lips you can tell if its in intelligent determination or in stupid determination. Slater has very expressive lips.
“On the third morning occurred the first of the man’s mental attacks. After some show of uneasiness in sleep, he burst forth into a frenzy so powerful that the combined efforts of four men were needed to bind him in a strait-jacket. The alienists listened with keen attention to his words, since their curiosity had been aroused to a high pitch by the suggestive yet mostly conflicting and incoherent stories of his family and neighbours. Slater raved for upward of fifteen minutes, babbling in his backwoods dialect of great edifices of light, oceans of space, strange music, and shadowy mountains and valleys. But most of all did he dwell upon some mysterious blazing entity that shook and laughed and mocked at him. This vast, vague personality seemed to have done him a terrible wrong, and to kill it in triumphant revenge was his paramount desire. In order to reach it, he said, he would soar through abysses of emptiness, burning every obstacle that stood in his way. Thus ran his discourse, until with the greatest suddenness he ceased. The fire of madness died from his eyes, and in dull wonder he looked at his questioners and asked why he was bound. Dr. Barnard unbuckled the leathern harness and did not restore it till night, when he succeeded in persuading Slater to don it of his own volition, for his own good. The man had now admitted that he sometimes talked queerly, though he knew not why.
Within a week two more attacks appeared, but from them the doctors learned little. On thesource of Slater’s visions they speculated at length, for since he could neither read nor write, and had apparently never heard a legend or fairy tale, his gorgeous imagery was quite inexplicable. That it could not come from any known myth or romance was made especially clear by the fact that the unfortunate lunatic expressed himself only in his own simple manner. He raved of things he did not understand and could not interpret; things which he claimed to have experienced, but which he could not have learned through any normal or connected narration. The alienists soon agreed that abnormal dreams were the foundation of the trouble; dreams whose vividness could for a time completely dominate the waking mind of this basically inferior man. With due formality Slater was tried for murder, acquitted on the ground of insanity, and committed to the institution wherein I held so humble a post.”
Not sure why they're so interested in the exact details of his delusions. Psychology has progressed immensely in the past century, but even back then I can't imagine that "I'm actually a superpowerful being and there's some omnipotent voice tormenting me" would be seen as anything but bog standard paranoid schizophrenia.
He had never heard a legend or a fairy tale? I'm pretty sure the hillbillies have plenty of legends and tall tales that no one outside of their territory has ever heard of. Not to mention the bible; even if they're illiterate, they'll have heard biblical stories that could inspire epic mental images of deserts, tall buildings, and the like.
Slater's evaluation and trial take about a month, going by the timeline provided a couple pages back. It’s a pretty cut and dry insanity case, so that's probably not unusual.
“I have said that I am a constant speculator concerning dream life, and from this you may judge of the eagerness with which I applied myself to the study of the new patient as soon as I had fully ascertained the facts of his case. He seemed to sense a certain friendliness in me; born no doubt of the interest I could not conceal, and the gentle manner in which I questioned him.”
Why does this sound like a pedophile?
“Not that he ever recognised me during his attacks, when I hung breathlessly upon his chaotic but cosmic word-pictures; but he knew me in his quiet hours, when he would sit by his barred window weaving baskets of straw and willow, and perhaps pining for the mountain freedom he could never enjoy again.”
“Perhaps?”
Fucking perhaps?
Isn't this a mental hospital? Shouldn't you be ASKING him what he's thinking and feeling? Actually, the hell with that; even if we’re assuming 1920’s mental health “care” at its absolute worst, you shouldn't even need to ask to be sure what he's pining for. Slater had a life, a home, and a family, and its all been taken away from him in the blink of an eye because of something he can't even remember. Then there's the little fact that he murdered one of his next door neighbors; maybe that might also be weighing on him just a little?
Of course he wishes none of this had ever happened and he was still at home with his family, you absolute moron.
“His family never called to see him; probably it had found another temporary head, after the manner of decadent mountain folk.”
Okay, I take that back. He doesn't miss his family. Hillbillies actually are solitary nomadic predators after all.
“By degrees I commenced to feel an overwhelming wonder at the mad and fantastic conceptions of Joe Slater. The man himself was pitiably inferior in mentality and language alike; but his glowing, titanic visions, though described in a barbarous and disjointed jargon, were assuredly things which only a superior or even exceptional brain could conceive. How, I often asked myself, could the stolid imagination of a Catskill degenerate conjure up sights whose very possession argued a lurking spark of genius? How could any backwoods dullard have gained so much as an idea of those glittering realms of supernal radiance and space about which Slater ranted in his furious delirium? More and more I inclined to the belief that in the pitiful personality who cringed before me lay the disordered nucleus of something beyond my comprehension; something infinitely beyond the comprehension of my more experienced but less imaginative medical and scientific colleagues.
And yet I could extract nothing definite from the man. The sum of all my investigation was, that in a kind of semi-uncorporeal dream life Slater wandered or floated through resplendent and prodigious valleys, meadows, gardens, cities, and palaces of light; in a region unbounded and unknown to man. That there he was no peasant or degenerate, but a creature of importance and vivid life; moving proudly and dominantly, and checked only by a certain deadly enemy, who seemed to be a being of visible yet ethereal structure, and who did not appear to be of human shape, since Slater never referred to it as a man, or as aught save a thing. This thing had done Slater some hideous but unnamed wrong, which the maniac (if maniac he were) yearned to avenge. From the manner in which Slater alluded to their dealings, I judged that he and the luminous thinghad met on equal terms; that in his dream existence the man was himself a luminous thing of the same race as his enemy. This impression was sustained by his frequent references to flying through space and burning all that impeded his progress. Yet these conceptions were formulated in rustic words wholly inadequate to convey them, a circumstance which drove me to the conclusion that if a true dream-world indeed existed, oral language was not its medium for the transmission of thought. Could it be that the dream-soul inhabiting this inferior body was desperately struggling to speak things which the simple and halting tongue of dulness could not utter? Could it be that I was face to face with intellectual emanations which would explain the mystery if I could but learn to discover and read them? I did not tell the older physicians of these things, for middle age is sceptical, cynical, and disinclined to accept new ideas. Besides, the head of the institution had but lately warned me in his paternal way that I was overworking; that my mind needed a rest.”
At this point I'm wondering if we just have an unreliable narrator.
He consistently describes Slater's language as too crude and inarticulate to convey these awe-inspiring concepts, but he's nonetheless able to understand them in great detail after listening to Slater's descriptions. In addition to his shockingly insensitive analysis of Slater's wistful basket-weaving, he dismisses his own superiors at the institution as unimaginative old conservatives; so far, there isn't a single other human being he's regarded as an intellectual equal, or even described in positive terms at all.
Should I not be taking this guy's account at face value? Is his characterization as an egomaniacal narcissist intentional on Lovecraft's part? This guy is written, with great and convincing detail, as a villain. Maybe that's what he is? Maybe the story will turn on its head with him crossing some blatant moral event horizon?
“It had long been my belief that human thought consists basically of atomic or molecular motion, convertible into ether waves of radiant energy like heat, light, and electricity. This belief had early led me to contemplate the possibility of telepathy or mental communication by means of suitable apparatus, and I had in my college days prepared a set of transmitting and receiving instruments somewhat similar to the cumbrous devices employed in wireless telegraphy at that crude, pre-radio period. These I had tested with a fellow-student; but achieving no result, had soon packed them away with other scientific odds and ends for possible future use. Now, in my intense desire to probe into the dream life of Joe Slater, I sought these instruments again; and spent several days in repairing them for action. When they were complete once more I missed no opportunity for their trial. At each outburst of Slater’s violence, I would fit the transmitter to his forehead and the receiver to my own; constantly making delicate adjustments for various hypothetical wave-lengths of intellectual energy. I had but little notion of how the thought-impressions would, if successfully conveyed, arouse an intelligent response in my brain; but I felt certain that I could detect and interpret them. Accordingly I continued my experiments, though informing no one of their nature.”
If the electrotelepathy device never worked before, what makes him think it'll work now?
And...he's attaching the device to Slater's head "at each outburst of Slater's violence" and doing the experiments "though informing no one of their nature."
Am I misinterpreting, or is he sneaking into Slater's cell after he's been straightjacketed? Entering the cell while Slater is in rage mode would be awfully dangerous if he wasn't restrained, so I’m thinking that that’s the intent.
So, he waits until Slater is raging, lets the guards put him in the straightjacket/restraints, and then sneaks into his cell and does these experiments once the doctors and guards have all left and there’s nobody watching.
That’s…well. That speaks for itself.
“It was on the twenty-first of February, 1901, that the thing finally occurred. As I look back across the years I realise how unreal it seems; and sometimes half wonder if old Dr. Fenton was not right when he charged it all to my excited imagination. I recall that he listened with great kindness and patience when I told him, but afterward gave me a nerve-powder and arranged for the half-year’s vacation on which I departed the next week. That fateful night I was wildly agitated and perturbed, for despite the excellent care he had received, Joe Slater was unmistakably dying.”
I'm not vouching for the "excellent care" of any hospital that would allow you within one hundred feet of the patients.
“Perhaps it was his mountain freedom that he missed, or perhaps the turmoil in his brain had grown too acute for his rather sluggish physique; but at all events the flame of vitality flickered low in the decadent body. He was drowsy near the end, and as darkness fell he dropped off into a troubled sleep. I did not strap on the strait-jacket as was customary when he slept, since I saw that he was too feeble to be dangerous, even if he woke in mental disorder once more before passing away. But I did place upon his head and mine the two ends of my cosmic “radio”; hoping against hope for a first and last message from the dream-world in the brief time remaining.”
Losing a valuable test subject. Such a tragedy.
“In the cell with us was one nurse, a mediocre fellow who did not understand the purpose of the apparatus, or think to inquire into my course.”
"Excellent care," ladies and gentlemen. Letting an intern attach an unknown homemade device to a dying patient's head without so much as asking what he's doing.
Sadly, having been in a psych ward myself, I find it all too easy to believe that something like this could actually happen even today.
“As the hours wore on I saw his head droop awkwardly in sleep, but I did not disturb him. I myself, lulled by the rhythmical breathing of the healthy and the dying man, must have nodded a little later.
The sound of weird lyric melody was what aroused me. Chords, vibrations, and harmonic ecstasies echoed passionately on every hand; while on my ravished sight burst the stupendous spectacle of ultimate beauty. Walls, columns, and architraves of living fire blazed effulgently around the spot where I seemed to float in air; extending upward to an infinitely high vaulted dome of indescribable splendour. Blending with this display of palatial magnificence, or rather, supplanting it at times in kaleidoscopic rotation, were glimpses of wide plains and graceful valleys, high mountains and inviting grottoes; covered with every lovely attribute of scenery which my delighted eye could conceive of, yet formed wholly of some glowing, ethereal, plastic entity, which in consistency partook as much of spirit as of matter. As I gazed, I perceived that my own brain held the key to these enchanting metamorphoses; for each vista which appeared to me, was the one my changing mind most wished to behold. Amidst this elysian realm I dwelt not as a stranger, for each sight and sound was familiar to me; just as it had been for uncounted aeons of eternity before, and would be for like eternities to come.”
Lots of evocative words, but the way they're arranged makes it hard for me to picture exactly what he's describing. That may be intentional to some degree; one of Lovecraft's fascinations was with the limits of what the human senses and languages can process. Here though, regardless of whether or not that was the intent, it just feels like clumsy writing.
“Then the resplendent aura of my brother of light drew near and held colloquy with me, soul to soul, with silent and perfect interchange of thought. The hour was one of approaching triumph, for was not my fellow-being escaping at last from a degrading periodic bondage; escaping forever, and preparing to follow the accursed oppressor even unto the uttermost fields of ether, that upon it might be wrought a flaming cosmic vengeance which would shake the spheres?”
"My cosmic brother," is it? You're presuming an awful lot of friendliness and familiarity between yourself and whatever Slater just turned into. That's in character for an egotist, I suppose; of course the being of cosmic light and splendor would see you as a "brother."
“We floated thus for a little time, when I perceived a slight blurring and fading of the objects around us, as though some force were recalling me to earth—where I least wished to go. The form near me seemed to feel a change also, for it gradually brought its discourse toward a conclusion, and itself prepared to quit the scene; fading from my sight at a rate somewhat less rapid than that of the other objects. A few more thoughts were exchanged, and I knew that the luminous one and I were being recalled to bondage, though for my brother of light it would be the last time. The sorry planet-shell being well-nigh spent, in less than an hour my fellow would be free to pursue the oppressor along the Milky Way and past the hither stars to the very confines of infinity.”
So that was only a glimpse at the world Slater was exploring in his dreams before the author returns to consciousness. There's a touch here that I think is pretty clever; for a moment, the narrator was awake, but not seeing the physical world around him because his senses were preoccupied by the ethereal one. This is probably the same condition that Slater himself was in when he killed that man; his body was moving and interacting with other solid things, but he only saw these luminous spirit things around himself. He was literally somewhere else.
One question that brings to mind is if the narrator, like Slater, will also lose his memory of these visions once they're over. Let's find out.
“A well-defined shock separates my final impression of the fading scene of light from my sudden and somewhat shamefaced awakening and straightening up in my chair as I saw the dying figure on the couch move hesitantly. Joe Slater was indeed awaking, though probably for the last time. As I looked more closely, I saw that in the sallow cheeks shone spots of colour which had never before been present. The lips, too, seemed unusual; being tightly compressed, as if by the force of a stronger character than had been Slater’s. The whole face finally began to grow tense, and the head turned restlessly with closed eyes. I did not arouse the sleeping nurse, but readjusted the slightly disarranged head-bands of my telepathic “radio”, intent to catch any parting message the dreamer might have to deliver.”
He still thinks that stupid machine works? I'd say its much more likely he shared Slater's vision just now because he happened to be close, with the wires and cardboard boxes and soup cans or whatever being irrelevant.
“All at once the head turned sharply in my direction and the eyes fell open, causing me to stare in blank amazement at what I beheld. The man who had been Joe Slater, the Catskill decadent, was now gazing at me with a pair of luminous, expanded eyes whose blue seemed subtly to have deepened. Neither mania nor degeneracy was visible in that gaze, and I felt beyond a doubt that I was viewing a face behind which lay an active mind of high order.
At this juncture my brain became aware of a steady external influence operating upon it. I closed my eyes to concentrate my thoughts more profoundly, and was rewarded by the positive knowledge that my long-sought mental message had come at last. Each transmitted idea formed rapidly in my mind, and though no actual language was employed, my habitual association of conception and expression was so great that I seemed to be receiving the message in ordinary English.
“Joe Slater is dead,” came the soul-petrifying voice or agency from beyond the wall of sleep.”
And the entity that's been hiijacking Slater in his dreams and fits of madness finally appears. The story doesn't name him, so MIKE will have to do.
“My opened eyes sought the couch of pain in curious horror, but the blue eyes were still calmly gazing, and the countenance was still intelligently animated. “He is better dead, for he was unfit to bear the active intellect of cosmic entity. His gross body could not undergo the needed adjustments between ethereal life and planet life. He was too much of an animal, too little a man; yet it is through his deficiency that you have come to discover me, for the cosmic and planet souls rightly should never meet. He has been my torment and diurnal prison for forty-two of your terrestrial years.
I am an entity like that which you yourself become in the freedom of dreamless sleep. I am your brother of light, and have floated with you in the effulgent valleys. It is not permitted me to tell your waking earth-self of your real self, but we are all roamers of vast spaces and travellers in many ages. Next year I may be dwelling in the dark Egypt which you call ancient, or in the cruel empire of Tsan-Chan which is to come three thousand years hence. You and I have drifted to the worlds that reel about the red Arcturus, and dwelt in the bodies of the insect-philosophers that crawl proudly over the fourth moon of Jupiter. How little does the earth-self know of life and its extent! How little, indeed, ought it to know for its own tranquillity!””
If I'm understanding this correctly, MIKE isn't an alien at all, but rather the "true" form of human consciousness, the butterfly of Chuang's dream. MIKE's species rest in the form of humans and other sentient beings - like the Jovian insectoids he mentioned - and are active in their true forms while the physical body sleeps. Presumably, all our mental activities during the day are just the true self's way of recharging, just as sleep seems to do for us.
"Us" and "them" might not be the right words, since we're just two different forms of the same species. However, MIKE talks about Slater in a disassociative way that makes me unsure.
It bears noting that MIKE is aware of everything about Slater's waking life, and has good general background knowledge of Earth and humanity as well. Either our dream-selves have some kind of omniscience, or we can remember our earth-selves while awake in our true forms even if the reverse isn't true.
Anyway, it sounds like it didn't much enjoy being Slater.
“Of the oppressor I cannot speak. You on earth have unwittingly felt its distant presence—you who without knowing idly gave to its blinking beacon the name of Algol, the Daemon-Star. It is to meet and conquer the oppressor that I have vainly striven for aeons, held back by bodily encumbrances.”
The narrator observed that, based on Slater's descriptions, he and his enemy seemed to be the same sort of being. This would imply that the Algol entity - we'll call it BOB - is another consciousness that can be a human or other sentient being during its rest cycles. BOB might be on Earth doing his grocery shopping or playing with her pet hamster right now, heedless of who they really are while "dreaming."
MIKE said that they...we...whatever...normally end up in a different physical body each time they recharge, and that their plane of existence is unbounded by our world's timeline. So, BOB could also be a person in the distant past or future while he's napping at the same time as MIKE in the other world. Or an alien in the distant past or future, humans and jovians are probably not the only two species of the physical continuum who are actually sleeping star-things. Being stuck in Slater's body so many times in a row seems to be the result of something going wrong, perhaps the other self's version of a disease or injury that prevents normal host rotation.
“Tonight I go as a Nemesis bearing just and blazingly cataclysmic vengeance. Watch me in the sky close by the Daemon-Star. I cannot speak longer, for the body of Joe Slater grows cold and rigid, and the coarse brains are ceasing to vibrate as I wish. You have been my friend in the cosmos; you have been my only friend on this planet—the only soul to sense and seek for me within the repellent form which lies on this couch. We shall meet again—perhaps in the shining mists of Orion’s Sword, perhaps on a bleak plateau in prehistoric Asia. Perhaps in unremembered dreams tonight; perhaps in some other form an aeon hence, when the solar system shall have been swept away.””
He's been your friend? I never would have known. Maybe MIKE means that he knows the consciousness currently inhabiting the narrator in their own world, but...that seems like a really big coincidence. Or maybe the narrator's been bribing Slater with candy to let him experiment on him when he's not delusional, and so MIKE's experience with him through Slater's chimpanzee-like perspective is just "nice man who gives me things."
So, any possibility of this being an unreliable narrator just went out the window. Turns out the protagonist was one hundred percent right, and he has the word of a cosmic superalien - and, it’s pretty hard to deny now, the author - to back him up in his smug self-congratulation. Well doesn't that just feel wonderful.
“At this point the thought-waves abruptly ceased, and the pale eyes of the dreamer—or can I say dead man?—commenced to glaze fishily. In a half-stupor I crossed over to the couch and felt of his wrist, but found it cold, stiff, and pulseless. The sallow cheeks paled again, and the thick lips fell open, disclosing the repulsively rotten fangs of the degenerate Joe Slater. I shivered, pulled a blanket over the hideous face, and awakened the nurse. Then I left the cell and went silently to my room. I had an insistent and unaccountable craving for a sleep whose dreams I should not remember.
The climax? What plain tale of science can boast of such a rhetorical effect? I have merely set down certain things appealing to me as facts, allowing you to construe them as you will. As I have already admitted, my superior, old Dr. Fenton, denies the reality of everything I have related. He vows that I was broken down with nervous strain, and badly in need of the long vacation on full pay which he so generously gave me. He assures me on his professional honour that Joe Slater was but a low-grade paranoiac, whose fantastic notions must have come from the crude hereditary folk-tales which circulate in even the most decadent of communities. All this he tells me—yet I cannot forget what I saw in the sky on the night after Slater died. Lest you think me a biassed witness, another’s pen must add this final testimony, which may perhaps supply the climax you expect. I will quote the following account of the star Nova Persei verbatim from the pages of that eminent astronomical authority, Prof. Garrett P. Serviss:
“On February 22, 1901, a marvellous new star was discovered by Dr. Anderson, of Edinburgh, not very far from Algol. No star had been visible at that point before. Within twenty-four hours the stranger had become so bright that it outshone Capella. In a week or two it had visibly faded, and in the course of a few months it was hardly discernible with the naked eye.””
Wait…a new star appeared BRIEFLY and then vanished, with Algol remaining in place? Does that mean MIKE just got his ass kicked again? I don’t know if that’s the author’s intent, but it’s the most obvious reading, and that’s hilarious.
The end.
So, to start with the good. The sheer imagination and mind-blowing aspect of the final revelation - that humanity is just one expression of sleeping demigods who can literally move stars while they're awake - is incredible. The temporally disjointed nature of the beings' host selection is not only evocative of certain concepts of reincarnation, giving the story an almost religious feel, but also adds to the sense that the world we perceive is false, and even something as seemingly fundamental as time is merely an illusion.
Unfortunately, the story is sabotaged almost completely by the author's classism. The way the story up to the interview with MIKE is written suggests that this was what Lovecraft saw as the normal, real world around us; that his portrayal of Slater and the alienists was true to reality. That there would be nothing untoward about an intern experimenting on patients and that questions SHOULDN'T be asked in that situation; after all, he doesn't call much attention to the nurse's apathy or the other staff members' inattentiveness, which normalizes them in contrast to the fantastical elements. And in Lovecraft's mind, the narrator was the good guy who earned his congratulation from MIKE before the latter rocketed back to the Black Lodge. My memory wasn't deceiving me; this story is just as unintentionally horrifying as I remembered, if not worse.
It’s not just background bigotry tainting the story either. As I already commented, the story goes to absurd lengths to pile more and more demeaning language on Slater and his people, even when it isn't relevant to the story and contributes nothing to wither the buildup or the payoff. It just feels like unrelated malice being poured into a story not meant for it. Like the cosmic entity being forced to inhabit Joe Slater, the brilliance of this story's premise is corrupted and bogged down by the perversity of the mind that channeled it.
A final note on this story is that it - along with "Dagon" written at around the same time - might be the earliest Cthulhu Mythos tale. None of the mythos entities are named in this story, but the concepts introduced - alien beings and realms beyond human comprehension, dreams having an existence of their own, the world around us just being a tiny part of a bigger and less orderly cosmos, and human scientists uncovering shocking aspects of all this by accident - are the foundations of the Cthulhuverse. It feels like a Cthulhu story in a way that the preceding works don't. The only real difference is that in the Cthulhuverse, humans are small and unimportant, and us being manifestations of Great Old One tier beings would go against the nihilism of the mythos. There's also the fact that in most of the later stories, the scientist would be in danger from this revelation, either giving into madness from the horror of it, or gaining the attention of some unearthly monster. In "Beyond the Wall of Sleep," on the other hand, the only monster is Howard Phillips Lovecraft himself.
