Doctor Tahuti and Mister Hide

by C. Rommial Butler

The excerpt below was discovered in the case files of Doctor Apis Tahuti, psychoanalyst, paranormal investigator, and head of the Department of Psychic Research at Miskatonic University.

The entry is from early in his career, in the 1920s, after the end of The Great War, in which he served with distinction, but before the beginning of the Great Depression, during which he was distinguished among his peers by his charity and philanthropy.

The venerable doctor died on May 4, 1936 under mysterious circumstances.

August 21, 1923

Walking into the sanitarium here in Arkham is like walking into a nightmare.

They have been over capacity for quite some time now, and it shows.

It shows in the barely contained meanderings of its many patients through the dingy halls as well as the general apathy of the staff.

My good friend Doctor Joseph Putnam laments the state of the hospital every time I stop by for a bull session.

He does all he can for the residents but there are too many. The state refuses to dole out any additional funds to build onto the place or update its services, so he is often forced to focus on the patients he has the best chance of helping while the others wander the halls, degenerating into mass hallucinations about fish-people, elder gods, resurrected mummies—the list is so long, I won’t attempt to complete it.

There’s a whole strange mythology unique to this region, concentrated in its most fascinating, terrifying form in the halls of Arkham and the ravings of its lunatics.

Joe called about a patient he thought I might be able to help.

Mr. Hieronymus Hide suffers from lycanthropy. At least, that’s Joe’s clinical diagnosis.

It was apparent to me from our brief telephone conversation, however, that Joe wasn’t convinced, and this is why he wanted a second opinion.

I have found, in my brief time working with lunatics, that there are few cases where the malady is strictly physical. Many of them are overcome with or by awful experiences which drive them mad.

[Editors Note: Dr. Tahuti found the term “lunatic” grotesque, as he would later go on to remark in various interviews and published essays, but it was the legal term for asylum inmates at the time of this writing.]

But when I hear of a man whose body is covered in hair and who believes he has transformed into a monster, whose bared teeth reveal fangs and whose ears are pointed, according to Joe, I can’t help but think psychoanalysis will be of little aid.

But how can I pass up the opportunity to see such a man for myself?

I genuinely hope I can help him, but even if I am unequipped, what I learn might help another down the line.

It is not lost on me that there is a sort of cosmic joke at play, perhaps for the amusement of Robert Louis Stevenson, or his shade. I suppose Carl Jung might call this synchronicity, but I fail to see the merit of interpreting it as such. I’m tempted to write to him about this, but don’t know if I want to suffer the sheer verbosity of his response.

August 28, 1923

How can I describe the events of this last week?

I wonder if I should write these things here.

The doctor—the scholar, the man of science—demands that these things be recorded for posterity, but the boy who grew out of a tumultuous background grappling with the nonsense of cult belief doesn’t want to encourage anyone among the general population to believe the unbelievable if they don’t see it with their own eyes, and for very good reason.

Emphatically, I must remark that Hieronymus Hide did not suffer from hypertrichosis. The excessive hair all over his body is the only relevant symptom for such a diagnosis, but there is no record of pointy teeth or ears among such cases, let alone gigantism, superhuman strength, or overgrown fingernails with the power to scourge leather.

I saw these abilities demonstrated with my own eyes in Joe’s office over the course of a few days. They were as much a marvel to Hide as they were to us. He did not understand at all the change which he was undergoing.

As for clinical lycanthropy, Joe admitted it was his best shot at an official diagnosis, which he must record in the ledger for bureaucratic purposes, but he didn’t buy it for a second.

One of the things I love about my good friend is his ability to inject levity into a situation.

“This is more like mythical lycanthropy, but we can see it’s no myth in this case,” Joe remarked at one point, reaching up to gently squeeze Mr. Hide’s shoulder. They regarded each other kindly, and I was reminded of a book I read earlier this year by a Dr. Treves, giving his account of John Merrick, otherwise known as The Elephant Man.

The most important thing to understand about Mr. Hide is that, despite his beastly appearance, he is not only a gentle soul, but a refined and intelligent man.

From the time I first shook his massive hand I knew this.

He could easily have crushed every bone from fingertips to wrist but applied his own grip in a knowingly genteel way so as to avoid inflicting minor discomfort, let alone pain.

Communication was through the written word, because Hide could only grunt, screech, rasp, and gasp. I will be appending to this file his full written accounts under Joe’s care, which are voluminous, well-articulated, and of acute scientific interest, but here I will summarize his ordeal in my own words.

Hide found his primary source of income through accounting work but spent many of his weekends joyfully playing the role of amateur lepidopterist. In other words, this fellow spent his free time quite literally chasing butterflies! Let that stand as another example of his gentility!

It was on such an adventure that he caught sight of a Juniper Hairstreak, exceedingly rare in these parts. It flew into a cave and he followed.

He lost track of the butterfly but became fascinated by the interior of the cave.

He described strange symbols painted on the walls. Some I recognize from my own investigations in the Miskatonic library, but some I’ve never encountered before.

He travelled as deep into the cave as he could go and came across an underground stream.

By this point, he was maddeningly thirsty, and having already emptied his canteen, and knowing that the summer heat still awaited him outside the cooler confines of the cave, decided to refill from the sparkling and seemingly fresh waters inside.

After filling his canteen, he drank it down by half, refilled it again before he left, and finished it off before he got home.

The changes began slowly over the first few days but rapidly picked up pace by the end of the week.

He described the process as exceedingly painful. The twisting and stretching of his skin and muscle. The breaking and reforming of his bones. The reformation of his organs, including his vocal cords.

He described being assailed by nightmares where a screeching, grunting creature chased him through dark caverns.

When it caught him, it tore through the soft flesh of his stomach and ate his intestines while he squirmed and screamed.

He was bedridden, unattended where he lived alone in his rural home. By the time a friendly coworker came to check on him he was some semblance of the poor creature I saw before me.

The coworker fled the house. Visibly shaken, he gave an account to the local police of the monster who ate his friend.

Hide fled and checked himself into the sanitarium, coming cloaked and under cover of night, bearing handwritten notes. Had he been home when the police arrived, they would have shot him on sight.

Hide did not reveal his disfigurement until he was alone with Joe in his office, and even then, only after a series of carefully worded handwritten warnings. This again demonstrates Hide’s thoughtfulness, his acute awareness of the effect his appearance must have.

Joe kept Hide isolated from the other inmates and all but his most trusted staff, for fear of their reactions.

Hide checked in on the 8^th of August, so he’d been there about two weeks when I arrived, with no signs of his condition abating. The nightmares still tormented him.

Joe was reticent to give him any medication, as he didn’t know exactly what he should be chemically counteracting.

In any event, despite his condition, Hide was sane and calm, steadfastly refusing anything for his nerves.

Joe and Hide agreed that he seemed to be regressing from his normal human state into something more primordial. His current state was beastlike, but the creature in his dreams seemed to harken to something more amorphous and amoeba-like.

Hide felt very strongly that this creature was what he would become if his condition was allowed to deteriorate.

He said in his dreams he could feel his consciousness bleeding into the creature as it consumed him, and sometimes, after he first awakened, he sensed the world through its eyes, overcome with “the primal urges of insatiable hunger and territorial malice”.

I proposed that we return to the cave to get a sample of the water there.

I theorized that if it was something in the water that caused Hide’s transformation, we might be able to study it and figure out what to do.

Hide cloaked himself to disguise his more gruesome features and, again, for his safety, and because time was of the essence, we left under cover of night.

Joe remained tied to his responsibilities at the sanitarium but assured me that he’d no doubt about Hide’s veracity, and that I should be perfectly safe in his presence.

I had trepidations about making the trip at night.

Some of the symbols which Hide drew in his journals were linked to a cult which is rumored to have existed in these parts since the colonial days; but rumors are all that can be corroborated.

Concrete evidence of their existence is harder to come by, though there are certain families and towns—Innsmouth comes to mind—which harbor noncommittal association.

What do I mean by noncommittal association?

I’ve visited Innsmouth a few times, and the locals there share some peculiar physical traits—bulbous eyes, weak jaws, and strange ways of walking. When I queried them about their history, they always replied in ambiguous ways, many with a knowing half-smile.

Yet I understand that these symbols have a sort of universality among the vestiges of many cultures which are unknown in the annals of academia, all but the most rudimentary evidence of their existence having been obliterated by the melting pot which is America.

As it would turn out, the cult about which I was concerned was not inhabiting the cave.

Something far more ancient resided there, if my suspicions are correct, but I dare not name it, or the specific location of the cave, for fear that those dark souls with sick and stupid minds will seek it out in their perverse curiosity.

The initial opening of the cave was small, and Hide had to crouch to enter where it was only inches above my own head.

I used our lone flashlight to scan the walls. I resolved at the time to come back in the daylight and take pictures, but now, of course, that will be impossible, so I can only confirm that what Hide drew in the appended journals was what I saw.

However, I must add that the symbols glowed in the dark in a way which did not seem to be a result of either a natural phosphorescent or the red paint. If paint was what it was. I took heart upon noticing that the handiwork was faded, which meant that none of them were recent.

I wish I could have asked Hide whether the symbols had glowed during the daytime, but written correspondence would have been impossible in the dark, even if it were timely.

Past the narrow entrance the cave widened first into a tunnel and then into a vaulted cavern.

The ground descended to the stream, which was the cavern’s end.

Where it flowed beneath the high walls, I could hear the water falling and crashing into another reservoir below.

The cavern was pitch black, save for the beam from my flashlight and the faint glow of the symbols upon the walls.

The smell of rotten meat gagged us.

This was not consonant with Hide’s account of the cave by daytime, and I judged by his startled reaction that he was just as surprised as I.

I also cannot imagine, as I sit here writing this account, that he would have collected, let alone drank, any water which came from a stream in a cave that reeked of carrion.

My light was trained on the stream. The water did not sparkle or reflect the light but churned a dull brown, like mud and soggy leaves, which defeated the light’s ability to penetrate its depths.

As I moved toward the stream, canteen in hand, I caught only the barest glimpse of the creature which arose from it, oozing over the gray stone bank.

I could only call it a creature because it moved towards us. Were it still, I might not have seen it at all and walked right into its waiting clutches. There was a transparency to it. Yet, fleeting though my glimpse may have been, some part of my brain has recorded the notion that I saw many silently sobbing, screaming faces reflecting and refracting from within its gyrating, globulous folds.

It screeched and grunted—a more frantic version of Hide’s own frustrated utterances—but from what mouth?

Was this the creature from his dreams? Was this what he was destined to become?

I was not given much time to think about it then, as the monster reared up like a title wave and sped toward me.

Hide rushed in front of me to meet it, tackling it into the stream like one of our Ol’ Misk footballers slamming a foe to the grass.

I ran, trying to keep the beam of light focused on them as they struggled with each other, giant beast and squelching nightmare, speeding downstream in the rushing waters, tangled in heated battle.

The blob tried to wrap itself around Hide, but he tore it open with his nails. Nevertheless, it reformed and rearranged itself to continue its attack.

I hoped my smaller frame would be able to drag the gentle giant from his certain doom, if only he could cling to the bank, but I never got the chance to try.

It was my ears which told me the rest of the story where the light of my beam could only shine impotently into the empty darkness beyond the waterfall.

I heard their wild grunting and screeching fade away as they were carried over the precipice into the reservoir below; the splash when they hit the water; briefly, the glub-glub of bubbling, no doubt a sign of Hide going under and drawing water, instead of air, into whatever now passed for his lungs.

A part of me feels ashamed for not even calling his name in the dark, but I knew if I’d waited, it would have been me going down into that black abyss, into those enchanted waters, to be absorbed into whatever it is that the genteel accountant and amateur lepidopterist was doomed, by mere happenstance, to become.

I truly believe in my heart that he not only saved my life that night but also sought to save himself from the day when he would no longer be tormented by but rather become the nightmare.

I can only hope he succeeded, and, even more so, that we never find out if he did not.

In this way I console myself about the fateful decision to traverse the path at night. Had we gone during the day, I suspect we never would have encountered the creature, and Hide’s transformation from the half-human beast of the fields to the subterranean terror which haunted his dreams would have unfolded in Joe’s office!

I also suspect that had we brought the enchanted waters back we might have exposed the whole world to their effects, as science, in its giddiness to explore new frontiers and appease its financial backers, has proven flippant enough to do.

I cite the use of chemical agents as weapons in the Great War to support this conjecture.

Without regret, and on this account, I did go back the following day to seal off the passage to the cave, not only so that innocents like our dear Mr. Hide would never again be harmed, but also to ward off those in this area who I know are eager to seek that which we should never let them find.

I encountered the creature in my dreams this past evening, but it did not chase me. It wheezed and whistled quietly in the shadowy mouth of the cave, a hunkering silhouette, while I stood outside in sunlight.

Hide? I asked in a timid voice.

It did not answer but quietly slunk back into the depths.

When I awoke, my heart ached with tremendous sorrow which was still, somehow, strangely reassuring.

***** ****

About the editor: Robert Renfield was Chair of Philosophy at Fnord College in southern Indiana from 1966 to 1980. This excerpt and some others were first published in The Kentuckianan Kronikal as a monthly column before Renfield was approached by an agent to collect “all the juiciest bits”, as he put it, in The Case Files of Doctor Apis Tahuti. He also completed a biography of Tahuti, Dusk in the Age of Reason, shortly before he passed away in 1983.

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C. Rommial Butler is a writer, musician and philosopher from Indianapolis, In. His works can be found online through multiple streaming services and booksellers. You can read much more on his VOCAL account