"The White People" is a horror-fantasy story by Arthur Machen, originally published in his 1906 collection The House of Souls.
The story marks the debut of elements that would later be incorporated into the Cthulhu Mythos, such as the Aklo language referenced by Lovecraft in numerous stories and the Alala, referenced by Ramsey Campbell in "The Plain of Sound". Additionally, the mysterious Dôls mentioned briefly in "The White People" might be the source of Frank Belknap Long's Doels and/or H. P. Lovecraft's Dhôl Chants.
Synopsis[]
The story opens up with a conversation between three men, one of which, named Ambrose, defends that the "great sinners" must be as far removed from the mundane aspects of man's social sphere as the great saints are. In other words, to be what he describes as a real sinner would involve breaking, not society's laws, nor even the commandments, but the laws of nature itself. One of the other men, named Cotgrave, is keenly interested, but insists that Ambrose provide an actual example. Reluctantly, Ambrose lends him a green book that turns out to be the diary of a 16 year old girl.
From this point on, the bulk of the narrative consists of the girl's writings, which reveal that she is strangely well-versed in occult languages, knows how to contact strange entities and has participated in secret ceremonies. She remembers a time when she was still an infant, and creatures with "little white faces" spoke to her and taught her their language. These beings lived in a "great white place", where the grass and the trees were white too, and a cold wind would blow through the tall hills.
When the girl was 5, she was left alone under a tree by a pool and saw a beautiful woman, with skin as white as milk and dark hair, who sang and danced until the girl fell asleep. When she woke up, she related the experience to her nurse, who seemed to be deeply frightened by it, even though the girl notices that the nurse looks a bit like the white lady herself.
At the age of 13, over a year after her mother's death, the girl finds a path over the countryside that leads to a strange place filled with "ugly stones", some of which seem to be shaped like people or animals. While frightened at first, she finds that she actually likes the stones. Later on, she locates a hidden valley where the ferns remain green throughout winter, and a stream made out of a liquid that looks like water but tastes much better. While trying to get back home, she finds herself at the bottom of a hollow pit and remembers a story her nurse once told her about another girl who went to the same pit and returned with what appeared to be beautiful jewelry, but a mysterious black man came to take her. Remembering this story, the girl gets frightened and utters some protective charms to keep the black man away.
After getting back home, she recalls other stories that her nurse told her about people's encounters with beautiful fairies who live inside the hills, and about mysterious ceremonies performed by groups of people inside these same hills. The girl gradually reveals how the nurse taught her and performed dark magic, including how to make clay dolls in the image of the people of the hills, which she was told to pay respects to. Eventually, she comes to understand that the creatures are nymphs, although the nurse called them by another name, and recalls how the nurse taught her that "there were two kinds, the bright and the dark, and both were very lovely and very wonderful, and some people saw only one kind, and some only the other, but some saw them both". Remembering the nurse's instructions on how to summon them, the girl meets with a dark nymph.
At this point, the diary ends abruptly, and Ambrose reveals that the girl killed herself about a year after she wrote it. A mysterious statue found nearby, known to be connected to ancient Sabbath rituals, was smashed to pieces by Ambrose and others who found it.
Connections to the Mythos[]
The girl notes in her diary that she knows secrets that she cannot write down:
I must not write down the real names of the days and months which I found out a year ago, nor the way to make the Aklo letters, or the Chian language, or the great beautiful Circles, nor the Mao Games, nor the chief songs. I may write something about all these things but not the way to do them, for peculiar reasons. And I must not say who the Nymphs are, or the Dôls, or Jeelo, or what voolas mean.
This passage is the source for the Aklo language mentioned by H. P. Lovecraft in "The Dunwich Horror", "The Haunter of the Dark", and "The Diary of Alonzo Typer". Aklo is also mentioned in August Derleth's The Lurker at the Threshold, which references the Chian language and the Mao Games as well. Later, the girl mentions "the kingdom of Voor, where the light goes when it is put out, and the water goes when the sun takes it away." She uses the word "voor" or "voorish" a few ways, in contexts that seem to mean "darkness", e.g.:
I saw the terrible voor again on everything, for though the sky was brighter, the ring of wild hills all around was still dark, and the hanging woods looked dark and dreadful, and the strange rocks were as grey as ever....
From these references Lovecraft took the "Voorish sign" that appears in "The Dunwich Horror".