The Colour Out of Space

Chapter 1: The Farm Beneath the Future Lake

I went into the hills west of Arkham to survey land for a reservoir. People warned me about the country, but warnings were plentiful in an old town. I expected a local legend. Instead, beside an abandoned road, I found five acres where nothing grew.

Grey dust covered the ground. Dead trees leaned around its edges, and among fallen chimney bricks an open well disturbed the colour of the sunlight. The place looked burned, though no ordinary fire could explain why the forest had never returned. I took another road back before evening.

The townspeople called it the blasted heath. They said a family had perished there within living memory. They also warned me against listening to old Ammi Pierce. Naturally, I went to see him.

Ammi lived near the travelled road, beyond the future lake. His memory wandered, and I had to supply connections between scattered recollections. But he knew more about the district than his neighbours admitted. When I mentioned the reservoir, he seemed relieved. The valley, he said, was better drowned.

In June 1882, a meteor had fallen beside Nahum Gardner's well. Nahum lived on a fertile farm with his wife and their three sons: Zenas, Thaddeus, and little Merwin. Ammi knew them well. He accompanied professors from Miskatonic University to examine the stone.

It remained hot, was strangely soft, and appeared to shrink. The scientists carried a specimen away, only to find that their tests refused to classify it. Heat and chemicals produced no familiar response. In a spectroscope it showed bands that belonged to no known colour. Eventually both specimen and the glass holding it disappeared.

Back at the farm, another cut exposed a glossy sphere inside the meteor. Its hue resembled the impossible spectrum. A hammer punctured it; the sphere vanished, leaving an empty cavity. They found no second sphere.

A thunderstorm repeatedly struck the stone. By morning it, too, was gone. A protected laboratory fragment lasted a week and left no residue. The professors exhausted their tests. The newspapers exhausted their interest.

Nahum returned to work. Whatever had arrived beside his well seemed to have departed. That was the first of the mistakes.

Chapter 2: A Harvest That Could Not Be Eaten

The autumn fruit looked magnificent. Nahum ordered extra barrels for apples and pears of extraordinary size and shine. But the first taste was sickening. Tomatoes and melons were equally spoiled. He blamed poison from the meteor and trusted the fields farther uphill to support his family.

Winter brought a quieter uneasiness. The Gardners grew withdrawn and unwell. Nahum noticed animal tracks that seemed wrong without being able to say why. Ammi dismissed the talk until a rabbit crossed before his sleigh in leaps so unnatural that his horse nearly bolted. Around the farm, even the dogs seemed afraid to bark.

The following spring came early and came strangely. Swollen plants appeared in hues people could not name. Professors visited but dismissed most complaints as rumour. A mineral might have entered the soil, they suggested; rain would wash it away. They did not return to study the long disaster that followed.

Flowers and orchard blossoms recalled the sphere within the meteor. Thaddeus said the trees moved without wind. Later his mother saw it too. The family began watching and listening at night, uncertain what they expected. A passing salesman reported that the vegetation glowed in darkness.

Ammi remained their visitor, but even he came less often. Neighbours avoided the road. When school closed, isolation became almost complete.

In June Mrs. Gardner began screaming about things shifting in the air and something taking life from her. She could not describe what threatened her. Nahum eventually locked her in an attic room when her behaviour frightened the boys. By July she had stopped speaking, and he thought she sometimes shone faintly in the dark.

The horses stampeded and, when found, were so changed that they had to be killed. Vegetation faded to grey and broke apart. Livestock sickened behind closed doors. Dogs and cats disappeared. Ammi tasted the well water and urged Nahum to dig a new well uphill. But the farmer, exhausted by months of dread, continued drinking it.

Thaddeus went to fetch water and returned without his pail, terrified by moving colours below. He too was confined upstairs. His cries answered his mother's through the locked doors. Little Merwin, deprived of his brother's company, listened in terror. Soon the boys no longer went to school. The farm was consuming every remaining connection to the world.

Chapter 3: The Last Visit

On October nineteenth, Nahum came to Ammi with news that Thaddeus had died. He had buried what remained in the family plot. The locked room showed no sign of an intruder. Ammi went home with him and tried to comfort Merwin. Zenas, the eldest, scarcely reacted to anything now.

Three days later Merwin vanished. He had gone outside at night with a lantern and pail. Nahum heard a cry, but found no child. At daylight, twisted and partly fused metal lay beside the well. He asked Ammi to care for his wife and Zenas if they outlived him.

More than two weeks passed before Ammi could overcome his fear and visit again. The farm was grey and silent. Inside, Nahum lay weak on a couch and called for Zenas to bring wood. There was no fire, and no boy answered. Yet Nahum asked whether the fresh wood had warmed the room.

When questioned, he said Zenas lived in the well. When asked about his wife, he seemed to think she was beside him. Ammi took the attic keys and went upstairs.

What he found in the locked room had suffered the same collapse as the animals and Thaddeus. It still moved. Ammi would never describe the rest. His account suggested a final act of mercy, but he gave me no details from which I could judge it.

At the attic window a strange colour passed before his eyes, and something damp brushed him. Descending, he heard a thud below, then dragging. The staircase wood shone faintly. Outside his horse bolted; a splash came from the well.

Nahum had left the couch, or had been moved. Ammi could not tell which. The farmer was collapsing into brittle fragments, but could still speak. He said the colour lived in the well, drained everything alive, and had come inside the meteor. Zenas had never returned from fetching water. Nahum believed the thing weakened their minds until they could not escape.

His voice failed. Ammi covered him with a tablecloth and fled through the fields, avoiding the well. No stone had fallen from its rim to account for the splash.

At home, his runaway horse was already waiting. Ammi went to Arkham and reported the deaths. The authorities insisted that he guide them back. Against his wishes, they arrived at the farm with night approaching.

Chapter 4: What Returned to the Well

The officers, doctors, and veterinary surgeon found little they could explain. Dust from the bodies would later yield the meteor's strange spectrum, then lose that property. At the farm, they ordered the well emptied. Ammi watched the daylight fading.

The water was low. Among animal bones below lay the remains of Merwin and Zenas. The mud bubbled, and a probing pole found no firm bottom. With the search finished, the party went inside to discuss poison, illness, and the boys' deaths. None of these explanations joined all the evidence.

Then the coroner noticed light rising from the well.

Ammi knew its colour. He had seen it inside the meteor, in the spring flowers, and that morning at the attic window. He warned the others against going outside. The horses struggled at their ties. Above them, trees moved though the air was still.

Their branches began to shine. The light spread through the old buildings, touched the furniture, and strengthened along the floor. Two horses escaped with the wagon. Ammi's remaining horse died in the yard. The party could no longer stay.

They stumbled out through the back and climbed across the brook to higher ground. Below them the entire farm glowed. Something shapeless poured upward from the well, changing into suggestions of forms that the witnesses later described differently.

Suddenly it shot into the sky and vanished through a round opening in the clouds. The buildings cracked and broke, throwing bright fragments upward after it. Others called it an explosion. Ammi remembered the sound of splitting wood. A fierce wind rose, and the men turned toward the road.

Ammi alone looked back. A faint portion of the colour rose from the ruined farm, failed to follow the rest, and sank again.

That was his secret. Forty-four years later, he still would not approach the well. Nothing had grown over the grey acres, and neighbours said the blight widened slowly. I had only Ammi's damaged memory and the unsettling landscape to consult. I cannot tell you what came, what it wanted, or what remained.

I gave up my surveying post. The reservoir will cover the heath, but I will never drink Arkham's new water. And one question troubles me more than Ammi's account of the sky: after all these years, why has he never managed to move away?