The custodian of the museum informed me that local antiquaries were much puzzled, not by the inscription, or by any difficulty in translating it, but as to the circumstance or rite to which allusion is made.

* * *

...And now, my dear Clarke, as to what you tell me about Helen Vaughan, whom you say you saw die under circumstances of the utmost and almost incredible horror.  I was interested in your account, but a good deal, nay all, of what you told me I knew already.  I can understand the strange likeness you remarked in both the portrait and in the actual face; you have seen Helen’s mother.  You remember that still summer night so many years ago, when I talked to you of the world beyond the shadows, and of the god Pan.  You remember Mary.  She was the mother of Helen Vaughan, who was born nine months after that night.

Mary never recovered her reason.  She lay, as you saw her, all the while upon her bed, and a few days after the child was born she died.  I fancy that just at the last she knew me; I was standing by the bed, and the old look came into her eyes for a second, and then she shuddered and groaned and died.  It was an ill work I did that night when you were present; I broke open the door of the house of life, without knowing or caring what might pass forth or enter in.  I recollect your telling me at the time, sharply enough, and rightly too, in one sense, that I had ruined the reason of a human being by a foolish experiment, based on an absurd theory.  You did well to blame me, but my theory was not all absurdity.  What I said Mary would see she saw, but I forgot that no human eyes can look on such a sight with impunity.  And I forgot, as I have just said, that when the house of life is thus thrown open, there may enter in that for which we have no name, and human flesh may become the veil of a horror one dare not express.  I played with energies which I did not understand, you have seen the ending of it.  Helen Vaughan did well to bind the cord about her neck and die, though the death was horrible.  The blackened face, the hideous form upon the bed, changing and melting before your eyes from woman to man, from man to beast, and from beast to worse than beast, all the strange horror that you witness, surprises me but little.  What you say the doctor whom you sent for saw and shuddered at I noticed long ago; I knew what I had done the moment the child was born, and when it was scarcely five years old I surprised it, not once or twice but several times with a playmate, you may guess of what kind.  It was for me a constant, an incarnate horror, and after a few years I felt I could bear it no more, and I sent Helen Vaughan away.  You know now what frightened the boy in the wood.  The rest of the strange story, and all else that you tell me, as discovered by your friend, I have contrived to learn from time to time, almost to the last chapter.  And now Helen is with her companions...