Message #3523

[Zodiac]

The complexity of my emotions upon reading, re-reading, and
pondering over this strange and unlooked-for letter is past adequate
description. I have said that I was at once relieved and made uneasy,
but this expresses only crudely the overtones of diverse and largely
subconscious feelings which comprised both the relief and the
uneasiness. To begin with, the thing was so antipodally at variance
with the whole chain of horrors preceding it--the change of mood from
stark terror to cool complacency and even exultation was so unheralded,
lightning-like, and complete! I could scarcely believe that a single
day could so alter the psychological perspective of one who had written
that final frenzied bulletin of Wednesday, no matter what relieving
disclosures that day might have brought. At certain moments a sense of
conflicting unrealities made me wonder whether this whole distantly
reported drama of fantastic forces were not a kind of half-illusory
dream created largely within my own mind. Then I thought of the
phonograph record and gave way to still greater bewilderment.

The letter seemed so unlike anything which could have been expected!
As I analysed my impression, I saw that it consisted of two distinct
phases. First, granting that Akeley had been sane before and was still
sane, the indicated change in the situation itself was so swift and
unthinkable. And secondly, the change in Akeley’s own manner, attitude,
and language was so vastly beyond the normal or the predictable. The
man’s whole personality seemed to have undergone an insidious mutation
--a mutation so deep that one could scarcely reconcile his two aspects
with the supposition that both represented equal sanity. Word-choice,
spelling--all were subtly different. And with my academic
sensitiveness to prose style, I could trace profound divergences in his
commonest reactions and rhythm-responses. Certainly, the emotional
cataclysm or revelation which could produce so radical an overturn must
be an extreme one indeed! Yet in another way the letter seemed quite
characteristic of Akeley. The same old passion for infinity--the same
old scholarly inquisitiveness. I could not a moment--or more than a
moment--credit the idea of spuriousness or malign substitution. Did
not the invitation--the willingness to have me test the truth of the
letter in person--prove its genuineness?

I did not retire Saturday night, but sat up thinking of the shadows
and marvels behind the letter I had received. My mind, aching from the
quick succession of monstrous conceptions it had been forced to
confront during the last four months, worked upon this startling new
material in a cycle of doubt and acceptance which repeated most of the
steps experienced in facing the earlier wonders; till long before dawn
a burning interest and curiosity had begun to replace the original
storm of perplexity and uneasiness. Mad or sane, metamorphosed or
merely relieved, the chances were that Akeley had actually encountered
some stupendous change of perspective in his hazardous research; some
change at once diminishing his danger--real or fancied--and opening
dizzy new vistas of cosmic and superhuman knowledge. My own zeal for
the unknown flared up to meet his, and I felt myself touched by the
contagion of the morbid barrier-breaking. To shake off the maddening
and wearying limitations of time and space and natural law--to be
linked with the vast outside--to come close to the nighted and abysmal
secrets of the infinite and the ultimate--surely such a thing was
worth the risk of one’s life, soul, and sanity! And Akeley had said
there was no longer any peril--he had invited me to visit him instead
of warning me away as before. I tingled at the thought of what he might
now have to tell me--there was an almost paralysing fascination in the
thought of sitting in that lonely and lately-beleaguered farmhouse with
a man who had talked with actual emissaries from outer space; sitting
there with the terrible record and the pile of letters in which Akeley
had summarised his earlier conclusions.

So late Sunday morning I telegraphed Akeley that I would meet him in
Brattleboro on the following Wednesday--September 12th--if that date
were convenient for him. In only one respect did I depart from his
suggestions, and that concerned the choice of a train. Frankly, I did
not feel like arriving in that haunted Vermont region late at night; so
instead of accepting the train he chose I telephoned the station and
devised another arrangement. By rising early and taking the 8:07 A.M.
(standard) into Boston, I could catch the 9:25 for Greenfield; arriving
there at 12:22 noon. This connected exactly with a train reaching
Brattleboro at 1:08 p.m.--a much more comfortable hour than 10:01 for
meeting Akeley and riding with him into the close-packed,
secret-guarding hills.

I mentioned this choice in my telegram, and was glad to learn in the
reply which came toward evening that it had met with my prospective
host’s endorsement. His wire ran thus:

ARRANGEMENT SATISFACTORY WILL MEET ONE EIGHT TRAIN WEDNESDAY DONT
FORGET RECORD AND LETTERS AND PRINTS KEEP DESTINATION QUIET EXPECT
GREAT REVELATIONS

AKELEY

Receipt of this message in direct response to one sent to Akeley--
and necessarily delivered to his house from the Townshend station
either by official messenger or by a restored telephone service--
removed any lingering subconscious doubts I may have had about the
authorship of the perplexing letter. My relief was marked--indeed, it
was greater than I could account for at the time; since all such doubts
had been rather deeply buried. But I slept soundly and long that night,
and was eagerly busy with preparations during the ensuing two days.