Warily, Cordell went after the Colonel, following his big footprints in the snow as they wound between the trees. At last he saw him ahead, looking down at something. Cordell stumbled up to where he stood and looked down as well. At first, he was puzzled at the sight of the naked body that lay before him. Then, he noticed its feet and his puzzlement turned to terror. He staggered back, hands reaching out for the support of a tree.
“This poor soul must have been one of the villagers,” guessed the Colonel. “When Ithaqua comes striding across the land, he takes up his victims in his windy arms and carries them off across the world to deposit them again in their own country; hours, sometimes days later. The others are…”
Cordell followed the Colonel’s gaze upward, and in the trees overhead, he saw a number of amorphous white blobs hanging in broken heaps among the branches. After seeing the condition of the corpse on the ground before him, Cordell thanked God he was not able to see the things in the trees with any detail.
Then, a distant swish and thumps coming from deeper in the woods brought his attention back to the present where the Colonel was just concluding his unfinished sentence: “…leaves them their bodies, but takes their lives.”
As if on cue, the wind sighed through the dark trees and the stars seemed to shimmer and fade. The forest protested the rising wind with a flurry of creaks and rustles. Snow fell from the upper branches and struck Cordell over the head. Startled, he lost his nerve then and ran back to the clearing. Arriving there, he suddenly realized that he was alone except for the empty pieces of clothing; the soldiers had managed to slip away. He felt a great weight heavy on his shoulders, forcing him to the ground; he fell to one knee, a hand wrist-deep in powdery, swirling whiteness. He struggled, wobbling to his feet; he took one faltering step, quick and strong; lifting his foot mere inches from the ground and slamming it down hard only inches away, just as a man would with an impossibly heavy load to carry. The wind was a howling whirlwind now. Snow and pine needles stung his face; loose clothes whipped themselves about his feet, seeking to drag him down.
Crushed to the ground, the force of the wind seemed to become even more fierce; his fur cap was dragged from his head and his muffler threatened to choke him. Weakly, he struggled to pull the scarf away until finally managing to get it off.
Shutting his eyes against the slashing wind, he tried to open them again, his eyelashes like black bars imprisoning his vision…or protecting him from the intrusion of a persistent thing that the Colonel had called Ithaqua. The black trees that towered above him seemed to shimmer and sway as if viewed from beneath the surface of the sea; the stars were gone, hidden from sight by a whirling, twisting cyclone of snow, tree limbs, pine needles and bits of clothing that were swept from the ground and up to the treetops and back again. Meanwhile, the wind, like countless tiny fingers, kept pulling and tugging at his own clothes and from the midst of the whirling pillar of debris a shape seemed to be forming.
It bulged and billowed, its outline at the mercy of the ravening wind. It grew huge and then dissipated, reassembled and grew huge again; it had shape and substance and yet was insubstantial too. The vision prompted Cordell to renew his struggle to escape but all he succeeded in doing was to pin his arms beneath his body. Slowly, the thing moved over him, enveloping him, and it was then he began to feel a different kind of tugging. Not the wind pulling at his clothes, but something felt inside him. He felt his personality slipping away, whatever it was that made him Mathias Cordell and no one else, and suddenly, his mind opened up and he thought he saw the yawning emptiness of eternity stretching out before him.
The vision inspired a new desperation in him. He found new reservoirs of strength he did not know he had and gradually, he began to lift himself from the ground, against the continued force of that mighty wind. Suddenly, his hand felt the hard leather of his holster. The snap had prevented the pistol inside from being dragged away. More with instinct than active thought, he undid the snap and took the pistol into his hand. Raising it in the direction of the nebulous form that continued to occupy the center of the whirling cyclone, he fired the gun in the direction of the ghostly form. There were a number of explosions from the gun before the clicking sounds of empty chambers were all that was left and in that instant Cordell realized that nothing remained between himself and the wind-creature that was once again moving to envelop him in its terrible embrace. Once again, he found himself being drawn outward, slipping, slipping, his mouth open in wordless, useless protest as the wind continued to whine in his ears.
Then something stepped between him and the wind thing. Whatever it was, it spoke, and from its throat emerged a string of guttural, barking noises, spat out like unclean things that had been swallowed and needed to be regurgitated:
Iä! Iä! Ithaqua, Ithaqua! Ai! Ai! Ai! Ithaqua f’ayak
vulgt-mm vugthlaghn vulgtmm. Ithaqua fhtagn! Ugh!
Iä! Iä! Ithaqua Iglucks fah’tn! Ai! Ai! Ai!
The sounds seemed to anger whatever it was in the wind. The speed of cyclonic forces increased in tempo and Cordell was forced to protect his eyes against the driven snow, pine needles, and dust that had been scoured from the exposed earth.
When at last he was able to see again, the trees around him were still whipping about and there were a number of sharp cracks indicating the splintering of mighty branches deep in the forest. The debris-filled cyclone still moved near the center of the clearing but now seemed to be winding down as the sound of snapping trees ceased and were replaced by the creaking of massive trunks that sounded more like the death rattle of some titanic beast.
And then, finally, all was still.
Cordell still crouched in the position he had assumed when he began firing his pistol into the wind: his eyes staring ahead along the length of his upraised arm, the gun still in his hand.
“Come, my friend, the battle is done.” The Colonel lifted him to his feet. “The recitation of certain sounds sent the creature back to its prison — for a time at least.”
“Then I didn’t just dream the whole thing?” Cordell asked, still recovering from his experience.
“Perhaps we both did; after all, one man’s belief is another’s superstition. Who is to say, if another man had been here, he would have seen the same as we, if anything? It is a tenuous thing, belief. Do the old gods really exist, only gone until another believer summons them forth? Like Ithaqua, one must believe in order to be threatened. Is belief, then, born of fear? To think a being such as man must be at once superior to all other creatures and yet so insecure!”
As he felt the Colonel’s strong arm beneath his shoulders, Cordell thought once more about the big Czech…was he only what he appeared to be, or was there something more to him? He had once seen a look in the colonel’s eyes and now, seeing it again, he recognized it.
It was the look of someone who was slipping…slipping…
ched Omsk.
Zzzzzzzz!
arrived home late that night after a hectic day at the office and had it in mind to hit the sack early after a quick drink. A prosaic opening to a tale whose implications hold dire tidings for the future of the human race…but despite the number of years that have passed since the events it describes, I still find myself struggling to come to terms with them.
Anyway, before I could fix myself the nightcap, I noticed there was a personal letter in among the bills and junk mail I’d received in the post that day.
I saw by the various stamped labels that it had been sent originally to my previous address in New Jersey where I had lived until almost ten years before, when job requirements forced me to leave there and relocate to Manhattan. Whoever sent me the message, then, must have been someone who hadn’t been in touch with me for quite some time. Tearing the envelope open, I pulled free the message and was surprised to find that it had been sent by my uncle, Giles Wilcox, the anthropologist and well-known explorer. Maybe you’ve heard of his greatest discovery, the jaw bone of Selenga Man that proved the exis
tence of the fabled lost people of the Mongolian high country that vanished almost one hundred thousand years ago? No? Understandable. His field was rather specialized. Among his other accomplishments were his explorations of the upper Amazon jungle, the discovery of the hidden crypt of Prince Tunka-Re in the Valley of Kings in Egypt, and the excavations in the lower Gobi Desert of the hidden city of Chin.
As a result of his travels, my principal recollections of Uncle Giles’ old house was that it was crammed with strange artifacts he’d collected from all over the world. I’d spent a bit of time there in my childhood and remember the house being swathed in shadows with relics of dead civilizations and objects of blasphemous and questionable origins littering every room and hallway. There were vaulted ceilings supported by heavy oaken beams that gave rooms an oppressive, claustrophobic atmosphere, and a massive fireplace on the ground floor that was shaped in the form of cyclopean jaws gaping wide with a grate like bared fangs and a fire like the fires of Hades burning in its gullet.
My thoughts returning to the letter in my hand, I found that I was being urged to come to visit my uncle at his house at once, but without stating any specific reason. However, whatever the reason was, I suspected that it would have to be pretty important for my uncle to suddenly have need of me after so many years.
More out of curiosity, I think, than out of a genuine desire to help, I decided to leave immediately. I packed a suitcase and bought a ticket on the next train bound for Woodhaven, New York. That night was a largely sleepless one as I spent hours going over the possible reasons for my uncle’s summons. Perplexed, but eager to find out more, I finally fell asleep just before dawn.
It was approaching evening the next day when the train pulled into the region around Woodhaven. Its dense, silent woods threatened to encroach upon the few ramshackle farms that dotted the landscape and the low hills with their mysterious cairns built in the times of the Indians looked down upon the countryside with a sort of primeval decadence that lay heavily upon this isolated area of the state.
The sun was all but down when I finally deboarded and found myself upon a short length of platform where a faded sign declared that the stop was indeed the Woodhaven station. Looking at the sign, I realized the wind had begun to pick up and the rustling of the trees that lined the railroad tracks whispered suggestively in the growing twilight.
The station doubled as Woodhaven’s Post Office and after checking the ranks of mail boxes inside, I found one labeled with my uncle’s name and address. Apparently, his house lay about a mile or two up the road and, finding no transportation about, I decided to walk the rest of the way. I’d only been walking for a few minutes before I heard the creak of a wagon coming up behind me. Turning, I saw an old man in faded overalls and work shirt sitting atop an old buckboard coming up the road. The swaybacked horses pulling the wagon looked none too reliable but when the old codger pulled up alongside me and asked if I wanted a lift, I decided to accept his offer.
After he’d judged that I’d had enough time to get used to the wagon’s hard seat, the old man spoke up.
“Where yer headed fer young fella?” he said from amidst a scraggly beard.
“To my uncle’s house a mile or so up the road.”
“An’ who might he be?”
“Giles Wilcox.”
“Oh? He lost his wife a coupla weeks back, mebbe yer comin’ fer thet?” He sounded mildly interested, but I sensed some curiosity behind the words.
The news of a deceased spouse though, came as quite a surprise to me; I hadn’t known my uncle had married. With my own curiosity aroused but reluctant to reveal that I wasn’t up on family business, I decided to play along with the old man a bit.
“I was sent a telegram inviting me to come,” I said. “Uncle Giles didn’t go into any details. Did you know his wife?”
The old man thought for a minute then, apparently deciding that his response would do no harm, said, “Not exactly. She wasn’t a local girl. Don’t know how she died. Just that she did. We all saw the coffin bein’ shown in his den before he had her buried behind the house. Thet was a few weeks ago naow. A terrible thing, it happening on their weddin’ night an all.”
“She died on the very day of the wedding?” I asked, more shocked than ever. “And you have no idea how she died?”
“Well, thet there’s the mystery,” said the old man. “She fell down the stairs they say. She lived fer two days after th’ accident. There weren’t any marks on ‘er, though. ‘Course, some wags in town say she was poisoned, others thet she kilt ‘erself. Hell, I don’t know, ask yer uncle.”
I grunted some neutral reply, not wanting to get into what the local gossips were saying. But the news that my uncle, who’d always been what used to be called a confirmed bachelor, was married, even briefly, certainly was interesting news and made me all the more intrigued about my invitation.
The old man quieted after a while and soon deposited me at the end of a wooded road that led back into the forest. Standing at the entrance, suitcase in hand, I could see that the trees had been allowed to grow so far into the roadway that in some places they threatened to choke it off completely. Not without some trepidation, I began walking up the path, half expecting to be jumped by some denizen of the woods before arriving at a gate that led into a weed-infested courtyard. The old house loomed large across the clearing, crowded and almost hidden by saplings and overgrown shrubbery that had remained untrimmed for years. Clearly, my uncle had been negligent beyond ordinary neglect. He’d always kept his properties as clean and orderly as an archeological dig but now, trees were prying up the flagstones in the courtyard and the fence that surrounded the yard was falling apart. Ivy crawled over everything so that as I approached the door, I was hard pressed even to find the bell-push. Waiting for an answer, I noticed that the house itself hadn’t been painted in years and that shingles lying on the ground indicated that the roof was in need of repair as well. The branches of the old oak trees that dotted the encroaching forest began to squeak and protest in a rising wind that bore a hin
Just then, the door opened revealing a tall man standing just inside the shadowed foyer. I recognized him nonetheless as my uncle’s butler, Bruce.
“Hello, Bruce; don’t know if you remember me, but —”
“But of course master Simon. Please step inside,” he said gravely, moving aside to let me in.
“How’s Uncle Giles?” I asked without preamble.
“Not too well I’m afraid,” Bruce replied. “He’s been acting very peculiar recently.”
“Oh? When did this begin?”
“Shortly after his marriage, as a matter of fact. A condition that’s only accelerated since Mistress Ruth’s untimely death a few weeks ago.”
“I understand she died the night of their wedding; it must have been a great shock to Uncle Giles.”
“It’s not my place to say, Master Simon, but if I may, I suspect his feelings have less to do with the suddenness of his wife’s death than the strange circumstances surrounding it.”
“Strange circumstances?” I asked, recalling my conversation with the old man on the road. “What actually happened Bruce; Uncle Giles never even mentioned that he was married in his letter to me. There seems to be an air of mystery surrounding the whole relationship with his wife.”
“The master has never been one to talk about his personal life with anyone,” said Bruce. “But I’m sure he deeply mourns the loss of his wife and would surely not want to profane her death by having it publicized. If you want any more information than that, I’m afraid you’ll have to ask him yourself.”
“Of course. I wouldn’t want you to abuse your position as an employee.”
“Thank you, sir. And now your bag sir?”
“Oh, sure.”
Bruce led the way up the curving staircase to the shadow haunted rooms above, our feet making little noise as we walked along the carpeted stairs and hallways. Suddenly, the silence was broken by the patter of raindr
ops against the rank of large windows that lined the north face of the house. Distantly, the rumble of thunder echoed in the distant hills and as the rain tossed patterns against the inner walls, we passed a door from beneath which a yellow light creeped into the hall.
“Is there someone else visiting besides me, Bruce?” I asked, hooking a thumb at the door.
“A Mr. Sean Stout, actually, a former colleague of your Uncle’s. Mr. Stout is here seeking your uncle’s advice on some carvings he discovered on the L’isle Mystere. No doubt your uncle will fill you in on the subject at dinner…ah. Here’s your room Master Simon.”
Bruce pulled out a wad of keys and a moment later had pushed a door inward, the scent of freshly cleaned linen and floor wax exhaling from the interior of the room. “I trust you’ll find everything in order.”
“No problem, Bruce…this is the same room I used on my last visit if I’m not mistaken…”
“You have a good memory, Master Simon,” Bruce replied.
Inside, the room was just as I remembered it, like the set for the castle in the old Bela Lugosi Dracula film: the overstuffed upholstery, the expansive bed with its overhead canopy, the cedar chest with its accompanying washbowl, pitcher and towel and, of course, the full length mirror with its teak border and frosted edges. And how could I forget the mysterious oriental rug with its curious and vaguely obscene pattern? Suddenly, the shadows that seemed to have followed me in to the room were momentarily chased away as the sky outside was split by a great bolt of lightning. It did the same for the outdoors, revealing the crown of a small hill set in the midst of surrounding woodland. When the light had vanished, I was left with the after-image of tombstones scattered about the hill’s slopes. I shuddered to think of my uncle’s wife being buried out there with the unknowns. I called them that when I was a boy, because no one knew who the unfortunates buried out there were. When my uncle had bought the property years before, it came with its own burial ground. When I asked him once, who was buried up there, he told me he’d tried to find out but no records existed beyond the curious inscriptions carved into some of the stones and what might be learned from the old cairns covering a few of the grave sites.
Goat Mother and Others: The Collected Mythos Fiction of Pierre Comtois Page 30
