His face, which he had lately taken to veiling almost completely, was partially visible, and it had suffered shocking disfigurement. His eyes were almost totally obscured by grotesquely swollen puffs of blue-veined pasty flesh. His nose, which admittedly I had never seen unswathed, seemed to have expanded to an astonishing degree. Here the change was not due to swelling—the very structure seemed to have been altered, the bridge oddly broadened, the nose itself, still covered at the top, absurdly elongated. His hair, always thin and wispy, was mostly gone, some of it visibly scattered around the pillow.
Though I felt utter repulsion, my curiosity was stronger still, and I actually found myself reaching hesitantly to pull away yet more of the loose bandaging. As I stood frozen with indecision, startlement shook me: The muffled voice spoke. "It appears I am found out. But I think you have discovered enough for one night." As he spoke, he made to rearrange his futile disguise, and he sat up.
“I am most sorry to have disturbed your sleep, my young friend. Return to your bed. I doubt that sleep will return with you, but try to get some rest. We will talk, and talk plainly, on the morrow. I would have taken you into my confidence ere now, save that I feared you might become drawn into the web that holds me fast.” With that, he turned his obese form over on its side, shaking the bed frame as he did.
There was nothing more to be said for the moment, so I turned and found my bed again. I resigned myself to some sleepless hours before the dawn and gazed out of the window to the cold white orb of the moon, which, I fancied, looked down upon secrets it knew but, like the intimidated Dr. Sprague, would not, or perhaps dared not, reveal.
Yet, despite my shock. I fell asleep almost at once. As if the moon had been the swaying watch of a hypnotist, I seemed to have passed without noticing into a dreaming stare. The wan, bluish radiance of the lunar disc seemed to narrow and to gather in intensity. It seemed even to go on and off periodically, though at very long intervals, as I watched and watched, seemingly for endless hours. The contrast with the surrounding darkness was great, so that the strange light illuminated nothing but itself. I seemed to know that the unseen landscape was not that which I would recognize in the light of day. As with a false memory, I felt I knew the lay of the shrouded land and that it must be a vast, bleak mountainous plateau. With equal tacit certainty I felt that the light I watched was set to guide the path of someone or something on its way home.
With this ... glimpse, I awoke to find the sun streaming on my face. Ordinarily I should have awakened with the light much sooner, and I found I shook off Morpheus with unaccustomed difficulty. I arose, showered, and dressed with a lingering sense of oppression. At the same time I eagerly anticipated whatever Dr. Harker might have to tell me. It was with some distraction that I made my way through the assigned tasks of the morning. My researches had come increasingly to seem like a charade. Of what import could fine points of exegesis of obscure old texts possibly be in the face of my employer's obviously impending collapse? Mustn't there be more significant things I could do to make his remaining weeks or days more pleasant? I resolved to make the suggestion whenever Dr. Harker should summon me. The day waned, and I suspected the old clergyman's lack of sleep had taken its toll, and that I should have to wait till the next day for our promised conversation.
To my surprise, the buzzer sounded in the library to summon me to his bedside at 9:45 in the evening. I rose with haste and paced rapidly to his door, knocking before I should venture to enter. Some moan from within I took as my invitation and turned the handle, opening the door into almost total darkness. After what I had seen the previous night, I did nor wonder at the reason.
A tired but surprisingly steady voice began to recount the strangest tale I had ever had occasion to marvel at. It is possible the disorientation I felt was due in some measure to the altogether unaccustomed tone and timber of what should have been a familiar voice. I could not imagine what tumorous occlusions could have grown so quickly so to affect his formerly clear and rather comforting voice. I will report as accurately as I can what the doomed man confided in me, as there no longer seems to be any point in keeping it to myself. The essentials are right, I am sure of that, though I will hardly blame you if you wish to accuse me of exaggerating.
ENOS Harker entered into the study of divinity at Byram Theological Seminary rather later in life than most of his classmates, having felt a dramatic "call" to the ministry in early middle age. Previously he had earned a wide reputation as an explorer, amateur archaeologist, and lecturer. Rather in the manner of Richard Haliburton, he would regale lecture-hall audiences with titillating exotica and tall tales from far corners of the globe. In fact, it was while returning to his hotel from one such engagement that his life had changed forever. While crossing town, he had felt strangely drawn to one of the storefront congregations of a small Pentecostal denomination. What attracted his attention was the sound of the sobbing hymns and shouted "prophecies" emerging from behind the painted glass of the large windows that had once displayed merchandise in the days before the neighborhood had run down. Wandering through the door and down the central aisle, he knelt with the circle of moaning seekers in what revivalists call a tarrying meeting.
Suddenly the Holy Ghost struck one of those present like lightning. She seemed to explode into almost orgasmic ecstasy, her arms flung skyward, her head thrown back, and unleashing a torrent of nonsense syllables, what Harker would learn was called “speaking in tongues", ostensibly divinely inspired oracles in genuine foreign languages unknown to the speaker in a normal waking state. Harker watched in growing alarm and yet unable to turn away. One by one. all those in the circle succumbed to the spittle-spewing frenzy, as if electrically wired in series, until it finally and ineluctably reached him.
When, in the wee hours, Harker found himself back outside on the street, he was a changed man. He began to pore over the scriptures, the copy provided him by the elders of his new religious fellowship. Not the King James Version, this Bible had been newly translated by the founder of the sect, himself under prophetic inspiration.
He returned to the shabby sanctuary every night for the next month or so, his speaking schedule forgotten and his conviction of new purpose and new destiny reinforced and focused. One midnight, the sweating, straining knot of believers, their hands clasping him about the head and shoulders, began to shudder and sway, and one of them blurted out a prophetic declamation. Brother Enos, it announced, had been set apart by the Lord to take the Full Gospel message to foreign climes as a missionary.
This duty the earnest new convert did not shirk, The sect was tiny and militant, eschewing, as is the manner of such conventicles, any cooperation with other churches varying from their own doctrine by the slightest degree. By themselves the sect, its name a jumble something like "the Fire-Baptized Temple of the Apostle of God", had neither the numbers nor the resources to maintain a theological college or a missions board. Thus his attendance at the staid Byram Seminary, theological training being a prerequisite for any reputable missionary agency.