II
THE SEAL WAS UNBROKEN! KALATIS AND I LOOKED AT EACH other in astonishment. An unopened tomb meant for me an unparalleled archaeological find, and for Kalatis it could mean the wealth that he so continually dreamed of.
I look the chisel, and, there, in the midday heat of Nubia, in a few moments I broke a seal that had remained perfectly intact since its placement there thousands of years earlier.
Curiously enough, once inside the foetid darkness, there was only an empty chamber less than five feet long, and only about three feet wide. At the end of the room was another very narrow stone stairway.
Our porters and diggers, of course, were too superstitious to enter with us, so, leaving Mustafa to keep an eye on them (these were not the trained museum expedition diggers), Kalatis and I had no recourse but to climb down alone. We were both slightly unnerved, being amateurs, and not a little worried about the condition in which the tomb might be after so many centuries. Also, as the tomb was unopened, there might still be some unsprung grave-robber trap awaiting us.
We began down the stairs slowly and cautiously, training both our lights directly ahead of us. The air was terribly hot and dusty, so much so that we had to hold our handkerchiefs over our mouths to keep from gagging.
Descending in this manner, we reached the bottom after about fifteen minutes. The heat was now so stifling that we both had to lie down and relax, at the same time mopping ourselves off, for we had been perspiring heavily.
The room we were now in was a large chamber with boxes piled up to a height of seven feet or so along the walls. As soon as this was noted, Kalatis went over to inspect them. I told him to be careful, since the boxes were sure to rot away at his touch, but his inspection proved them not to be of wooden gilt as I had imagined, but of gold! Here were perhaps a hundred large boxes, all of gold inlaid with lapis-lazuli and coral, done in an astonishingly sophisticated manner. Kalatis grabbed a box off the top of one of the piles and placed it, with much difficulty, on the floor. We bent over it, and, while I was looking for a seal or lock to open, Kalatis in his haste simply chiseled it open. I was rather angry at him, because archaeology is never served by people who go about breaking things in order to save a few moments.
Once open, the box revealed an exquisitely carved effigy of Horus, the Falcon God, the Avenger, Son of Isis and Osiris. It was about a foot and a half long, and, at its widest part about the shoulders, it was seven inches or so wide. Its grace, fluidity of line, and, if I may say, degenerate quality, dated it at being late in Egyptian history, possibly even as late as the Roman occupation. The figure was hollow, and, I imagine, contained the mummified body of a falcon, the sacred bird of Horus.
Kalatis, of course, was overwhelmed by the incredible amount of treasure that we had before us; from a monetary point of view it was the greatest archaeological find in history. He began to leap about, dancing, and shouting in Greek of his good fortune. For some reason, exactly what I cannot say, his gamboling about the place frightened me. I still had seen no evidence of it being a tomb—it could easily have been a storeroom or treasure room for the great temple—and yet, unaccountably, I felt the presence of something, something very remote in time, and bizarre beyond imagination, something very close to us, watching.
Then, in the beam of my flashlight, I caught a vague movement; there was something stirring on top of one of the piles of chests. I shouted this intelligence to Kalatis, who instantly sobered up and set his own beam atop the same pile. For a moment we saw nothing, then, over the rim of the box, as we drew closer, we saw a form and two positively blazing red dots staring at us. It was a bird—not a bat—a bird, and a large one from its silhouette!
When we got within about five feet, the thing took off and, with a terrible squawking, began to bang itself about the walls and boxes in the manner of birds who are trying to escape from an enclosure. Presently, with a flapping of its wings, it settled back on top of another pile of boxes and rested, glaring at us.
By this time, I was so unnerved that I was all for climbing back up the stairway and out into the fresh air. We were covered with dust, dirt and plaster dislodged by the bird’s wild flight. Actually, a trained archaeologist would have immediately gone above to get cataloguing equipment, wires for stringing electric lights, brushes, and cloths for the handling and cleaning of the ancient trove. How much I wish I had done this straightaway.
In spite of my protests, Kalatis wanted to inspect the entire room before going back. It was, rather, a long corridor of sorts, since it stretched on for what must have been about fifty feet, narrowing visibly at its terminus. There, cut into the stone, was a small entrance. So, with the great treasure gleaming dully in the dim light behind us, we entered the third chamber. The room was again large and narrow, and, in the beam of the flashlight we saw the standing figure of a man with a hawk’s head. There was something about the figure that startled us; it was certainly not unusual for statuary to be placed in tombs or sanctuaries, but there was a feeling pervading the entire chamber, a feeling that there was something alive, and that was the statue.
I don’t know whether Kalatis felt this or not; if he did, it certainly was an immense act of bravery to walk up to the figure. I personally feel that he was ignorant of the entire aura of terror that the place had about it. Perhaps, because my mind is attuned to Egyptology and his was not, he sensed nothing.
At any rate, whether Kalatis was aware of it or not, he went right up to the figure. As he drew closer, his light illuminated every detail of it. It was a representation of Horus, divine son of Isis and Osiris, the Avenger of his father’s murder, and whose great eye lights the world by day and calms it by night. The figure stood erect, in the typical Egyptian pose of walking, with one foot slightly ahead of the other. The fists were clenched, and under the great double crown of Egypt, the large round eyes were closed.
At this time I still had no direct evidence that my fears were anything more than imagined, but suddenly, to my unspeakable horror, the figure snapped open its eyes and fixed them on Kalatis! I screamed, for in that fatal gloom, those bird eyes shone with such malevolent red brightness, that I knew we would never take the treasure out into the light.
Kalatis stopped instantly, drew his pistol, and raised it. For what seemed like hours, the two stood glaring at each other. Then, slowly, the figure of Horus began to move, the dust of centuries flaking off and falling to its feet in gray-white clouds. Kalatis remained still for a few moments, then cocked his pistol and fired it. The first shot slammed audibly into the figure’s body, but aside from throwing up a huge volume of dust, there was no visible effect on the thing. Then, in very rapid sequence, Kalatis emptied the gun, each shot answered by a thump and more dust.
By this time, the creature was less than a yard away from us. Neither Kalatis nor I could move; we were absolutely paralyzed. Then, with a sudden lunge, the hawk leapt to where Kalatis was standing, and grabbed him. Kalatis’ resulting scream was quite sufficient to snap me out of my stupor, and allow me to once again move my legs. I pulled out my gun and, manoeuvering to the side of the thing, put a well-aimed bullet directly into the side of its head. There was more dust, and some feathers this time, and the creature relaxed its grip on Kalatis—who by now was either dead or fainting, for he dropped to the floor—and looked fiercely at me. I immediately turned and ran down the long corridor piled high with the boxes of treasure.
To my immense terror, I was now pursued by birds—the whole corridor was full of them, large birds with great burning eyes and sharp beaks, tearing at my clothes and flesh. These birds were falcons.
In spite of their hindrance, I made it through the corridor, and up the treacherously narrow stairway. I am forever astonished by the ability of the human body to cope with, shall we say, unique and taxing situations. My mind, frozen with horror, was now almost dormant, and my body alone and without mental command, carried me on. Fortunately, the stairway was too narrow to admit many birds and me at the same time, so th
ey became less of a threat to my life now, and, by this time, I was so numb with pain and terror, that I could barely feel their clawing anyway. Every so often I would trip and fall on my knees and elbows—the stairs were irregularly hewn—and the pecking of the birds served to prod me to my feet again.
I don’t know how long it took me to get up the stairway; I couldn’t even make a guess.
When I got to the antechamber described earlier, I fell to the ground and, it being such a small chamber, crawled the rest of the way into the weakening sunlight. As I crawled over onto the sand, I realized that I had absolutely no strength left. I expected to be pecked to pieces, but the birds behind me flew out of the tomb and perched on its lintel. They sat and watched me, but flew at me no more.
The diggers had taken fright and could not be restrained from leaving, so Mustafa was all that was left of our company. He ran up to me, much alarmed at my appearance—when later given a mirror, I too was shocked; my face was (and is, still) a complete mess of bruises and long jagged rips from the birds’ beaks. It was a miracle that my eyes were not touched. The rest of my body was also in terrible shape, and my clothes had just about been ripped off by those fiendish claws.
I collapsed, and, had it not been for the constant ministrations of Mustafa, I should surely have perished on the trip back.
Once we arrived at Wadi Hadalfa by Nile boat, it was an easy operation to get the train back to our base at Aswan.
It is now less than two weeks after that terrible day twenty miles out of Akasha, and now even this short time has begun to cloud my memory of the affair. Mustafa believes me, but he is little more than a superstitious old Bedouin who has been brought up on legends and tales of horror. Kirk and several Englishmen staying here think that I am lying or raving. I have no means of proving the story other than going back—which I will not, except that Kalatis is gone, and I am still recovering from my wounds.
I wired my agent in New York to stand by with ready funds; by this evening I shall be on the train to Cairo, and to the museum (to which I should have gone in the first place). Once there I shall convince them of the truth of the whole affair, and of the importance of my discovery. In the Book of the Dead there is the means of placating the Great Hawk through spells—you can fight the supernatural only with the supernatural. And when Horus is at rest, we can go back, and my find will be catalogued and published, and my name shall go to the head of the list of great Egyptologists.
Should something happen to me, I have made a carbon of this, and am giving it to one of the English businessmen here; I am giving it to Kearton because he is the least interested in the affair, and the least likely to have formed any theories of his own about it.
George Warren
The carbon is signed by George Warren. It was indeed a good thing that he gave me the above testimony. He never got to the train, and the original report was never found.
Just when the train was to have left, his body was discovered in his room. No cause of death could be found; he was just lying face down on his bed, with his hands, curiously enough, clasped at the back of his neck. The room—which was a mess—was literally covered with feathers.
Michael Kearton
THE CELLAR ROOM
BY STEFFAN B. ALETTI
I AM WRITING THIS IN AN EFFORT TO THROW SOME LIGHT ON the recent chain of appalling murders. I have no real evidence to offer, nothing more than prior knowledge of the existence of a dangerous creature loose in London, and a reluctant familiarity with its habits.
There have been to date seven murders. Four victims were women, two of them elderly, two fairly young; of the other three, one was a nondescript businessman, the second a tradesman, the third an officer investigating the screams of one of these victims. All of these crimes occurred in early evening or at night, in particularly dark places such as blind alleys, closes or residential courts off the streets; and all were within a short distance of 12 Cannington Lane, Chelsea.
These crimes do not seem to have sexual overtones; they are unique and traceable to a single source purely because of the appalling ferocity. In each case the victim was ripped apart, though absence of toothmarks would seem to suggest that the monster is a human one. I say humanoid. It is no madman ranging the streets at night, acting out his sexual fantasies as was the celebrated ripper of a generation ago. I feel sure that it is a species of creature that lies just beyond the measure of human existence and knowledge. The police will not give me the hearing that I desire; after the “multiple murders” of Sir Harold Wolverton and his manservant, they would rather not hear from me. Had that affair received the press coverage it deserved, I feel that a number of perceptive people would have drawn the same conclusions that I offer you now, but owing to the victim’s importance and the affluence of his heirs, as well as the recent conclusion of the Boer War, journalists completely ignored it.
I had become reasonably famous; I was by no means Britain’s best known or most influential psychical researcher—“ghost hunter” in common parlance—but I had done a good deal of work for the Society for Psychical Research, the College of Psychical Sciences, and the Marylebone Spiritual Society. I had published several monographs, written a book on Spiritualism, and produced a number of pamphlets describing my stays in various so-called haunted houses.
Sir Harold Wolverton had once been the president of the Royal College; at that time he was the most respected of the gentlemen engaging in the pursuit of that not-so-respectable science. His papers were widely held to be the most sane and scientifically accurate to come out of the ranks of the Spiritualists. Indeed, at that time Sir Harold was the only one of the brotherhood well enough thought of to appear in public without being heckled by closed minds unfortunately harnessed to big mouths.
It was about 1885 that a very mysterious tragedy occurred. Sir Harold, then not yet knighted, had been about to marry a young lady of good birth, by name Jessica Turner—a relative, as a matter of fact, of the artist. She died under most mysterious circumstances, and Sir Harold disbanded his group, the Chelsea Spiritualist Society, and retired from public life. As that was a very exciting time of Empire, the news did not long dwell on the affair, and, in time, all was forgotten.
Last week, however, I received, to my great surprise, a letter from Sir Harold inviting me to his residence at Cannington Lane. I lost no time in answering, and found myself a short time later in a carriage threading its way through the winding streets of Chelsea.
I was shocked to see Sir Harold. Naturally, we are all familiar with the photographs of him in his prime: heavy-chested, his great shock of red hair flowing over his ears and joining his bristly mustache, and puffing majestically on a massive Oom Paul. He looked the very essence of the British gentleman. I was perfectly aware, of course, that these photographs had been taken about twenty years earlier, but I did not expect the course of time to have exacted so many ravages. His face was bare, and his head had a sparse tonsure of wispy white. He sat in a wheelchair, a shawl wrapped around his knees. His thick hands, obviously once very powerful, shook with palsy; and his eyes, in his youth and middle age his most commanding feature, were vacant and rheumy. He was forty years old at the time of his fiancée’s tragic death; he could now be no more than in his late fifties. He looked like a man of eighty.
“I have decided,” he said, watching his servant back out of the room, closing the partition doors behind him, “to publish my diaries for the years 1884 and 1885. They end the night Jessica, my fiancée died. Will you handle the arrangements for me?”
“Of course, Sir Harold,” I replied, “but surely there are others who arrange such things professionally; they would be more clever in these matters than I. I myself work through a literary agent.”
“I have chosen you,” he interrupted, “for several reasons.” He wheeled himself feebly over to the bookcase, impatiently gesturing me down when I stood to offer my help. He took two handsomely bound books from a shelf, and wheeled back to the table, throwing them down
. They sent up an impressive quantity of dust, arguing their antiquity.
“First,” he continued, “you are presumably a researcher. As a scientist, you must see that these are published as records of scientific experiments. They must not be thought of as fiction or romance. They are serious and not to be taken lightly. Second, I presume that you are a gentleman. There are obviously, as in any diary, allusions to certain private matters that are to be deleted before publication. You will, I trust, see to it?”
“You may be sure,” I replied; “but why, if I may ask, have you delayed the release of these diaries for so many years if they contain valuable scientific matter?”
Sir Harold remained silent for a few moments. At length, when the silence had begun to be painful, he spoke. “You are getting too close. You fellows think that what you are doing is new and exciting, but let me assure you that we here at the Chelsea Society had done it all fifteen years ago. We, too, were scientists; and like you, we toyed with things we were not properly equipped to handle. And you people are about to make the same mistakes that we did.”
“Mistakes!” I protested. “I beg to differ. We are indeed on the verge of bridging the gap between the living and the dead, of piercing the veil.” I could hear my voice mounting with excitement. “But be sure, Sir Harold, we are doing so with the most modern scientific methods and all possible precautions.”
“Balderdash!” he shouted with a ferocity I wouldn’t have expected from such a fragile-looking old man. “Don’t prattle to me about your ‘scientific methods’. If you go to the Pole to explore, you take along an overcoat and a bottle of brandy. That’s scientific! If you go digging about in Egypt, you take along a fan and a bottle of gin. That’s scientific! But what, sir, what possible precautions can you take against the unseen and the totally unknown? Don’t you realize the tremendous power and raw forces of evil you can invoke by accident? What precautions do you take against these, sir? A raincoat? A gun? Or a cross? Believe me, sir, if there is a God, He waits until you are dead before he enters the picture. The devil is not so polite!”
Acolytes of Cthulhu Page 32
