The Book of Iod

by Henry Kuttner

  “What are they?” Elak asked again. “Tell me, before I go mad thinking hell has loosed its legions on Atlantis.”

  “They are the children of Dagon,” Zend said. “Their dwelling-place is in the great deeps of the ocean. Have you never heard of the unearthly ones who worship Dagon?”

  “Yes. But I never believed—”

  “Oh, there’s truth in the tale. Eons and unimaginable eons ago, before mankind existed on earth, only the waters existed. There was no land. And from the slime there sprang up a race of beings which dwelt in the sunken abysses of the ocean, inhuman creatures that worshipped Dagon, their god. When eventually the waters receded and great continents arose, these beings were driven down to the lowest depths. Their mighty kingdom, that had once stretched from pole to pole, was shrunken as the huge land masses lifted. Mankind came — but from whence I do not know — and civilizations arose. Hold still. These cursed knots—”

  “I don’t understand all of that,” Elak said, wincing as the wizard’s nail dug into his wrist. “But go on.”

  “These things hate man, for they feel that man has usurped their kingdom. Their greatest hope is to sink the continents again, so that the seas will roll over all the earth, and not a human being will survive. Their power will embrace the whole world, as it once did eons ago. They are not human, you see, and they worship Dagon. They want no other gods worshipped on Earth. Ishtar, dark Eblis, even Poseidon of the sunlit seas… . They will achieve their desire now, Hear.”

  “Not if I can get free,” Elak said. “How do the knots hold?”

  “They hold,” the wizard said discouragedly. “But one strand is loose. My fingers are raw. The — the red globe is broken?”

  “No,” Elak said. “Some cords were torn loose as I fought with your slave, and the light went out of it. Why?”

  “The gods be thanked!” Zend said fervently. “If I can repair the damage and light the globe again, the children of Dagon will die. That’s the purpose of it. The rays it emits destroy their bodies, which are otherwise invulnerable, or almost so. If I hadn’t had the globe, they’d have invaded my palace and killed me long ago.”

  “They have a tunnel under the cellars,” Elak said.

  “I see. But they dared not invade the palace while the globe shone, for the light-rays would have killed them. Curse these knots! If they accomplish their purpose—”

  “What’s that?” Elak asked — but he had already guessed the answer.

  “To sink Atlantis! This island-continent would have gone down beneath the sea long ago if I hadn’t pitted my magic and my science against that of the children of Dagon. They are masters of the earthquake, and Atlantis rests on none too solid a foundation. Their power is sufficient to sink Atlantis forever beneath the sea. But within that room” — Zend nodded toward the curtain that hid the sea-bred horrors — “in that room there is power far stronger than theirs. I have drawn strength from the stars, and the cosmic sources beyond the universe. You know nothing of my power. It is enough — more than enough — to keep Atlantis steady on its foundation, impregnable against the attacks of Dagon’s breed. They have destroyed other lands before Atlantis.”

  Hot blood dripped on Elak’s hands as the wizard tore at the cords.

  “Aye … other lands. There were races that dwelt on Earth before man came. My powers have shown me a sunlit island that once reared far to the south, an island where dwelt a race of beings tall as trees, whose flesh was hard as stone, and whose shape was so strange you could scarcely comprehend it. The waters rose and covered that island, and its people died. I have seen a gigantic mountain that speared up from a waste of tossing waters, in Earth’s youth, and in the towers and minarets that crowned its summit dwelt beings like sphinxes, with the heads of beasts and gods and whose broad wings could not save them when the cataclysm came. For ruin came to the city of the sphinxes, and it sank beneath the ocean — destroyed by the children of Dagon. And there was—”

  “Hold!” Elak’s breathless whisper halted the wizard’s voice. “Hold! I see rescue, Zend.”

  “Eh?” The wizard screwed his head around until he too saw the short, ape-featured man who was running silently across the room, knife in hand. It was Lycon, whom Elak had left slumbering in the underground den of Gesti.

  The knife flashed and Elak and Zend were free. Elak said swiftly, “Up the stairs, wizard. Repair your magic globe, since you say its light will kill these horrors. We’ll hold the stairway.”

  * * *

  Without a word the gray dwarf sped silently up the steps and was gone. Elak turned to Lycon.

  “How the devil—”

  Lycon blinked wide blue eyes. “I scarcely know, Elak. Only when you were carrying me out of the tavern and the soldier screamed and ran away I saw something that made me so drunk I couldn’t remember what it was. I remembered only a few minutes ago, back downstairs somewhere. A face that looked like a gargoyle’s, with a terrible great beak and eyes like Midgard Serpent’s. And I remembered I’d seen Gesti put a mask over the awful face just before you turned there in the alley. So I knew Gesti was probably a demon.”

  “And so you came here,” Elak commented softly. “Well, it’s a good thing for me you did. I — what’s the matter?” Lycon’s blue eyes were bulging.

  “Is this your demon?” the little man asked, pointing.

  Elak turned, and smiled grimly. Facing him, her face puzzled and frightened, was the girl on whom Zend had been experimenting — the maiden whose soul he had been about to unleash to serve him when Elak had arrived. Her eyes were open now, velvet-soft and dark, and her white body gleamed against the silver-black drape.

  Apparently she had awakened, and had arisen from her hard couch.

  Elak’s hand went up in a warning gesture, commanding silence, but it was too late. The girl said,

  “Who are you? Zend kidnapped me — are you come to set me free? Where—”

  With a bound Elak reached her, dragged her back, thrust her up the stairway. His rapier flashed in his hand. Over his shoulder he cast a wolfish smile.

  “If we live, you’ll escape Zend and his magic,” he told the girl, hearing an outbrust of sibilant cries and the rushing murmur of the attacking horde. Yet he did not turn. “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Coryllis.”

  “’Ware, Elak!” Lycon shouted.

  Elak turned to see the little man’s sword flash out, shearing a questing tentacle in two. The severed end dropped, writhing and coiling in hideous knots. The frightful devil-masks of monsters glared into Elak’s eyes. The children of Dagon came sweeping in a resistless rush, cold eyes glazed and glaring, tentacles questing, iridescent bodies shifting and pulsing like jelly — and Elak and Lycon and the girl, Coryllis, were caught by their fearful wave and forced back, up the staircase.

  Snarling inarticulate curses, Lycon swung his sword, but it was caught and dragged from his hand by a muscular tentacle. Elak tried to shield Coryllis with his own body; he felt himself going down, smothering beneath the oppressive weight of cold, hideous bodies that writhed and twisted with dreadful life. He struck out desperately — and felt a hard, cold surface melting like snow beneath his hands.

  The weight that held him down was dissipating — the things were retreating, flowing back, racing and flopping and tumbling down the stairs, shrieking an insane shrill cry. They blackened and melted into shapeless puddles of slime that trickled like a little gray stream down the stairway… .

  Elak realized what had happened. A rose-red light was glowing in the air all about him. The wizard had repaired his magic globe, and the power of its rays was destroying the nightmare menace that had crept up from the deeps.

  In a heartbeat it was over. There was no trace of the horde that had attacked them. Gray puddles of ooze — no more. Elak realized that he was cursing softly, and abruptly changed it to a prayer. With great earnestness he thanked Ishtar for his deliverance.

  * * *

  Lycon recovered his sword, a
nd handed Elak his rapier. “What now?” he asked.

  “We’re off! We’re taking Coryllis with us — there’s no need to linger here. True, we helped the wizard — but we fought him first. He may remember that. There’s no need to test his gratefulness, and we’d be fools to do it.”

  He picked up Coryllis, who had quietly fainted, and quickly followed Lycon down the steps. They hurried across the great room and into the depths of the corridor beyond.

  And five minutes later they were sprawled at full length under a tree in one of San-Mu’s numerous parks. Elak had snatched a silken robe from a balcony as he passed beneath, and Coryllis had draped it about her slim body. The stars glittered frostily overhead, unconcerned with the fate of Atlantis — stars that would be shining thousands of years hence when Atlantis was not even a memory.

  No thought of this came to Elak now. He wiped his rapier with a tuft of grass, while Lycon, who had already cleaned his blade, stood up and, shading his eyes with his palm, peered across the park. He muttered something under his breath and set off at a steady lope. Elak stared after him.

  “Where’s he going? There’s a — by Ishtar! He’s going in a grog shop. But he has no money. How—”

  A shocked thought came to him, and he felt hastily in his wallet. Then he cursed. “The drunken little ape! When he slashed my bonds in the wizard’s palace, he stole the purse! I’ll—”

  Elak sprang to his feet and took a stride forward. Soft arms gripped his leg. He looked down. “Eh?”

  “Let him go,” Coryllis said, smiling. “He’s earned his mead.”

  “Yes — but what about me? I—”

  “Let him go,” Coryllis murmured….

  And, ever after that, Lycon was to wonder why Elak never upbraided him about the stolen purse.

  The Invaders

  by Henry Kuttner

  Frank Belknap Long’s “The Hounds of Tindalos” proved to be quite influential. Lovecraft mentions the uncanny canines in “The Whisperer in Darkness”, and later the Hounds were taken out fora walk by both Brian Lumley and Roger Zelazny. The device of the drug that enables the user to swim backward in the time stream also proved influential. One finds it in this story by Kuttner as well. We will find something similar again in “Hydra.”

  Kuttner also has a good bit of fun with his friend Bloch’s Mysteries of the Worm in this story. He notes that “the book’s kept in a vault in the Huntington Library… but I managed to get photostatic copies of the pages I needed… Scarcely anyone in California knows that such a book exists in the Huntington Library.” Of course, there is no De Vermis Mysteriis there or any place else, but Kuttner’s fiction did prove to be strangely prophetic. As it happens, the Huntington Library did acquire a treasure trove of ancient esoteric manuscripts—a complete set of photograph copies of the Dead Sea Scrolls—and few knew of their presence. Though a good three-fourths of the Scroll texts had been published by the 1960’s and ’70’s, the official authorities in Jerusalem kept the remainder under wraps. All scholarly requests for access and plans to publish these texts were quashed by the authorities.

  To break this scholarly monopoly, the Huntington Library announced in 1991 that any interested scholar might have access to their set of copies. Since then we have witnessed a firestorm of controversy over the Scrolls, their content, date, authorship, and possible repercussions for the early history of Christianity. Kuttner was more than half right in depicting a secret manuscript kept under wraps at the Huntington Library, as well as the furor that resulted when photocopies were made available!

  First publication: Strange Stories, February 1939

  * * *

  “Oh—it’s you,” said Hayward. "You got my wire?”

  The light from the doorway of the cottage outlined his tall, lean figure, making his shadow a long, black blotch on the narrow bar of radiance that shone across the sand to where green-black rollers were surging.

  A sea bird gave a shrill, eerie cry from the darkness, and I saw Hayward’s silhouette give a curious little jerk.

  “Come in,” he said, quickly, stepping back.

  Mason and I followed him into the cottage.

  Michael Hayward was a writer—a unique one. Very few writers could create the strange atmosphere of eldritch horror that Hayward put into his fantastic tales of mystery. He had imitators—all great writers have—but none attained the stark and dreadful illusion of reality with which he invested his oftentimes shocking fantasies. He went far beyond the bounds of human experience and familiar superstition, delving into uncanny fields of unearthliness. Blackwood’s vampiric elementals, M. R. James’ loathsome liches—even the black horror of de Maupassant’s “Horla” and Bierce’s “Damned Thing”—paled by comparison.

  It wasn’t the abnormal beings Hayward wrote about so much as the masterly impression of reality he managed to create in the reader’s mind—the ghastly idea that he wasn’t writing fiction, but was simply transcribing on paper the stark, hellish truth. It was no wonder that the jaded public avidly welcomed each new story he wrote.

  Bill Mason had telephoned me that afternoon at the Journal, where I worked, and had read me an urgent telegram from Hayward asking -in fact, begging- us to come at once to his isolated cottage on the beach north of Santa Barbara. Now, beholding him, I wondered at the urgency.

  He didn’t seem ill, although his thin face was more gaunt than usual, and his eyes unnaturally bright. There was a nervous tension in his manner, and I got the odd impression that he was intently listening, alert for some sound from outside the cottage. As he took our coats and motioned us to chairs, Mason gave me a worried glance.

  Something was wrong. Mason sensed it, I sensed it. Hayward filled his pipe and lit it, the smoke wreathing about his stiff black hair. There were bluish shadows in his temples.

  “What’s up, old man?” I hazarded. “We couldn’t make head nor tail of your wire.”

  He flushed. “I guess I was a little flurried when I wrote it. You see, Gene—oh, what’s the use—something is wrong, very wrong. At first I thought it might be my nerves, but—it isn’t.”

  From outside the cottage came the shrill cry of a gull, and Hayward turned his face to the window. His eyes were staring, and I saw him repress a shudder. Then he seemed to pull himself together. He faced us, his lips compressed.

  “Tell me, Gene—and you, Bill—did you notice anything— odd—on your way up?”

  “Why, no,” I said.

  “Nothing? Are you sure? It might have seemed unimportant— any sounds, I mean.”

  “There were the seagulls,” Mason said, frowning. “You remember, I mentioned them to you, Gene.”

  Hayward caught him up sharply. “Seagulls?”

  “Yes,” I said. “That is, birds of some kind—they didn’t sound quite like seagulls. We couldn’t see them, but they kept following the car, calling to each other. We could hear them. But aside from the birds—”

  I hesitated, astonished at the look on Hayward’s face—an expression almost of despair. He said, “No—that’s it, Gene. But they weren’t birds. They’re something—you won’t believe,” he whispered, and there was fright in his eyes. “Not till you see them—and then it’ll be too late.”

  “Mike,” I said. “You’ve been overworking. You’ve—”

  “No,” he interrupted. “I’m not losing my grip. Those weird stories of mine—they haven’t driven me mad, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m as sane as you are. The truth is,” he said very slowly, choosing his words with care, “I am being attacked."

  I groaned inwardly. Delusions of persecution—a symptom of insanity. Was Hayward’s mind really crumbling? Why, I wondered, were his eyes so unnaturally bright, and his thin face so flushed? And why did he keep shooting quick, furtive glances at the window?

  I turned to the window. I started to say something and stopped.

  I was looking at a vine. That is, it resembled a thick, fleshy vine more than anything else, but I had never seen any plant
quite similar to the rope-like thing that lay along the window ledge. I opened the window to get a better look at it.

  It was as thick as my forearm, and very pale—yellowish ivory. It possessed a curious glossy texture that made it seem semi-transparent, and it ended in a raw-looking stump that was overgrown with stiff, hair-like cilia. The tip somehow made me think of an elephant’s trunk, although there was no real similarity. The other end dangled from the window ledge and disappeared in the darkness toward the front of the house. And, somehow, I didn’t like the look of the thing.

  “What is it?” Mason asked behind me.

  I picked up the—the—whatever it was. Then I got a severe shock, for it began to slip through my hand! It was being pulled away from me, and as I stared the end slipped through my fingers and whipped into the darkness. I craned out the window.

  “There’s somebody outside!” I flung over my shoulder. “I saw—”

  I felt a hand seize me, shove me aside. “Shut that window,” Hayward gasped. He slammed it down, locked it. And I heard a gasping inarticulate cry from Mason.

  He was standing in the open doorway, glaring out. His face was changing, becoming transfigured with amazement and loathing.

  From outside the portal came a shrill, mewing cry—and a blast of great winds. Sand swirled in through the doorway. I saw Mason stagger back, his arm flung up before his eyes.

  Hayward leaped for the door, slammed it. I helped the now shuddering Mason to a chair. It was terrible to see this usually imperturbable man in the grip of what could only be called panic. He dropped into the seat, glaring up at me with distended eyes. I gave him my flask; his fingers were white as they gripped it. He took a hasty gulp. His breathing was rapid and uneven.

  Hayward came up beside me, stood looking down at Mason, pity in his face.

  “What the devil’s the matter?” I cried. But Mason ignored me, had eyes only for Hayward.

  “G-God in heaven,” he whispered. “Have I—gone mad, Hayward?"

  Hayward shook his head slowly. “I’ve seen them, too.”