Haggopian and Other Stories (32 page)

“If there is a way to…deflect…this horror, then I now believe I stand every chance of finding it, though that may take some time. This clue is the one I needed.” He tapped the book with a fingernail. “If not…at least we know what we’re up against. Personally, well, you will never find my home wanting for a gross of candles; I will always have a store of dry batteries and electric light bulbs; I will always carry on my person at least one cigarette lighter and a metal box of fresh, dry matches. Bugg-Shash will not find me unprepared when darkness falls…”

• • •

Through the morning, Bart and Nuttall slept and, even though daylight streamed in across Millwright’s balcony and through his windows, still the electric lights burned while candles sank down slowly on their wicks. In mid-afternoon, when the occultist returned in cautious triumph, the two were up and about.

“I have it,” he said, closing the door of the sumptuous flat behind him. “At least, I think so. It is the Third Sathlatta. There was more on Bugg-Shash in the
Necronomicon,
and that in turn led me to the
Cthaat Aquadingen
,” he shuddered. “It is a counterspell to be invoked—as with many of the Sathlattae—at midnight. Tonight we’ll free ourselves of Bugg-Shash forever…unless…” As he finished the occultist frowned. Despite his words, there was uncertainty in his tone.

“Yes?” Nuttall prompted him. “Unless what? Is something wrong?”

“No, no,” Millwright shook his head angrily, tiredly. “It’s just that…again I’ve come across this peculiar warning!”

“What warning is that?” Bart worriedly asked, his face twitching nervously.

“Oh, there are definite warnings, of sorts,” Millwright answered, “but they’re never clearly stated. Confound that damned Arab! It seems he never once wrote a word without that he wrapped it in a riddle!” He collapsed into a chair.

“Go on,” prompted Nuttall, “explain. How does this ‘counterspell’ of yours work…and what are these ‘warnings’ that you’re so worried about?”

“As to your first question: I don’t believe there’s any need to explain more than I’ve done already. But to enlighten you, albeit briefly; the Sathlattae consist of working spells and counterspells. The third Sathlatta is of the latter order. As to what I’m frightened of, well…”

“Yes?” Nuttall impatiently prompted him again.

“As applicable to our present situation,” Millwright finally went on, “—in this predicament we’re in—the third Sathlatta is…incomplete!”

“You mean it won’t work?” Bart demanded, his eyes wide and fearful.

“Oh, yes, it’ll work all right. But—”

“For God’s sake!” Nuttall cried, his usually disciplined nerves stretched now to the breaking point, evidence of which shoved clearly in his high, quavering voice. “Get on, man!”

“How do I explain something which I can’t readily understand myself?” Millwright snarled, rounding on the frightened man. “And you’d better not start shouting at me, my friend. Why, but for your meddling, none of us would be in this position…and remember that, without my help, you’re stuck with it forever!”

At that, Nuttall s face went very white and he began a stuttered apology. The occultist cut him short. “Forget it. I’ll tell you why I’m worried. To put it simply, the third Sathlatta carries a clause!”

“A clause?” Bart repeated the word wonderingly, plainly failing to understand.

“To quote Alhazred,” Millwright ignored him,”the counterspell’s protection lasts ‘only unto death’!”

For a moment there was silence; then Bart gave a short, strained laugh. “Only unto death? Why, who could ask fairer than that? I really don’t see—”

“And one other-thing,” the occultist continued. “The third Sathlatta is not irrevocable. Its action may be reversed simply by uttering the Sathlatta itself in reverse order.”

Millwright’s guests stared at him for a few moments without speaking; then Nuttall said: “Does anyone else know of our…problem?”

“Not unless you’ve told someone else,” the occultist answered, a deep frown creasing his forehead. “Have you?”

“No,” Nuttall answered, “we haven’t…but you see what I mean, don’t you? What is there to worry about, if it’s all as simple as you say? We, certainly, will never mess about with this sort of thing again…and who else is there to know what’s happened? Even if someone was aware that we’d conjured up a devil, it’s unlikely he’d know how to reverse this process of yours. It’s doubtful anyone would even want or dare to, isn’t it?”

Millwright considered it and gradually his manner became more relaxed. “Yes, you’re right, of course,” he answered. “It’s just that I don’t like complications in these things. You see, I know something of the Old Adepts. They didn’t issue the sort of warnings I’ve seen here for nothing. This
Bugg-Shash—whatever he is—must be the very worst order of demons. Everything about him is…demoniacal!”

III

That same evening, from copious notes copied in the rare books department of the British Museum, Millwright set up all the paraphernalia of his task. He cleared the floor of his study. Then, in what appeared to Nuttall and Bart completely random positions—which were, in fact, carefully measured, if in utterly alien tables—upon the naked floor, he placed candles, censers and curious copper bowls. When he was satisfied with the arrangement of these implements, leaving the centre of the floor clear, he chalked on the remaining surrounding floor-space strange and disturbing magical symbols in a similarly confusing and apparently illogical over-all design. Central to all these preparatory devices, he drew a plain white circle and, as the midnight hour approached, he invited his guests to enter with him into this protective ring.

During the final preparations the candles had been lit. The contents of the censers and bowls, too, now sent up to the ceiling thinly wavering columns of coloured smoke and incense. Moreover, the purely electrical lights of the room had been switched off—very much to the almost hysterical Bart’s dislike—so that only the candles gave a genuine, if flickering, light while the powders and herbs in their bowls and censers merely glowed a dull red.

As the first stroke of midnight sounded from the clock on the wall, Millwright drew from his pocket a carefully folded sheet of paper. In a voice dead of emotion—devoid, almost, of all human inflection—he read the words so carefully copied earlier that day from a near-forgotten tome in the dimmer reaches of the British Museum.

It is doubtful whether Bart or Nuttall could ever have recalled the jumble of alien vowels, syllables and discordants that rolled in seemingly chaotic disorder off Millwright’s tongue in that dimly lit room. Certainly, it would have been impossible for any mere mortal, unversed in those arts with which Millwright had made himself familiar, to repeat that hideously jarring, incredible sequence of sounds. To utter the thing backwards, then—“in reverse order,” as Millwright had had it—must plainly be out of the question. This thought, if not the uppermost in their minds, undoubtedly occurred to the two initiates as the occultist came to the end of his performance and the echoes of his hellish liturgy died away…but, within the space of seconds, this and all other thoughts were driven from their minds by sheer terror!

Even Millwright believed, at first, that he had made some terrible mistake, for now there fell upon the three men in the chalked circle a tangible weight of horror and impending doom! Bart screamed and would have fled the circle and the room at once—doubtless to his death—but the occultist grabbed him and held him firmly.

Slowly but surely, the candles dimmed as their flames inexplicably lowered. Then, one by one, they began to flicker out, apparently self-extinguished. Bart’s struggles and screaming became such that Nuttall, too, had to hold on to him to prevent his rushing from the circle. Suddenly, there came to the ears of the three—as if from a thousand miles away—the merest whisper at first, a susurration, as heard in a sounding shell. The rustling chitterings of what could only be…a presence!

Bart promptly fainted. Millwright and Nuttall lowered him to the floor and crouched beside his unconscious form, still holding him tightly in their terror, staring into the surrounding shadows. The hideously evil chitterings, madly musical in an indefinable alien manner, grew louder. And then…something slimy and wet moved gelatinously in the darker shadows of the room’s corners!

“Millwright!” Nuttall’s voice cracked on that one exclamation. The word had been an almost inarticulate utterance, such as a child might make, crying out for its mother in the middle of a particularly frightening nightmare.

“Stay still! And be quiet!” Millwright commanded, his own voice no less cracked and high-pitched.

Only two candles burned now, so low and dim that they merely pushed back the immediate shadows. As the occultist reached out a tremulous hand to draw one of these into the circle…so the other blinked out, leaving only a spiral of grey smoke hanging in the near-complete darkness.

At this, the abominable chittering grew louder still. It surrounded the circle completely now and, for the first time, the two conscious men clearly saw that which the single, tiny remaining flame held at bay. Creeping up on all sides, to the very line of the chalked circle, the Thing came; a glistening, shuddering wall of jelly-like ooze in which many mouths gaped and just as many eyes monstrously ogled! This was Bugg-Shash the Drowner, The Black One, The Filler of Space. Indeed, the bulk of this…Being?…did seem to fill the entire study! All bar the blessed sanctuary of the circle.

The eyes were…beyond words, but worse still were those mouths. Sucking and whistling with thickly viscous lips, the mouths glistened and slobbered and, from out of those gluttonous orifices poured the lunatic chitterings of alien song—the Song of Bugg-Shash—as His substance towered up and leaned inwards to form a slimy ceiling over their very heads!

Nuttall closed his eyes and began to pray out loud, while Millwright simply moaned and groaned in his terror, unable to voice prayers to a God he had long forsaken; but though it seemed that all was lost, the Third Sathlatta had not failed them. Even as the ceiling of jelly began an apparently inexorable descent, so the remaining candle flared up and, at that, the bulk of Bugg-Shash broke and ran like water through a shattered dam. The wall and ceiling of quivering protoplasm with its loathsome eyes and mouths seemed to waver and shrink before Millwright’s eyes as the awful Black One drew back to the darker shadows.

Then, miraculously, the many extinct candles flared up, returning to life one by one and no less mysteriously than they had snuffed themselves out. The occultist knew then that what he had seen had merely been an immaterial visitation, a vision of what
might
have been, but for the power of the Third Sathlatta.

Simultaneously with Bart’s return to consciousness, Millwright shouted: “We’ve won!”

As Nuttall ventured to open incredulous eyes the occultist stepped out of the circle, crossed to the light switch and flooded the room with light. The thing he and Nuttall had witnessed must indeed have been merely a vision—a demon-inspired hallucination—for no sign of the horror remained. The floor, the walls and bookshelves, the pushed-aside furniture, all were clean and dry, free of the horrid Essence of Bugg-Shash. No single trace of His visit showed in any part of the room; no single crack or crevice of the pine floor knew the morbid loathsomeness of His snail-trail slime…

IV

“Ray!” Alan Bart cried, shouldering his way through the long-haired, tassel-jacketed patrons of The Windsor’s smokeroom. Nuttall saw him, waved him in the direction of a table and ordered another drink. With a glass in each hand he then made his way from the bar, through the crush of regulars, to where Bart now sat with his back to the wall, his fist wrapped tightly around an evening newspaper.

Over a week had passed since their terrifying experience at the London flat of Thomas Millwright. Since then, they had started to grow back into their old creeds and customs. Although they still did not quite trust the dark, they had long since proved for themselves the efficacy of Millwright’s Third Sathlatta. Ever the cynic, and despite the fact that he still trembled in dark places, Nuttall now insisted upon taking long walks along lone country lanes of an evening, usually ending up at The Windsor before closing time. Thus Bart had known where to find him.

“What’s up?” Nuttall questioned as he took a seat beside the younger man. He noted with a slight tremor of alarm the drawn, worried texture of his friend’s face.

“Millwright’s dead!” Bart abruptly blurted, without preamble. “He’s dead—a traffic accident—run down by a lorry not far from his flat. He was identified in the mortuary. It’s all in the paper.” He spread the newspaper before Nuttall who hardly glanced at it.

If the olive-skinned man was shocked, it did not show; his weak eyes had widened slightly at Bart’s disclosure, nothing more. He let the news sink in, then shrugged his shoulders.

Bart was completely taken aback by his friend’s negative attitude. “We did
know
him!” he protested.

“Briefly,” Nuttall acknowledged; and then, to Bart’s amazement, he smiled. “That’s a relief,” he muttered.

Bart drew away from him. “What? Did I hear you say—”

“It’s a relief, yes,” Nuttall snapped. “Don’t you see? He was the only one we knew who could ever have brought that…
thing
…down on us again. And now he’s gone.”

For a while they sat in silence, tasting their drinks, allowing the human noises of the crowded room to close in and impinge upon their beings. Then Bart said: “Ray, do you suppose that…?”

“Hmm?” Nuttall looked at him. “Do I suppose what, Alan?”

“Oh, nothing really. I was just thinking about what Millwright told us; about the protection of that spell of his lasting ‘only unto death’!”

“Oh?” Nuttall answered. “Well, if I were you, I shouldn’t bother. It’s something I don’t intend to find out about for a long time.”

“And there’s something else bothering me,” Bart admitted, not really listening to Nuttall’s perfunctory answer. “It’s something I can’t quite pin down—part of what we discovered that night at Millwright’s place, when we were going through all those old books. Damned if I can remember what it is, though!”