The Cthulhu Mythos Megapack (40 Modern and Classic Lovecraftian Tales) (89 page)

It was on the twenty-first of February, 1901, that the thing occurred. As I look back across the years I realize how unreal it seems, and sometimes wonder if old Doctor Fenton was not right when he charged it all to my excited imagination. I recall that he listened with great kindness and patience when I told him, but afterward gave me a nerve-powder and arranged for the half-year’s vacation on which I departed the next week.

That fateful night I was wildly agitated and perturbed, for despite the excellent care he had received, Joe Slater was unmistakably dying. Perhaps it was his mountain freedom that he missed, or perhaps the turmoil in his brain had grown too acute for his rather sluggish physique; but at all events the flame of vitality flickered low in the decadent body. He was drowsy near the end, and as darkness fell he dropped off into a troubled sleep.

I did not strap on the straightjacket as was customary when he slept, since I saw that he was too feeble to be dangerous, even if he woke in mental disorder once more before passing away. But I did place upon his head and mine the two ends of my cosmic “radio,” hoping against hope for a first and last message from the dream world in the brief time remaining. In the cell with us was one nurse, a mediocre fellow who did not understand the purpose of the apparatus, or think to inquire into my course. As the hours wore on I saw his head droop awkwardly in sleep, but I did not disturb him. I myself, lulled by the rhythmical breathing of the healthy and the dying man, must have nodded a little later.

The sound of weird lyric melody was what aroused me. Chords, vibrations, and harmonic ecstasies echoed passionately on every hand, while on my ravished sight burst the stupendous spectacle ultimate beauty. Walls, columns, and architraves of living fire blazed effulgently around the spot where I seemed to float in air, extending upward to an infinitely high vaulted dome of indescribable splendor. Blending with this display of palatial magnificence, or rather, supplanting it at times in kaleidoscopic rotation, were glimpses of wide plains and graceful valleys, high mountains and inviting grottoes, covered with every lovely attribute of scenery which my delighted eyes could conceive of, yet formed wholly of some glowing, ethereal plastic entity, which in consistency partook as much of spirit as of matter. As I gazed, I perceived that my own brain held the key to these enchanting metamorphoses; for each vista which appeared to me was the one my changing mind most wished to behold. Amidst this elysian realm I dwelt not as a stranger, for each sight and sound was familiar to me; just as it had been for uncounted eons of eternity before, and would be for like eternities to come.

Then the resplendent aura of my brother of light drew near and held colloquy with me, soul to soul, with silent and perfect interchange of thought. The hour was one of approaching triumph, for was not my fellow-being escaping at last from a degrading periodic bondage; escaping forever, and preparing to follow the accursed oppressor even unto the uttermost fields of ether, that upon it might be wrought a flaming cosmic vengeance which would shake the spheres? We floated thus for a little time, when I perceived a slight blurring and fading of the objects around us, as though some force were recalling me to earth—where I least wished to go. The form near me seemed to feel a change also, for it gradually brought its discourse toward a conclusion, and itself prepared to quit the scene, fading from my sight at a rate somewhat less rapid than that of the other objects. A few more thoughts were exchanged, and I knew that the luminous one and I were being recalled to bondage, though for my brother of light it would be the last time. The sorry planet shell being well-nigh spent, in less than an hour my fellow would be free to pursue the oppressor along the Milky Way and past the hither stars to the very confines of infinity.

A well-defined shock separates my final impression of the fading scene of light from my sudden and somewhat shamefaced awakening and straightening up in my chair as I saw the dying figure on the couch move hesitantly. Joe Slater was indeed awaking, though probably for the last time. As I looked more closely, I saw that in the sallow cheeks shone spots of color which had never before been present. The lips, too, seemed unusual, being tightly compressed, as if by the force of a stronger character than had been Slater’s. The whole face finally began to grow tense, and the head turned restlessly with closed eyes.

I did not rouse the sleeping nurse, but readjusted the slightly disarranged headband of my telepathic “radio,” intent to catch any parting message the dreamer might have to deliver. All at once the head turned sharply in my direction and the eyes fell open, causing me to stare in blank amazement at what I beheld. The man who had been Joe Slater, the Catskill decadent, was gazing at me with a pair of luminous, expanding eyes whose blue seemed subtly to have deepened. Neither mania nor degeneracy was visible in that gaze, and I felt beyond a doubt that I was viewing a face behind which lay an active mind of high order.

At this juncture my brain became aware of a steady external influence operating upon it. I closed my eyes to concentrate my thoughts more profoundly and was rewarded by the positive knowledge that my long-sought mental message had come at last. Each transmitted idea formed rapidly in my mind, and though no actual language was employed, my habitual association of conception and expression was so great that I seemed to be receiving the message in ordinary English.

“Joe Slater is dead,” came the soul-petrifying voice of an agency from beyond the wall of sleep. My opened eyes sought the couch of pain in curious horror, but the blue eyes were still calmly gazing, and the countenance was still intelligently animated. “He is better dead, for he was unfit to bear the active intellect of cosmic entity. His gross body could not undergo the needed adjustments between ethereal life and planet life. He was too much an animal, too little a man; yet it is through his deficiency that you have come to discover me, for the cosmic and planet souls rightly should never meet. He has been in my torment and diurnal prison for forty-two of your terrestrial years.

“I am an entity like that which you yourself become in the freedom of dreamless sleep. I am your brother of light, and have floated with you in the effulgent valleys. It is not permitted me to tell your waking earth-self of your real self, but we are all roamers of vast spaces and travelers in many ages. Next year I may be dwelling in the Egypt which you call ancient, or in the cruel empire of Tsan Chan which is to come three thousand years hence. You and I have drifted to the worlds that reel about the red Arcturus, and dwelt in the bodies of the insect-philosophers that crawl proudly over the fourth moon of Jupiter. How little does the earth self know life and its extent! How little, indeed, ought it to know for its own tranquility!

“Of the oppressor I cannot speak. You on earth have unwittingly felt its distant presence—you who without knowing idly gave the blinking beacon the name of Algol, the Demon-Star. It is to meet and conquer the oppressor that I have vainly striven for eons, held back by bodily encumbrances. Tonight I go as a Nemesis bearing just and blazingly cataclysmic vengeance. Watch me in the sky close by the Demon-Star.

“I cannot speak longer, for the body of Joe Slater grows cold and rigid, and the coarse brains are ceasing to vibrate as I wish. You have been my only friend on this planet—the only soul to sense and seek for me within the repellent form which lies on this couch. We shall meet again—perhaps in the shining mists of Orion’s Sword, perhaps on a bleak plateau in prehistoric Asia, perhaps in unremembered dreams tonight, perhaps in some other form an eon hence, when the solar system shall have been swept away.”

At this point the thought-waves abruptly ceased, the pale eyes of the dreamer—or can I say dead man?—commenced to glaze fishily. In a half-stupor I crossed over to the couch and felt of his wrist, but found it cold, stiff, and pulseless. The sallow cheeks paled again, and the thick lips fell open, disclosing the repulsively rotten fangs of the degenerate Joe Slater. I shivered, pulled a blanket over the hideous face, and awakened the nurse. Then I left the cell and went silently to my room. I had an instant and unaccountable craving for a sleep whose dreams I should not remember.

The climax? What plain tale of science can boast of such a rhetorical effect? I have merely set down certain things appealing to me as facts, allowing you to construe them as you will. As I have already admitted, my superior, old Doctor Fenton, denies the reality of everything I have related. He vows that I was broken down with nervous strain, and badly in need of a long vacation on full pay which he so generously gave me. He assures me on his professional honor that Joe Slater was but a low-grade paranoiac, whose fantastic notions must have come from the crude hereditary folk-tales which circulated in even the most decadent of communities. All this he tells me—yet I cannot forget what I saw in the sky on the night after Slater died. Lest you think me a biased witness, another pen must add this final testimony, which may perhaps supply the climax you expect. I will quote the following account of the star Nova Persei verbatim from the pages of that eminent astronomical authority, Professor Garrett P. Serviss:

“On February 22, 1901, a marvelous new star was discovered by Doctor Anderson of Edinburgh, not very far from Algol. No star had been visible at that point before. Within twenty-four hours the stranger had become so bright that it outshone Capella. In a week or two it had visibly faded, and in the course of a few months it was hardly discernible with the naked eye.”

SOMETHING IN THE MOONLIGHT, by Lin Carter

Statement of Charles Winslow Curtis, M.D.

Quite early in the spring of 1949, I was fortunate enough to secure an appointment to the staff of the Dunhill Sanatorium in Santiago, California, as a psychiatric counselor working under the renowned Harrington J. Colby. The appointment was exciting and promising in the extreme, for it is seldom that a doctor as young as myself—the ink, as it were, hardly dry on his diploma—has the opportunity to work under so distinguished a member of the psychiatric profession as Dr. Colby.

Motoring up by taxi from Santiago, I enjoyed the glorious sunshine of Southern California and admired the almost tropical profusion of flowering shrubs and trees. I soon discovered the sanatorium to be a handsome group of buildings in the Spanish hacienda style, surrounded by spacious, well-planted grounds. Gardens and tennis-courts and even golf links were there for the recreation of the patients; there was, as well, a large marshy lake behind the property from which at night the croaking of bullfrogs could be heard. The sanatorium was one of the finest, I had been given to understand, in this part of the state, and I looked forward eagerly to working under such excellent conditions.

Dr. Colby himself, spry and keen-eyed for all his silver hair, greeted me affably.

“I trust you will enjoy working with us here at Dunhill, my dear Curtis,” he said while escorting me to my new office. “Your professors back at Miskatonic speak highly of you; I am given to understand that your primary interest in abnormal psychology is the several forms of acute paranoia. In that area, you will find one of your new patients, a fellow named Horby, singularly intriguing.”

“I’m sure I will, doctor,” I murmured politely. “What is the nature of his problem?”

“There is something in the moonlight that he abhors,” Colby said. “He cannot tolerate moonlight, and the drapes in his room must always be closely drawn. Not only that, but he sleeps with all lights burning, so that not one ray of moonlight could enter his room.”

“That seems harmless enough,” I said thoughtfully. “There are several cases on record of—”

“There’s more. He is afraid of lizards,” said Colby succinctly.

I shrugged. “Well, sir, phobic reactions to various reptiles are certainly common enough—”

“Not Horby’s,” he said dryly.

And then in utter seriousness, and without even the slightest trace of comment by inflection or expression, he made the most extraordinary statement.

“The lizard Mr. Horby fears happens to inhabit the moon.”

* * * *

Before very long I had met the rest of the staff, become acquainted with the layout of the sanatorium and familiar with its routine, and found myself “settling in” comfortably. For the most part, those patients to whom I was assigned were suffering from conditions depressingly common and ordinary. A lone exception was Uriah Horby: even as my superior had predicted on the day of my arrival, Horby’s case was singular and curious.

Paranoia, of course, is a mental disorder characterized by systematized delusions and the projection of inner conflicts, which are ascribed to the supposed hostility of others. Such, at least, is the textbook definition: I have found such cases more richly various and less simple of explanation.

Sometimes, paranoid patients believe themselves hounded by imaginary enemies (which can be anything from foreign spies to the Jesuits or some secret brotherhood of mystics). They believe themselves followed wherever they go and that they are spied upon continuously, and they assign to the malignancy of these shadowy foes every accident or mishap that chances to befall them.

The outward symptoms of paranoia are remarkably easy to discern: a tendency towards careless, disorderly dress, a neglect of personal cleanliness, rapid and disconnected patterns of speech, eyes that wander to and fro fearfully searching the shadowy corners of the room, and a furtive lowering of the voice so that hidden ears cannot overhear what is being said.

It is particularly in the eyes that paranoia can be detected, even by the layman. The gaze of a paranoid is either dim, glazed, unfocused, the attention being turned within to ruminating over one’s endless and pitiful persecution—or it is afire with the febrile gleam of the fanatic.

When I first entered the room assigned to Uriah Horby, I felt the shock of surprise. He was a small man in his mid-fifties, lean of build and going bald, clean-shaven and seemingly in good health. He was seated at a small folding desk studying sheaves of note-paper written (I noticed) in a clear, tight, legible hand…very unlike the hysteric scrawl of most cases of acute paranoia I have studied.

His person was scrupulously neat and so was his room. The narrow bed was neatly made, the small bookcase tidy, and the personal effects on his dresser and wash-stand efficiently organized. And when he raised his eyes to meet mine I was in for another shock of surprise.

For Uriah Horby had the clearest, most candid gaze of any man I have ever met. His eyes were shrewd and thoughtful, but their innocence and candor were those of a small child.

Before the tranquil sanity in his eyes, I felt myself amazed. But to cover my lack of composure, I hurried to introduce myself. He smiled politely.

“How do you do, Dr. Curtis? Pardon me if I do not rise: to do so would disarrange these notes, and I have a passion for organization and deplore messiness. I have known you were about to join our little social circle here at Dunhill for some time, of course. I trust you have found your welcome adequate? As Menander said, ‘The gentleman is at home in every circumstance,’ but a madhouse is somewhat lacking in the amenities.”

And this is the man who went in mortal fear of lizards? A man whose chiefest and most deadly enemy lived in the moon? A paranoid who had been confined to Dunhill for over six years, and was believed incurable?

I could hardly believe it, yet it was indeed so…

* * * *

At Dunhill, as I soon discovered, meetings between doctor and patient are informal and leisurely conversations, more like what my contemporaries call “rap sessions” than the usual clinical interrogations to which I had become accustomed. And Uriah Horby was a deft and interesting conversationalist. His speech was coherent, his mind seemingly rational, his demeanor quiet and controlled.

He was an exceptionally intelligent man of obvious breeding and had enjoyed an excellent education. The son of a local merchant, he had studied abroad and traveled widely before settling in Santiago. He was of scholarly interests, learned in several abstruse fields, and, although absorbed by the nature of his peculiar fixation, able to converse easily upon a variety of subjects.

I conceived of an intense curiosity concerning the man, for several reasons, one of them being that he displayed in his manner and deportment and appearance none of the haunted, harried traits I had so often observed in other victims of paranoia. And his delusions of persecution were certainly novel.

“Why is it that you fear lizards, Mr. Horby?” I inquired bluntly on one of our first meetings. He considered his folded hands, lips pursed judiciously, as if carefully choosing his words.

“They ruled the earth before the earliest of our mammalian ancestors arose,” he replied soberly. “In time, our kind replaced theirs, and they hate us for it. As well, they are utterly alien to our species—vicious and cold-blooded predators, devoid of emotion. That the highest order of sentience should reside in such loathsome reptiles is more than abhorrent, it is unholy.”

Despite a formal, even pedantic, diction, as can be seen above, his speech was completely unemotional and lucid. Whatever fears tormented the man were obviously buried deeply within him.

“My understanding has always been that reptiles possess very little of what we should call intelligence, and operate on rudimentary instinct alone,” I remarked. It is sometimes unwise to argue or to disagree with a mental patient, of course, but I meant to draw the man out, if possible.

He smiled dryly. “I gather, Dr. Curtis, that you have never encountered the
Necronomicon
in the range of your studies,” he said, changing the subject, or so I thought. I shook my head.

“I don’t believe I have,” I admitted frankly. “A Greek work, I assume? Theological?”

“Translated into Greek from the original Arabic,” he answered. “Also into Latin and Elizabethan English. The author, a Yemenite poet of the eighth century of the Christian era, was named Alhazred: his work has been dismissed by your colleagues in the formal sciences as the ravings of a diseased intelligence. Had there been asylums for the insane in Alhazred’s day, as there are, unfortunately, in my own, I have no doubt he would have been locked up in one.”

“I gather that this Alhazred discusses the intelligence of reptiles?”

“To complete my reply to your first query, it is a work of demonology rather than of theology,” he said somberly. “It presents a theory, drawn from documents and sources of the most fabulous antiquity, that this planet was first inhabited by entities from other worlds and galaxies and planes of existence, countless ages before the evolution of man. The nature of these beings is such that they would seem like gods or demons to lesser creatures like ourselves: immortal, indestructible, not constructed from matter as we know it, they are incomprehensible intelligences of pure, devouring evil—older than the world, and desirous of possessing it…”

These words, spoken in quiet, sober tones, sent a chill through the warm afternoon sunlight. Despite myself, I could not suppress a shudder: the nature of Horby’s paranoid delusions were, then, religious.

“In one section, during the first few chapters of Book IV,” he continued, “Alhazred relates the history of a prehistoric town or settlement called ‘Sarnath’ which early men built in ominous proximity to ‘the grey stone city Ib’ where dwelt a race of aquatic nonhumans who worshipped the demon Bokrug in the form of a gigantic water-lizard. Although Alhazred does not employ the term in the passages of which I speak, the aquatic beings are known as the Thunn’ha: they are green-skinned, batrachian, speechless. And they worshipped their reptilian divinity with abominable rites—”

Recalling Dr. Colby’s words, I hazarded aloud the guess that this devil-god of Ib resided in the moon. Disconcertingly, Uriah Horby paled and bit his lip.

“Not he…not he,” he whispered hoarsely. “But That which he serves…”

His voice shook a little on these words, as if struggling to suppress some powerful emotion. Sensing my patient’s perturbation, I changed the subject at this point and began to question him about his childhood experiences, seeking a possible trauma.

Our interview terminated not long thereafter.

2. Extract from the Notes of Uriah Horby

Tues, the 17th.
Young Doctor Curtis is a likable fellow and keen enough on his work, but a blind, stubbornly-ignorant fool nonetheless. As they all are. When my book is published, perhaps then the scientific community will recognize the value of my discovery and the dimensions of the enormous peril awaiting mankind in the near future.

Summer will soon be upon us, and the frogs will begin their hellish nightly serenade; I must strive to organize my notes, for the Hour Appointed cometh nigh and time is running out for me…perhaps young Curtis will prove useful in at least one sense: he seems fascinated by my “case” and exhibits a pitiful eagerness to gain my confidence. Possibly I can persuade him to assist me in locating the complete text of the Zoan chant; if it is not to be found in Prinn or in Von Junzt, perhaps it is in the
Cultes des Goules
, although Diedrich swears it is not. If only my father’s
Necronomicon
had been complete! Well, I have long ago tried all of the nine formulae between the Ngg and the Hnnrr, and the Zhooric sign is obviously of no avail against them. What remains, but the Chian Pentagram and the Xao games? And if they fail, I have yet to employ the thirteen formulae between the Yaa and the Ghhgg…

But time is running out for me, as the end of the Cycle nears. Running out for me?—it is running out for all mankind!

3. From the Statement of Charles Winslow Curtis

It was not long before I learned that Uriah Horby was an enthusiastic lifelong student of archaeology, and quite a talented, though an amateur, scholar in that field. It was this fascination which the ancient past held for him, it seemed, that had some connection to his present condition.

“I found my first clue in Alhazred, of course,” he remarked during the course of one of our early conversations together. “In chapter iii of Book Four…I am quoting from memory, of course, but my memory is most precise on certain subjects…‘In the fullness of time a prophet arose among the men of Sarnath, by name Kish: even that one we remember as the Elder Prophet, for that They Who Reign From Betelgeuse made revelation unto him, saying, Beware the Ib-folk, O men of Sarnath! for that they were come down to this earth from certain cavernous places in the Moon, ere man rose out of the slime, and the Water-thing they worship in foul ways is Other than ye think, and the name Bokrug is but a mask, behind the which there lurketh an Elder Horror’…now, following this clue, I delved into the pages of Von Junzt—”

“Von Junzt?” I interposed. He brushed my query aside with a prim yet brusque gesture.

“Friedrich Wilhelm Von Junzt, the German occultist, author of the
Unaussprechlichen Kulten
,” he said, a trifle impatiently. “You should be able to find him in most of the standard biographical reference works. If you ever bother to check up on any of the things I tell you, Dr. Curtis, you will discover that I am inventing nothing: all of these data are valid and authentic, and may be found in print. But, to continue—quoting from the Cylinders of Kadatheron and the Ilarnek Papyrus, which were Alhazred’s principal sources for the Sarnath legend, Von Junzt speculates most intriguingly on the lunar origin of Bokrug and those he commands, which are the Thuun-ha. It seems that when Alhazred transcribed from these same sources, he was working from an incomplete copy of the ancient texts. Expanding on the hint given in the passage from the
Necronomicon
I have already quoted to you, Von Junzt postulates an extra-galactic origin for Bokrug and his minions. He suggests that they came hither with the Great Old Ones through the star-spaces or the dimensions between them. But none of the ancient scriptures at our disposal mention Bokrug in the context of the Old Ones, which is odd.…”