The Fearful Old Man

 The Fearful Old Man

 brought over from "The Terrible Old Man" by H. P. Lovecraft

English draft at

It was the plot of Angelo Ricci and Joe Czanek and Manuel Silva to call on the Fearful Old Man. This old man dwells all alone in an ereshaft on Water Street near the sea, and is reckoned to be both unmet enough rich and unmet enough weak; which forms a stead very quemely to berns of the trade of Messrs. Ricci, Czanek, and Silva, for that trade was nothing less earlish than theft.

The townsfolk of Kingsport say and think many things about the Fearful Old Man which most often keep him safe from the heed of drightfolk like Mr. Ricci and his fellows, notwithstanding the almost wissly fact that he hides a gavelhoard of unbounded size somewhere about his musty and on-drysen abode. He is, in truth, a very uncouth person, believed to have been a headman of East India clipper ships in his day; so old that no one can bethink when he was young, and so untalkative that few know his true name. Among the gnarled trees in the front yard of his old and forsat place he keeps an weird gathering of big stones, oddly clustered and dyed so that they look like the offgods in some hidden Eastern church. This gathering frightens away most of the small boys who love to tease the Fearful Old Man about his long white hair and beard, or to break the small-sheeted windows of his dwelling with wicked shots; but there are other things which frighten the older and more ferwetful folk who sometimes steal up to the house to peer in through the dusty windows. These folk say that on a board in a bare room on the ground floor are many weird flasks, in each a small bit of lead hung down from a string. And they say that the Fearful Old Man talks to these flasks, calling them by such names as Jack, Scar-Face, Long Tom, Spanish Joe, Peters, and Mate Ellis, and that whenever he speaks to a flask the little lead downhanging within makes unmistakeworth quiverings as if in answer.

Those who have watched the tall, lean, Fearful Old Man in these weird mootings do not watch him again. But Angelo Ricci and Joe Czanek and Manuel Silva were not of Kingsport blood; they were of that new and mixed altheedy stock which lies outside the spellbound ring of New England life and thew, and they saw in the Fearful Old Man merely a tottering, almost helpless grey-beard, who could not walk without the aid of his knotted staff, and whose thin, weak hands shook ruefully. They were truly most sorry in their way for the lonely, unliked old fellow, whom everybody shunned, and at whom all the dogs barked oddly. But business is business, and to a thief whose soul is in his trade, there is a costing and a dare about a very old and very weak man who has no ledger at the bank, and who pays for his few needs at the town store with Spanish gold and silver minted two hundred years ago.

Messrs. Ricci, Czanek, and Silva chose the night of April 11th for their call. Mr. Ricci and Mr. Silva were to befraign the poor old bern, whilst Mr. Czanek waited for them and their foretakeworth burden of ore with a covered roadwain in Ship Street, by the gate in the tall rear wall of their host’s grounds. Wishing to miss needless layings-out in case of unforeseen law-warden harrying shinded these plots for a silent and unloffyearn outfaring.

As forestighted, the three outfarers each started out alone thus to forestall any evil-minded inklings afterward. Messrs. Ricci and Silva met in Water Street by the old man’s front gate, and although they did not like the way the moon shone down upon the dyed stones through the budding branches of the gnarled trees, they had more pressing things to think about than mere idle overbelief. They feared it might be bitter work making the Fearful Old Man gabby about his hoarded gold and silver, for old sea-headmen are most stubborn and uncouth. Still, he was very old and very weak, and there were two callers. Messrs. Ricci and Silva were andwise in the craft of making unwilling persons speechful, and the screams of a weak and unmet enough elderly man can be easily muffled. So they moved up to the one lighted window and heard the Fearful Old Man talking childishly to his flasks with downhangings. Then they put on fake nebs and knocked earlishly at the weather-stained oaken door.

Waiting seemed very long to Mr. Czanek as he fidgeted restlessly in the covered roadwain by the Fearful Old Man’s back gate in Ship Street. He was more than ymeanly tender-hearted, and he did not like the ghastly screams he had heard in the ereshaft just after the stound set for the deed. Had he not told his fellows to be as soft as they could be with the rueful old sea-headman? Very edgily he watched that narrow oaken gate in the high and ivy-clad stone wall. Often he looked at his watch, and wondered at the tarrying. Had the old man died before unheling where his hoard was hidden, and had a thorough combing become needful? Mr. Czanek did not like to wait so long in the dark in such a place. Then he sensed a soft tread or tapping on the walk inside the gate, heard a gentle fumbling at the rusty latch, and saw the narrow, heavy door swing inward. And in the wan glow of the one dim street-lamp he squinted his eyes to see what his fellows had brought out of that forbidding house which loomed so close behind. But when he looked, he did not see what he had thought; for his fellows were not there at all, but only the Fearful Old Man leaning silently on his knotted staff and smiling grimly. Mr. Czanek had never before heeded the hue of that man’s eyes; now he saw that they were yellow.

Little things make a mighty stir in little towns, which is the inthing that Kingsport folk talked all that spring and summer about the three unacknowworth bodies, frightfully slashed as with many cutlasses, and frightfully battered as by the tread of many ruthless boot-heels, which the tide washed in. And some folk even spoke of things as paltry as the forsaken roadwain found in Ship Street, or truly unmennishly cries, most likely of a stray beast or northfaring bird, heard in the night by wakeful burgars. But of this idle town gossip the Fearful Old Man took no heed at all. He was by lund withdrawn, and when one is old and weak, one’s withholding is twice as strong. Besides, so eldern a sea-headman must have witnessed scores of things much more stirring in the far-off days of his unbethought youth.