Cool Air (adapted), H. P. Lovecraft
Cool Air (adapted)
H. P. Lovecraft
Category: Short Stories
Genres: Horror,Science fiction,Mystery
Level 3.40:26 h11.3 mb
In New York City, a poor writer moves into a strange boarding house. There he meets Dr. Muñoz, a clever but unusual man who keeps his rooms very cold, even in summer. What secret is Dr. Muñoz trying to hide?.. This is an adapted version of the story, simplified to A2 level.

Cool Air

[adapted]

by
H. P. Lovecraft

Cool Air (adapted)

You ask me to explain why I am afraid of a draft of cool air; why I shiver more than others when I enter a cold room, and seem sick and disgusted when the evening chill moves through the heat of a mild autumn day. Some people say I react to cold as others do to a bad smell, and I will not deny it. What I will do is to tell the most terrible event I ever went through, and leave it to you to decide whether this is a good explanation of my strange way.

It is a mistake to think that horror is always joined with darkness, silence, and being alone. I found it in the bright light of mid-afternoon, in the loud noise of a big city, and in the crowded middle of an old and ordinary boarding house with a plain landlady and two strong men by my side. In the spring of 1923 I had got some dull and low-paying magazine work in the city of New York; and being unable to pay any large rent, began moving from one cheap boarding house to another in search of a room which might combine the qualities of decent cleanliness, bearable furniture, and a very low price. It soon turned out that I had only a choice between different bad options, but after a time I found a house in West Fourteenth Street which disgusted me much less than the others I had tried.

The place was a four-story brownstone house, built, it seemed, in the late forties, and it had woodwork and marble whose stained and dirty splendour showed a fall from high levels of good taste and wealth. In the rooms, large and high, and decorated with strange wallpaper and very fancy plaster edges, there stayed a depressing musty smell and a hint of strange cooking; but the floors were clean, the sheets fairly regular, and the hot water not too often cold or shut off, so that I came to see it as at least a bearable place to sleep through the time until one could really live again.

The landlady, an untidy, almost bearded Spanish woman named Herrero, did not bother me with gossip or with complaints about the electric light that burned late in my third-floor front hall room; and the other lodgers were as quiet and not talkative as one could want, being mostly Spaniards a little above the roughest and rudest level. Only the noise of street cars in the street below was a serious bother.

I had been there about three weeks when the first strange event happened. One evening at about eight I heard a dripping on the floor and suddenly noticed that I had been smelling a strong smell of ammonia for some time. Looking around, I saw that the ceiling was wet and dripping; the wetness seemed to be coming from a corner on the side toward the street. Wanting to stop the problem at its start, I quickly went to the basement to tell the landlady; and she told me that the problem would be fixed quickly.

“Doctor Muñoz,” she shouted as she ran upstairs ahead of me, “he has spilled his chemicals. He is too sick to take care of himself — sicker and sicker all the time — but he will not have any other to help him. He is very strange in his illness — all day he takes funny-smelling baths, and he cannot get excited or warm. He does all his own housework — his little room is full of bottles and machines, and he does not work as a doctor. But he was great once — my father in Barcelona heard of him — and only just now he fixed a plumber’s arm that got hurt suddenly. He never goes out, only on the roof, and my boy Esteban brings him his food and laundry and medicines and chemicals. My God, the sal-ammoniac that man uses to keep him cool!”

Mrs. Herrero went up the stairs to the fourth floor, and I went back to my room. The ammonia stopped dripping, and as I cleaned up what had spilled and opened the window for fresh air, I heard the landlady’s heavy footsteps above me. I had never heard Dr. Muñoz, except for some sounds like a gasoline-powered machine, because he walked softly and gently. I wondered for a moment what the strange illness of this man might be, and whether his stubborn refusal of outside help was not the result of a strange habit without good reason. There is, I thought in a very ordinary way, a great amount of sadness in the situation of a famous person who has become poor and less respected.

I might never have known Dr. Muñoz if not for the heart attack that suddenly struck me one morning as I sat writing in my room. Doctors had told me how dangerous those attacks were, and I knew there was no time to lose; so, remembering what the landlady had said about the sick man helping the injured workman, I dragged myself upstairs and knocked weakly at the door above mine. My knock was answered in good English by a strange voice a little way to the right, asking my name and what I wanted; and after I said these things, the door next to the one I had tried opened.

A rush of cool air met me; and though the day was one of the hottest in late June, I shivered as I crossed the doorway into a large room whose rich and nice decoration surprised me in this place of dirt and shabbiness. A folding couch now filled its daytime role of sofa, and the dark wood furniture, rich curtains, old paintings, and warm bookshelves all showed a gentleman’s study rather than a bedroom in a boarding-house. I now saw that the hall room above mine — the “leetle room” with bottles and machines which Mrs. Herrero had mentioned — was only the doctor’s lab; and that his main living area was in the large next room whose handy small spaces and large bathroom next to it let him hide all dressers and big useful machines. Dr. Muñoz, surely, was a man of good family, learning, and good taste.

The figure before me was short but very well-shaped, and dressed in rather formal clothes that fit perfectly. A noble face with a strong though not proud look had a short, iron-grey, full beard, and a pair of old-fashioned glasses called pince-nez covered the full, dark eyes and sat on a hooked nose which gave a North African touch to a face otherwise mostly Spanish. Thick, well-trimmed hair that showed regular visits to a barber was parted neatly above a high forehead; and the whole picture was one of very great intelligence and good family and upbringing.

Still, as I saw Dr. Muñoz in that wave of cool air, I felt a dislike that nothing in his look could explain. Only his very pale skin and cold touch could have given a physical reason for this feeling, and even these things should have been easy to excuse because the man was known to be sick. It might also have been the strange cold that made me feel distant; for such cold was not normal on so hot a day, and what is not normal always causes dislike, distrust, and fear.

But strong dislike was soon forgotten in respect, for the strange doctor’s great skill at once became clear despite the ice-cold and shaky feel of his very pale hands. He clearly understood my needs with one look, and took care of them with a master’s skill; while reassuring me in a well-controlled though oddly hollow and flat voice that he was the strongest of sworn enemies to death, and had spent his fortune and lost all his friends in a lifetime of strange experiments devoted to beating and ending it.

He seemed a bit like a kind but very eager person, and he talked on and on, almost too much, as he listened to my chest and mixed the right drink of medicine brought from the smaller lab room. Clearly he thought the company of a man from a good family was a rare thing in this dirty place, and it made him talk more than usual as memories of better days came back to him.

His voice, though strange, was at least calming; and I could not even notice that he breathed as the smooth sentences came out politely. He tried to take my mind off my own attack by talking about his ideas and tests; and I remember how he gently comforted me about my weak heart by saying again and again that will and mind are stronger than life of the body itself, so that if a body is at first healthy and is carefully kept, it may, through a scientific improvement of these powers, keep a kind of life in the nerves even with the most serious damage, faults, or even missing parts in the group of certain organs.

He might, he said half joking, some day teach me to live — or at least to have some kind of awake life — without any heart at all! For his part, he suffered from a combination of illnesses needing a very strict routine which included constant cold. Any clear rise in temperature might, if it lasted, kill him; and the coldness of his home — about 55 or 56 degrees Fahrenheit—was kept by a cooling system that used ammonia, and I had often heard the gasoline engine for its pumps in my own room below.

My attack ended in a very short time, and I left the cold place a follower and admirer of the talented man who lived alone. After that I visited him often in my coat; listening while he told of secret studies and almost horrible results, and shaking a bit when I looked at the unusual and amazingly old books on his shelves. I was, in the end, I may add, almost cured of my sickness forever by his skillful care. It seems that he did not look down on the spells of the people from the Middle Ages, since he believed these secret formulas had rare signals for the mind which might possibly have strange effects on the nerves when the natural pulses had stopped.

I was moved by his story of the old Dr. Torres of Valencia, who had shared his early experiments and took care of him during the great sickness eighteen years earlier, from which his present problems came. As soon as the respected doctor saved his colleague, he himself died from the cruel enemy he had fought. Maybe the strain had been too great; for Dr. Muñoz made it clear in a whisper — though not in detail — that the methods of healing had been very unusual, involving scenes and steps not accepted by old and traditional doctors.

As the weeks passed, I saw with sadness that my new friend was indeed slowly but clearly getting worse in his body, as Mrs. Herrero had suggested. The pale look of his face got worse, his voice became weaker and more unclear, his movements were less well coordinated, and his mind and will showed less strength to keep going and less ability to start things. He clearly knew about this sad change, and little by little his expression and conversation both took on a horrible tone of making fun which brought back in me some of the slight dislike I had originally felt.

He began to have strange habits, starting to like unusual spices and incense from Egypt until his room smelled like the tomb of a buried Pharaoh in the Valley of Kings. At the same time his need for cold air grew, and with my help he added to the ammonia pipes of his room and changed the pumps and supply of his cooling machine until he could keep the temperature as low as 34 degrees or 40 degrees, and finally even 28 degrees; the bathroom and laboratory, of course, being less cold, so that water would not freeze, and so that chemical work would not be stopped.

The tenant next to him complained about the very cold air from around the door between the rooms, so I helped him put up heavy curtains to solve the problem. A kind of growing fear, strange and dark, seemed to control him. He talked about death all the time, but laughed without feeling when things like burial or funeral plans were gently suggested.

All in all, he became an upsetting and even horrible friend; but because I was thankful that he made me well I could not leave him to the strangers around him, and I was careful to dust his room and take care of his needs each day, wrapped up in a heavy coat which I bought just for this. I also did much of his shopping, and was very surprised and confused by some of the chemicals he ordered from drugstores and shops that sell lab supplies.

A growing feeling of panic, without a clear reason, seemed to rise around his apartment. The whole house, as I have said, had a stale smell; but the smell in his room was worse — and even with all the spices and scented smoke, and the strong chemicals of the now constant baths which he insisted on taking without help. I realized that it must be connected with his illness, and shivered when I thought about what that illness might be. Mrs. Herrero made the sign of the cross when she looked at him, and gave him up completely to me; not even letting her son Esteban continue to run errands for him.

When I suggested other doctors, the patient would get as angry as he seemed to dare to feel. He clearly feared the effect on his body of strong emotion, yet his will and drive grew instead of getting weaker, and he refused to stay in his bed. The tired weakness of his earlier sick days was replaced by the return of his strong purpose, so that he seemed ready to fight against the death-demon even as that old enemy took hold of him. The act of pretending to eat, always strangely like just a duty with him, he almost gave up; and only mental strength seemed to keep him from completely breaking down.

He got into a habit of writing long papers of some sort, which he carefully closed up and filled with instructions to send them after his death to certain people he named — mostly educated East Indians, but including a once famous French doctor now usually thought dead, and about whom the most unbelievable things had been whispered. As it happened, I burned all these papers without sending them and without opening them. His look and voice became very scary, and being near him was almost too hard to stand.

One September day a sudden look at him caused a fit of epilepsy in a man who had come to fix his electric desk lamp; a fit for which he gave the right medicine while keeping himself well out of sight. That man, strangely enough, had been through the terrors of the Great War without ever having had any fear so strong.

Then, in the middle of October, the worst horror came very suddenly. One night about eleven the pump of the cooling machine broke down, so that within three hours the process of ammonia cooling became impossible. Dr. Muñoz called me by thumping on the floor, and I worked desperately to fix the damage while my host cursed in a voice whose lifeless, rattling emptiness could not be described. My poor efforts, however, were of no use; and when I had brought in a mechanic from a nearby all-night garage, we learned that nothing could be done until morning, when a new piston would have to be gotten.

The rage and fear of the dying man who lived alone, growing very big, seemed like it would break what was left of his weak body, and once a sudden fit caused him to put his hands over his eyes and rush into the bathroom. He felt his way out with his face tightly bandaged, and I never saw his eyes again.

The coldness of the apartment was now clearly getting less, and at about 5 a.m. the doctor went to the bathroom, telling me to keep giving him all the ice I could get at drug stores and cafeterias that were open all night. As I would return from my sometimes disappointing trips and put my ice down in front of the closed bathroom door, I could hear a noisy splashing inside, and a rough voice calling out the order for “More — more!” At last a warm day began, and the shops opened one by one. I asked Esteban either to help with getting the ice while I got the pump piston, or to order the piston while I continued with the ice; but, told by his mother, he absolutely refused.

Finally I hired a shabby-looking man with no job whom I met on the corner of Eighth Avenue to keep the patient supplied with ice from a little shop where I took him, and I worked hard at the task of finding a pump piston and hiring workmen able to put it in. The task seemed endless, and I got almost as angry as the hermit when I saw the hours passing in a breathless, foodless round of useless phone calls, and a hectic search from place to place, here and there by subway and streetcar.

About noon I found a good supply store far downtown, and at about 1:30 p.m. got to my boarding house with the needed equipment and two strong and smart mechanics. I had done all I could, and hoped I was in time.

Dark fear, however, had come before me. The house was in great confusion, and above the talk of scared voices I heard a man praying in a deep, low voice. Evil things were in the air, and tenants counted the beads on their rosaries as they smelt the odour from under the doctor’s closed door. The helper I had hired, it seems, had fled screaming and wild-eyed not long after his second delivery of ice; perhaps because of too much curiosity. He could not, of course, have locked the door behind him; yet it was now shut fast, probably from the inside. There was no sound inside except for a strange kind of slow, heavy dripping.

Briefly talking with Mrs. Herrero and the workers despite a deep fear inside me, I said we should break down the door, but the landlady found a way to turn the key from the outside with a piece of wire. We had earlier opened the doors of all the other rooms in that hall, and opened all the windows all the way up. Now, our noses covered with handkerchiefs, we went in trembling to the hated south room, which was bright with the warm sun of early afternoon.

A kind of dark, slippery trail led from the open bathroom door to the hall door, and then to the desk, where a terrible little pool had formed. Something was written there in pencil in awful, shaky handwriting on a piece of paper badly smeared, as if by the same claws that made the quick last words. Then the trail led to the couch and ended in a way that cannot be described.

What was, or had been, on the couch I cannot and do not dare say here. But this is what I, while shivering, worked out on the sticky, smeared paper before I took out a match and burned it to a crisp; what I worked out in terror as the landlady and two repairmen rushed in panic from that terrible place to tell their mixed-up stories at the nearest police station. The sickening words seemed almost unbelievable in that yellow sunlight, with the noise of cars and trucks rising loudly from crowded Fourteenth Street, yet I admit that I believed them then.

I do not know if I believe them now. There are things it is better not to think about too much, and all I can say is that I hate the smell of ammonia, and I feel weak in a draft of very cool air.

“The end,” said that messy writing, “is here. No more ice — the man looked and ran away. Warmer every minute, and the tissues can’t last. I think you know — what I said about the will and the nerves and the preserved body after the organs stopped working. It was a good idea, but couldn’t keep up forever. There was a slow decay I had not expected. Dr. Torres knew, but the shock killed him. He couldn’t stand what he had to do — he had to put me in a strange, dark place when he did what my letter said and nursed me back. And the organs never would work again. It had to be done my way — keeping me by artificial means — for you see I died that time eighteen years ago.”