Here, he comes across a being the he was incapable of describing.

Inside the house, he finds a delirious Nahum, who when asked where Zenas is, replies that he 'Lives in the well' Fearful of what became of Nahum's wife, Nabby, Ammi goes upstairs to the attic room she and Thaddeus had been locked in. After a few weeks with no word from Nahum and Zenas, the only two of the family still sane, their concerned friend Ammi Pierce visits. Soon after, the second child, Merwin, vanishes while fetching water from a well, all that was left of him being the melted heap of metal that had been his lantern and bucket.

The Wife and one son, Thaddeaus, were driven insane rambling on about dancing lights that they alone could see. One member of the family claimed that the branches of some trees 'swayed also when there was no wind,' although it is never established if this swaying was the result of specific manipulation from the alien species, or was merely another example of the unusual growths.Īs the months went on, the corrupting influence of the Colour spread to encompass a large patch of land, this place being referred to as the 'Blasted Heath' By locals.Īt the center of The Heath lay the farm of the Gardener family, which one by one started to fall to the Colour's light. Within a few months all plant life near the site took on unnatural properties and odd hues to the point where the road running near it fell into disuse, owing to people fearful of seeing such a sight. Although all plant life in the area tended to die away, some, most notably trees, reacted in an unusual way. Sprouting saxifrage bore the same unnatural hues as the cabbages.

The trees budded early and were observed to be moving even with no wind of any sort.

It has since become noted as one of the more iconic aliens of Lovecraft's works, and embodies much of his cosmic horror in which protagonists rarely win and the 'enemy' is both unknowable, largely unstoppable, and often beyond simple good and evil since the Colour Out of Space is neither good nor evil, but simply alien, albeit incredibly dangerous to all other life due to their properties.Ĭolour possesses mutagenic properties around the house melted faster than anywhere else nearby, and skunk cabbages of prodigious size and unusual color sprouted out of the soil. In Lovecraft's story, the Colour Out of Space is an alien entity of unknown origin or function that crash-landed on Earth upon a meteor, and soon became a catastrophic force that drained the life of any living creature it came across. The Colour that came from beyond the stars.

The color of space lovecraft