Cthulhu Fhtagn!

by Laird Barron

The torch dropped from my numb fingers and flickered into darkness on the floor. But while the darkness freed my eyes from seeing that which they could not understand, still I sensed the creature lurking in the passage, regarding me just as it had done in the forest. I almost imagined its hand, its blood-encrusted hand, outstretched toward me, and I still shudder to think that I very nearly extended my own in reply.

  Suddenly I heard Norrys shouting for help. This brought me back to my senses just in time to see the shape before me lope away into the sitting room. I grabbed my torch and hit it a few times to turn it on. When the light shone again, the corridor was empty save for the trail of blood. I ran to the sitting room and looked inside. There I saw the broken window and more blood, but no creature and nothing else.

  I ran to find Norrys, which coincided exactly with the trail of blood. I found my old chum standing in the doorway of Sir Arthur’s study, holding himself upright with one hand as he swayed on his feet. As I pushed past him, I saw what had so overpowered him, and suddenly I was nearly faint myself.

  Sir Arthur’s body sat slumped in his chair, almost unrecognizable. It had been torn asunder, spraying the poor man’s blood all over one corner of the room, and leaving the desk and part of the floor drenched.

  “Oh, dear God,” I said.

  “Who could have done such a thing?” Norrys cried.

  I heard footsteps from down the corridor, and more on the floor above us. It seemed that Norrys’s cry had raised the whole house.

  Professor Howard was the first to arrive. He clapped his hands over his mouth and slowly walked into the room as if in a daze.

  “No, no, no,” he mumbled. “Sir Arthur….”

  I quickly grabbed him by the arm.

  “Look, um, everyone stay back,” I said, doing my best to keep a cool head. Strangely, the shock of the moment made it all the easier for me to forget what I had seen in the corridor. As the others began to arrive, I repeated myself: “Everyone, stay back. Don’t disturb the room.”

  Presently, Vos arrived as well, looking rather sleepy. He had a hairnet on, and another for his moustache, which would have been comical under any other circumstances.

  Vos yawned a little and said softly, “What has happened, Stamford?”

  “It’s Sir Arthur, Vos. He’s been murdered.”

  There were cries from the others. Bella put a hand over her mouth to keep from crying out and Susan sobbed into James’s shoulder. Her brother was pale at the news, but he kept his composure like a proper soldier, as did Hazel and Gwen, though I saw the anguish on the faces of all three of them.

  Meanwhile, Vos was busy counting the heads in the hallway.

  “I see that we are all here,” he said. “All here but young Newbury. Would someone kindly go and rouse him.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Norrys.

  “Goed,” said Vos. When Norrys had gone, he confided to me, “I do not think that he will find anyone there, but all the same….”

  Vos rubbed his hands together and went into the study, carefully avoiding the blood. He first examined the desk and its contents, notably the papers and the dead man’s glass of brandy. Then he went to the safe, which I saw was left open. After a moment’s scrutiny, he motioned for me to join him.

  “Tell me, Stamford,” he said, “what is wrong with the picture we see here?”

  To my surprise, I saw that the safe’s money and valuables were all still there. In fact, there was only one thing missing at all.

  “My God, Vos!” I cried. “The jade amulet! It’s gone!”

  ***

  The police were summoned, of course, and I don’t think I need dwell on the details of their investigation, which was reported on by the press and which was concluded very quickly anyway. I imagine you already know the official verdict: for reasons that are largely unknown, young Charles Newbury murdered poor Sir Arthur at his desk, broke into the safe, and stole a few select objets d’art. As Newbury has yet to be apprehended, the reason for the murder remains unknown, but the police suspect an argument that may have become too heated and grown out of control.

  But let us ignore that conclusion, for I fear that the police are wrong. Their manhunt for Charles Newbury must inevitably come to nothing. They will never find Newbury, nor would it matter if they did, as I shall explain.

  ***

  Thanks to Vos’s careful managing of the police, the investigation of the house was largely concluded that day. The local Chief Inspector hit upon the notion of Newbury’s guilt quite quickly, and by the following evening, the rest of us were left undisturbed at Brympton House. There had been some attempt to scour the grounds with dogs, but these had become quite unmanageable within a few minutes of setting foot on the property, and the search had been abandoned. Now the only police on hand were a pair of constables left to wait outside the front door in case Newbury showed his face again.

  At Vos’s insistence, the rest of us gathered in the sitting room. The broken window had been covered up, the glass thrown away, and the blood concealed by a fresh rug; but still everyone looked uneasy. Vos was very cheerful despite all this. He had tea brought for everyone and served it up himself, bringing each guest their cup and saucer by his own hand.

  “Look here, Mister Vos,” James said, “as you’re John’s friend, I’m willing to indulge this meeting of yours, but would you please explain what all this is about?”

  “It’s horrid, simply horrid,” Susan murmured, sniffling into a handkerchief and leaning on Bella for support.

  “Ja, this I know,” Vos said, “and I assure you that it will all be over soon. But surely you wish to know the truth about your father’s death.”

  “The truth?” Gwen demanded. “That beast Newbury killed him!”

  “And to think, he seemed like such a nice young man,” Bella said, looking down sadly.

  Vos smiled. “Of course, this we all know: Newbury, for no reason at all, rises in the middle of the night, takes a knife that has not yet been found, stabs Sir Arthur to death, and then flees into the wilderness.” Vos held up a finger. “But…what if, for the moment, we entertain another possibility, a more fantastical possibility.”

  “What are you talking about, Vos?” I demanded.

  “Before I begin, would you be so kind as to rouse the Captain Norrys, Stamford?” Vos asked.

  I glanced toward Norrys, who sat on the sofa beside me. The poor chap seemed to have dozed off, though it was quite unlike him. I gave him a gentle shake; then, as he did not respond, I shook him harder.

  “Good God!” I cried, my alarm echoed by the others.

  “Is he asleep or is he dead, Stamford?” Vos asked.

  “Asleep,” I answered, “but he’s just dropped off!”

  Vos crossed to Norrys and took the teacup from his slumbering hand before it could tumble onto the floor.

  James leaped to his feet and shouted, “What have you done, Mister Vos?”

  Vos did not seem to mind James’s angry tone, and replied with a gentle voice:

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I have given Captain Norrys what I believe to be a sleeping draught. I took the liberty of removing it from the late Sir Arthur’s glass on the night of the murder. This confirms what I suspected: that Sir Arthur Turnbridge was dead asleep in the moments before he died. For this reason there was no cry, no struggle. Had there been a fight, as the police believe, there would have been signs. The upturned chair, the broken accouterments, the body upon the floor. But there were none of these things.”

  “My God!” James shouted. “You drugged Norrys?”

  Now Vos began to look irritated.

  “Ja, Mister Turnbridge,” he said. “Now if you please, be quiet and sit down while Vos speaks.”

  “I…” James began, but he slowly sat all the same.

  “The question then becomes, who drugged Sir Arthur?” Vos continued.

  “You mean who killed him?” I ventured.

  “Nee,” Vos corrected. “Who drugged. You see the killer is al
ready known to Vos—”

  “What?” Now it was Gwen who cried out and sprang to her feet. “You do?”

  “—but we shall attend to that shortly.” Vos smiled and brushed his moustache with one fingertip. “For you see, the person who drugged Sir Arthur is the very same person who robbed him.”

  “Yes, but who would want to rob him?” I asked.

  The room fell silent and suddenly everyone more or less looked in Gwen’s direction.

  “Oh, thanks!” Gwen protested, slowly sinking back into her chair. “You all think I did it, do you?”

  “Well…you are a bit hard up most of the time—” James began. Then Hazel slapped his arm for rudeness. “Ouch!”

  “What James means is—” Hazel said.

  “What he means is that I’m an actress in New York and I go to parties and I want to produce plays,” Gwen snapped. She glared at the others. “Don’t pretend you aren’t thinking it. You’ve always thought I was a wastrel, haven’t you?”

  There was a long silence and then Susan shouted, “Well yes! Dash it all, yes, Gwen, you’re a wastrel! I devote my life to taking care of our father and you go flouncing off to America!”

  “Um,” I said, clearing my throat, “I think this is getting a bit off the mark.”

  “At least I can say ‘hello’ to a chap when I fancy him,” Gwen retorted. “You can’t even do it when he’s out cold!”

  “Just please, stop fighting!” Bella shouted, her voice croaking with the emotion of it. More softly she said, “Please stop. My husband is dead and I would prefer for his surviving family…my surviving family…not to bicker like dogs!”

  The siblings were suddenly quiet again, looking down at their hands.

  “Sorry,” they all mumbled, more or less at the same time.

  “Besides,” I said, “there wasn’t any money taken. We all saw the contents of the safe. Almost everything was there.”

  “Ah, but it was not the money that was taken, was it, Stamford?” asked Vos.

  I was confused for a moment, but then I gasped with realization. “Oh, right! That jade thingy! That was missing!”

  Vos shook his head. “Stamford, you are truly a lighthouse of elucidation in a fog of confusion. Ja, the…how you say…‘jade thingy’. It was stolen, along with the Sogdian manuscript that I had only that evening offered to translate for Sir Arthur.”

  Vos folded his hands and continued:

  “And so, let me tell you a story. It is a story about an old man who, as he moves onward into the twilight of his life begins to feel the weight of age. Everything makes him feel old. His body? Withering. His house? Decaying. His children? Young enough, almost, to be his grandchildren. And so he surrounds himself with that which is new, that which is young. The modern furniture, the young wife, the even younger second wife…. But it is not enough. Ah, but this man, he is a scholar of that which is arcane, and so in the course of his studies, he discovers his solution.

  “He turns to forgotten legends and secret, forbidden texts. He obtains and reads portions of the Kitab al-Azif, that which in Greek is called the Necronomicon. And in these fragments he learns a great many things, things that man was not meant to know, but which man will always strive to know! And he reads that most significant of passages: ‘That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die.’ And so Sir Arthur comes to believe that he too can escape death!”

  Vos began to pace, becoming so animated that the tips of his moustache seemed to quiver like a thing possessed of life.

  “And over the course of his studies, Sir Arthur learns of a profane and secretive corpse-eating cannibal cult that so terrorized Central Asia in the seventh century. He discovers that through strange and occult practices, these ghûls, as they were called in Arabia, possessed the secret of immortality. And he must have that power.”

  “But this is all nonsense!” protested James.

  “Ah, nee, nee, I fear it is all too true,” Vos answered. “I merely tell you a story of the facts as I have observed and deduced them. You are free to deny the truth if you so choose. Such voluntary blindness has served mankind well for our short time upon the Earth. But what you cannot deny are the actions of your father. Sir Arthur obtained these texts and artifacts at great personal expense, even to the abandonment of his children and the disintegration of his house…did he not, Professor Howard?”

  Howard looked startled at being addressed, and for a few moments he merely stammered. Finally he managed to reply, “How should I know?”

  “You know, Professor, because you obtained them for him!” Vos shouted. “You, Professor Howard, who were ejected from Arabia two years ago for grave robbing! Just as you had done before the War! Sir Arthur knew about your criminal activities, did he not?”

  “No, I—”

  “He knew, and in exchange for helping you conceal them, Sir Arthur put you to work as his errand boy, scouring the world for his accursed artifacts and books of forbidden knowledge! He held your black market dealings like a sword above your head, all the while forcing you to call upon them to obtain his collection!”

  “I…I…” Howard stammered. He looked at the others, his face pale, nervous sweat upon his brow.

  “And what cruel irony for you, Professor,” Vos continued, “that it was only by your work, your digs, your contacts, your risk that Sir Arthur could obtain his ghoul amulet and the Sogdian text and the other countless keys to immortality he had assembled! You, who were as old as he, who were as terrified of old age and death as he!”

  “It…I….”

  “With the Sogdian text, you finally had the last piece to your puzzle,” said Vos. “But how to obtain them? You yourself know Sogdian. How else could you have known the validity of the manuscript? But to complete the ritual, you need also the amulet, and that was always kept either under Sir Arthur’s watchful eye or in his safe. You had all the time in the world to wait and plan and find an opening to steal them…until last night.

  “Last night, when Vos came to visit with his friend Major Stamford, to visit the friends of a friend for the sake of a friend. The most unlikely of chances. And to your horror, you learn that Vos, he knows Sogdian. Vos, he can translate the manuscript for Sir Arthur, and then Sir Arthur will have his immortality and you will have nothing. Perhaps even he will kill you, so that you cannot reveal what you know, for what crimes and betrayal would a man not commit for eternal life?”

  “But this is balderdash!” protested James.

  “Steady on, Jamie,” I said. “I think Meester Vos is onto something.”

  Gwen looked at me, astonished and horrified.

  “You can’t mean that, John! Your friend is clearly insane!”

  Normally I would have agreed, but I have never known Vos to be wrong about such things, no matter how impossible they sound. And what was more, as I watched, I saw Howard sink back into his chair, growing more and more distressed with each word that Vos spoke:

  “And so, Professor, you resolved to take the amulet and the manuscript that night, before Vos could provide the translation and undo your years of patient waiting! You took a portion of sleeping powder, which any sensible household has on hand, and with it you lace the drink of Sir Arthur so that he will fall asleep at his desk, while his safe is still open. When this is done, you sneak in and steal what you believe to be rightfully yours.”

  Howard twitched rather vulgarly, perhaps weighing his options and finding none of them agreeable.

  “Yes, yes, alright!” he cried. “I drugged him! I stole it! But I did not kill him! I swear it!”

  “You filthy dog!” shouted Hazel as she bounded to her feet. “I should give you a damn thrashing for what you’ve done to this family!”

  “I didn’t kill him!” Howard repeated, his voice desperate and fearful.

  “Liar!” snapped Bella.

  Vos quickly raised his hands to silence the others. “Nee, nee, I believe that Professor Howard speaks the truth. Having obtained th
e amulet and the manuscript, what reason would he have to kill Sir Arthur?” Vos paused for effect and then answered his own question: “None at all. And better still to be on the run as a thief rather than a murderer. Nee, in fact it was the murder of Sir Arthur that prevented Professor Howard from fleeing. Once the body was discovered, he had no choice but to remain and trust that the police would lay blame for the theft at the feet of the murderer. And so, Professor Howard, he hides the amulet and the manuscript about his person and waits for the opportunity to leave.”

  Howard nervously touched the front of his shirt.

  “My God! He’s wearing it!” Susan exclaimed.

  “Ah, ah,” Vos said, “let us leave that for now. And let us address the identity of the murderer.”

  “It must be Newbury,” I said. “He’s the only one not here. And I overheard him talking to someone about that night being ‘the night’.” I paused. “Oh, wait a minute…. If he’s the murderer, who was he talking to?”

  “You are learning well, Stamford,” Vos exclaimed, clapping his hands. “Who indeed? And I tell you truly, it was not Newbury.”

  “One of us, then?” asked Gwen.

  “Nee, not one of you either. No one in this room was responsible.”

  “I don’t follow,” said James.

  “Allow me to tell you another story,” replied Vos. “A story about this same cannibal cult of ghouls. They were not confined to Central Asia nor to Arabia, but rather spread out across all the world, scurrying to the furthest reaches of the Earth with bloody claws and plague-ridden hooves. Some of them even traveled to this ‘sceptered isle’ where they lurked in hidden places in days before even the Celts took possession here. And in time, in their mysterious comings and goings, plundering and haunting, they were forgotten, remembered only as ‘Fair Folk beneath the hills’.

  “Then one day a young man named Newbury comes to study the legends they have become, and he discovers them and they discover him, and so one night they take him down into their stygian charnel houses, to a fate that even the wise can only imagine.

  “For you see, on that same night, these ghouls arose from their pits and came to reclaim that which was stolen from them: an amulet carved from jade in the manner of their kin, adorned with wings for a reason known only to them. It is my conclusion that Sir Arthur Turnbridge was brutally murdered while he slept by a ghoul from beneath the hill, perhaps even the same ghoul that enticed Newbury to join them in their rotting Tartarus.”