The destruction of the Gardner family

The destruction of the Gardner family is the central human catastrophe caused by the Colour at the farm: a household is progressively isolated, physically undone, and stripped of its members as an alien force spreads through its land and water. The horror advances by degrees—from altered plants and tainted milk to madness, unexplained deaths, and disappearances—until Ammi Pierce finds Nahum Gardner dying and learns that the well was the source of the family’s doom.

The farm’s gradual isolation

The crisis took shape in the months after the meteorite fell. The Gazette printed a short account of what Nahum Gardner had told in Arkham, and the farmers, including Nahum Gardner, recognized the farm from the report. At night, the vegetation around it gave off a dim but distinct luminosity; once, a detached patch of phosphorescence seemed to stir near the barn. These signs did not immediately end ordinary farm life. The grass appeared unaffected, and the cows continued to graze near the house, until the milk began to go bad toward the end of May. Nahum Gardner moved the cows to the uplands, and the trouble temporarily stopped.

The apparent reprieve gave way to visible decay. Grass and leaves turned grey and brittle, while Ammi Pierce became the only visitor and came less often. As the school year ended, the Gardner family was nearly cut off from the community and sometimes relied on Ammi Pierce to run errands in town. The family’s physical and mental decline became increasingly apparent; Mrs Gardner grew mad, while the farm itself seemed to withdraw from familiar life. By September, vegetation was crumbling into grey powder, and Nahum Gardner feared the trees would die before the poison left the soil.

The household’s isolation was compounded by a sequence of warnings that did not restore its safety. A horse borrowed from Ammi Pierce would not approach the barn, and the family’s own four horses had bolted in terror, become unmanageable, and been shot. When Ammi Pierce recognized that the well water tasted wrong, he advised Nahum Gardner to dig another well on higher ground. Nahum Gardner ignored the advice. He and the boys continued to drink the water and eat their meagre, ill-cooked meals, moving through the days in a state of weary resignation.

Madness, death, and disappearance

In June, around the anniversary of the meteorite’s fall, Mrs Gardner began screaming about things in the air. Her ravings named no particular objects: they consisted of movements, changes, and sensations, including the feeling that something was being taken from her or fastening itself upon her. Nahum Gardner let her wander while she seemed harmless, but confined her to the attic after the boys became frightened and Thaddeus Gardner nearly fainted at her expressions. By July she had stopped speaking and crawled on all fours. Nahum Gardner also believed she had begun to glow faintly in the dark, like the nearby vegetation.

Thaddeus Gardner’s breakdown followed a visit to the well in September. He returned with an empty pail, screaming and gesturing, then muttering about moving colours below. Nahum Gardner allowed him to roam for a week, until he stumbled and hurt himself, before locking him in an attic room across the hall from his mother. Their screams answered one another through the locked doors. Merwin Gardner, whose closest playmate was now shut away, became increasingly restless and imaginative.

The livestock failed as the family did. Poultry turned grey, died quickly, and had dry, noisome meat. Hogs grew abnormally fat before becoming grey, brittle, and distorted; cows developed shrivelled or compressed patches, sometimes across their bodies, and collapsed or disintegrated. The animals died even though cases occurred in a locked, undisturbed barn, and the hogs had not eaten the tainted vegetation. By harvest, no livestock remained. The three dogs vanished in one night, while the five cats had already left.

On October 19, Nahum Gardner came to Ammi Pierce’s house with the news that Thaddeus Gardner was dead. The room had been locked and its small barred window remained intact; Nahum Gardner buried what he had found in the family plot. Three days later Merwin Gardner disappeared after going out at night with a lantern and pail to fetch water. Nahum Gardner heard a shriek from the yard but reached the door too late to see his son. After searching through the night, he found near the well a crushed, partly melted mass that had been the lantern, and the bent, partly fused remains of the pail. There was no trace of Merwin Gardner.

Nahum Gardner’s final account

After more than two weeks without seeing Nahum Gardner, Ammi Pierce returned to the farm. The grass and leaves lay grey and withered, vines had fallen from the old walls and gables, and bare trees stood against the November sky. Nahum Gardner was alive, weak, and lying in the cold kitchen, but his mind had given way under the accumulated losses. Asked about Zenas Gardner, he could offer only the confused explanation that Zenas Gardner lived in the well. He seemed not to know that Mrs Gardner was missing, and Ammi Pierce had to take the keys and search the attic himself.

In the locked room, Ammi Pierce found a dark, foul-smelling remnant that had shared the fate of Thaddeus Gardner and the livestock. It was still moving, though it crumbled as it moved. After a noise and a splash from the direction of the well, Ammi Pierce returned downstairs and found Nahum Gardner collapsing. In his last account, Nahum Gardner identified the force as a Colour that burned with a cold, wet sensation and had lived in the well. He believed it had drained Thaddeus Gardner, Merwin Gardner, and Zenas Gardner, and connected it to the coloured object shattered by the college geologists in the meteorite. He recalled seeing the same hue in the spring flowers and plants, and said the Colour had grown strong on Zenas Gardner before reaching him. His account also warned that Mrs Gardner was being affected and that the well’s water had been evil.

Nahum Gardner’s speech ended as his body caved in. Ammi Pierce covered the remains with a red-checked tablecloth and fled by the fields and woods, unable to pass the well. Looking back through a window, he had seen that no stone was missing from its rim; the splash had not been caused by a buggy wheel, but by something entering the well. He went to Arkham and reported that the Gardner family was gone: Nahum Gardner and Mrs Gardner were dead, Thaddeus Gardner’s death was already known, and Merwin Gardner and Zenas Gardner had disappeared. He gave the authorities no detailed account, but was compelled to return to the farm with officers and medical officials.

The event’s significance

The family’s destruction is structured as a series of intimate reversals: a home becomes inaccessible to visitors, familiar food and water become suspect, care turns into confinement, and trips to the well become occasions of disappearance. Nahum Gardner’s refusal to replace the water supply follows Ammi Pierce’s warning, but the account does not reduce the catastrophe to a single human mistake. The force also changes plants, animals, and people, and its action exceeds ordinary explanations such as poison or disease.

The final revelation gives the farm’s scattered symptoms a common source without making that source comprehensible. Nahum Gardner can name the Colour and trace its apparent path from the meteorite to the well, but he cannot explain what it wants. Even his last attempt to describe it falters into fragments. The family is therefore not simply killed in a single attack: its members are separated, altered, or erased one by one, while the well remains as the point toward which the surviving evidence converges.