page_title: The Dreams in the Witch House
section_title: Characters
hierarchical_section_title: The Dreams in the Witch House / Characters
caption_attribution_description: English: Brown Jenkin. Muzski's artwork based on H. P. Lovecraft's story The Dreams in the Witch House. Français&#160;: Brown Jenkin, le familier de la sorcière Keziah Mason. Illustration de Muzski d'après la nouvelle La Maison de la sorcière de Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
context_page_description: "The Dreams in the Witch House" is a horror short story by American writer H. P. Lovecraft, part of the Cthulhu Mythos cycle. Written in January/February 1932 and first published in the July 1933 issue of Weird Tales.
context_section_description: Walter Gilman
  Formerly of Haverhill, Massachusetts, Walter Gilman came to Miskatonic to study "non-Euclidean calculus and quantum physics", which he linked to the "fantastic legends of elder magic". He is troubled by deep mental tension brought on by studying too hard and at one point is forbidden by his professors to further consult Miskatonic's collection of rare books, including the Necronomicon, the Book of Eibon and Unaussprechlichen Kulten. As the story progresses, Gilman has dreams of Keziah Mason, Brown Jenkin, Nyarlathotep and an abstract higher dimension, and begins to sleepwalk. The acuteness of his senses as described in the opening paragraphs can be likened to that of some of Edgar Allan Poe's characters. Gilman confesses his full story to fellow student Frank Elwood and is then killed by Brown Jenkin, who erupts out of his chest.
  Keziah Mason
  An old woman of Arkham who was arrested as part of the Salem witch trials of 1692. In her testimony to Judge John Hathorne, she had spoken of "lines and curves that could be made to point out directions leading through the walls of space to other spaces beyond.... She had spoken also of the Black Man, of her oath, and of her new secret name of Nahab." She later disappeared mysteriously from Salem Gaol, leaving behind "curves and angles smeared on the grey stone walls with some red, sticky fluid" that were inexplicable even to Cotton Mather. Gilman comes to suspect that Mason—"a mediocre old woman of the Seventeenth Century"—had developed "an insight into mathematical depths perhaps beyond the utmost modern delvings of Planck, Heisenberg, Einstein, and De Sitter." It is eventually found that she has left into a higher dimension to gain knowledge and serve Nyarlathotep, having signed the Book of Azathoth. Mason is described as having a "bent back, long nose, and shrivelled chin". She wears an expression "of hideous malevolence and exultation", and has "a croaking voice that persuaded and threatened." She dresses in "shapeless brown garments". Mason is "struck with panic" at the sight of a crucifix carried by Gilman, allowing him to strangle her in self-defense.
  Brown Jenkin
  Mason's familiar, "a small white-fanged furry thing", "no larger than a good-sized rat", which for years haunts the Witch House and Arkham in general, "nuzzl[ing] people curiously in the black hours before dawn". The story relates this description of Jenkin:
  Witnesses said it had long hair and the shape of a rat, but that its sharp-toothed, bearded face was evilly human while its paws were like tiny human hands. It took messages betwixt old Keziah and the devil, and was nursed on the witch’s blood—which it sucked like a vampire. Its voice was a kind of loathsome titter, and it could speak all languages.
  One theory posits that Brown Jenkin is the child of Keziah and Nyarlathotep, the Lovecraftian deity whom she presumably serves. In The Dunwich Horror, Lavinia Whately mated with Yog-Sothoth. A passage in The Lurker at the Threshold (which was written by August Derleth based on some notes by Lovecraft) reads, "She affirm'd, and her good neighbours likewise, that it had been borne to her, and took oath that she did not know by what manner it had come upon her, for it was neither Beast nor Man but like to a monstrous Bat with human face."  Another theory, proposed by Weird Tales columnist Kenneth Hite, is that Brown Jenkin was a higher dimensional servitor of Nyarlathotep who was made into a familiar as a reward.
  The Black Man
  In his dreams, Gilman is introduced by Mason to
  a figure he had never seen before—a tall, lean man of dead black colouration but without the slightest sign of negroid features: wholly devoid of either hair or beard, and wearing as his only garment a shapeless robe of some heavy black fabric. His feet were indistinguishable because of the table and bench, but he must have been shod, since there was a clicking whenever he changed position. The man did not speak, and bore no trace of expression on his small, regular features. He merely pointed to a book of prodigious size which lay ope
caption: Brown Jenkin (illustration by Muzski)
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