At last he found his mark. The crocodile writhed in mortal agony, flapped his tail, striking half a dozen men who were bowing before him, and died. The priest dropped the girl, and commenced to run. In his haste, the mask which covered his face became dislodged, and fell to the ground.
I stared in stark horror at the lust-distorted visage that was revealed to me.
9
The girl came dashing up the aisle and disappeared into the street. We were in a dangerous position. The frenzied mob turned upon us with murderous lust, and scratching, punching, and panting we were borne to the floor. Again Ellery’s gun spat lead and flame, and the crowd edged away from him. In the lull, we dashed for the door and escaped across the street into the car.
We saw the girl standing in the street. Hastily telling her to get into the car, we drove back to the office of the detective.
When we arrived, we found the secretary in great distress. The police dog that Ellery loved so much appeared to have been taken suddenly ill. The detective excused himself, and left the room.
We heard him outside, calling the dog. There was a patter of canine feet, then a snarling growl. We heard a heavy body thud to the ground, and a cry of pain. Darting to the door, we saw a sight that sickened us.
Ellery lay upon the floor, and blood was streaming from his throat. He was dead before we reached him. And as the dog—half wolf, wholly wild—stood there, growling at us, the unspeakable enmity of those eyes, touched with a devilish light, bespoke the fiend, the devourer, Behemoth. Around him there curled a thin wisp of yellow vapor.
D’Arlancourt picked up Ellery’s revolver from the table and fired at the brute. The dog fell dead, and as he fell—was it true, or did my distraught nerves belie my senses?—I thought I heard an ominous rumble from the dark recesses of the room, as the vapor floated out of the window and vanished.
10
It did not need the statement of the girl whom we had brought with us to convince us that the day was near when the whole horde of the jungle would attempt to overrun civilization.
The telegrams without exception told of a series of attempts to the same end. Several of them in fact employed the word “B’Moth,” showing clearly that the incidents were all connected by some strong central purpose.
But we were still in the dark, and ignorant of the time and place of the attempt. The thing was expected to raise its head in Argentina, Africa, India, and a dozen other countries. How could we hope to deal with them all at the same time?
What we did do, however, was to cable to the police forces of the entire world, telling them to watch diligently and be on their guard for any invasion from the jungle or from the sea. Probably our message sounded fantastic to them, but we made it as convincing as possible.
This done, we set about for a means to protect our own people from the menace which we felt was imminent. After some thought, I found a possible means to forestall these hideous things. It was a daring one, and risky; not to be attempted without the full consent of Dr. Prendergast.
I telephoned the hospital, and asked if he was there. I learned that he was, and that the hospital authorities had succeeded in rekindling the fire which a careless attendant had allowed to die some time previously. The doctor was rapidly recovering. I requested the office to connect me with him, and he replied cheerily enough.
He was quite unable to furnish me with any information of the sort that I desired. Finally, I made the proposal that I had in mind. It was the only way that offered even a possible solution of the problem.
“Are you willing to do something for the cause of humanity?” I asked.
“What is it that you want me to do?” he asked rather anxiously. He had already been in dire peril, and I could well believe that he feared the Thing more than anything else in the world.
“I want you to let that fire die out again for a few minutes,” I said slowly and distinctly.
“Good heavens! I can’t do that. You know what it would mean.”
“Yes, I know. And because the matter is so important, I ask you to do this. We will be outside, and ready to light it again, so you will not be powerless.”
“Why do you want me to do this?”
“There is a chance that you may be able to tell us when this invasion will occur. If it is to be soon, all the followers of the Master will have to know it. You must try to remember all that occurs while the fire is out. Will you do this?”
“It’s a lot—but I’ll do it,” he said resolutely.
We hurried over to the hospital, and watched through the aperture of the door while Dr. Prendergast allowed the fire to flicker slowly to death. His face grayed with fear as the last sparks died down and the ashes cooled. I could see, even from that distance, the great drops of perspiration breaking out upon his brow, as the insidious influence stole over him. The room darkened, and the tendrils of vapor slowly gathered about him. He lay upon the bed like one dead, but, by his breathing, I could see that he was still alive.
I saw the distorted ferocity that I had come to know so well these last few days spread over his regular features. I heard the grunts that came from him as from some wild animal. He snarled and spat in a very fury of savage lust, as he became metamorphosed from the doctor into the demon. No longer did he lie motionless, but he moved excitedly about, and began to talk in a language meaningless to me. He seemed to be holding a lengthy conversation; but at last he struggled, as though attempting to throw off some fearful oppression, and I knew that it was time to relight the fire. I entered the room, resolutely shunning the dampness that sought to envelop me with its coils. I soon had a bright fire burning, and slowly the good doctor revived.
“Do you remember anything?” I questioned, anxiously.
“Yes, I remember all. I can scarcely credit it. There will be an invasion from the ocean with the next full moon. Monsters will attempt to blot out the whole civilized world, and the followers of B’Moth are expected to help in the destruction. I myself have been ordered to help.”
“You are sure that it is to be with the next full moon?” I interjected earnestly.
“Yes. The next full moon—when is that?”
I consulted the calendar. “It is a week from today,” I said. “Have you any idea where the attempt will commence?” I suggested.
“None whatever, but I suppose it will be somewhere in this country,” he said dejectedly.
“Well, we will be on our guard everywhere,” I said.
D’Arlancourt and I left the hospital, and hurrying to the secret service offices, we again sent several telegrams, and also radio messages to ships at sea. We requested everyone to keep a sharp watch for any accumulation of monsters both at sea and on land.
We spent some days of enforced idleness, and were becoming hopeless of being able to prevent the awful catastrophe that was about to overwhelm us. We had had great difficulty in influencing the war department in the matter, but finally they had consented to order the forts in various parts of the country to fire upon anything extraordinary belonging to the animal world. That was as far as they would go, and the order was given more out of courtesy than anything else. And who can blame them? They were used to fighting armies, and not spirits.
As the day of full moon approached, the armed forces of a world united for the sake of civilization were mustered and anxious. Then came the message. It was from the steamer Malolana, plying between San Francisco and Hawaii. The broadcast that we had sent out a few days earlier had been effective. The captain reported that he had seen a school of monstrous things swimming rapidly toward the mainland, directly upon the steamer routes forming the great circle to Honolulu. There were thousands of them, like enormous blanket-fish, huge beyond comparison, almost as large as his own ship!
During the day, other messages came in from various vessels on the great circle route to Hawaii, and they all mentioned this huge array of Things. The Presidio at San Francisco was immediately notified, and we caught a fast airplane that took us to C
hicago, and Denver, and so to Mills Field.
It was the night of the full moon when we arrived at San Francisco. We motored hastily to the Presidio. Activity was everywhere. The enormous disappearing guns that can shoot a shell thirty miles were ready to hurl destruction at the invading hordes from the deep. The scout planes hovered aloft to signal the approach of the invaders. Telescopes were trained anxiously upon the starlit Pacific. Fort Miley was a scene of activity also. The naval stations at Bremerton and San Diego were watching for any change of course on the part of the hordes from the ocean. And with the full moon, they came! The ocean for miles was a seething, swirling mass of horrid immensity. Green bodies sucked their way through the smooth water. The swish of their swimming was plainly audible to the watchers on the look-outs of the Presidio.
“Fire!” went forth the order, and the range guns belched a message of death. Again and again shells were hurled into the center of the bloated creatures. Still they came on, slowly, relentlessly, ceaselessly.
The air was a deafening hell of shrieks and blasts as the guns did their work. The ocean was red with the blood of the Things. And still they came on!
Mines were exploded outside the Golden Gate—mines placed there to blow up battleships. But still the things came on!
Airplanes dropped bomb after bomb upon the horde, and came back for more ammunition, but still the advance continued! A dense fog that I had learned to dread was enveloping the sea—the breath of Behemoth himself, coming to general his forces!
Time after time the guns spoke. The very hills shook. From Fort Miley there came thunder, too. Battleships anchored in Navy Row steamed to the mouth of the Golden Gate and hurled broadside after broadside at the monsters. They were slowing up now, and their number was greatly reduced, but still the advance was not halted.
At last came frantic word from the coast guard station at the beach that they were landing. The panic-stricken people were leaving their homes, to see them crushed beneath the weight of the horde like so much matchwood. The guns laid down a concentrated barrage upon the landing-place of the monsters and tore the beach to shreds.
Under the glare of the huge searchlights I saw streams of sluggish red, where the awful carnage went on; but at last they turned back— back to the sea whence they came. The fog lifted—had the Master met his fate?—and the filthy things floundered heavily away from the shore, jostling the carcasses of thousands of their dead as they did so. Still the thunder of the guns followed them, far, far out to sea, to the extreme limit of their range; and when it was all over we sank limp to the ground, speechless before the peril that had just confronted us.
Of course, the details were never made public, but on the following day we received cablegrams from all parts of the world telling of a concerted attempt to regain power by these creatures of a dreadful past.
From India came messages telling of invasions by hordes of tigers and mammoth elephants; from Africa of lions, all the wild life of the forest; from Burma stories of huge apes that crushed the life out of men; from South America, all of the reptilian life of the Amazonian forests massed in relentless array. But thanks to our knowledge of their purpose, the attempts were frustrated.
The stories of incendiarism, of course, could not be kept out of the press. The dynamiting of the McAuliffe Building in New York is common property. The butchery of Professor Atkinson in his laboratory of experimental hygiene is well known. Throughout the civilized world, the police forces were hard put to it to cope with the threatened overthrow of civilization.
But civilization triumphed, and the forces of destruction were greatly reduced, although not destroyed; they never can be destroyed. Dr. Prendergast laughs at the fog now, and the rain has no terrors for me.
Was my surmise correct when those Things turned tail and made again for the open sea? Is B’Moth dead? I wonder!
The House of the Worm
Mearle Prout
But see, amid the mimic rout
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food
And the angels sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
For hours I had sat at my study table, trying in vain to feel and transmit to paper the sensations of a criminal in the death-house. You know how one may strive for hours—even days—to attain a desired effect, and then feel a sudden swift rhythm, and know he has found it? But how often, as though Fate herself intervened, does interruption come and mar, if not cover completely, the road which for a moment gleamed straight and white! So it was with me.
Scarcely had I lifted my hands to the keys when my fellow-roomer, who had long been bent quietly over a magazine, said, quietly enough, “That moon—I wonder if even it really exists!”
I turned sharply. Fred was standing at the window, looking with a singularly rapt attention into the darkness.
Curious, I rose and went to him, and followed his gaze into the night. There was the moon, a little past its full, but still nearly round, standing like a great red shield close above the tree-tops, real enough....
Something in the strangeness of my friend’s behavior prevented the irritation which his unfortunate interruption would ordinarily have caused.
THE HOUSE OF THE WORM
“Just why did you say that?” I asked, after a moment’s hesitation.
Shamefacedly he laughed, half apologetic. “I’m sorry I spoke aloud,” he said. “I was only thinking of a bizarre theory I ran across in a story.”
“About the moon?”
“No. Just an ordinary ghost story of the type you write. While Pan Walks is its name, and there was nothing in it about the moon.”
He looked again at the ruddy globe, now lighting the darkened street below with a pale, tenuous light. Then he spoke: “You know, Art, that idea has taken hold of me; perhaps there is something to it afterall....”
Theories of the bizarre have always enthralled Fred, as they always hold a romantic appeal for me. And so, while he revolved his latest fancy in his mind, I waited expectantly.
“Art,” he began at last, “do you believe that old story about thoughts becoming realities? I mean, thoughts of men having a physical manifestation?”
I reflected a moment, before giving way to a slight chuckle. “Once,” I answered, “a young man said to Carlyle that he had decided to accept the material world as a reality; to which the older man only replied, ‘Egad, you’d better!’ . . . Yes,” I continued, “I’ve often run across the theory, but——”
“You’ve missed the point,” was the quick rejoinder. “Accept your physical world, and what do you have?—Something that was created by God! And how do we know that all creation has stopped? Perhaps even we——”
He moved to a book-shelf, and in a moment returned, dusting off a thick old leather-bound volume.
“I first encountered the idea here,” he said, as he thumbed the yellowed pages, “but it was not until that bit of fiction pressed it into my mind that I thought of it seriously. Listen:
“ ‘The Bible says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” From what did He create it? Obviously, it was created by thought, imagery, force of will if you please. The Bible further says: “So God created man in His own image.” Does this not mean that man has all the attributes of the Almighty, only upon a smaller scale? Surely, then, if the mind of God in its omnipotence could create the entire universe, the mind of man, being made in the image of God, and being his counterpart on earth, could in the same way, if infinitely smaller in degree, create things of its own will.
“ ‘For example, the old gods of the dawn-world. Who can say that they did not exist in reality, being created by man? And, once created, how can we tell whether they will not develop into something to harass and destroy, beyond all control of their creators? If this be
true, then the only way to destroy them is to cease to believe. Thus it is that the old gods died when man’s faith turned from them to Christianity.’ ”
He was silent a moment, watching me as I stood musing.
“Strange where such thoughts can lead a person,” I said. “How are we to know which things are real and which are fancies—racial fantasies, I mean, common in all of us. I think I see what you meant when you wondered if the moon were real.”
“But imagine,” said my companion, “a group of people, a cult, all thinking the same thoughts, worshipping the same imaginary figure. What might not happen, if their fanaticism were such that they thought and felt deeply? A physical manifestation, alien to those of us who did not believe....”
And so the discussion continued. And when at last we finally slept, the moon which prompted it all was hovering near the zenith, sending its cold rays upon a world of hard physical reality.
Next morning we both arose early—Fred to go back to his prosaic work as a bank clerk, I to place myself belatedly before my typewriter. After the diversion of the night before, I found that I was able to work out the bothersome scene with little difficulty, and that evening I mailed the finished and revised manuscript.
When my friend came in he spoke calmly of our conversation the night before, even admitting that he had come to consider the theory a rank bit of metaphysics.
THE HOUSE OF THE WORM
Not quite so calmly did he speak of the hunting-trip which he suggested. Romantic fellow that he was, his job at the bank was sheer drudgery, and any escape was rare good fortune. I, too, with my work out of the way and my mind clear, was doubly delighted at the prospect.
Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos Page 26
