The Taint and Other Novellas (33 page)

Taking the diary with me, I ran out of my room with one thought in my mind. Whatever Julian thought he was doing I had to stop him. Already his delvings constituted a terrible threat to his health, and who could say but that the next time a cure might not be possible? If he suffered a second attack, there was the monstrous possibility that he would remain permanently insane.

Immediately I started my frantic hammering, he opened the cellar door and I literally fell inside. I say I fell; indeed, I did—I fell from a sane world into a lunatic, alien, nightmare dimension totally outside any previous experience. As long as I live I shall never forget what I saw. The floor in the centre of the cellar had been cleared, and upon it, chalked in bold red strokes, was a huge and unmistakable evil symbol. I had seen it before in those books which were now destroyed…and now I recoiled at what I had later read of it! Beyond the sign, in one corner, a pile of ashes was all that remained of Julian’s many notes. An old iron grating had been fixed horizontally over bricks, and the makings of a fire were already upon it. A cryptographic script, which I recognized as being the blasphemous
Nyhargo Code,
was scrawled in green and blue chalk across the walls, and the smell of incense hung heavily in the air. The whole scene was ghastly, unreal, a living picture from Eliphas Lévi—nothing less than the lair of a sorcerer! Horrified, I turned to Julian—in time to see him lift a heavy iron poker and start the stunning swing downwards towards my head. Nor did I lift a finger to stop him. I could not—
for he had taken off those spectacles, and the sight of his terrible face had frozen me rigid as polar ice…

• • •

Regaining consciousness was like swimming up out of a dead, dark sea. I surfaced through shoals of night-black swimmers to an outer world where the ripples of the ocean were dimly lit by the glow from a dying orange sun. As the throbbing in my head subsided, those ripples resolved themselves into the pattern of my pin-stripe jacket—but the orange glow remained! My immediate hopes that it had all been a nightmare were shattered at once; for as I carefully raised my head from its position on my chest the whole room slowly came under my unbelieving scrutiny. Thank God Julian had his back to me and I could not see his face. Had I but
glimpsed
again, in those first moments of recovery, those hellish eyes I am certain the sight would have returned me to instant oblivion.

I could see now that the orange glow was reflected from the now blazing fire on the horizontal grill, and I saw that the poker which had been used to strike me down was buried in the heart of the flames with red-heat creeping visibly up the metal towards the wooden handle. Glancing at my watch, I saw that I had been unconscious for many hours—it was fast approaching the midnight hour. That one glance was also sufficient to tell me that I was tied to the old wicker-chair in which I had been seated, for I saw the ropes. I flexed my muscles against my bonds and noticed, not without a measure of satisfaction, that there was a certain degree of slackness in them. I had managed to keep my mind from dwelling on Julian’s facial differences; but, as he turned towards me, I steeled myself to the coming shock.

His face was an impassive white mask in which shone, cold and malevolent and indescribably alien, those eyes! As I live and breathe, I swear they were twice the size they ought to have been—and they bulged, uniformly scarlet, outwards from their sockets in chill, yet aloof hostility.

“Ah ! You’ve returned to us, dear brother. But why d’you stare so? Is it that you find this face so awful? Let me assure you, you don’t find it half so hideous as I!”

Monstrous truth, or what I thought was the truth, began to dawn in my mazed and bewildered brain. “The dark spectacles!” I gasped. “No wonder you had to wear them, even at night. You couldn’t bear the thought of people seeing those diseased eyes!”

“Diseased? No, your reasoning is only partly correct. I had to wear the glasses, yes; it was that or give myself away—which wouldn’t have pleased those who sent me in the slightest, believe me. For Cthulhu, beneath the waves on the far side of the world, has already made it known to Othuum, my master, of his displeasure. They have spoken in dreams, and Cthulhu is
angry!”
He shrugged, “Also, I needed the spectacles; these eyes of mine are accustomed to piercing the deepest depths of the ocean! Your surface world was an agony to me at first—but now I am used to it. In any case, I don’t plan to stay here long, and when I go I will take this body with me,” he plucked at himself in contempt, “for my pleasure.”

I knew that what he was saying was not, could not, be possible, and I cried out to him, begging him to recognize his own madness. I babbled that modern medical science could probably correct whatever was wrong with his eyes. My words were drowned out by his cold laughter. “Julian!” I cried.

“Julian?” he answered. “Julian Haughtree?” He lowered his awful face until it was only inches from mine. “Are you blind, man?
I am Pesh-Tlen, Wizard of deep Gell-Ho to the North!”
He turned away from me, leaving my tottering mind to total up a nerve-blasting sum of horrific integers. The Cthulhu Mythos—those passages from the
Cthaat Aquadingen
and the
Life of St. Brendan
—Julian’s dreams; “They can now control dreams as of old.” The Mind Transfer—“They will rise”—“through his eyes in my body”—giant gods waiting in the ocean deeps—“ He shall walk the Earth in my guise”—a submarine disturbance off the coast of Greenland!
Deep Gell-Ho to the North…

God in heaven! Could such things be? Was this all, in the end, not just some fantastic delusion of Julian’s but an incredible fact? This thing before me! Did he—
it
—really see through the eyes of a monster from the bottom of the sea? And if so—
was it governed by that monster’s mind?

After that, it was not madness that gripped me—not then—rather was it the refusal of my whole being to accept that which was unacceptable. I do not know how long I remained in that state, but the spell was abruptly broken by the first, distant chime of the midnight hour.

At that distant clamour my mind became crystal clear and the eyes of the being called Pesh-Tlen blazed even more unnaturally as he smiled—if that word describes what he
did
with his face—in final triumph. Seeing that smile, I knew that something hideous was soon to come and I struggled against my bonds. I was gratified to feel them slacken a little more about my body. The—creature—had meanwhile turned away from me and had taken the poker from the fire. As the chimes of the hour continued to ring out faintly from afar it raised its arms, weaving strange designs in the air with the tip of the redly glowing poker, and commenced a chant or invocation of such a loathsome association of discordant tones and pipings that my soul seemed to shrink inside me at the hearing. It was fantastic that what was grunted, snarled, whistled, and hissed with such incredible fluency could ever have issued from the throat of something I had called brother, regardless what force motivated his vocal cords; but, fantastic or not, I heard it. Heard it? Indeed, as that mad cacophony died away, tapering off to a high-pitched, screeching end—
I saw its result!

Writhing tendrils of green smoke began to whirl together in one corner of the cellar. I did not see the smoke arrive, nor could I say whence it came—it was just suddenly there! The tendrils quickly became a column, rapidly thickening, spinning faster and faster, forming—
a shape!

Outside in the night freak lightning flashed and thunder rumbled over the city in what I have since been told was the worst storm in years—but I barely heard the thunder or the heavy downpour of rain. All my senses were concentrated on the silently spinning, rapidly coalescing thing in the corner. The cellar had a high ceiling, almost eleven feet, but what was forming seemed to fill that space easily.

I screamed then, and mercifully fainted. For once again my mind had been busy totalling the facts as I knew them, and I had mentally questioned Pesh-Tlen’s reason for calling up this horror from the depths—or from wherever else it came. Upstairs in my room, unless Julian had been up there and removed it, the answer lay where I had thrown it—Walmsley’s translation! Had not Julian, or Pesh-Tlen, or whatever the thing was, written in that diary:
“It will now be necessary to contact my natural form in order to re-enter it”?

My black-out could only have been momentary, for as I regained consciousness for the second time I saw that the thing in the corner had still not completely formed. It had stopped spinning and was now centrally opaque, but its outline was infirm and wavering, like a scene viewed through smoke. The creature that had been Julian was standing to one side of the cellar, arms raised towards the semi-coherent object in the corner, features strained and twitching with hideous expectancy.

“Look,” it spoke coldly, half turning towards me. “See what I and the Deep Ones have done! Behold, mortal, your brother—
Julian Haughtree!”

For the rest of my days, which I believe will not number many, I will never be able to rid my memory of that sight! While others lie drowning in sleep I will claw desperately at the barrier of consciousness, not daring to close my eyes for fear of that which lingers yet beyond my eyelids. As Pesh-Tlen spoke those words—the thing in the corner finally materialized!

Imagine a black, glistening, ten-foot heap of twisting, ropey tentacles and gaping mouths…Imagine the outlines of a slimy, alien face in which, sunk deep in gaping sockets, are the remains of ruptured
human
eyes…Imagine shrieking in absolute clutching, leaping fear and horror—and imagine the thing which I have here described answering your screams in a madly familiar voice;
a voice which you instantly recognize!

“Phillip! Phillip, where are you? What’s happened? I can’t see…We came up out of the sea, and then I was whirled away somewhere and I heard your voice.” The horror rocked back and forth. “Don’t let them take me back, Phillip!”

The voice was that of my brother, all right—but not the old sane Julian I had known! That was when I, too, went mad; but it was a madness with a purpose, if nothing else. When I had previously fainted, the sudden loosening of my body must have completed the work which I had started on the ropes. As I lurched to my feet they fell from me to the floor. The huge, blind monstrosity in the corner had started to lumber in my direction, vaguely twisting its tentacles before it as it came. At the same time the red-eyed demon in Julian’s form was edging carefully towards it, arms eagerly outstretched.

“Julian,” I screamed, “look out—only by contact can he re-enter—and then he intends to kill you, to take you back with him to the deeps.”

“Back to the deeps? No! No, he can’t! I won’t go!” The lumbering horror with my brother’s mad voice spun blindly around, its flailing tentacles knocking the hybrid sorcerer flying across the floor. I snatched the poker from the fire where it had been replaced and turned threateningly upon the sprawling half-human.

“Stand still, Julian!” I gibbered over my shoulder at the horror from the sea as the wizard before me leapt to his feet. The lumberer behind me halted. “You, Pesh-Tlen, get back.” There was no plan in my bubbling mind; I only knew I had to keep the two—
things
—apart. I danced like a boxer, using the glowing poker to ward off the suddenly frantic Pesh-Tlen.

“But it’s time—it’s time! The contact must be now!” The red-eyed thing screeched. “Get out of my way…” Its tones were barely human now. “You can’t stop me…I must…must…must make strong…strong contact! I must…
bhfg—ngyy fhtlhlh hegm—yeh’hhg narcchhh’yy!
You won’t cheat me!”

A pool of slime, like the trail of a great snail, had quickly spread from the giant shape behind me; and, even as he screamed, Pesh-Tlen suddenly leapt forward straight onto it, his feet skidding on the evil-smelling mess. He completely lost his balance. Arms flailing he fell, face down, sickeningly, onto the rigid red-hot poker in my hand. Four inches of the glowing metal slid, like a warm knife through butter, into one of those awful eyes. There was a hissing sound, almost drowned out by the creature’s single shrill scream of agony, and a small cloud of steam rose mephitically from the thing’s face as it pitched to the floor.

Instantly the glistening black giant behind me let out a shriek of terror. I spun round, letting the steaming poker fall, to witness that monstrosity from the ocean floor rocking to and fro, tentacles wrapped protectively round its head. After a few seconds it became still, and the rubbery arms fell listlessly away to reveal the multi-mouthed face with its ruined, rotting eyes.

“You’ve killed him, I know it,” Julian’s voice said, calmer now. “He is finished and I am finished—already I can feel them recalling me.” Then, voice rising hysterically
“They won’t take me alive!”

The monstrous form trembled and its outline began to blur. My legs crumpled beneath me in sudden reaction, and I pitched to the floor. Perhaps I passed out again—I don’t know for sure—but when I next looked in its direction the horror had gone. All that remained was the slime and the grotesque corpse.

• • •

I do not know where my muscles found the strength to carry my tottering and mazed body out of that house. Sanity did not drive me, I admit that, for I was quite insane. I wanted to stand beneath the stabbing lightning and scream at those awful, rain-blurred stars. I wanted to bound, to float in my madness through eldritch depths of unhallowed black blood. I wanted to cling to the writhing breasts of Yibb-Tstll. Insane—insane, I tell you, I gibbered and moaned, staggering through the thunder-crazed streets until, with a roar and a crash, sanity-invoking lightning smashed me down…

You know the rest. I awoke to this world of white sheets; to you, the police psychiatrist, with your soft voice…Why must you insist that I keep telling my story? Do you honestly think to make me change it? It’s
true,
I tell you! I admit to killing my brother’s body—but it wasn’t
his mind
that I burned out! You stand there babbling of awful eye diseases.
Julian had no eye disease!
D’you really imagine that the other eye, the unburnt one which you found in that body—in my brother’s face—was his? And what of the pool of slime in the cellar and the stink? Are you stupid or something? You’ve asked for a statement, and here it is! Watch, damn you, watch while I scribble it down…you damn great crimson eye…always watching me…who would have thought that the lips of Bugg-Shash could
suck
like that? Watch, you redness you…and look out for the Scarlet Feaster!
No, don’t take the paper away…