Mysteries of the Worm

by Robert Bloch

  The ease with which he remembered vivid details was also unusual. There seemed to be no blurred mental concepts at all; he recalled every detail of dreams he had experienced perhaps years ago. Once in a while he would gloss over portions of his descriptions with the excuse that “it would not be possible to make things intelligible in speech.” He insisted that he had seen and comprehended much that was beyond description in a three-dimensional way, and that in sleep he could feel colors and hear sensations.

  Naturally this was a fascinating field of research for me. In reply to my questions, Gordon once told me that he had always known these dreams from earliest remembered childhood to the present day, and that the only difference between the first ones and the last was an increase of intensity. He now claimed that he felt his impressions much more strongly.

  The locale of the dreams was curiously fixed. Nearly all of them occurred amidst scenes which he somehow recognized were outside of our own cosmos. Mountains of black stalagmites; peaks and cones amidst crater valleys of dead suns; stone cities in the stars; these were commonplace. Sometimes he walked or flew, shambled or moved in unnamable ways with the indescribable races of other planets. Monsters he could and would describe, but there were certain intelligences which existed only in a gaseous, nebulous state, and still others which were merely the embodiment of an inconceivable force.

  Gordon was always conscious that he himself was present in every dream. Despite the awesome and often unnerving adventures he so glibly described, he claimed that none of these sleep-images could be classified as nightmares. He had never felt afraid. Indeed, at times he experienced a curious reversal of identity, so that he regarded his dreams as natural and his waking life as unreal.

  I questioned him as deeply as possible, and he had no explanation to offer. His family history had been normal in this and every other respect, although one of his ancestors had been a “wizard” in Wales. He himself was not a superstitious man, but he was forced to admit that certain of his dreams coincided curiously with descriptive passages in such books as the Necronomicon, the Mysteries of the Worm, and the Book of Eibon.

  But he had experienced similar dreams long before his mind prompted him to read the obscure volumes mentioned above. He was confident that he had seen “Azozath” and “Yuggoth” prior to the time he knew of their half-mythic existence in the legendary lore of ancient days. He was able to describe “Nyarlathotep” and “Yog-Sothoth” from what he claimed to be actual dream contact with these allegorical entities.

  I was profoundly impressed by these statements, and finally was forced to admit that I had no logical explanation to offer. He himself took the matter so seriously that I never tried to humor or ridicule him out of his notions.

  Indeed, every time he wrote a new story I asked him quite seriously about the dream which had inspired it, and for several years he told me such things at our weekly meetings.

  But it was about this time that he entered into that phase of writing which brought him into general disfavor. The magazines which catered to his work began to refuse some of the manuscripts as too horrible and revolting for popular taste. His first published book, Night-Gaunt, was a failure, due to the morbidity of its theme.

  I sensed a subtle change in his style and subject. No longer did he adhere to conventional plot-motivation. He began to tell his stories in first-person, but the narrator was not a human being. His choice of words clearly indicated hyperesthesia.

  In reply to my remonstrances on introducing non-human ideas, he argued that a real weird tale must be told from the viewpoint of the monster or entity itself. This was not a new theory to me, but I did object to the shockingly morbid note which his stories now emphasized. Then too, his nonhuman characters were not conventional ghouls, werewolves, or vampires. Instead he presented queer demons, star-spawned creatures, and even wrote a tale about a disembodied intelligence that he called The Principle of Evil.

  This stuff was not only metaphysical and obscure, it was also insane, to any normal concept of thought. And the ideas and theories he expounded were becoming absolutely blasphemous. Consider his opening statement in The Soul of Chaos:

  This world is but a tiny island in the dark sea of Infinity, and there are horrors swirling all around us. Around us? Rather let us say amongst us. I know, for I have seen them in my dreams, and there are more things in this world than sanity can ever see.

  The Soul of Chaos, by the way, was the first of his four privately printed books. By this time he had lost all contact with the regular publishers and magazines. He dropped most of his correspondents, too, and concentrated on a few eccentric thinkers in the Orient.

  His attitude toward me was changing, too. No longer did he expound his dreams to me, or outline theories of plot and style. I didn’t visit him very often any more, and he rejected my overtures with unmistakable brusqueness.

  I thought it just as well, in view of the last few sessions we had together. For one thing, I didn’t like some of the new books in his library. Occultism is all right for a study, but the nightmare arcana of Cultes des Goules and the Daemonolorum are not conducive to a healthy state of mind. Then too, his last private manuscripts were almost too wild. I was not so favorably impressed at the earnestness with which he treated certain cryptic lore; some of his ideas were much too strong. In another century he would have been persecuted for sorcery if he dared express half the beliefs contained in these writings.

  There were other factors which somehow made me half glad to avoid the man. Always a quiet recluse by choice, his hermit-like tendencies seemed visibly accentuated. He never went out any more, he told me; not even walking in the yard. Food and other necessities he had delivered weekly to the door. In the evening he allowed no light but a small lamp within the parlor study. All he volunteered about this rigid routine was non-committal. He said that he spent all his time in sleeping and writing.

  He was thinner, paler, and moved with a more mystic dreaminess of manner than ever before. I thought of drugs; he looked like a typical addict. But his eyes were not the feverish globes of fire which characterize the hashish-eater, and opium had not wasted his physique. Then I suspected insanity myself; his detached manner of speech and his suspicious refusal to enter deeply into any subject of conversation, might be due to some nervous disorder. He was by nature susceptible to certain schizoid characteristics. Perhaps he was deranged.

  Certainly what he said at the last about his recent dreams tended to substantiate my theory. I’ll never forget that final discussion of dreams as long as I live—for reasons soon to be apparent.

  He told me about his last stories with a certain reluctance. Yes, they were dream-inspired, like the rest. He had not written them for public consumption, and the editors and publishers could go to blazes for all he cared. He wrote them because he had been told to write them.

  Yes, told to. By the creature in his dreams, of course. He did not care to speak about it, but since I was a friend . . .

  I urged him. Now I wish I hadn’t; perhaps I could have been spared the knowledge that follows . . .

  Edgar Henquist Gordon, sitting there in the wan lunar light of the moon; sitting at the wide window with eyes that equaled the leprous moonlight in the dreadful intensity of their pallid glow . . .

  “I know about my dreams now. I was chosen, from the first, to be the Messiah; the messenger of His word. No, I’m not going religious. I’m not speaking of a God in the ordinary sense of the word men use to designate any power they cannot understand. I speak of the Dark One. You’ve read about Him in those books I showed you; the Demon Messenger, they call Him. But that’s all allegorical. He isn’t Evil, because there is no such thing as Evil. He is merely alien. And I am to be His messenger on earth.

  “Don’t fidget so! I’m not mad. You’ve heard about it all before—how the elder peoples worshipped forces that once were manifested physically on Earth, like the Dark One that has chosen me. The legends are silly, of course. He isn’t a destroyer—me
rely a superior intelligence who wishes to gain mental rapport with human minds, so as to enable certain—ah exchanges between humanity and Those beyond.

  “He speaks to me in dreams. He told me to write my books, and distribute them to those who know. When the right time comes, we shall band together, and unfold some of the secrets of the cosmos at which men have only guessed or even sensed in dreams.

  “That’s why I’ve always dreamed. I was chosen to learn. That is why my dreams have shown me such things—‘Yuggoth’ and all the rest. Now I am being prepared for my—ah—apostleship.

  “I can’t tell you much more. I must write and sleep a great deal nowadays, so that I can learn faster.

  “Who is this Dark One? I can’t tell you any more. I suppose you already think I’m crazy. Well, you have many supporters of that theory. But I’m not. It’s true!

  “You remember all I’ve told you about my dreams—how they kept growing in intensity? Well enough. Several months ago I had some different dream-sequences. I was in the dark—not the ordinary dark you know, but the absolute dark beyond Space. It isn’t describable in three-dimensional concepts or thought-patterns at all. The darkness has a sound, and a rhythm akin to breathing, because it is alive. I was merely a bodiless mind there; when I saw Him.

  “He came out of the dark and—ahm—communicated with me. Not by words. I’m thankful that my previous dreams had been so arranged as to inure me against visual horror. Otherwise I should never have been able to stand the sight of Him. You see, He is not like humans, and the shape He chose to wear is pretty awful. But, once you understand, you can realize that the shape is just as allegorical as the legends ignorant men have fostered about Him and the others.

  “He looks something like a medieval conception of the demon Asmodeus. Black all over, and furry, with a snout like a hog, green eyes, and the claws and fangs of a wild beast.

  “I was not frightened after He communicated, though. You see, He wears that shape merely because foolish people in olden days believed that He looked that way. Mass belief has a curious influence on intangible forces, you understand. And men, thinking such forces evil, have made them assume the aspect of evilness. But He means no harm.

  “I wish I could repeat some of the things He has told me.

  “Yes, I’ve seen Him every night since then. But I promised to reveal nothing until the day is ready. Now that I understand, I am no longer interested in writing for the herd. I am afraid humanity doesn’t mean anything to me since I have learned those steps which lie beyond—and how to achieve them.

  “You can go away and laugh at me all you like. All I can say is that nothing in my books has been exaggerated in the least—and that they only contain infinitesimal glimpses of the ultimate revelations which lurk beyond human consciousness. But when the day He has appointed shall arrive, then the whole world will learn the truth.

  “Until then, you’d best keep away from me. I can’t be disturbed, and every evening the impressions get stronger and stronger. I sleep eighteen hours a day now, at times, because there is so much that he wishes to tell me; so much to be learned in preparation. But when the day comes I shall be the godhead—He has promised me that in some way I shall become incarnate with Him!”

  Such was the substance of his monolog. I left shortly after that. There was nothing I could say or do. But later I thought a lot about what he had said.

  He was quite gone, poor fellow, and it was evident that another month or so would bring him to the breaking-point. I felt sincerely sorry, and deeply concerned over the tragedy. After all, he had been my friend and mentor for many years, and he was a genius. It was all too bad.

  Still, he had a strange and disturbingly coherent story. It certainly conformed to his previous accounts of dream-life, and the legendary background, was authentic, if the Necronomicon is to be believed. I wondered if his Dark One was remotely connected with the Nyarlathotep fable, or the “Dark Demon” of the witch-coven rituals.

  But all that nonsense about the “day” and his being a “Messiah” on Earth was too absurd. What did he mean about the Dark One’s promise of incarnating himself in Gordon? Demonic possession is an old belief credited only by the childishly superstitious.

  Yes, I though plenty about the whole thing. For several weeks I did a little investigating of my own. I reread the later books, corresponded with Gordon’s former editors and publishers, dropped notes to his old friends. And I even studied some of the old magic tomes myself.

  I got nothing tangible from all this, save a growing realization that something must be done to save Gordon from himself. I was terribly afraid for the man’s mind, and I knew that I must act quickly.

  So one night, about three weeks after our final meeting, I left the house and started to walk to his home. I intended to plead with him, if possible, to go away; or at least insist that he submit to a medical examination. Why I pocketed the revolver I cannot say—some inner instinct warned me that I might meet with a violent response.

  At any rate I had the gun in my coat, and I gripped the butt firmly in one hand as I threaded some of the darker streets that led to his old dwelling on Cedar Street.

  It was a moonless night, with ominous hints of a thunder-storm in the offing. The little wind that warns of approaching rain was already sighing in the dark trees overhead, and streaks of lightning occasionally flared in the west.

  My mind was a chaotic jumble of apprehension, anxiety, determination, and a lurking bewilderment. I did not even formulate what I was going to do or say once I saw Gordon. I kept wondering what had happened to him in the last few weeks—whether the “day” he spoke of was approaching at last.

  Tonight was May-Eve . . .

  The house was dark. I rang and rang, but there was no response. The door opened under the impact of my shoulder. The noise of splintering wood was drowned out by the first peal of thunder overhead.

  I walked down the hall to the study. Everything was dark. I opened the study door. There was a man sleeping on the couch by the window. It was undoubtedly Edgar Gordon.

  What was he dreaming about? Had he met the Dark One again in his dreams? The Dark One, “looking like Asmodeus—black all over, and furry, with green eyes, hog-snout, and the claws and fangs of some wild beast;” the Dark One who told him about the “day” when Gordon should become incarnate with Him?

  Was he dreaming about this, on May-Eve? Edgar Henquist Gordon, sleeping a strange sleep on the couch by the window . . .

  I reached for the light-switch, but a sudden flash of lightning forestalled me. It lasted only a second, but it was brilliant enough to illuminate the entire room. I saw the walls, the furniture, the terrible scribbled manuscripts on the table.

  Then I fired three revolver shots before the final flicker died away. There was a single eldritch scream that was mercifully drowned in a new burst of thunder. I screamed, myself. I never turned on the light, but only gathered up the papers on the table and ran out into the rain.

  On the way home rain mingled with tear-drops on my face, and I echoed each new roar of thunder with a sob of deathly fear.

  I could not endure the lighting, though, and shielded my eyes as I ran blindly to the safety of my own rooms. There I burnt the papers I had brought without reading them. I had no need of that, for there was nothing more to know.

  That was weeks ago. When Gordon’s house was entered at last, no body was found—only an empty suit of clothes that looked as though it had been tossed carelessly on the couch. Nothing else had been disturbed, but police point to the absence of Gordon’s papers as an indication that he took them along when he disappeared.

  I am very glad that nothing else has been found, and would be content to keep silent, were it not for the fact that Gordon is regarded as insane. I once thought him insane, too, so you see I must speak. After that I am going away from here, because I want to forget as much as I can. At that, I’m lucky I do not dream.

  No, Edgar Gordon was not insane. He was a genius,
and a fine man. But he told the truth in his books—about horrors being around us and amongst us.

  Because when that flash of lightning blazed across the room, I saw what lay in sleep upon the couch. That is what I shot; that is what sent me screaming into the storm, and that is what makes me sure that Gordon was not crazy, but spoke the truth.

  For the incarnation had occurred. There on the couch, dressed in the clothes of Edgar Henquist Gordon, lay a demon like Asmodeus—a black, furry creature with the snout of a hog, green eyes, and the dreadful fangs and talons of some wild beast. It was the Dark One of Edgar Gordon’s dreams!

  The Brood of Bubastis

  This story inaugurates a closely-connected series with the next two, but it stands alone quite well. Here we seem to have a combination of themes from Lovecraft’s “The Rats in the Walls” and Bloch’s own “The Grinning Ghoul”. Note that in “The Rats in the Walls” we conclude with a reference to the narrator’s cat darting into the dark abysses beneath Exham Priory “like a winged Egyptian god”. Which god would that have to be? The cat deity, Bubastis, of course! It is only surprising that we do not discover in “The Brood of Bubastis” any reference to “Luveh-Keraph, priest of cryptic Bast.” We may rest assured that Lin Carter would never have proved able to resist the temptation!

  The Brood of Bubastis

  by Robert Bloch

  I wish I did not have to write these lines. Still, before I seek forgetfulness in the black boon of death, I feel impelled to leave this final testament.

  I owe it to my friends, who have never understood the metamorphosis of personality I underwent upon my return from England. Perhaps this will serve to explain my abhorrent and unnatural zoöphobia—feliphobia, rather. My quite inexplicable fear of cats caused them much anguish, I know, and for a while there was talk of a “nervous breakdown”. Now they shall hear the truth. I trust it clears up other points which may have puzzled them: my voluntary retirement to the country, the breaking off of all personal contacts and correspondence, and my brusque rejection of all their sympathetic advances. Here, then, is my final explanation to those I once knew and loved.