Impulsively I raised my arm and knocked on the door.
There was no answer from within, but on the instant of my knock, the music stopped, the strange odors vanished from the air!
“You shouldn’t have done that!” whispered Frolin. “If he …”
I tried the door. It yielded to my pressure, and I opened it.
I do not know what I expected to see there in the study, but certainly not what I did see. No single aspect of the room had changed, save that grandfather had gone to bed, and now sat there with his eyes closed and a little smile on his lips, some of his work open before him on the bed, and the lamp burning. I stood for an instant staring, not daring to believe my eyes, incredulous before the prosaic scene I looked upon. Whence then had come the music I had heard? And the odors and fragrances in the air? Confusion took possession of my thoughts, and I was about to withdraw, disturbed by the repose of my grandfather’s features, when he spoke.
“Come in, then,” he said, without opening his eyes. “So you heard the music, too? I had begun to wonder why no one else heard it. Mongolian, I think. Three nights ago, it was clearly Indian—north country again, Canada and Alaska. I believe there are places where Ithaqua is still worshipped. Yes, yes—and a week ago, notes I last heard played in Tibet, in forbidden Lhasa years ago, decades ago.”
“Who made it?” I cried. “Where did it come from?”
He opened his eyes and regarded us standing there. “It came from here, I think,” he said, placing the flat of one hand on the manuscript before him, the sheets written by my great-uncle. “And Leander’s friends made it. Music of the spheres, my boy—do you credit your senses?”
“I heard it. So did Frolin.”
“And what can Hough be thinking?” mused grandfather. He sighed. “I have nearly got it, I think. It only remains to determine with which of them Leander communicated.”
“Which?” I repeated. “What do you mean?”
He closed his eyes and the smile came briefly back to his lips. “I thought at first it was Cthulhu; Leander was, after all, a seafaring man. But now—I wonder if it might not be one of the creatures of the air: Lloigor, perhaps—or Ithaqua, whom I believe certain of the Indians call the Wendigo. There is a legend that Ithaqua carries his victims with him in the far spaces above the earth—but I am forgetting myself again, my mind wanders.” His eyes flashed open, and I found him regarding us with a peculiarly aloof stare. “It’s late,” he said. “I need sleep.”
“What in God’s name was he talking about?” asked Frolin in the hall.
“Come along,” I said.
But, back in my room once more, with Frolin waiting expectantly to hear what I had to say, I did not know how to begin. How would I tell him about the weird knowledge hidden in the forbidden texts at Miskatonic University—the dread Book of Eibon, the obscure Pnakotic Manuscripts, the terrible R’lyeh Text, and, most shunned of all, the Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred? How could I say to him with any conviction at all the things that crowded into my mind as a result of hearing my grandfather’s strange words, the memories that boiled up from deep within—of powerful Ancient Ones, elder beings of unbelievable evil, old gods who once inhabited the earth and all the universe as we know it now, and perhaps far more—old gods of ancient good, and forces of ancient evil, of whom the latter were now in leash, and yet ever breaking forth, becoming manifest briefly, horribly, to the world of men. And their terrible names came back now, if before this hour my clue to remembrance had not been made strong enough, had been refused in the fastnesses of my inherent prejudices—Cthulhu, potent leader of the forces of the waters of earth; Yog-Sothoth and Tsathoggua, dwellers in the depths of earth; Lloigor, Hastur, and Ithaqua, the Snow-Thing, and Wind-Walker, who were the elementals of air. It was of these beings that grandfather had spoken; and the inference he had made was too plain to be disregarded, or even to be subject to any other interpretations—that my Great-Uncle Leander, whose home, after all, had once been in the shunned and now deserted city of Innsmouth, had had traffic with at least one of these beings. And there was a further inference that he had not made, but only hinted at in something he had said earlier in the evening—that there was somewhere in the house a threshold, beyond which a man dared not walk, and what danger could lurk beyond that threshold but the path back into time, the way back to that hideous communication with the elder beings my Uncle Leander had had!
And yet somehow, the full import of grandfather’s words had not dawned upon me. Though he had said so much, there was far more he had left unsaid, and I could not blame myself later for not fully realizing that grandfather’s activities were clearly bent toward discovering that hidden threshold of which Uncle Leander had so cryptically written—and crossing it! In the confusion of thought to which I had now come in my preoccupation with the ancient mythology of Cthulhu, Ithaqua, and the elder gods, I did not follow the obvious indications to that logical conclusion, possibly because I feared instinctively to go so far.
I turned to Frolin and explained to him as clearly as I could. He listened attentively, asking a few pointed questions from time to time, and, though he paled slightly at certain details I could not refrain from mentioning, he did not seem to be as incredulous as I might have thought. This in itself was evidence of the fact that there was still more to be discovered about my grandfather’s activities and the occurrences in the house, though I did not immediately realize this. However, I was shortly to discover more of the underlying reason for Frolin’s ready acceptance of my necessarily sketchy outline.
In the middle of a question, he ceased talking abruptly, and there came into his eyes an expression indicating that his attention had passed from me, from the room to somewhere beyond; he sat in an attitude of listening, and, impelled by his own actions, I, too, strained to hear what he heard.
Only the wind’s voice in the trees, rising now a little, I thought. A storm coming.
“Do you hear it?” he said in a shaky whisper.
“No,” I said quietly. “Only the wind.”
“Yes, yes—the wind. I wrote you, remember. Listen.”
“Now, come, Frolin, take hold of yourself. It’s only the wind.”
He gave me a pitying glance and, going to the window, beckoned me after him. I followed, coming to his side. Without a word he pointed into the darkness pressing close to the house. It took me a moment to accustom myself to the night, but presently I was able to see the line of trees struck sharply against the star-swept heavens. And then, instantly, I understood.
Though the sound of the wind roared and thundered about the house, nothing whatever disturbed the trees before my eyes—not a leaf, not a treetop, not a twig, swayed by so much as a hair’s breadth!
“Good God!” I exclaimed, and fell back, away from the pane, as if to shut the sight from my eyes.
“Now, you see,” he said, stepping back from the window, also. “I have heard all this before.”
He stood quietly, as if waiting, and I, too, waited. The sound of the wind continued unabated; it had by this time reached a frightful intensity, so that it seemed as if the old house must be torn from the hillside and hurtled into the valley below. Indeed, a faint trembling made itself manifest even as I thought this: a strange tremor, as if the house were shuddering, and the pictures on the walls made a slight, almost stealthy movement, almost imperceptible, and yet quite unmistakably visible. I glanced at Frolin, but his features were not disquieted; he continued to stand, listening and waiting, so that it was patent that the end of this singular manifestation was not yet. The wind’s sound was now a terrible, demoniac howling, and it was accompanied by notes of music, which must have been audible for some time, but were so perfectly blended with the wind’s voice that I was not at first aware of them. The music was similar to that which had gone before, as of pipes and occasionally stringed instruments, but was now much wilder, sounding with a terrifying abandon, with a character of unmentionable evil about it. At the same time, tw
o further manifestations occurred. The first was the sound as of someone walking, some great being whose footsteps seemed to flow into the room from the heart of the wind itself; certainly they did not originate in the house, though there was about them the unmistakable swelling which betokened their approach to the house. The second was the sudden change in the temperature.
The night outside was warm for September in upstate Wisconsin, and the house, too, had been reasonably comfortable. Now, abruptly, coincident with the approaching footsteps, the temperature began to drop rapidly, so that in a little while the air in the room was cold, and both Frolin and I had to put on more clothing in order to keep comfortable. Still this did not seem to be the height of the manifestations for which Frolin so obviously waited; he continued to stand, saying nothing, though his eyes, meeting mine from time to time, were eloquent enough to speak his mind. How long we stood there, listening to those frightening sounds from outside, before the end came, I do not know.
But suddenly Frolin caught my arm and, in a hoarse whisper, cried, “There! There they are! Listen!”
The tempo of the weird music had changed abruptly to a diminuendo from its previous wild crescendo; there came into it now a strain of almost unbearable sweetness, with a little of melancholy to it, music as lovely as previously it had been evil, and yet the note of terror was not completely absent. At the same time, there was apparent the sound of voices, raised in a kind of swelling chant, rising from the back of the house somewhere—as if from the study.
“Great God in Heaven!” I cried, seizing Frolin. “What is it now?”
“It’s grandfather’s doing,” he said. “Whether he knows it or not, that thing comes and sings to him.” He shook his head and closed his eyes tightly for an instant before saying bitterly in a low, intense voice, “If only that accursed paper of Leander’s had been burned as it ought to have been!”
“You could almost make out the words,” I said, listening intently.
There were words—but not words I had ever heard before: a kind of horrible, primeval mouthing, as if some bestial creature with but half a tongue ululated syllables of meaningless horror. I went over and opened the door; immediately the sounds seemed clearer, so that it was evident that what I had mistaken for many voices was but one, which could nevertheless convey the illusion of many. Words—or perhaps I had better write sounds, bestial sounds—rose from below, a kind of awe-inspiring ululation:
“Iä! Iä! Ithaqua! Ithaqua cf’ayak: vulgtmm. Iä! Uhg! Cthulhu fhtagn! Sbub-Niggurath! Ithaqua naflfhtagn!”
Incredibly, the wind’s voice rose to howl ever more terribly, so that I thought at any moment the house would be hurled into the void, and Frolin and myself torn from its rooms, and the breath sucked from our helpless bodies. In the confusion of fear and wonder that held me, I thought at that instant of grandfather in the study below, and beckoning Frolin, I ran from the room to the stairs, determined, despite my ghastly fright, to put myself between the old man and whatever menaced him. I ran to his door and flung myself upon it—and once more, as before, all manifestations stopped: as if by the flick of a switch, silence fell like a pall of darkness upon the house, a silence that was momentarily even more terrible.
The door gave, and once more I faced grandfather.
He was sitting still as we had left him but a short time before, though now his eyes were open, his head was cocked a little to one side, and his gaze was fixed upon the overlarge painting on the east wall.
“In God’s name!” I cried. “What was that?”
“I hope to find out before long,” he answered with great dignity and gravity.
His utter lack of fear quieted my own alarm to some degree, and I came a little farther into the room, Frolin following. I leaned over his bed, striving to fix his attention upon me, but he continued to gaze at the painting with singular intensity.
“What are you doing?” I demanded. “Whatever it is, there’s danger in it.”
“An explorer like your grandfather would hardly be content if there were not, my boy,” he replied crisply, matter-of-factly.
I knew it was true.
“I would rather die with my boots on than here in this bed,” he went on. “As for what we heard—I don’t know how much of it you heard—that’s something for the moment not yet explicable. But I would call to your attention the strange action of the wind.”
“There was no wind,” I said. “I looked.”
“Yes, yes,” he said a little impatiently. “True enough. And yet the wind’s sound was there, and all the voices of the wind—just as I have heard it singing in Mongolia, in the great snowy spaces, over the shunned and hidden Plateau of Leng where the Tcho-Tcho people worship strange ancient gods.” He turned to face me suddenly, and I thought his eyes feverish. “I did tell you, didn’t I, about the worship of Ithaqua, sometimes called Wind-Walker, and by some, surely, the Wendigo, by certain Indians in upper Manitoba, and of their beliefs that the Wind-Walker takes human sacrifices and carries them over the far places of the earth before leaving them behind, dead at last? Oh, there are stories, my boy, odd legends—and something more.” He leaned toward me now with a fierce intensity. “I have myself seen things—things found on a body dropped from the air—just that—things that could not possibly have been got in Manitoba, things belonging to Leng, to the Pacific Isles.” He brushed me away with one arm, and an expression of disgust crossed his face. “You don’t believe me. You think I’m wandering. Go on then, go back to your little sleep, and wait for your last through the eternal misery of monotonous day after day!”
“No! Say it now. I’m in no mood to go.”
“I will talk to you in the morning,” he said tiredly, leaning back.
With that I had to be content; he was adamant, and could not be moved. I bade him good-night once more and retreated into the hall with Frolin, who stood there shaking his head slowly, forbiddingly.
“Every time a little worse,” he whispered. “Every time the wind blows a little louder, the cold comes more intensely, the voices and the music more clearly—and the sound of those terrible footsteps!”
He turned away and began to retrace the way upstairs, and, after a moment of hesitation, I followed.
In the morning my grandfather looked his usual picture of good health. At the moment of my entrance into the dining room, he was speaking to Hough, evidently in answer to a request, for the old servant stood respectfully bowed, while he heard grandfather tell him that he and Mrs. Hough might indeed take a week off, beginning today, if it was necessary for Mrs. Hough’s health that she go to Wausau to consult a specialist. Frolin met my eyes with a grim smile; his color had faded a little, leaving him pale and sleepless-looking, but he ate heartily enough. His smile, and the brief indicative glance of his eyes toward Hough’s retreating back, said clearly that this necessity which had come upon Hough and his wife was their way of fighting the manifestations which had so disturbed my own first night in the house.
“Well, my boy,” said grandfather quite cheerfully, “you’re not looking nearly as haggard as you did last night. I confess, I felt for you. I daresay also you aren’t nearly so skeptical as you were.”
He chuckled, as if this were a subject for joking. I could not, unfortunately, feel the same way about it. I sat down and began to eat a little, glancing at him from time to time, waiting for him to begin his explanation of the strange events of the previous night. Since it became evident shortly that he did not intend to explain, I was impelled to ask for an explanation, and did so with as much dignity as possible.
“I’m sorry if you’ve been disturbed,” he said. “The fact of the matter is that that threshold of which Leander wrote must be in that study somewhere, and I felt quite certain I was onto it last night, before you burst into my room the second time. Furthermore, it seems undisputable that at least one member of the family has had traffic with one of those beings—Leander, obviously.”
Frolin leaned forward. “Do you believe i
n them?”
Grandfather smiled unpleasantly. “It must be obvious that, whatever my abilities, the disturbance you heard last night could hardly have been caused by me.”
“Yes, of course,” agreed Frolin. “But some other agency …”
“No, no—it remains to be determined only which one. The water smells are the sign of the spawn of Cthulhu, but the winds might be Lloigor or Ithaqua or Hastur. But the stars aren’t right for Hastur,” he went on. “So we are left with the other two. There they are, then, or one of them, just across that threshold. I want to know what lies beyond that threshold, if I can find it.”
It seemed incredible that my grandfather should be talking so unconcernedly about these ancient beings; his prosaic air was in itself almost as alarming as had been the night’s occurrences. The temporary feeling of security I had had at the sight of him eating breakfast was washed away; I began to be conscious again of that slowly growing fear I had known on my way to the house last evening, and I regretted having pushed my inquiry.
If my grandfather were aware of anything of this, he made no sign. He went on talking much in the manner of a lecturer pursuing a scientific inquiry for the benefit of an audience before him. It was obvious, he said, that a connection existed between the happenings at Innsmouth and Leander Alwyn’s non-human contact outside. Did Leander leave Innsmouth originally because of the cult of Cthulhu that existed there, because he, too, was becoming afflicted with that curious facial change which overtook so many of the inhabitants of accursed Innsmouth?—those strange batrachian lineaments which horrified the Federal investigators who came to examine into the Innsmouth affair? Perhaps this was so. In any event, leaving the Cthulhu cult behind, he had made his way into the wilds of Wisconsin and somehow he had established contact with another of the elder beings, Lloigor or Ithaqua—all, to be noted, elemental forces of evil. Leander Alwyn was apparently a wicked man.
Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos Page 21
