Acolytes of Cthulhu

by Robert M. Price

  People will read this and scoff; they will call it the wild scrawling of a madman on the crumbling lip of the grave. They will laugh. But it will be a nervous, sickly laughter that doesn’t ring true. For in the end, when they have correlated the things I have told with the accepted facts, they will know that I am right. Claude Ashur will go on. For, strangely enough, insane as he is, I think perhaps he has captured the vagrant dream of every man—the only true immortality; the immortality of the mind that will not be imprisoned in one fleshly tomb, but will find others, and, somehow, forever escape the ravages of disease, the oblivion of the grave.

  It is ironic and cruel that such a man should have made the discovery. But it is more than just that. It is dangerous. Not to me; not to Gratia and the others who have fought with Claude and lost. Nothing can touch us now. But Claude Ashur can touch you. Perhaps, even now, he is near you; perhaps he speaks with the lips of a lover, or watches through the eyes of an old and trusted friend, smiling that ancient, enigmatic smile. Laugh, if you will, but remember:

  The will of Claude Ashur is possessed of a strength that goes beyond flesh and blood. One by one, it has met and vanquished every obstacle in his path. Before it, even Death has bowed a humbled head. And what it could not conquer, it has destroyed. If you doubt such power, you have only to think of me. It was that unholy strength of will that usurped my clean, healthy body, and left me entombed in this swollen, putrescent mass of flesh that has been rotting these twenty years with leprosy.

  THE FINAL WAR

  BY DAVID H. KELLER, M.D.

  THOMPSON SAT IN HIS LONELY LIBRA RY READING A VERY OLD book. Written on vellum pages, it was bound with the tanned skin of a Chinaman killed by a magician in Gobi. The oriental liver had failed to unlock the past or give any information concerning the future. The skin, however, bound a book that was destined to save mankind.

  The scholar had often read this very ancient tome, in what had been, so far, a useless effort to unravel its secret. Tonight, in the middle of the book he suddenly saw the solution to the mystery. He read on through the night with increasing fear grasping his soul in its icy clutches. At last he realized the terrific import of the message, hid so long in the old folio. The candle, fanned by the breath of impending doom, flickered over his shoulder. Death hung in hovering terror.

  “The world and everything in it will be destroyed!” Thompson whispered. “I alone realize the danger. I am the only one who can save mankind. But I am only a dreamer. The scientists must help me. They only can win this final war.”

  That night Thompson read of Saturn, the distant, mysterious, threatening planet; a land of lofty mountains and of chasms so deep that falling rocks took years to reach their final resting place.

  He read of caverns carved in the rock by millions of hopeless slaves who prayed for nothing but death to end their torment; of tunnels illumined by the cold light of gigantic glow worms, each chained to a pillar, who fed on mushrooms mixed with phosphorus; of cities inhabited by very ancient races.

  The book described these beings, not men, but living things with shapes that could only be imagined by the opium eater. Foul and unclean monsters who loved and worshiped a God from the beyond.

  This God, malign, powerful, mighty in wrath, terrible in intelligence, brooded through an eternity of time with only one desire: to conquer the earth, make slaves of the bodies of men and take their souls to a place of everlasting torment.

  Thompson continued to read. Finally he wrote a transcript of one page; wrote with a hand that trembled. Even as he wrote, he doubted his translation of the ancient code.

  “Ruling Saturn does not content Great Cthulhu. The beautiful people of Venus have perished; the men in the building of underground cities, the women in laboratories from horrible genetic experiments. The scientists from Mercury toil making new forms of destruction while the armies of Mars are prepared for conquest of other worlds.

  “Cthulhu has many shapes but usually assumes that of a gigantic toad, with hypnotic eyes, poisoned claws and an intelligence which defies earthly mind to understand. The lesser Gods on Saturn are all controlled by this great God. At the appointed time he will visit the earth and make of it a desert. Let all who read beware! He will come with spaceships, mechanical armies, poisons and obscene weapons. If all these fail, he will, in the end, transform himself into a beautiful woman, and, thru her seductive beauty enslave and torture their souls.”

  The candle flickered.

  “At least,” Thompson muttered, “We have been warned.”

  The Earth-men accepted Thompson’s warning. The United Nations erected a large experimental laboratory in the Arizona desert. With thick walls, it rose, an enormous cone, towards the threatening sky from out of which the invading forces would come. Astronomers kept a twenty-four-hour vigil searching for enemy spaceships. Scientists watched the spectrum for new elements from Saturn. Biologists perfected deadly cultures and prepared antiserums which would protect in germ warfare. Chemists found explosives more powerful than the atomic bomb. Air ships, rocket-propelled, were built.

  But a final invention was perfected by Jenkins, based on a suggestion made by Thompson. This was so novel in its form, so subtle in its proposed use and so powerful, that the two men hoped, if all else failed, their invention would win the final war.

  Various groups aided in the construction of this new weapon, but each made only a part. These parts were put together, vitalized, made into a perfect whole by Jenkins, watched and instructed by the dreamer, Thompson.

  “It is the hand of Destiny,” cried Jenkins, but Thompson replied, “I would call it the hand of God!”

  Meantime, all was activity on Saturn. There the Great Cthulhu had brought to perfection his machine men. With metal bodies, electrified brains, those scientific workers could perform in their cavern laboratories tasks that would have been impossible to the greatest scientists on earth.

  Back of them, controlling their every activity, directing their inventive genius, was the mysterious power of the Great God. Up to this time, he had made all his dreams come true. His history showed that a war begun was a war won. Only Earth remained to be conquered. Living from the beginning of time, confident that he would never die, he was impatient to conquer the last of the planets. Day after day, night after night, he drove the machine men who worked tirelessly toward their goal. Biological chemists perfected a new and terrible form of war.

  “I will destroy their cities!” Cthulhu boasted to the lesser Gods. “I will make their earth a waste place. Finally, in their despair they will lose the power to resist and will seek only death, not realizing that I will take their souls and torture them in many obscene ways thru an eternity of years.”

  * * *

  The machine men finally completed the space ship, which, hurtling thru the void of the skies, would finally land on earth and complete its mission of destruction. Skillfully made, rocket-propelled, every part of its journey had been carefully planned. Not a detail had been overlooked. The hypnotic, all-powerful intelligence of the Great God had so completely dominated the machine men that the final result, the death-carrying ship, was a masterpiece of devilish imagination.

  It carried no crew. Once it was shot from the tube, it would go directly to the earth even as a splinter of iron flies thru the air and fastens to a giant magnet.

  Cthulhu trusted no one to start it on its flight. At the appointed time he went to the tube which housed the ship and for the last time went over every detail of its construction. Once again he correctly charted its course so that it would land in the rich corn belt of the United States.

  Finally he pushed the starting button and the beautiful cylinder started off.

  “Those pitiful Earth-men will now have something to worry about,” he cried to the lesser Gods.

  “Great is Cthulhu!” they shouted.

  The long cylindrical rocket ship approached the earth, encircled it, and then pausing over the upper Mississippi Valley, disintegrated, showering
its cargo upon the black earth. Borne by the wind, the small seeds scattered over a large area, fell on the ground, germinated at once and in a day were full grown. The male plants, rootless, crawled into the female plants and impregnated them. In another day the ripened ovaries exploded, scattering seed for another generation.

  Those plants were not only flesheaters, but exuded a vapor which killed all who breathed it and a juice that burned and rotted the flesh of all that contacted them. By the millions they spread from the country to the cities, bringing death so rapidly that it could not be avoided. Only the dry, lifeless desert was immune. There the airships, prepared for any eventuality, had been placed. Now they went into action with their flame jets. Patiently, methodically, the deadly plants were cremated.

  Finally all were destroyed. The God Cthulhu had failed in his first assault. The cities were destroyed, but the best of humanity lived on to fight.

  * * *

  Cthulhu prepared for an assault which he felt would be the final step to victory. He was sure that he knew the souls of men, their secret desires, their fatal weakness. This time he would use, not a modern instrument of war, but the oldest known to all life on every planet. He was so confident of success that he decided to go by himself, unattended by even his most favored lesser God—go to Earth and, singlehanded, use his magical power in such a way that no mere Earth-man could resist him.

  He had his machine men make a globular ship with a single opening. When the circular door was open, a much smaller globe could descend to earth on a guiding beam of light.

  In this globe, the Great God sped earthward on what he was certain would be a journey ending in victory.

  The Giant Toad hopped out of the small globe near the ruins of a Utah city. With giant leaps he rushed to Arizona. There in a desert of volcanic rocks and dead cedars, he underwent a metamorphosis revealing his primitive bivalency. Now the toad was gone, being replaced by a male and female such as man in his wildest dreams had never seen; or once seeing would have died of pure horror.

  Male and female, they lived for the appointed time in the desert. The female, with one eye, a long tail, human hands ending in long claws, would, when alone, shake her mule ears and call loudly for her mate. He had the calves of a man, the thighs of a bear, the torso of a bull and the head of a devil. Hearing his mate call, he would gallop to her, roaring his impassioned love song. In every way he was the kind of a male that this kind of female appreciated.

  They were in love!

  Thus they lived in a garden of Eden. They satisfied each other but when the female realized her delicate condition, the male knew the honeymoon was over and hid his head in a rock hole and died. His soul, the half of the God from the Beyond, simply passed into the new life that the female was bringing into the world. She gave birth to a baby and then she too died. Now the God was once again united in this deadly menace to the world, a beautiful woman.

  Standing there alone in the desert she realized her power. What man could resist her charms? Once in her power she could make him a slave. Thus women have always treated men, and now Cthulhu, as the Super-Woman, would show men that they were simply little animals to be twisted around her delicate fingers, sucked dry of blood and their souls sent to Hell.

  Thompson had anticipated the Woman. The final pages of the old book had prepared him. With Jenkins’ help he had made a trap. There was only one question. Would it work?

  The Woman glided over the desert. Her beautiful face glowed with the expectation of victory. Her lovely fingers twitched in anticipation of tearing the bodies of all men. Within her, the Great God glowed with satisfaction as he thought of all the ways in which he would mutilate their souls. He did not realize that the beautiful body he had made to dwell in had, in one little convolution of her brain, curiosity and a desire for love.

  Suddenly the Woman saw a gigantic hand rearing out of the sandy desert. It was a very masculine hand with short, stubby, powerful fingers. The back was covered with hair; the palm was soft.

  “What a beautiful hand!” exclaimed the Woman. “I could rest in that hand while the fingertips caress my lovely body.” She crawled into the hand and cuddled on the soft palm.

  “Love me, you wonderful masculine hand,” she commanded.

  The fingers and thumb closed on her, slowly crushing her to death.

  Cthulhu screamed. Now on earth he had no place to live. His failure was complete. There was nothing for him to do but return to Saturn.

  Man had won the war. Humanity was safe. A finer civilization rose on the ruins.

  THE DUNSTABLE HORROR

  BY ARTHUR PENDRAGON

  A PALEOGRAPHER CANNOT BE THOUGHT A MADMAN. TO AVOID such a charge I have suppressed until my retirement the story which I now add to this book of memoirs. Do not doubt the accuracy of the tale. My memory has not failed me in probing the skin of this earth; it could not betray me now, for I bear like an old unclosed wound the remembrance of that horror in the forest north of Dunstable.

  I had come from the British Museum to Dunstable in northern New England during the rainy March of 1920 in order to find and study the long-buried records of the Massaquoit tribe of red Indians. They were an isolate and obscure nation, a sea-marsh people who perished shortly after the foundation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. My grips and gear were thrown from the creaking passenger train at the Boston & Maine depot on the outskirts of the town. From the platform of the small Victorian building the landscape was singularly depressing. The continual drizzle of winter’s end reduced all to a monochrome grey of muddy flats and dripping scrub-topped hills. I would have been stranded were it not for the New England type lounging with the stationmaster in the telegraph office. As I entered the warmth of the waiting room he casually surveyed my dripping waterproof and the cut of my clothes, remarking drily, “Looks like the tourist season has begun.”

  I took an instant dislike to the man which went beyond the sneer in his remark. However, since his was the only team outside I forced myself to be polite, to suffer his arrogance for the sake of a ride to town and a warm billet. After a few minutes of conversation he rose to his feet and grudgingly offered to drive me into Dunstable if I would help him load the wagon.

  We wrestled several boxes of parts for his lumber mill, apparently the only industry in this area of rocky farms, into the back of the wagon, and added my gear. As the team plodded through the cold mist I found him more talkative than the traditionally taciturn New Englander. He commented, in a fragmentary fashion, on his mill, his position of authority in the town, and his affluence. From the very beginning his family, the Varnums, had inhabited the town, and he was the culmination of the line. Although unmarried at forty, he had decided to take a wife when time allowed in order to perpetuate the Varnum house.

  The wagon swung onto a paved and wider thoroughfare posted as the Black North Road. Varnum finished his monologue and eyed me suspiciously, asking why I had come all the way up the coast to Dunstable. I decided to put an end to his egoistic spouting by exploiting the awe for learning shared by the middle classes, and so replied, “I am Thomas Grail of the British Museum, and I have come to find Pauquatoag.” To my utter astonishment he recognized the name of the great sorcerer of the Massaquoits, the evil Merlin of the New England tribes.

  Varnum saw the surprise on my face. “Oh, yes. The family had a certain—ah—contact with Pauquatoag when they first landed.” He smiled darkly and alluded to several diaries he had inherited with his father’s estate. I would not learn the peculiar nature of that contact, and its terrible result, until later.

  We rolled onto the covered bridge over the Penaubsket River. On the far bank lay Dunstable, its lights wanly glowing against the foggy dusk. “I suppose this means you’ll be going up north into the forest,” Varnum said. “You’ll have a hard time getting anyone to go with you.” I told him that I could offer good wages, and that the work would not be difficult, merely a bit of digging. “You’ve got three things working against you,” he replied.
“Number one—the frost is coming out of the ground and the farmers’ll be putting in the seed pretty soon. Number two—the ice broke on the Penaubsket and the Kennebago last week, so the mill will be running at top speed in a few days.” He cracked the reins as we left the bridge for the main road. “And number three—everyone’s been sort of reluctant to go farther north than the logging camps since the animals came floating down river.”

  He pointed out a mill pond at the side of a small dam. The oily water circled and foamed in endless eddies. “That pond has been almost full of dead animals two or three times since the thaw began. Came floating downstream from beyond the last logging camp. Squirrels, foxes, even a deer or two. Never saw anything like it.”

  I asked how they had died. “As far as we could tell, by drowning. As if something had driven them into the river. When the snow melts in the uplands the current gets vicious. You’ll see it at its worst in about a week. Ever since then, nobody has gone beyond the camps. Superstitious peasants.” He laughed wryly. “And some of my men who’ve been past the camps laying out cutting stakes even say they saw a glow in the forest after dark, near the marshes. I just couldn’t convince them that they had seen an ordinary will o’ the wisp.”

  I recognized the popular name for ignis fatuus, a light seen at night moving across bogs, thought to be caused by the slow oxidation of gases from rotting vegetation. “But surely,” I said, “they must see that sort of thing often around here, judging from the number of fens I passed on the train.”

  Varnum snorted. “They all said this light was different—steady, not flickering, and moving from the marshes into the forest. They’re just trying to get out of camp duty. Lazy oxes. I have to keep after them all the time.”