The Cthulhu Mythos Megapack (40 Modern and Classic Lovecraftian Tales) (62 page)

Johansen and his men landed at a sloping mud-bank on this monstrous Acropolis, and clambered slipperily up over titan oozy blocks which could have been no mortal staircase. The very sun of heaven seemed distorted when viewed through the polarising miasma welling out from this sea-soaked perversion, and twisted menace and suspense lurked leeringly in those crazily elusive angles of carven rock where a second glance shewed concavity after the first shewed convexity.

Something very like fright had come over all the explorers before anything more definite than rock and ooze and weed was seen. Each would have fled had he not feared the scorn of the others, and it was only half-heartedly that they searched—vainly, as it proved—for some portable souvenir to bear away.

It was Rodriguez the Portuguese who climbed up the foot of the monolith and shouted of what he had found. The rest followed him, and looked curiously at the immense carved door with the now familiar squid-dragon bas-relief. It was, Johansen said, like a great barn-door; and they all felt that it was a door because of the ornate lintel, threshold, and jambs around it, though they could not decide whether it lay flat like a trap-door or slantwise like an outside cellar-door. As Wilcox would have said, the geometry of the place was all wrong. One could not be sure that the sea and the ground were horizontal, hence the relative position of everything else seemed phantasmally variable.

Briden pushed at the stone in several places without result. Then Donovan felt over it delicately around the edge, pressing each point separately as he went. He climbed interminably along the grotesque stone moulding—that is, one would call it climbing if the thing was not after all horizontal—and the men wondered how any door in the universe could be so vast. Then, very softly and slowly, the acre-great lintel began to give inward at the top; and they saw that it was balanced.

Donovan slid or somehow propelled himself down or along the jamb and rejoined his fellows, and everyone watched the queer recession of the monstrously carven portal. In this phantasy of prismatic distortion it moved anomalously in a diagonal way, so that all the rules of matter and perspective seemed upset.

The aperture was black with a darkness almost material. That tenebrousness was indeed a
positive quality
; for it obscured such parts of the inner walls as ought to have been revealed, and actually burst forth like smoke from its aeon-long imprisonment, visibly darkening the sun as it slunk away into the shrunken and gibbous sky on flapping membraneous wings. The odour rising from the newly opened depths was intolerable, and at length the quick-eared Hawkins thought he heard a nasty, slopping sound down there. Everyone listened, and everyone was listening still when It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness.

Poor Johansen’s handwriting almost gave out when he wrote of this. Of the six men who never reached the ship, he thinks two perished of pure fright in that accursed instant. The Thing cannot be described—there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. God! What wonder that across the earth a great architect went mad, and poor Wilcox raved with fever in that telepathic instant? The Thing of the idols, the green, sticky spawn of the stars, had awaked to claim his own. The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight.

Three men were swept up by the flabby claws before anybody turned. God rest them, if there be any rest in the universe. They were Donovan, Guerrera, and Angstrom. Parker slipped as the other three were plunging frenziedly over endless vistas of green-crusted rock to the boat, and Johansen swears he was swallowed up by an angle of masonry which shouldn’t have been there; an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse. So only Briden and Johansen reached the boat, and pulled desperately for the
Alert
as the mountainous monstrosity flopped down the slimy stones and hesitated, floundering at the edge of the water.

Steam had not been suffered to go down entirely, despite the departure of all hands for the shore; and it was the work of only a few moments of feverish rushing up and down between wheel and engines to get the
Alert
under way. Slowly, amidst the distorted horrors of that indescribable scene, she began to churn the lethal waters; whilst on the masonry of that charnel shore that was not of earth the titan Thing from the stars slavered and gibbered like Polypheme cursing the fleeing ship of Odysseus. Then, bolder than the storied Cyclops, great Cthulhu slid greasily into the water and began to pursue with vast wave-raising strokes of cosmic potency. Briden looked back and went mad, laughing shrilly as he kept on laughing at intervals till death found him one night in the cabin whilst Johansen was wandering deliriously.

But Johansen had not given out yet. Knowing that the Thing could surely overtake the
Alert
until steam was fully up, he resolved on a desperate chance; and, setting the engine for full speed, ran lightning-like on deck and reversed the wheel. There was a mighty eddying and foaming in the noisome brine, and as the steam mounted higher and higher the brave Norwegian drove his vessel head on against the pursuing jelly which rose above the unclean froth like the stern of a daemon galleon. The awful squid-head with writhing feelers came nearly up to the bowsprit of the sturdy yacht, but Johansen drove on relentlessly. There was a bursting as of an exploding bladder, a slushy nastiness as of a cloven sunfish, a stench as of a thousand opened graves, and a sound that the chronicler could not put on paper. For an instant the ship was befouled by an acrid and blinding green cloud, and then there was only a venomous seething astern; where—God in heaven!—the scattered plasticity of that nameless sky-spawn was nebulously
recombining
in its hateful original form, whilst its distance widened every second as the
Alert
gained impetus from its mounting steam.

That was all. After that Johansen only brooded over the idol in the cabin and attended to a few matters of food for himself and the laughing maniac by his side. He did not try to navigate after the first bold flight, for the reaction had taken something out of his soul. Then came the storm of April 2nd, and a gathering of the clouds about his consciousness. There is a sense of spectral whirling through liquid gulfs of infinity, of dizzying rides through reeling universes on a comets tail, and of hysterical plunges from the pit to the moon and from the moon back again to the pit, all livened by a cachinnating chorus of the distorted, hilarious elder gods and the green, bat-winged mocking imps of Tartarus.

Out of that dream came rescue-the
Vigilant
, the vice-admiralty court, the streets of Dunedin, and the long voyage back home to the old house by the Egeberg. He could not tell—they would think him mad. He would write of what he knew before death came, but his wife must not guess. Death would be a boon if only it could blot out the memories.

That was the document I read, and now I have placed it in the tin box beside the bas-relief and the papers of Professor Angell. With it shall go this record of mine—this test of my own sanity, wherein is pieced together that which I hope may never be pieced together again. I have looked upon all that the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and the flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me. But I do not think my life will be long. As my uncle went, as poor Johansen went, so I shall go. I know too much, and the cult still lives.

Cthulhu still lives, too, I suppose, again in that chasm of stone which has shielded him since the sun was young. His accursed city is sunken once more, for the Vigilant sailed over the spot after the April storm; but his ministers on earth still bellow and prance and slay around idol-capped monoliths in lonely places. He must have been trapped by the sinking whilst within his black abyss, or else the world would by now be screaming with fright and frenzy. Who knows the end? What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise. Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men. A time will come—but I must not and cannot think! Let me pray that, if I do not survive this manuscript, my executors may put caution before audacity and see that it meets no other eye.

THE OLD ONE, by John Glasby

That there are still many mysteries associated with this planet and, in particular how and when life first came into existence, is something no self-respecting scientist will deny. Geologists accept that the Earth is some four billion years old while archaeologists maintain that modern Man evolved only ten or fifteen thousand years ago. But suggest to them that Man is only the latest in a long line of intelligent races to have inhabited this planet and they either turn a deaf ear to such theories or verbally attack the proposer of such ideas, labeling him a crank or a fanciful dreamer.

They state categorically that there is not a single shred of evidence for such wild propositions; that no archaeological expedition has yet uncovered the ruins of such civilizations and if questioned about the ancient myths and legends of the old gods and the days when giants lived in the earth, they claim these are nothing more than superstitious tales and old religions perpetrated by the priestly cults to gain power for themselves.

In my post as associate professor of archaeology at a small American university I had come up against this brick wall of strict scientific agnosticism from many of my colleagues, in particular Professor Dorman, my immediate superior. Where matters of a bizarre or highly controversial nature were concerned, he absolutely refused to discuss them, insisting that his students must be taught only conventional theories and if I held any other ideas it would be best if I kept them to myself.

Being only a relatively obscure figure in archaeology, I did as I was bid during working hours. But after the lectures were finished, and during my weekends away from the university, I actively pursued my own ideas, haunting the various bookshops and libraries in my search for any reference to these most ancient of civilizations. My main purpose at that time was to extend my knowledge of these distant cultures as far back into Earth’s prehistoric history as possible.

I read avidly of the religious beliefs of the early Egyptian dynasties and those of neighboring Ur and of the British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans’ discoveries on Crete, which resulted in rescuing the Minoan civilization from mythological fiction and putting it before the scientific world as fact.

Yet in spite of all my researches, I seemed doomed to go so far back in time and no further. There were, of course, the numerous references to fabled Atlantis but these were so varied and placed this civilization in so many different locations they were virtually useless.

Then, one October evening, I came across a bookshop I had not previously visited. It was in a narrow street well removed from any of the major thoroughfares and the dim-lit window did little to attract attention. I entered it with a curious sense of precognitive excitement, noticing that it appeared far more spacious than I would have expected, viewing it from outside. There were a few late-night customers browsing among the shelves but most appeared interested in the sections devoted to modern novels and I soon found myself at the rear of the shop where the dusty appearance of the books was indicative both of their age and infrequent sale.

The majority dealt with mundane subjects such as geography and travel. There were one or two containing experiments in alchemy with vague references to the Philosopher’s Stone and the Elixir of Life. These I glanced through and then replaced and I was beginning to despair of finding anything worthwhile when I spotted a slim volume tucked away, almost out of sight, behind a large treatise on the life of Samuel Pepys.

What initially caught my attention was the curious nature of the covers and binding. The covers had a smooth, slippery touch, more like metal than cloth or board and the pages were bound by incredibly thin strips of a dull grey metal. It looked like a fake made by some modern process cunningly treated to give the appearance of great age. Yet even in the dim light, I would have sworn that the pages were of some kind of papyrus, yellowed and brittle. Many of them were oddly stained as if by seawater and in places they were stuck together.

The text was handwritten and this, coupled with the fact that the ink had faded, made it singularly difficult to read. It was in Latin but that, in itself, presented to problem for I was well versed in that dead language. Almost at once, my eye fell upon a curious passage—

It is written in the
Book of K’yog
that long aeons before the first men came there was a great city built where the rivers Karnodir and Deb ran together at the head a delta which vanished in fire and cataclysm more than thirty thousand years ago. It is further told that the beings which erected the gray-hued pillars and columns of Yuth migrated from a dark planet on the outer edge of the solar system, drifting sunward on huge leathery wings and bearing with them an amorphous entity they called Tsathoggua which they enshrined within a central temple and worshipped with abominable ceremonies each night when the moon was full.

To say that my excitement and curiosity reached fever pitch on reading this extraordinary passage would be an understatement. This volume promised to provide me with such revelations into the distant past of our planet as I had never before encountered. There remained, of course, the possibility the book was a deliberate fake. Yet, somehow, I did not think so. There was something about it, some strange aura, which spoke of a long forgotten age. That the text had been copied from some much earlier volume, I did not doubt.

But if it provided me with but a single clue to further reading, it would be well worth whatever price the owner asked. I took it back to the front of the shop and handed it over the counter, asking him the price. He quoted a ridiculously low figure that I accepted at once and before leaving with my prize I inquired of him where he had obtained it.

I had noticed his curious expression the moment he had glanced at it and, although he raised no objection to my purchasing it, he seemed singularly evasive as to its origin. Finally, however, he consulted a large ledger, running his finger down the pages until he found the entry he sought.

The volume, he informed me, was part of a small lot he had bought some seven years earlier from a house in Winson Street when the owner, a recluse well into his nineties, had died leaving the house and contents to his grandson, a wealthy industrialist, who had not the slightest interest in such fantastic literature. On further questioning, he gave me, albeit reluctantly, the name and present address of this grandson.

The hour was now growing late and I hurried back to my rooms at the university, clutching my find under my coat for it had begun to rain and I did not wish any further damage to befall the book which, from my brief perusal, I felt certain was more than a thousand years old. I had already resolved to get in touch with Simon Howarth, the grandson, as soon as possible to see if he could possibly throw any light upon where his grandfather had obtained the volume.

That very evening, I sat until the early hours of the morning, reading through the book. Strangely, it bore no title, nor was there any indication of the author, which was highly unusual. The only conclusion I could reach was that the writer, whoever he was, had penned these pages anonymously for fear of persecution. Down through the ages, those who had delved into such forbidden writings were considered warlocks and witches and had suffered a harsh fate at the hands of the Church.

Despite the numerous portions that had faded beyond legibility where I could make out only disjointed sentences, there was much in the book to convince me of its authenticity. There were, of course, no dates given which I could use to correlate with known historical facts and events, for it told of an era long before the primitive nomadic tribes of the Egyptian delta had come together after the war between North and South under the double crown of a united Egypt.

Briefly, it was a compilation of historical events covering a period, if I could read the text correctly, of more than fifty thousand years and ending some twenty thousands years ago, between the coming of this alien race to Earth from the Dark Planet on the rim of the solar system—which I assumed to be Pluto—to the destruction of their capital city of Yuth.

There were also veiled, and necessarily vague, references which went back in time much further than this, possibly millions of years, detailing a great war between two races fought far out in space among the stars. For the first time I had come across evidence which went far beyond even my ideas upon this subject, alluding to beings far different from humans in their ability to move through space and time quite freely, employing weapons beyond all imagining, able to produce living creatures from inanimate matter and energy, keeping them as slaves to perform all manner of menial tasks requiring only brute strength and little intelligence.

The outcome of this great interstellar war was defeat for the race, which the unknown writer called the Old Ones and they had been hurled down onto young, evolving planets of a number of suns, including our own. Here, they had been held in check throughout the ages by powerful spells and sigils of immense potency.

It made fascinating reading. But it ended on a chilling and menacing note which sent a shudder of nameless dread through me as I sat at my table; for it suggested that with the passage of untold aeons, the potency of these ancient spells might weaken sufficiently for the Old Ones to throw off their shackles and rise again with terrible consequences for the inhabitants of those planets where they had been held in bondage.

I considered showing the volume to Professor Dorman but knowing his deep aversion to such bizarre ideas, I decided against such a course, at least for the present. He would undoubtedly have judged the book a very clever fake and ridiculed me for even thinking it could be genuine.

The following day was a Saturday and, having no lectures, I had plenty of time to check the town map for the address before ringing Simon Haworth and arranging an appointment to see him on a matter which I described as particularly urgent.

He was a tall, bearded man in his late forties who received me cordially and evinced some surprise to learn that I had purchased one of the old books which had belonged to his grandfather. He himself had considered them to be worthless and had been glad to get rid of them when his grandfather’s house had been emptied some ten years earlier.

I explained who I was and my interest in what had been written in the book; that my main purpose in visiting him was to inquire if he could give me any information at all on where his grandfather had obtained the book in question.

“Well now, Professor Sheldon,” he said, shaking his head slowly, “I’m afraid there’s very little I can tell you. My grandfather was a strange man with more than a passing interest in this incredible mythos of alien races which existed on Earth long before men.”

“The volume speaks of the
Book of
K’yog
,” I said. “Obviously this was the original source from which this book was copied.”

Howarth’s face showed he had never heard of the
Book of K’yog
, a fact which did not surprise me. But his next statement roused my curiosity.

“I do recall he had some correspondence with several people who had similar ideas to his own many years ago. Much of it came from abroad, remote parts of Asia and Africa.”

I sat up straight in my chair. “I don’t suppose any of these letters are still in existence?”

Howarth pursed his lips. “I’m not certain.” He got to his feet. “There is an old casket of his containing some letters which I brought with me from the house.”

“May I see it?” I asked.

Howarth hesitated for a moment, then went out of the room and I heard him going upstairs. He came back a few minutes later carrying an antique oak box, which he placed on the table in front of him. The lid, which was delicately carved with scrolls and minute figures was evidently locked but neither of us were able to find any keyhole.

Haworth gave a shaky laugh. “It doesn’t seem as though he meant it to be opened.” he muttered, turning it over and over in his hands, “Unless there’s a concealed spring catch somewhere.”

He moved his fingers over the curious arabesques carved on the lid and sides, then uttered a sharp exclamation as his finger depressed one and the lid flew open with a sudden snap.

Inside, bound with a length of black ribbon, was a bundle of letters, yellow with age. With Haworth’s permission, I removed them and glanced at the dates. All were more than fifty years old and had come from many parts of the world, some written in hasty scribbles which were difficult to decipher; others in more stylish hands with flowing letters.

Haworth readily agreed I could take them with me to examine at my leisure and after promising to return them at the earliest opportunity, I left. Back at the university, I lost no time in reading through the curious correspondence Jethro Haworth had carried on more than fifty years before.

That he had believed implicitly in these fabulously ancient myths and legends was immediately apparent and his interest clearly stemmed from a very early age for two of the letters dated from the early years of the century when he could have barely entered his teens.

One, dated January 27, 1935, had been posted in Nairobi and contained the following cryptic passage—

Brenton claims we have now uncovered virtually all of the ruins, which certainly cover a very large extent. We are all agreed that this previously unsuspected city in the middle of the African continent is incredibly old. Allen maintains it to be contemporary with Ur while I am positive that not only is it far older but we have merely uncovered the topmost layers and will discover even more if we dig deeper. However, the buildings are far too regular, too normal, for it to be Yuth as mentioned in the
Book of K’yog
.

Many of the other letters were in a similar vein giving accounts of excavations in various regions of the world, but all from places where no known civilizations were believed to have existed in far-off days.

All mentioned Yuth, that gray city of this alien race which had disappeared twenty thousand years ago, millenia before the stones for the pyramids had been hewn from the earth. That they were all searching for it was self-evident. But why had nothing of this got into the newspapers or scientific journals of the time? While I would almost certainly have missed the former, it was unlikely I would have overlooked any reference in the latter. It took planning and finance to embark upon expeditions such as these to remote and generally inaccessible parts of the world.