Goat Mother and Others: The Collected Mythos Fiction of Pierre Comtois (49 page)

The next day he’d learned that the museum wing at Miskatonic had burned to the ground. The result of a gas explosion it was said. And because he’d abandoned his car in the library parking lot, he was asked to come to police headquarters for questioning. Still somewhat incoherent after his experience, the police found his explanations unsatisfying and kept after him for hours. Finally, he was allowed to go home. Disheveled and exhausted from his ordeal, Stillnor fell into a chair and congratulated himself in managing not to tell the police everything that had happened the night before. If he’d had, he was sure that not only would he have been implicated in the destruction of the museum but accused of being a madman himself and candidate for residency at his own hospital; a verdict that he was not at all sure would be far from the truth. Fearful of talking to anyone about what really happened, he finally decided that there was only one person with whom he could confide.

After making himself presentable and reclaiming his car from the garage where the police had it towed, he drove out to the hospital and, avoiding as many of the staff as he could, made his way to the third floor where he greeted the duty nurse and asked for the key to Danforth’s room.

Inside, Danforth had been released from his straightjacket but was once again secured to the bed. Unspeaking, he at least acknowledged Stillnor’s presence when he turned his head in his direction and stared at him with dull, emotionless eyes.

Taking a chair, Stillnor set it beside the bed and sat down. He was about to say something when Danforth surprised him by speaking first.

“I can tell that you’ve seen it,” he said.

Stillnor said nothing.

“Have you told anyone?” asked Danforth.

“Who’d believe me?”

After that, the two talked for a good while before Stillnor finally left.

Back at home, he chose not to turn on the lights and simply sat in the study listening to the occasional car swish by outside. His mind wandering, Stillnor recalled his conversation with Danforth, a conversation whose content he would have dismissed as lunatic only 24 hours before. All about how the Old Ones had mastered cellular manipulation and could and did create the ancestors of the creatures that went on to populate the Earth following their extinction. How they developed telepathic skills that enabled them to communicate with the Shoggoths, their greatest creation and eventual heirs. Finally, as Danforth felt more at ease with him, he confided to him that it had been Gedney’s voice he heard telling him to remove the wards around Arkham and in the weeks in which nothing was seen of him after his escape from the hospital, it was the voice again that directed him to South America where he arranged for cargo to be transported to Boston. At that point, after his own harrowing experience, it finally struck Stillnor in all its terrible implications that the Old Ones were real. As were their servitors, the monstrous Shoggoths who had evolved over millions of years into self-conscious beings filled with curiosity of a world outside the confines of their subterranean abode and eager to learn more about it. Imitative creatures, they had mastered many of the Old Ones’ skills including the manipulation of organic matter, either dead or alive, so that if given the opportunity, they could no doubt alter the structure of a human being so that it could survive the rigors of life deep beneath the Antarctic continent. Such alterations would also no doubt make telepathic communication between themselves and their mutation easier to accomplish. Stillnor knew this was so because he’d seen an example of it the night he found himself in the greenhouse at Miskatonic University, lured there under a telepathic guidance that had prodded him first to the library, then to the museum, and finally to the greenhouse. Although he hadn’t realized it at the time, it had been a call for help after Danforth had been removed from the scene and restrained at the hospital. A cry for help that went unheeded until a deep desperation no other human being could possibly understand forced the telepath to end its existence in a fiery blast of its own making. A cry for help in fact, from a tortured soul trapped in the shape of an Old One, but that still retained its human mind. It had been a sight that badly frightened Stillnor when he saw the star-headed thing looming over him but it wasn’t that which finally sent him screaming into the night. Rather, it was what had been revealed in those few seconds when moonlight broke through the clouds, for nested amid those waving, pleading tentacles were fixed
the unmistakable features of Felix Gedney!

harles Vaughn (1902-1966), was the first and perhaps foremost American example of that traditionally Gallic malady, the
poete moudit
. He came from a well-to-do Long Island family of solid Welsh stock. His father, James Cabot Vaughan, was a prominent New York attorney; his mother, Elizabeth Forester Vaughan,
nee
Woolton, was a socialite who spent her childhood in Europe. James Vaughan expected his son to follow him into the law profession, and Charles read law at Cambridge for one fruitless semester. In 1920, contrary to all his father’s explicit wishes, Charles left for France to study art. After failing to enter the prestigious
Ecole des Beaux Artes
, he turned his interests to the burgeoning, post-war literary movement centered in Paris. Vaughan began writing poetry, and living on a small stipend secretly sent by his mother, he tramped about Europe — a few months in Germany, an extended visit to Italy, and a return to Paris in early 1923. There, with the help of friends and admirers, he was able to self-publish his first book,
Rhine Sketches
; a small collection of reminiscences and vignettes extolling the beauty of the Bavarian countryside, and the pleasures of the Hamburg brothels, all in the overblown, overtly romantic language typical of his early prose and verse.

Prima Matera
, a group of extended poems dealing with more philosophical concerns, followed in 1925. These poems, in the manner of Rimbaud and Appolinaire, found a willing publisher and some critical and public success. With his mother’s stipend and the small profit from
Prima Matera,
Vaughan moved with his mistress to Nice where he began writing a novel. This disastrous and huge book (816 pages!) appeared in 1928.
Athenian Nights
, set in the Paris of the 1920s, and based on Sophocles’ Oedipus plays, was hated by both the critics and the public at large. This monumental failure coincided with his father’s death. In despair, Vaughan fled Nice, leaving his dreams of writing and his mistress behind. After a failed suicide attempt and months of wandering, Vaughan settled in Berlin in 1929. Vaughan found solace in the expressionist theater he found there. Inspired by the plays of Ernst Toller, Georg Kaiser and Bertold Brecht, he began writing one-act plays which soon won him a new-found reputation as one of the best new dramaturges of the era. In 1933, anticipating the Nazi regime’s fascist policies, Vaughan fled to England where he was greeted enthusiastically by the critics. In 1934 he had his first widespread success with a full length play titled
Descartes
: a three hour montage of scenes from the French mathematician/philosopher’s life, interspersed with excerpts from Descartes’
Les Passions de L’ame
(1649) sung by a Greek chorus. Fresh off this success, he soon completed his most ambitious play to date,
The Age of Bronze
(1936), a scathing modern drama which dealt with the rise of fascism in Europe. The
Age of Bronze
was also Vaughan’s first triumph on the Broadway stage; and in 1938, he returned to the United States after eighteen years of self-imposed exile.

From 1939 to 1945, Vaughan continued to write one-act plays, poetry, and essays ranging in subject-matter from art to mysticism (collected in
The Night Watch,
1972). In 1946 his mother died, and his new full-length play,
Charles I
, opened to enthusiastic reviews. Olivier’s refusal to play the doomed king, along with the author’s tumultuous personal life made Vaughan one of the most scandalous and well-known writers in America. In 1949, Vaughan completed the libretto for
La Rouge et le Noir
, an opera based on the classic novel by Stendahl, and he married the artist Virginia Abrams. Vaughan’s next play was
Hadrian’s Wall
(1952), a bitter parable which compared the decline of the Roman empire with Cold War America. This made Vaughan the target of an investigation by Senator Joseph McCarthy. Vaughan became silent until 1957, when his next, eagerly-awaited play
Metaphysique
premiered. This stark, disturbing farce/tragedy is made up of one long monologue, often sinking into a stream-of-consciousness, recited by a number of gray, faceless characters inhabiting a dark, featureless wasteland. This confusing monologue is repeatedly interrupted by inexplicable passages of brutal, sadistic violence including a beheading, a number of acts of rape, and a crucifixion. It managed to deeply shock critics and audiences alike. Vaughan retreated into a solitude in which he remained until his untimely death a decade later. Vaughan’s death was as controversial as his life and has been the subject of much conjecture. Did he accidentally shoot himself, or was it a suicide? In the twenty years following his death, Vaughan’s collected
oeuvre
has been brought back into print, along with a tantalizing fragment first published in 1975. This fragment,
The King in Yellow
, is put forth by some as Vaughan’s final play. A full decade of scholarship has not revealed any conclusive answers.

CHORUS:

Along the shore the cloud waves break,

The twin suns sink behind the lake,

The shadows lengthen

In Carcosa.

Strange is the night where black stars rise,

And strange moons circle through the skies,

But stranger still is