Beneath the Moors and Darker Places [SSC]

by Brian Lumley

  It may be remembered that those words were spoken by the eminent antiquary and archaeologist before he set out upon his last, ill-fated trip into the interior of Africa. Sir Amery was hinting, I know, at the same breed of hell-spawned horror which first began to make itself apparent to me at that ghastly time eighteen months ago; and I take this into account when I remember the way in which he returned, alone and raving, from that dark continent to civilization.

  At that time my brother, Julian, was just the opposite of myself, insofar as he was a firm believer in dark mysteries. He read omnivorously of fearsome books uncaring whether they were factual—as Frazer’s Golden Bough and Miss Murray’s Witch-Cult—or fanciful— like his collection of old, nigh-priceless volumes of Weird Tales and similar popular magazines. Many friends, I imagine, will conclude that his original derangement was due to this unhealthy appetite for the monstrous and the abnormal. I am not of such an opinion, of course, though I admit that at one time I was.

  Of Julian: he had always been a strong person physically, but had never shown much strength of character. As a boy he had had the size to easily take on any bully—but never the determination. This was also where he failed as a writer, for while his plots were good, he was unable to make his characters live. Being without personality himself, it was as though he was only able to reflect his own weaknesses into his work. I worked in partnership with him, filling in plots and building life around his more or less clay figures. Up until the time of which I write, we had made a good living and had saved a reasonable sum. This was just as well, for during the period of Julian’s illness, when I hardly wrote a word, I might well have found myself hard put to support both my brother and myself. Fortunately, though sadly, he was later taken completely off my hands, but that was after the onset of his trouble . . .

  ~ * ~

  It was in May 1962 that Julian suffered his actual breakdown, but the start of it all can be traced back to the 2nd of February of that year—Candlemas—a date which I know will have special meaning to anyone with even the slightest schooling in the occult. It was on that night that he dreamed his dream of titanic basalt towers— dripping with slime and ocean ooze and fringed with great sea mats—their weirdly proportioned bases buried in grey-green muck and their non-Euclidean-angled parapets fading into the watery distances of that unquiet submarine realm.

  At the time we were engaged upon a novel of eighteenth-century romance, and I remember we had retired late. Still later I was awakened by Julian’s screams, and he roused me fully to listen to an hysterical tale of nightmare. He babbled of what he had seen lurking behind those monolithic, slimy ramparts, and I remember remarking—after he had calmed himself somewhat—what a strange fellow he was, to be a writer of romances and at the same time a reader and dreamer of horrors. But Julian was not so easily chided, and such was his fear and loathing of the dream that he refused to lie down again that night but spent the remaining hours of darkness sitting at his typewriter in the study with every light in the house ablaze.

  One would think that a nightmare of such horrible intensity might have persuaded Julian to stop gorging himself with his nightly feasts of at least two hours of gruesome reading. Yet, if anything, it had the opposite effect: now his studies were all channelled in one certain direction. He began to take a morbid interest in anything to do with oceanic horror, collecting and avidly reading such works as the German Unter-Zee Kulten, Gaston le Fe’s Dwellers in the Depths, Gantley’s Hydrophinnae, and the evil Cthaat Aquadingen by an unknown author. But it was his collection of fictional books which in the main claimed his interest. From these he culled most of his knowledge of the Cthulhu Mythos, which he fervently declared was not myth at all, and often expressed a desire to see an original copy of the Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, as his own copy of Feery’s Notes was practically useless, merely hinting at what Julian alleged Alhazred had explained in detail.

  In the following three months our work went badly. We failed to make a deadline on a certain story and, but for the fact that our publisher was a personal friend, might have suffered a considerable loss financially. It was all due to the fact that Julian no longer had the urge to write. He was too taken up with his reading to work and could no longer even be approached to talk over story plots. Not only this, but that fiendish dream of his kept returning with ever increasing frequency and vividness. Every night he suffered those same silt-submerged visions of obscene terrors the like of which could only be glimpsed in such dark tomes as were his chosen reading. But did he really suffer? I found myself unable to make up my mind. For as the weeks passed, my brother seemed to become all the more uneasy and restless by day, whilst eagerly embracing the darkening skies of evening and the bed in which he sweated out the horrors of hideous dream and nightmare ...

  We were leasing, for a reasonable monthly sum, a moderate house in Glasgow where we had separate bedrooms and a single study which we shared. Although he now looked forward to them, Julian’s dreams had grown even worse, and they had been particularly bad for two or three nights when, in the middle of May, it happened. He had been showing an increasing interest in certain passages in the Cthaat Aquadingen and had heavily underscored a section in that book that ran thus:

  Rise!

  O Nameless Ones:

  That in Thy Season

  Thine Own of Thy choosing.

  Through Thy Spells and Thy Magic,

  Through Dreams and Enchantry,

  May know of Thy Coming;

  And rush to Thy Pleasure,

  For the Love of Our Master,

  Knight of Cthulhu,

  Deep Slumberer in Green,

  Othuum...

  This and other bits and pieces culled from various sources, particularly certain partly suppressed writings by a handful of authors, all allegedly “missing persons” or persons who had died in strange circumstances—namely Andrew Phelan, Abel Keane, Claiborne Boyd, Nayland Colum, and Horvath Blayne—had had a most unsettling effect upon my brother, so that he was close to exhaustion when he eventually retired late on the night that the horror really started. His condition was due to the fact that he had been studying his morbid books almost continually for a period of three days, and during that time had taken only brief snatches of sleep—and then only during the daylight hours, never at night. He would answer, if ever I attempted to remonstrate with him, that he did not want to sleep at night “when the time is so near” and that “there was so much that would be strange to him in the Deeps.” Whatever that was supposed to mean ...

  After he had retired that night I worked on for an hour or so before going to bed myself. But before leaving our study I glanced at that with which Julian had last been so taken up, and I saw—as well as the above nonsense, as I then considered it—some jottings copied from the Life of St. Brendan by the sixth-century Abbot of Clonfert in Galway:

  All that day the brethren, even when they were no longer in view of the island, heard a loud wailing from the inhabitants thereof, and a noisome stench was perceptible at a great distance. Then St. Brendan sought to animate the courage of the brethren, saying: “Soldiers of Christ, be strong in faith unfeigned and in the armour of the spirit, for we are now on the confines of hell!”

  I have since studied the Life of St. Brendan, and have found that which made me shudder in awful recognition—though at the reading I could not correlate the written word and my hideous disquiet; there was just something in the book which was horribly disturbing—and, moreover, I have found other references to historic oceanic eruptions; namely, those which sank Atlantis and Mu, those recorded in the Liber Miraculorem of the monk and chaplain Herbert of Clairvaux in France in the years 1178-80, and that which was closer to the present and which is known only through the medium of the suppressed Johansen Narrative. But at the time of which I write, such things only puzzled me and I could never, not even in my wildest dreams, have guessed what was to come.

  I am not sure how long I slept that night before I was
eventually roused by Julian and half awoke to find him crouching by my bed, whispering in the darkness. I could feel his hand gripping my shoulder, and though I was only half-awake I recall the pressure of that strong hand and something of what he said. His voice had the trancelike quality of someone under deep hypnosis, and his hand jerked each time he put emphasis on a word.

  “They are preparing... They will rise ... They have not mustered The Greater Power, nor have they the blessing of Cthulhu, and the rising will not be permanent nor go recorded ... But the effort will suffice for the Mind-Transfer... For the Glory of Othuum ...

  “Using those Others in Africa, those who took Sir Amery Wendy-Smith, Shudde-M’ell and his hordes, to relay their messages and dream-pictures, they have finally defeated the magic spell of deep water and can now control dreams as of old—despite the oceans which cover them! Once more they have mastery of dreams, but to perform the Transfer they need not even break the surface of the water; a lessening of the pressure will suffice.

  “Ce’haie, ce’haie!!!

  “They rise even now; and He knows me, searching me out... And my mind, which they have prepared in dreams, will be here to meet Him, for I am ready and they need wait no longer. My ignorance is nothing—I do not need to know or understand! They will show me; as, in dreams, they have showed me the Deep Places. But they are unable to draw from my weak mind, or from any mortal brain, knowledge of the surface... The mental images of men are not strongly enough transmitted ... And the deep water—even though, through the work of Shudde-M’ell, they have mostly conquered its ill effects—still interferes with those blurred images which they have managed to obtain ...

  “I am the chosen one... Through His eyes in my body will they again acquaint themselves entirely with the surface; that in time, when the stars are right, they may perform the Great Rising... Ah! The Great Rising! The damnation of Hastur! The dream of Cthulhu for countless ages ... When all the deep dwellers, the dark denizens, the sleepers in silted cities, will again confound the world with their powers...

  “For that is not dead which can lie forever, and when mysterious times have passed, it shall be again as it once was... Soon, when the Transfer is done, He shall walk the Earth in my guise, and I the great deeps in His! So that where they ruled before they may one day rule again—aye—even the brethren of Yibb-Tstll and the sons of dreaming Cthulhu and their servants—for the Glory of R’lyeh ...”

  That is as much of it as I can remember, and even then not at all clearly, and as I have said, it was nothing to me at that time but gibberish. It is only since then that I have acquainted myself with certain old legends and writings, and in particular, in connection with the latter part of my brother’s fevered mouthings, the inexplicable couplet of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred:

  That is not dead which can eternal lie,

  And with strange aeons even death may die.

  But I digress.

  It took me some time, after the drone of Julian’s outré monologue had died away, to realize that he was no longer in the room with me and that there was a chill morning breeze blowing through the house. In his own room his clothes still hung neatly where he had left them the night before—but Julian had gone, leaving the door to the house swinging open.

  I dressed quickly and went out to search the immediate neighbourhood—with negative results. Then, as dawn was breaking, I went into a police station to discover—to my horror—that my brother was in “protective custody.” He had been found wandering aimlessly through the northern streets of the city mumbling about “giant Gods” waiting for something in the ocean deeps. He did not seem to realize that his sole attire was his dressing-gown, nor did he appear to recognize me when I was called to identify him. Indeed, he seemed to be suffering from the aftereffects of some terrible shock which had left him in a traumalike state, totally incapable of rational thought. He would only mumble unguessable things and stare blankly towards the northern wall of his cell, an awful, mad light glowing in the back of his eyes.

  ~ * ~

  My tasks were sufficient that morning to keep me amply occupied, and horribly so, for Julian’s condition was such that on the orders of a police psychiatrist he was transferred from his police-station cell to Oakdeene Sanatorium for “observation.” Nor was it easy to get him attended to at the sanatorium. Apparently the supervisors of that institute had had their own share of trouble the previous night. When I did eventually get home, around noon, my first thought was to check the daily newspapers for any reference to my brother’s behaviour. I was glad, or as glad as I could be in the circumstances, to find that Julian’s activities had been swamped from a more prominent place of curious interest—which they might well have otherwise claimed—by a host of far more serious events.

  Strangely, those other events were similar to my brother’s trouble in that they all seemed concerned with mental aberrations in previously normal people or, as at Oakdeene, increases in the activities of the more dangerous inmates of lunatic asylums all over the country. In London a businessman of some standing had hurled himself bodily from a high roof declaring that he must “fly to Yug-goth on the rim.” Chandler Davies, who later died raving mad at Woodholme, painted “in a trance of sheer inspiration” an evil black and grey G’harne Landscape which his outraged and frightened mistress set on fire upon its completion. Stranger still, a Cotswold rector had knifed to death two members of his congregation who, he later protested to the police, “had no right to exist,” and from the coast, near Harden in Durham, strange midnight swimmers had been seen to make off with a fisherman who screamed of “giant frogs” before disappearing beneath the still sea ... It was as if, on that queer night, some madness had descended—or, as I now believe, had risen—to blanket the more susceptible minds of certain people with utter horror.

  But all these things, awful as they were, were not that which I found most disturbing. Looking back on what Julian had murmured in my bedroom while I lay in half-slumber, I felt a weird and inexplicable chill sweep over me as I read, in those same newspapers, of an amateur seismologist who believed he had traced a submarine disturbance in the ocean between Greenland and the northern tip of Scotland...

  What was it Julian had whispered about a rising which would not go recorded? Certainly something had been recorded happening in the depths of the sea!... But, of course, that was ridiculous, and I shook off the feeling of dread which had gripped me on reading the item. Whatever that deep oceanic disturbance had been, its cause could only be coincidental to my brother’s behaviour.

  So it was that rather than ponder the reason for so many outré happenings that ill-omened night I thanked our lucky stars that Julian had got away with so light a mention in the press, for what had occurred could have been damaging to both of us had it been given greater publicity.

  Not that any of this bothered Julian! Nothing bothered him, for he stayed in that semiconscious state in which the police had found him for well over a year. During that year his weird delusions were of such a fantastic nature that he became, as it were, the psychological pet and project of a well-known Harley Street alienist. Indeed, after the first month or so, so strong did the good doctor’s interest in my brother’s case become, he would accept no fee for Julian’s keep or treatment, and, though I visited Julian frequently, whenever I was in London, Dr. Stewart would never listen to my protests or hear of me paying for his services. Such was his patient’s weird case that the doctor declared himself extremely fortunate to be in a position where he had the opportunity to study such a fantastic mind. It amazes me now that the same man who proved so understanding in his dealings with my brother should be so totally devoid of understanding with me, yet that is the pass to which the turn of events has brought me. Still, it was plain my brother was in good hands, and in any case I could hardly afford to press the matter of payment; Dr. Stewart’s fees were usually astronomical.

  It was shortly after Dr. Stewart “took Julian in” that I began to study my brother’s star cha
rts, both astronomical and astrological, and delved deep into his books on the supernatural arts and sciences. I read many peculiar volumes during that period and became reasonably familiar with the works of Fermold, Lévi, Prinn, and Gezrael, and—in certain darker reaches of the British Museum—I shuddered to the literacy lunacy of Magnus, Glynnd, and Alhazred. I read the R’lyeh Text and the Johansen Narrative and studied the fables of lost Atlantis and Mu. I crouched over flaking tomes in private collections and tracked down all sources of oceanic legend and myth with which I came into contact. I read the manuscript of Andrew Phelan, the deposition of Abel Keane, the testament of Claiborne Boyd, the statement of Nayland Colum, and the narrative of Horvath Blayne. The papers of Jefferson Bates fell to my unbelieving scrutiny, and I lay awake at nights thinking of the hinted fate of Enoch Conger.

  And I need never have bothered.

  All the above delvings took the better part of a year to complete, by which time I was no nearer a solution to my brother’s madness than when I began. No, perhaps that is not quite true. On reflection I think it quite possible that a man might go mad after exploring such dark avenues as these I have mentioned—and especially a man such as Julian, who was more than normally sensitive to begin with. But I was by no means satisfied that this was the whole answer. After all, his interest in such things had been lifelong; I could still see no reason why such an interest should suddenly accumulate so terribly. No, I was sure that the start of it all had been that Candlemas dream.