Laird nodded. “I know it’s incredible.”
“It’s just not possible.”
“Well, yes, I suppose it’s impossible. But it was so. That’s why it wasn’t exhibited—just taken out and buried.”
“I don’t quite follow that.”
He leaned forward and said very earnestly, “Because when it came in it had all the appearance of being completely preserved, as if by some natural embalming process. It wasn’t. It was frozen. It began to thaw out that night. And there were certain things about it that indicated that Fr. Piregard hadn’t been dead the three centuries history said he had. The body began to go to pieces in a dozen ways—but not crumbling into dust, nothing like that. Gardner estimated that he hadn’t been dead over five years. Where had he been in the meantime?”
He was quite sincere. I would not at first have believed it. But there was a certain disquieting earnestness about Laird that forbade any levity on my part. If I had treated his story as a joke, as I had the impulse to do, he would have shut up like a clam, and walked out of my room to brood about this thing in secret, with Lord knows what harm to himself. For a little while I said absolutely nothing.
“You don’t believe it.”
“I haven’t said so.”
“I can feel it.”
“No. It’s hard to take. Let’s say I believe in your sincerity.”
“That’s fair enough,” he said grimly. “Do you believe in me sufficiently to go along up to the lodge and find out what may have happened there?”
“Yes, I do.”
“But I think you’d better read these excerpts from Gardner’s letters first.” He put them down on my desk like a challenge. He had copied them off onto a single sheet of paper, and as I took this up he went on, talking rapidly, explaining that the letters had been those written by Gardner from the lodge. When he finished, I turned to the excerpts and read.
I cannot deny that there is about the lodge, the lake, even the forest an aura of evil, of impending danger—it is more than that, Laird, if I could explain it, but archaeology is my forte, and not fiction. For it would take fiction, I think, to do justice to this thing I feel.… Yes, there are times when I have the distinct feeling that someone or something is watching me out of the forest or from the lake—there does not seem to be a distinction as I would like to understand it, and while it does not make me uneasy, nevertheless it is enough to give me pause. I managed the other day to make contact with Old Peter, the half-breed. He was at the moment a little the worse for firewater, but when I mentioned the lodge and the forest to him, he drew into himself like a clam. But he did put words to it: he called it the Wendigo—you are familiar with this legend, which properly belongs to the French-Canadian country.
That was the first letter, written about a week after Gardner had reached the abandoned lodge on Rick’s Lake. The second was extremely terse, and had been sent by special delivery.
Will you wire Miskatonic University at Arkham, Massachusetts, to ascertain if there is available for study a photostatic copy of a book known as the Necronomicon, by an Arabian writer who signs himself Abdul Alhazred? Make inquiry also for the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Book of Eibon, and determine whether it is possible to purchase through one of the local bookstores a copy of The Outsider and Others, by H. P. Lovecraft, published by Arkham House last year. I believe that these books individually and collectively may be helpful in determining just what it is that haunts this place. For there is something; make no mistake about that; I am convinced of it, and when I tell you that I believe it has lived here not for years, but for centuries—perhaps even before the time of man—you will understand that I may be on the threshold of great discoveries.
Startling as this letter was, the third was even more so. For an interval of a fortnight went by between the second and third letters, and it was apparent that something had happened to threaten Professor Gardner’s composure, for his third letter was even in this selected excerpt marked by extreme perturbation.
Everything evil here.… I don’t know whether it is the Black Goat with a Thousand Young or the Faceless One and/or something more that rides the wind. For God’s sake … those accursed fragments!… Something in the lake, too, and at night the sounds! How still, and then suddenly those horrible flutes, those watery ululations! Not a bird, not an animal then—only those ghastly sounds. And the voices!… Or is it but a dream? Is it my own voice I hear in the darkness?…
I found myself increasingly shaken as I read those excerpts. Certain implications and hints lodged between the lines of what Professor Gardner had written were suggestive of terrible, ageless evil, and I felt that there was opening up before Laird Dorgan and myself an adventure so incredible, so bizarre, and so unbelievably dangerous that we might well not return to tell it. Yet even then there was a lurking doubt in my mind that we would say anything about what we found at Rick’s Lake.
“What do you say?” asked Laird impatiently.
“I’m going.”
“Good! Everything’s ready. I’ve even got a dictaphone and batteries enough to run it. I’ve arranged for the sheriff of the county at Pashepaho to replace Gardner’s notes, and leave everything just the way it was.”
“A dictaphone,” I broke in. “What for?”
“Those sounds he wrote about—we can settle that for once and all. If they’re there to be heard, the dictaphone will record them; if they’re just imagination, it won’t.” He paused, his eyes very grave. “You know, Jack, we may not come out of this thing.”
“I know.”
I did not say so, because I knew that Laird, too, felt the same way I did: that we were going like two dwarfed Davids to face an adversary greater than any Goliath, an adversary invisible and unknown, who bore no name and was shrouded in legend and fear, a dweller not only of the darkness of the wood but in that greater darkness which the mind of man has sought to explore since his dawn.
II
Sheriff Cowan was at the lodge when we arrived. Old Peter was with him. The sheriff was a tall, saturnine individual clearly of Yankee stock; though representing the fourth generation of his family in the area, he spoke with a twang which doubtless had persisted from generation to generation. The half-breed was a dark-skinned, ill-kempt fellow; he had a way of saying little, and from time to time grinned or snickered as at some secret joke.
“I brung up express that come some time past for the professor,” said the sheriff. “From some place in Massachusetts was one of ’em, and the other from down near Madison. Didn’t seem t’ me ’twas worth sendin’ back. So I took and brung ’em with the keys. Don’t know that you fellers ’ll git anyw’eres. My posse and me went through the hull woods, didn’t see a thing.”
“You ain’t tellin’ ’em everything,” put in the half-breed, grinning.
“Ain’t no more to tell.”
“What about the carvin’?”
The sheriff shrugged irritably. “Damn it, Peter, that ain’t got nothin’ to do with the professor’s disappearance.”
“He made a drawin’ of it, didn’t he?”
So pressed, the sheriff confided that two members of his posse had stumbled upon a great slab or rock in the center of the wood; it was mossy and overgrown, but there was upon it an odd drawing, plainly as old as the forest—probably the work of one of the primitive Indian tribes once known to inhabit northern Wisconsin before the Dacotah Sioux and the Winnebago—
Old Peter grunted with contempt. “No Indian drawing.”
The sheriff shook this off and went on. The drawing represented some kind of creature, but no one could tell what it was; it was certainly not a man, but on the other hand, it did not seem to be hairy, like a beast. Moreover, the unknown artist had forgotten to put in a face.
“ ’N beside it there wuz two things,” said the half-breed.
“Don’t pay no attention to him,” said the sheriff then.
“What two things?” demanded Laird.
“Jest things,” r
eplied the half-breed, snickering. “Heh, heh! Ain’t no other way to tell it—warn’t human, warn’t animal, jest things.”
Cowan was irritated. He became suddenly brusque; he ordered the half-breed to keep still, and went on to say that if we needed him, he would be at his office in Pashepaho. He did not explain how we were to make contact with him, since there was no telephone at the lodge, but plainly he had no high regard for the legends abounding about the area into which we had ventured with such determination. The half-breed regarded us with an almost stolid indifference, broken only by his sly grin from time to time, and his dark eyes examined our luggage with keen speculation and interest. Laird met his gaze occasionally, and each time Old Peter indolently shifted his eyes. The sheriff went on talking; the notes and drawings the missing man had made were on the desk he had used in the big room which made up almost the entire ground floor of the lodge, just where he had found them; they were the property of the State of Wisconsin and were to be returned to the sheriff’s office when we had finished with them. At the threshold he turned for a parting shot to say he hoped we would not be staying too long, because “While I ain’t givin’ in to any of them crazy ideas—it jest ain’t been so healthy for some of the people who came here.”
“The half-breed knows or suspects something,” said Laird at once. “We’ll have to get in touch with him sometime when the sheriff’s not around.”
“Didn’t Gardner write that he was pretty close-mouthed when it came to concrete data?”
“Yes, but he indicated the way out. Firewater.”
We went to work and settled ourselves, storing our food supplies, setting up the dictaphone, getting things into readiness for a stay of at least a fortnight; our supplies were sufficient for this length of time, and if we had to remain longer, we could always go into Pashepaho for more food. Moreover, Laird had brought fully two dozen dictaphone cylinders, so that we had plenty of them for an indefinite time, particularly since we did not intend to use them except when we slept—and this would not be often, for we had agreed that one of us would watch while the other took his rest, an arrangement we were not sanguine enough to believe would hold good without fail, hence the machine. It was not until after we had settled our belongings that we turned to the things the sheriff had brought, and meanwhile, we had ample opportunity to become aware of the very definite aura of the place.
For it was not imagination that there was a strange aura about the lodge and the grounds. It was not alone the brooding, almost sinister stillness, not alone the tall pines encroaching upon the lodge, not alone the blue-black waters of the lake, but something more than that: a hushed, almost menacing air of waiting, a kind of aloof assurance that was ominous—as one might imagine a hawk might feel leisurely cruising above prey it knows will not escape its talons. Nor was this a fleeting impression, for it was obvious almost at once, and it grew with sure steadiness throughout the hour or so that we worked there; moreover, it was so plainly to be felt, that Laird commented upon it as if he had long ago accepted it, and knew that I, too, had done so! Yet there was nothing primary to which this could be attributed. There are thousands of lakes like Rick’s in northern Wisconsin and Minnesota, and while many of them are not in forest areas, those which are do not differ greatly in their physical aspects from Rick’s; so there was nothing in the appearance of the place which at all contributed to the brooding sense of horror which seemed to invade us from outside. Indeed, the setting was rather the opposite; under the afternoon sunlight, the old lodge, the lake, the high forest all around, had a pleasant air of seclusion—an air which made the contrast with the intangible aura of evil all the more pointed and fearsome. The fragrance of the pines, together with the freshness of the water, served also to emphasize the intangible mood of menace.
We turned at last to the material left on Professor Gardner’s desk. The express packages contained, as expected, a copy of The Outsider and Others, by H. P. Lovecraft, shipped by the publishers, and photostatic copies of manuscript and printed pages taken from the R’lyeh Text and Ludvig Prinn’s De Vermis Mysteriis—apparently sent for to supplement the earlier data dispatched to the professor by the librarian of Miskatonic University, for we found among the material brought back by the sheriff certain pages from the Necronomicon, in the translation by Olaus Wormius, and likewise from the Pnakotic Manuscripts. But it was not these pages, which for the most part were unintelligible to us, which held our attention. It was the fragmentary notes left by Professor Gardner.
It was quite evident that he had not had time to do more than put down such questions and thoughts as had occurred to him, and, while there was little assimilation manifest, yet there was about what he had written a certain terrible suggestiveness which grew to colossal proportions as everything he had not put down became obvious.
“Is the slab (a) only an ancient ruin, (b) a marker similar to a tomb, (c) or a focal point for Him? If the latter, from outside? Or from beneath? (NB: Nothing to show that the thing has been disturbed.)
“Cthulhu or Kthulhut. In Rick’s Lake? Subterrene passage to Superior and the sea via the St. Lawrence? (NB: Except for the aviator’s story, nothing to show that the Thing has anything to do with the water. Probably not one of the water beings.)
“Hastur. But manifestations do not seem to have been of air beings either.
“Yog-Sothoth. Of earth certainly—but he is not the ‘Dweller in Darkness.’ (NB: The Thing, whatever it is, must be of the earth deities, even though it travels in time and space. It could possibly be more than one, of which only the earth being is occasionally visible. Ithaqua, perhaps?)
“ ‘Dweller in Darkness.’ Could He be the same as the Blind, Faceless One? He could be truly said to be dwelling in darkness. Nyarlathotep? Or Shub-Niggurath?
“What of fire? There must be a deity here, too. But no mention. (NB: Presumably, if the Earth and Water Beings oppose those of Air, then they must oppose those of Fire as well. Yet there is evidence here and there to show that there is more constant struggle between Air and Water Beings than between those of Earth and Air. Abdul Alhazred is damnably obscure in places. There is no clue as to the identity of Cthugha in that terrible footnote.)
“Partier says I am on the wrong track. I’m not convinced. Whoever it is that plays the music in the night is a master of hellish cadence and rhythm. And, yes, of cacophony. (CF. Bierce and Chambers.)”
That was all.
“What incredible gibberish!” I exclaimed.
And yet—and yet I knew instinctively it was not gibberish. Strange things had happened here, things which demanded an explanation which was not terrestrial; and here, in Gardner’s handwriting, was evidence to show that he had not only arrived at the same conclusion, but passed it. However it might sound, Gardner had written it in all seriousness, and clearly for his own use alone, since only the vaguest and most suggestive outline seemed apparent. Moreover, the notes had a startling effect on Laird; he had gone quite pale, and now stood looking down as if he could not believe what he had seen.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Jack—he was in contact with Partier.”
“It doesn’t register,” I answered, but even as I spoke I remembered the hush-hush that had attended the severing of old Professor Partier’s connection with the University of Wisconsin. It had been given out to the press that the old man had been somewhat too liberal in his lectures in anthropology—that is, he had “Communistic leanings!”—which everyone who knew Partier realized was far from the facts. But he had said strange things in his lectures, he had talked of horrible, forbidden matters, and it had been thought best to let him out quietly. Unfortunately, Partier went out trumpeting in his contemptuous manner, and it had been difficult to hush the matter up satisfactorily.
“He’s living down in Wausau now,” said Laird.
“Do you suppose he could translate all this?” I asked and knew that I had echoed the thought in Laird’s mind.
“He’s three hours aw
ay by car. We’ll copy these notes, and if nothing happens—if we can’t discover anything, we’ll go to see him.”
If nothing happened—!
If the lodge by day had seemed brooding in an air of ominousness, by night it seemed surcharged with menace. Moreover, events began to take place with disarming and insidious suddenness, beginning in mid-evening, when Laird and I were sitting over those curious photostats sent out by Miskatonic University in lieu of the books and manuscripts themselves, which were far too valuable to permit out of their haven. The first manifestation was so simple that for some time neither of us noticed its strangeness. It was simply the sound in the trees as of rising wind, the growing song among the pines. The night was warm, and all the windows of the lodge stood open. Laird commented on the wind, and went on giving voice to his perplexity regarding the fragments before us. Not until half an hour had gone by and the sound of the wind had risen to the proportions of a gale did it occur to Laird that something was wrong, and he looked up, his eyes going from one open window to another in growing apprehension. Then I, too, became aware.
Despite the tumult of the wind, no draft of air had circulated in the room, not one of the light curtains at the window was so much as trembling!
With one simultaneous movement, both of us stepped out upon the broad verandah of the lodge.
There was no wind, no breath of air stirring to touch our hands and faces. There was only the sound in the forest. And both of us looked up to where the pines were silhouetted against the starswept heavens, expecting their tops would be bending before a high gale; but there was no movement whatever; the pines stood still, motionless; and the sound as of wind continued all around us. We stood on the verandah for half an hour, vainly attempting to determine the source of the sound—and then, as unobtrusively as it had begun, it stopped!
The hour was now approaching midnight, and Laird prepared for bed; he had slept little the previous night, and we had agreed that I was to take the first watch until four in the morning. Neither of us said much about the sound in the pines, but what was said indicated a desire to believe that there was a natural explanation for the phenomenon, if we could establish a point of contact for understanding. It was inevitable, I suppose, that even in the face of all the curious facts which had come to our attention, there should still be an earnest wish to find a natural explanation. Certainly the oldest fear and the greatest fear to which man is prey is fear of the unknown; anything capable of rationalization and explanation cannot be feared; but it was growing hourly more patent that we were facing something which defied all known rationales and credos, but hinged upon a system of belief that antedated even primitive man, and indeed, as scattered hints within the photostat pages from Miskatonic University suggested, antedated even earth itself. And there was always that brooding terror, the ominous suggestion of menace from something far beyond the grasp of such a puny intelligence as man’s.
Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos Page 16
