"Man enters asylum sane, leaves completely off his rocker" (Miskatonic Press, Vol. 4)

Miskatonic Press started because I couldn't remember which stories I'd already read in my H.P. Lovecraft anthology. When I finished a story, I would go to the table of contents and write a one-sentence summary of what happened (usually in a humorous way). I would typically phrase them like a newspaper headline or the tag line for a movie. This post covers a story called, "Beyond the Wall of Sleep."

Today I will attempt to explain H.P. Lovecraft's, "Beyond the Wall of Sleep." I say attempt, because this is another of those stories where dreams and reality meld together and get mixed up and immerse our protagonist in a cosmic pudding that might be jello but might also be both or neither. You might not even exist. I might not exist. I might be a figment of your imagination, or you might be a figment of mine.

In other words... I think I have this saved from last time...

We find our protagonist at the state psychopathic institution, where he works as an intern. Not usually the way Lovecraft's characters end up in such a place.

The institution takes on a new patient named Joe Slater, a hunter and trapper who lived in the secluded hills with the rest of his white trash neighbors. Lovecraft makes sure to emphasize how degenerate, lawless, and brain-dead these people are. In fact he made a point of saying this population that had been isolated for the past 300 years were the stupidest people in the country. No doubt inbreeding had something to do with that.

Even in a population of "barbaric degeneracy," Slater was "strange in the eyes of his primitive associates." This was because he slept in late and talked about weird things when he woke up. Heck, most of the people I knew in my early 20s were like that...

One day, John Slater woke up at noon, after a "profound sleep begun in a whiskey debauch at about five of the previous afternoon." Below is actual footage of the debauch. It was a rager, as you can see:

Slater woke screaming, and beat the tar out of anyone who tried to restrain him. He raved about his desperate need to kill a "thing that shines and shakes and laughs." He focused his ire upon one of his neighbors and began tearing at him with demonic bloodlust. The sensible people in the vicinity decided to give him his space to ride it out. When they returned, all they found was the unfortunate victim, who now resembled so much hamburger meat.

Slater's terrified neighbors found him later, napping in a hollowed-out tree. When he woke up, he said he could remember nothing of the violent incident. From his perspective, he went to sleep after drinking and woke with blood all over his hands and the mutilated corpse of his neighbor Peter Slader (no relation, I'm sure) at his feet.

He was tried for murder, obviously, acquitted on the ground of insanity, and committed to the psychiatric hospital.

Our protagonist, curious about Slater's experience, digs out an old invention from his college days: a device meant to enable him to communicate telepathically with Slater. He hopes to gain insight into the man's mind.

The narrator had tested the device on a fellow student without success, but as we know, a mind meld only works if the subject has a brain. Strangely, the device works perfectly fine on a raving lunatic, and the narrator manages to catch a ride into Slater's dreams. In the dream world, he meets a "cosmic soul," a being of pure light striving to escape "degrading periodic bondage" within the waking mind of John Slater. Only when Slater sleeps can the cosmic entity go about its business in the ethereal realm.

After this encounter, the narrator returns to the waking world and finds Slater strangely altered:

"The man who had been John Slater, the Catskill degenerate, 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 face, and I felt beyond a doubt that I was viewing a face behind which lay and active mind of high order."

The cosmic being departs the body, leaving John Slater lifeless. The narrator reports the incident to his superior, who promptly gives him a nerve tonic and six months paid vacation. That is what we in the work force define as a win.

Follow me down the rabbit hole:

• "The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft" (Chartwell Classics). This is the edition of Lovecraft that I have at home, and I enjoy it immensely. It's a nice hefty tome with a beautiful illustration on the cover.

• Want to read the story? Here it is online: Beyond the Wall of Sleep.

• Somebody made this story into a movie! It got a 2.9 out of 10 on IMDB, so it's probably worth every penny. Here are some reviews:

  • "This movie is not to be taken seriously. At least we hope not."

  • "Unwatchable."

  • "Doctor, my eyes!"

  • "Avoid at all costs!"

  • "One abomination after the next until the credits roll... It feels like you're going to have a seizure."