Clay

by C. Hall Thompson

  At the approximate center of this putrid, blue-black mass, a raw, slobbering hole, which seemed to be a rudimentary mouth sucked in and out with obscene rhythm. It was from this opening in the reticulated, reptilian hide that the cloying, mucous-choked chant of Yoth Kala emanated. Actually, there was no face, but, nearly a foot above the wound-like mouth, there was a single, serpentine tentacle that writhed from side to side, sensing, rather than seeing, looking like some flesh-made periscope shot up from hell. At the end of the tentacle, I made out what might have been an eye—the squamous, dusky, expressionless orb of a snake. And, now, as the Thing crawled upward, the eye-tentacle suddenly grew rigid, turning toward me. For a second, the huge gelatinous form hesitated, then moved forward again, this time directly for me.

  Mechanically, sick with the putrid vileness of the odor the Thing cast off, I staggered backward, away from on-coming horror. The eye-tentacle wavered and followed me. The forerunning cilia of black, tarry stickiness flowed across the hall, only a few feet from me. The stench was unbearable. It seemed to me that the pagan song of Yoth Kala had taken on a high, evilly-humorous note. The slobbering mouth-hole spread in what could only be a hideous, anticipatory grin.

  *

  Now, my back was against the wall; I could still hear Cassandra thumping on the panels of her door, crying her invitation to this loathsome lover of hers, but I was no longer thinking of her. I could think only of the long, jelly-like feeler, sent out from the black, viscid mass, curling slowly about my waist, crushing. Perhaps, I screamed or swore; I do not know. I remember plunging my hand into my pocket and squeezing the trigger of that revolver. There was a smell of seared cloth as the bullet burnt through my coat, and then, sharply, a cry, almost human, of furious pain. A slitted, ugly wound opened in the feeler, and bluish, stinking slime spewed over my hand and waist; this was the foul, putrid blood of the creature of the Abyss! A thick, nauseous ichor that spurted like oil from the bullet wound. The feeler uncoiled in a tremendous reflex of agony, and I stumbled away, down the hall, fumbling in my pocket for the key to Cassandra’s door. I slammed the heavy portal behind me, and leaned against it, sobbing hysterically.

  The first thing I became conscious of was the sudden silence; it fell like a spidery caul over Heath House. I realized dully that, for a moment, Yoth Kala’s song had been stopped.

  Beyond the door, there was a vague, liquid rustling, then a tense, waiting noiselessness—as though the Thing were being very still, listening.

  And, here, in Cassandra’s room, there was another silence. Before me in the shadows, the pallid oval of Cassandra’s face wavered phantom-like, staring at me; the darkly brilliant eyes were tortured with a surprisingly sane fear. Abruptly, as though the silencing of that blasphemous incantation had momentarily released her to sanity, Cassie was in my arms, crying softly.

  “Don’t let him get me, darling! You mustn’t let him get me! Promise you won’t! Please!... I’m all right, now; it’s only when I hear his voice that I can’t refuse him...

  “It’s all right,” I said thickly. “We’ll get out of here somehow.... We’ll go away where he can never touch you....”

  “No... no, I can’t escape him that way....”

  “We can, Cassie! We must....”

  “No.... Believe me! I know! There’s only one escape.... You’ve got to kill me...

  “Cassie!”

  “It’s true! It’s the only way out. If you don’t care about me, think about the child... my child by him....”

  “Stop talking crazy. I tell you we’ll get away....”

  “Think of the child,” Cassandra insisted hoarsely. “I am the daughter of Zoth Syra. My father was a human; I was born in the image of that father. But, think of the child I must bear.... Suppose... suppose he is born in the image of his father... of that... that Thing out there!”

  8

  I was no longer seeing that frail, anguished visage, gray as death, with its ghastly, bluish throat-scars; I was no longer aware of the horror that shone through Cassandra’s eyes—the terror of a mind caught in a web from which there was no escape. All I could see was that slavering, heinous monstrosity beyond the chamber door. A child! Its child, born in its own hideous image! It couldn’t be! It must never happen! This lost decadent race of evil encroaching upon the earth, begetting its hellish fruit upon humans—-and in the end, overwhelming, conquering, reclaiming, as Lazarus Heath had prophesied!

  “Cassandra! O, my bride! Princess of the Abyss, I call. Yoth Kala calls!”

  Beneath my hands, I felt Cassandra’s fragile body turn rigid; her flesh suddenly burned against mine. Those dark eyes glazed and protruded horribly, and at her throat, the bluish lines pulsed obscenely, like the gills of a fish, like the nauseous mouth of the Thing in the hall. I tried to hold her, but as the chant of Yoth Kala rose wildly, her clawed hands beat insanely at my face; their nails bit into the flesh. With a species of supernatural strength, Cassandra tore herself loose. She thrust me to one side, and was at the door, tearing frantically at the latch, shrilling a nasal, hypnotic reply to her mate.

  Now, staring at the door itself, I saw the massive panels sag and warp, as if from tremendous pressure from without. A fetid black feeler oozed through the crevice at the bottom of the door. It circled, obscenely possessive, about Cassandra’s ankles, evil, caressing. The storm throbbed at the blackened casements. There was no lightning, now; only endless, abysmal blackness and rising through it, all the myriad hateful voices of the Green Abyss, howling in chorus to the incantations of Yoth Kala and his bride.

  What I did then was done with the sure, unthinking calm of a man who has reached his final decision. I walked slowly to Cassandra’s side; she was no longer conscious of my existence. She tore so maniacally at the door to freedom that her frail fingers bled. The revolver felt cool in my sweat-soaked grip. I brought the neat, businesslike muzzle within a few inches of Cassandra’s temple. I knew, now, that she was right. There was only one escape. I pulled the trigger.

  I waited for death.

  You must understand that. I fully expected to die. I had no idea of running. I saw Cassandra slump forward against the door. As she slid to the floor, her fingers clutched convulsively at the dark wood; the nails dug four parallel streaks the length of the panels. She lay very still. In that instant, as the crashing echo of the shot withered to silence through the catacombs of Heath House, a great terrified wail soared insanely above the onslaught of the storm; a scream of pain and unanswerable anger. The huge door bent beneath superhuman pressure. Then, slowly, as I waited for loathsome, foul-smelling death in the grip of Yoth Kala, a death I did not intend to fight, the weird chanting from without died away. There was silence. A strange, utterly peaceful silence such as Heath House had not known for countless years. I saw the black, stinking tentacle withdrawn from the room. Outside, in the hallway, a sickly hissing sound echoed mournfully. It moved down the staircase that creaked beneath its retreating weight.

  I walked unsteadily to the casement window and gazed out through a strangely abated storm. A sudden, peaceful moon had crept from behind dull clouds. And across the cold moonlit strand, into the cove, once again to be swallowed by the sightless depths of the Green Abyss, slithered the hideous, hell-spawned Thing no other living man has ever seen. Yoth Kala was gone.

  I know, now, why it happened that way. I have thought about it a great deal in these last lonely hours, and I believe I have found the answer. I had waited for the vengeance of Yoth Kala; I had expected to die as the destroyer of his bride. But, Yoth Kala could not reach me. As Lazarus Heath had been before her, Cassandra was an instrument. She was the key in the grip of the people of the Abyss, their only contact with this world that had cast them out ages since, the only one through whom they could regain a foothold in that world, on whom they could beget the race that would one day reclaim all that they had lost. When I killed Cassandra, I cut off that contact. Yoth Kala and his hideous breed were once more consigned to the bonded anonymity of th
e Abyss. This time, at least, the world had escaped their vengeance.

  I walked back to where Cassandra lay, calm, and at peace. I sat down beside her, and smoothed her soft, warm hair gently. I think I cried. The storm whispered a last protest and died. I sat there with Cassandra until late the next evening, when Dr. Ambler came to call, and found us.

  Only another half-hour until dawn. The cell block has been very quiet most of the night. Outside, in the grayish half-light, there is a sound of distant business that seems ghostly coming in through the bars on the cold early morning air. There is a creaking of wood, and then a sudden thud. This is repeated several times. They are testing the spring-trap of my gallows.

  They say that prayers help. If you have come this far, if you think you understand the story of Cassandra Heath, you might try it. Make it a very special sort of prayer. Not for Cassandra and me. All our prayers were said a long time since. We are at peace.

  This prayer must be for you—for you and all the others who must be left behind, who cannot walk with me, up that final flight of wooden stairs, to peace and escape, who must go on living in the shadow of a monstrous evil of which they are not even aware, and so, can never destroy. You may need those prayers.

  Somewhere beyond the edge of the last lone lip of land, beyond the rim of reality, sunken beneath the slime and weed of innumerable centuries, the creatures of the Abyss live on. Zoth Syra still reigns, and the syren songs are still sung. Entombed in their foul, watery empire, they writhe; restless, waiting.... This time they have lost their foothold. This time their link with the world of normalcy has been broken, their contact destroyed. This time they have failed.

  But, they will try again... and again....

  The Will of Claude Ashur

  I

  THEY have locked me in. A moment since, for what well may have been the last time, I heard the clanking of the triple-bolts as they were shot into place. The door to this barren white chamber presents no extraordinary appearance, but it is plated with impenetrable steel. The executives of the Institution have gone to great pains to ensure the impossibility of escape. They know my record. They have listed me among those patients who are dangerous and "recurrently violent." I haven't contradicted them; it does no good to tell them that my violence is long since spent; that I have no longer the inclination nor the strength requisite to make yet another attempted break for freedom. They cannot understand that my freedom meant something to me only so long as there was hope of saving Gratia Thane from the horror that returned from the flesh-rotting brink of the grave to reclaim her. Now, that hope is lost; there is nothing left but the welcome release of death. I can die as well in an insane asylum as elsewhere.

  Today, the examinations, both physical and mental, were quickly dispensed with. They were a formality; routine gone through "for the record." The doctor has left. He wasn’t the man who usually examines me. I presume he is new at the Institution. He was a tiny man, fastidiously dressed, with a narrow, flushed face and a vulgar diamond stickpin. There were lines of, distaste and fear about his mouth from the moment he looked into the loathesome mask that, is my face. Doubtless one of the white-suited attendants warned him of the particular horror of my case. I didn’t resent it when he came no nearer me than necessary. Rather, I pitied the poor devil for the awkwardness of his situation; I have known men of obviously stronger stomach to "stumble away from the sight of me, retching with sick terror. My name, the unholy whisperings of my story, the remembrance of the decaying, breathing half-corpse that I am, are legendary in the winding gray halls of the Asylum. I cannot blame them for being relieved by the knowledge that they will soon shed the burden I have been—-that, before long, they will consign this unhuman mass of pulsating flesh to maggots and oblivion.

  Before the doctor left, he wrote something in his notebook; there would be the name: Claude Ashur. Under today’s date he has written only a few all-explanatory words. "Prognosis negative. Hopelessly insane. Disease in most advanced stage. Demise imminent."

  Watching the slow, painful progress of his pen across the paper, I experienced one last temptation, to speak. I was overwhelmed with a violent need to scream out my now-familiar protest to this new man, in the desperate hope that he might believe me. The blasphemous words welled for an instant in my, throat, sending forth a thick nasal sob. Quickly, the doctor glanced up, and the apprehensive loathing of his gaze told me the truth. It would do no good to speak. He was like all the rest, with their soothing voices and unbelievable smiles. He would listen to the hideous, nightmare that is the story of Gratia and my brother and myself, and, in the end, he would nod calmly, more convinced than ever that I was stark, raving mad. I remained, silent. The last flame of hope guttered and died. I knew in that moment, that no one would ever believe that I am not Claude Ashur.

  Claude Ashur is my brother.

  *

  DO NOT misunderstand me. This is no mundane instance of confused identity. It is something infinitely more evil. It is a horror conceived and realized by a warped brain bent upon revenge; a mind in league with the powers of darkness, attuned to the whimpering of lost, forbidden rites and incantations. No one ever could have mistaken me for Claude Ashur. To the contrary, from the earliest days of our childhood, people found it difficult to believe that we were brothers. There could not have been two creatures more unlike than he and I. If you will, imagine the average boy and man, the medium-built creature of normal weight and nondescript features, whose temperament is safely, if somewhat dully balanced —in short, the product of normalcy— you will have before you a portrait of myself. My brother, Claude, was the precise antithesis of all these things.

  He was always extremely delicate of health, and given to strange moodiness. His head, seemed too large for the fragility, of his body, and his face was constantly shadowed by a pallor that worried my father dreadfully.

  His nose was long and thin with supersensitive nostril-volute’s, and his eyes, set well apart in deep sockets, held a sort of mirthless brilliance. From the outset, I was the stronger as well as the elder, and yet it was always Claude with his frail body and powerful will who ruled Inneswich Priory.

  At a certain point in the-road that fingers its way along the lifeless, Atlantic-clawed stretches of the Northern New Jersey coast, the unsuspecting traveler may turn off into a bramble-clotted byway. There is (or was, at one time), a signpost pointing inland that proclaims: “INNESWICH—1/2 MILE." Not many take that path today. People who know that part of the country, give wide berth to Inneswich and the legends that hang like a slimy caul over the ancient coastal village. They have heard infamous tales of the Priory that lies on the northernmost edge of Inneswich and of late years, the town, the Priory, the few intrepid villagers who ding to their homes, have fallen into ill-repute. Things were different in the days before the coming of Claude Ashur.

  My father, Edmund Ashur, was the pastor of the Inneswich Lutheran Church; he had come to the Priory, a timid, middle-aged man with his young bride, two years before I was born. The night Claude Ashur was born Inneswich Priory became the house of death.

  *

  THE night Claude was born. I have never really thought of it in that way; to me, it has always been the night my mother died. Even I, child that I was, had been caught in the web of the pervading sense of doom that hung over Inneswich Priory all that day. A damp sea-breeze smelling of rain, had swept westward, and perforce, I had spent the day indoors. The house had been uncannily quiet, with only the muffled footfalls of my father, pacing in the library, trying to smile when his gaze chanced to meet mine.

  I did not know, then, that the time for the accouchement was near. I knew only that, in the last weeks, my mother had been too pale, and the huge, cold rooms seemed lonely for her laughter. Toward nightfall, the village physician, a round apple-cheeked man named Ellerby, was summoned; he brought me taffy from the general store as he always did, and shortly after he disappeared up the wide staircase, I was packed off to bed. For what seemed like hou
rs I lay in the dark, while a leaden bulwark of clouds rolled inland with the storm. Rain lashing against my casement, I fell to sleep at last, crying because my mother hadn't come to kiss me goodnight.

  I thought it was the screaming that woke me. I know, now, that the pain-torn cries had died long-since with my mother’s last shuddering breath. Perhaps some final plaintive echo had slithered along the blackened halls finding my sleep-fogged, child’s brain at last. A cold, nameless terror numbed me as I crept down the winding carpeted stairs. At the newelpost, a soft, desperate lost sound stopped me. And then, through the open library door, I saw them. My father was sunken in a leather armchair by the fireless grate; candlelight wavered on the hands that covered his face. Uncontrollable sobs wracked his bowed shoulders. After a moment, his face more solemn and pallid than I had ever seen it, Dr. Ellerby came from the shadow beyond my view. His thin, ineffectual hand touched Father’s arm gently. His voice was thick.

  "I... I know how little words help, Edmund... I just want you to know, I did all I could. Mrs. Ashur was... He shrugged his plump shoulders in impotent rage at fate. "She just wasn’t strong enough. It was odd; as if the baby were too much for her -too powerful— taking all the strength, the will from her. It was as if..."

  His words withered into nothingness, and crawling abysmal darkness clawed at me. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. Fear and loneliness knotted in my chest. I could barely breathe. Years later, the completion of that last unfinished sentence of Ellerby’s became more and more horribly clear to me. "It was as if he had killed her, so that he could live..."