And so I did.
We kept going, finally reaching the chamber once more. Ray was whistling, happy to be two hundred dollars richer and almost out of here. The whistle died in his throat when we stepped into the chamber.
The door was open.
A blue light leaked from inside the room, splashing across the entrance and out into the chamber like an ink spill. The moaning started again, so loud and pervasive I winced. I glanced at Ray but he didn’t react to the sound. I grit my teeth and advanced. I had to know what was in there, even though the rational part of my mind screamed at me to run, to flee for my life. The rest of me did not. The moaning was doing what it did before, soothing my nerves and calming my anxieties. I was as much under its spell as a moth is to a glowing light bulb.
When I crossed the threshold and entered, the moaning stopped. All went silent as my eyes adjusted to what I was seeing.
The room was about twenty yards across and ten yards wide. The floor was made of the same black earth that packed the tunnels behind me. The walls were packed earth as well, solid and unyielding. The blue light was emanating from a well, dug into the center of the room, made of rock and about waist high.
The moaning began again. It was coming from the well.
“Jesus,” Ray said behind me. He had followed and was now standing at the entrance. I was halfway across the room, my legs carrying me of their own volition over to the well and the source of the moaning.
The well was five yards square in size and tunneled down deep into the earth. I leaned over to peer in and what greeted my eyes was the most horrible sight I had ever seen.
The blue light came from a thing that filled the bottom of the well. It was round and almost resembled a giant eyeball, but it wasn’t an eye. It floated in water so rank, the stench of it permeated the pores of my body, forever defiling my flesh with its musk. The object was pinkish in color and blue in the center. It was from this center that the light was glowing and it pulsed as something opened and closed within the blue circle, almost like a mouth pursing its lips and blowing a kiss.
The hair stood up on my neck, chills ran through my body, I shivered and sweat as if I had a fever, and my pupils dilated so that I could hardly see. My hands and feet swelled and my teeth ached as my sinuses filled with mucous that burbled and foamed out my nostrils. I was a gibbering mess but I could not tear my gaze from the creature I was staring at. All awareness I had was focused solely on the thing at the bottom of the well. I did not feel Ray approach my side and stand next to me.
The blue mouth puckered and spat out a green gas. It floated up out of the well and wreathed my head like a smoke ring. I was compelled by the moaning voice to inhale deeply.
The world spun around me. I saw and experienced things I can put no description to. It was like the night before; I was experiencing my febrile dreams from the night before all over again, only this time, there was a logic and order to them.
I spun backwards through time. I saw the stars in the sky change their constellations. They rearranged, mixing and matching, forming formations I’d never dared dream of before. Orion the Hunter became a crab creature with a thousand legs; the Big Dipper turned into a fanged beast with slouched shoulders and spikes growing from its shoulders; Cassiopeia transformed into a hideous woman with giant breasts that had mouths for nipples and claws for teeth. On and on it went; what was once familiar now became foreign, almost as if I’d traveled to another realm altogether. But something about it stayed rooted firm in the earth I knew. I did not travel to some other place but to some other time, long before the world as I knew it took shape.
Backwards and backwards, tumbling. The world sprouted volcanoes and continents and they shrank back down again, over and over, growing and retracting. The forms and shapes of the land masses also changed, from the familiar to the utterly bizarre. I saw species of plants die and be reborn. I saw humans devolve until they were apes and then back into the fish of the sea. I saw the seas swirl and changed, the oceans as I knew them taking on different, bizarre configurations. Plants walked and talked, animals grew from the dirt, and great creatures roamed the lands and the skies.
My nose and mouth bled. My teeth fell out, one by one, rotting where they were planted and turning sour to the taste. My tongue swelled in my mouth and I choked on it. My eyes burned and the flesh of my face dried and wilted, peeling off in great tufts.
Still, I traveled backwards.
Eventually, I stopped spinning through time, my body coming to rest as I hung in the air. Waiting, observing.
Two creatures, so big as to defy explanation, rushed each other over a large land mass. My brain could not take in the details of them; they were both too queer, too strange, too unlike anything I could ever explain. The one that came from the left side of my vision was long and lean with green skin streaked with red, throbbing veins. It was of one, fixed piece, like a tree trunk with no leaves but hundreds of skeletal limbs for arms. Its bottom, a round stump with wriggling worms for feet, carved deep valleys in the earth below it as it propelled forward towards the other creature. It had eyes, thousands of eyes, rippling over its body, up and down, side to side. The skeletal arms lashed out, yellow sparks striking from where they rubbed together. There was more to it, more than I could comprehend. Its skin slithered across its body, the red veins changing positions like lightning strikes against a black sky. Its facade shifted as well, the eyes rolling as moss floats on a churning sea. It kept changing its surface but its basic form stayed the same shape, a stalk with tentacles for feet and long limbs for arms.
“An Old One,” a voice cried. “An Old One!”
I hardly got a glimpse at the other creature, the one on my right. I saw it, the image of it burned into my brain, but I could not ever hope to take that jumbled picture and make sense of it.
“Cthulhu,” a voice whispered. “It is great Cthulhu.”
To try and put into words what I saw would be futile. It was giant, bigger than the creature coming at it. There was a general humanoid shape to it, but it was equally dragon and octopus, with giant wings at its back. To stare at it was to destroy my mind, so I turned away, not daring to gaze upon it again. Here was the root of nightmares, here was the beginning of all fear and dread, the author of the things that squirm in the darkness, waiting, watching. Here was dread Cthulhu, he who dreamed in the great city of R’lyeh, waiting to rise once again.
As this knowledge came to me, as I understood on some small, primitive level, what I was seeing, my body spun and transformed. I flattened like a disk and flew towards Cthulhu, and as I neared him, my mind melted and all reasoning fled. I was reduced to a small thing, bigger than I had been as a human, but so much smaller next to Cthulhu.
I stuck to the underside of one of the flailing tentacles attached to the great creature. And here I stayed as the beasts warred, sparks and explosions cracking the skies and ripping the earth below. I could not see much for I had transformed into a suction cup on one of Cthulhu’s tentacles. I saw what it saw, and felt what it felt. My consciousness melded with its and we became one creature.
All at once a fantastic, screeching pain tore through me and I found myself flying free from my master, torn off and flung to the side. I drifted on the wind and screamed as I plummeted to the ground, striking it like a dagger rips through rice paper. I slammed into the earth and was buried under the great conflagrations of the monsters above me.
And there I lay, for thousands and thousands of years. I was intelligent, at least to the extent of being self-aware. I moaned and cried for my loss. I was once part of a greater whole and now I was all alone, forever, doomed to slowly rot in this earthly prison.
Time and time passed. I cried out to the various creatures that rose and fell during my burial. Some had minds to listen, others did not. I never stopped moaning, though, in vain hope of bringing my master back to me. He did not return. I was a sloughed-off piece of skin and would not be missed.
Over the eons, madness
consumed me. I hurt, I hungered, and yet I grew. The earth above me gained and lost mountains, sprouted lakes and drained them just as quickly. Until one day, man came to walk its surface. And in man, I found a creature who would listen...
I bade one man to unearth me, and he did. His name was Rance Randifor and I compelled his brother Vance to convince him to make this so. I possessed Vance’s mind, making great promises of wealth and power if he fed me. And feed me he did. Other humans. And their meat was sweet to the taste. They stewed within me for hundreds of years, slowly dissolving and providing my sustenance. But that man died, and none came to replace him for so very long.
Until someone finally did, other Randifor relatives. One built a well for me to soak in, another brought me more victims. Over and over again.
And then, the last human, Grady Randifor, the one who brought me the darker-skinned humans by the dozens. He was the finest of all my thralls for he brought me the most food. It was a sore day when he came to join me and now there was another one, a human who was now ready to know the final truth and become my willing servant, just as his ancestors had.
“Cthulhu,” I whispered, and my mind broke free of the grip upon it and all at once I was back in the room, standing beside the well, gripping the old stones at the top of it so hard my knuckles were swollen with the strain.
“I swear to my God,” Ray said next to me.
I turned to face him. He had been here this whole time. And how much time had that been? It could only have been seconds, mere moments, but in that small fraction, I had experienced so much. I had been myself, and then I had been that thing at the bottom of the well, that creature of howling madness.
And now, I knew what I must do.
I seized Ray by the collar of his shirt and shoved him towards the lip of the well. He screamed and clawed at my face. Any other day or circumstance I would not have stood a chance against his strength, but my journey had snapped my mind and given me the potency of a dozen maniacs. I lifted him as if he were a feather, and, despite his frantic protestations, I tossed him down to my new master.
Ray hit with a wet slap and the blue iris in the middle of the creature opened and swallowed him whole. He disappeared in a crackle of bones and a cacophony of screams.
I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that what I had just done was going to open forbidden doors of knowledge and I would soon come to know and understand things far beyond the grip of the mortal mind. The Howling Madness had promised me this, just as it had my forbears. I only had to keep feeding it.
I stuck my fingers into my mouth and chewed on the nails. I stumbled around the well, walking in circles. Doubts swelled I my mind and breast. I had just killed a man and there was no way to hide or cover it up. His wife would come looking for him and then the police. I had no way of hiding what I’d done. I was not that good of a liar.
In my haze of fear and recriminations, I did not pay heed to where I was walking and, like the fool I am, I ran straight into the side of the well and fell head first over the side.
I hit with a splash and sheer terror bolted through my mind. I sputtered and tried to grip the sides of the well to climb out. This creature had promised me untold knowledge and power in exchange for a steady diet of human flesh, so I was surely going to be safe from its hunger.
Something that felt like a beak surrounded my ankle and snapped down, cracking the bone in two. White hot pain rifled up my leg, stung my spine, and clawed at my brain. My fingers let go of the sad grip I had on the wall and my body slipped down into the mire of the creature.
I cannot recall the next few moments with any sort of rational clarity. I remember feeling those beaks—and that’s what they had to be, hard as bone and as big as a giant’s hands—swim out on tendrils from the main body, attach themselves to my thighs, my forearms, and my ribs. They moved as one, all of them crunching the spots they held. My bones turned to powder under their strength.
I wished I could pass out, but even as the pain was too much and the darkness rolled in to cover me, other tendrils went to work. They snaked around my body and pulled me under the water. They had tiny teeth running in ridges on their underside and bit into my flesh, injecting some type of venom deep into my veins. My body was racked by a series of spasms and then it went limp all over.
I sank deeper and the tentacles pulled me into the body, inside another opening. I once again begged for the sweet release of unconsciousness or death, but neither was forthcoming. Whatever the creature had injected me with kept me both completely awake and alert.
I passed through a pouch that slurped me into it like a pair of giant lips. I slid through a small, greased passage, heading downward. I tried to breathe but there was no air here, nothing to sustain me. I laughed, my mouth stretching and my lips cracking. I would suffocate to death and that would be my end.
As soon as that thought drifted lazy through my mind, a different tentacle shot out and stabbed my mouth, smashing through my teeth, slicing my tongue in half, and forcing its way down my throat. I felt it sink in deep until it almost reached my stomach. Dozens of tiny feelers wriggled from its tips and inserted themselves into my lungs.
Fetid, diseased air flooded my lungs, filling them. Half of the feelers served this function; the other half sucked the air back out a few seconds later.
The Howling Madness was forcing me to breathe.
Time passed. I spun around inside this chamber within the creature, my body completely immobilized. I was as helpless as a child floating in the stomach of its mother.
Only this foul beast was no mother, no giver of life. It was a destroyer, a feeder.
After a time, I slid into another chamber. The other tentacles, the ones who had broken my limbs and ravaged my flesh, drifted away. All that attached me to the creature was the tube running down my throat and into my lungs.
It was here I joined the other victims. It was here that I came to rest, stewing in a thick, viscous brown fluid that smelled of burnt feces. Here we bobbed around together, bumping into one another. Here, I learned what my true fate was.
One last time, images from the creature flooded my mind. I saw Grady Randifor making a pact with the monster in the well. I watched as he built a series of tunnels and used magicks the Howling Madness taught him to consecrate the entrance. The only way through the locked door—itself bound by ancient magicks that kept the knob hot and the door itself frigid—was to walk all of the passages. It did not matter in which order; just as long as all were trod within a certain framework of time. This caused the locks to release and the door to open, leading to the well and the Madness within.
Grady Randifor then devised a perfect plan to bring the creature all the victims it could ever want. He asserted himself into the emancipation movement, becoming a vociferous advocate for the ending of slavery. He then joined the secret Underground Railroad organization. He informed them of his tunnel system built under his house that could both safely hide runaway slaves and lead them to safety miles away. It was all a ruse. The men, women, and children were brought here under false pretenses and fed to the thing in the well. It feasted for a few years before the frequency of fleeing slaves petered out. The war ended. There was no more need for Grady and his services. He eventually went mad when he couldn’t bring the creature any more food. And yet, sickeningly, he was hailed as a hero by the very organizations he’d betrayed.
More images flashed in my brain. I saw my father and Uncle Chester, both staring down into the well at the thing at the bottom. I saw the look of fear and revulsion in their eyes as the creature bartered with them, offering them all they’d offered me and all our relatives. I watched my father flee, stronger than me. I watched Uncle Chester linger longer, but eventually leaving as well.
If I had lips, I would have wailed.
X
So here I float. Here I ruminate on what I have done to bring me to such a state. Here I am stuck, until I die, for there is no escape. The creature is slowly digesting me. And if
I can judge by the other, still-living humans floating around me, that digestion will take a very long time. Hundreds of years, perhaps. The bodies and heads of the dozens of slaves still here greet me with sneering faces and angry eyes. And there is Ray, whom I bump into on occasion. He has the most savage expression. I know that if he had hands that worked, he would have strangled me a thousand times over by now.
Every now and then, the tendrils inside of us squeeze our lungs and tiny valves release the air into our throats. It is then our voices rise as one, and we sing the low moan that I first heard upon my arrival here.
It is the howl of madness.
It is our song, and we will sing it until we can sing it no more.
THE NAMELESS
A Stuart Williams
Living, as we do, on a tiny planet, spinning silently in a lonely corner of a universe full of strange things seen and unseen, of cold, dark matter, and yet darker energies that underlie what we see as “reality”, what can we really know of the worlds beyond? Astronomers often say that we are “made of stardust”, but some of those stars are dark indeed, and long-dead. And few writers realise from whence their darkest inspirations truly come. Nor did I, until one dark, late October afternoon in Providence, Rhode Island, I came upon a remarkable shop, by accident as I thought.
It was the kind of store you might never notice normally, tucked away as it was, but that day I was suffering from “writer’s block” and, desperately seeking inspiration for my first book, I had determined to make a good beginning by buying a fine pen to write my first draft, and to bring me good fortune, as a kind of talisman, if you will. So, there I was, wearing out the sidewalks of Providence, and my boots, hoping to find a pen store, and rediscover my muse! After all, I was now going one step beyond short stories...
New Tales of the Old Ones Page 27
