“And you want to sell me this book?”
He peered at me more intently. “It could not be bought for all the wealth of this or any other planet. No, I merely want you to read it. I am most anxious that you read it. You may take it home with you if you wish. You see, I am aware that in spite of your skepticism you are consumed with curiosity.”
He was right. And yet why did I hesitate? There was something very queer about all this, something that did not appear on the surface, something subtle and almost frightening. So far he had hinted at much, but had told me exactly nothing. He was far too ready to let me take this book away with me, and something told me that if he were so anxious to have me read it I would do best by not doing so.
“No, thanks,” I muttered, and didn’t try to conceal a shiver as I turned away.
I had had enough. His eyes were too black. But he had seemed to anticipate my refusal, and at the door he again gripped my arm.
“You may as well know,” he said, “that if you had not come here I would sooner or later have brought the book to you. Knowing what I do know of you and your occult studies, it follows that you are the logical one to be entrusted with this volume. I realize that I have only hinted at things and have told you nothing, but I cannot do more than that now. You must read the book; then you will understand.”
My hand on the door, I hesitated one fateful moment. In that moment the book came from under his arm and he pressed it upon me most eagerly, half shoving me out the door into the dusk of the approaching night; and there I stood with that ponderous volume in my hands, mystified, half angry, yet daring to hope that at last I was in possession of something momentous. With a half-laugh and a shrug, I turned homeward.
2
My hopes were more than confirmed, as I soon ascertained in the privacy of my rooms. The book was huge—the size of a large ledger, and very thick, the covers edged all around with metal. The binding was of a black faded fabric unfamiliar to me, and the yellowed pages proved also to be of some strange, resilient texture. The pages were covered with strange, angular symbols, long and narrow and strictly perpendicular. I looked for a keyword, or key-symbol, but there was none; so I stared at the pages, wondering how I was to decipher them.
And then a strange thing happened, which was to be only the first of many strange events that evening. As I stared and continued to stare at those bewildering pages I thought I saw one of the symbols move, ever so slightly; and as I peered intently at the page it became apparent that the symbols did indeed move as my eyes ran across the lines—rearranging themselves ever so minutely, writhing and twisting like so many tiny snakes. And with this queer writhing movement I no longer wondered at the meaning of those symbols, for they became suddenly clear and vivid and meaningful, impressing themselves upon my consciousness as so many words and sentences. I knew that I had indeed stumbled upon something very great.
The book seemed to exude an invisible aura of evil which at first unnerved me and then pleased me, and I determined to lose no time in plunging into my task.
Seated at one end of a library table, I spread the book before me and pulled a lamp nearer. So comforted by a blazing log fire at my right, I turned to the very first page and began the most fantastic, I might almost say insane, document I have ever read; yet in consequence of what happened, I can never be sure whether it was the document or I who was insane.
But here it is, almost word for word as I so clearly remember it:
PREFACE
to the most Damnable Book
ever loosed
upon an unsuspecting Cosmos
Whoso comes in possession of this book should be warned, and this Preface is to serve that purpose. The possessor of this book should be wise to flee from it—but will not. His curiosity is already aroused, and reading even these few words of warning, he will not be deterred from reading on; and reading on, he will be enmeshed, become a part of the Plot, and will learn too late that there is left but a single sorrowful alternative of escape.
Such is the awful damnability of it. But how They must chuckle with glee!
Know, then, whoso should read this, that I, Tlaviir of Vhoorl, do hereby subscribe the history and origin of the Book, so that all manner of men in all time to come may consider carefully before succumbing to the curiosity that is inherent in all men throughout the universe. I had no such warning; and by reason of my folly am fated to be the first guardian. I myself know not—yet—what that may portend; for, try as I might, I cannot forget my friend, Kathulhn, who all unknowingly launched this horrible jest of the gods, and the fate that was his.
Kathulhn had always been something of a puzzle to all who knew him, except, perhaps, to me. Even as a boy he had professed an insatiable wonderment of those profound mysteries of time and space which the Wise Men of Vhoorl said were not for mere man to know or to seek out.
Kathulhn could not understand why this should be.
We grew up together and entered the university together, and there Kathulhn became such an avid student of the sciences, particularly of complex mathematics, that he was a perpetual astonishment to the professors.
We left the university together, I to enter into my father’s business, and Kathulhn, having been awarded an assistant-professorship, to continue with certain of his studies.
I can never understand why he confided in me as he would in no one else, unless it was because I listened to his theories with true seriousness. I was fascinated by certain of his lines of thought. Nevertheless, I cannot but admit that he sounded rather wild at times.
“Here we are,” he would say, vibrantly, “tiny motes upon the surface of the planet Vhoorl, deep in the twenty-third nebula. The great scientists have told us that much as to our present locality. But what of our destination—the ultimate? Here we have our spinning planet, our revolving system, our drifting nebula—but one among millions that go to make what we call the universe— a universe we should say, for it is only a particle, rushing onward with other particles— whither? and to what destiny? and for what purpose?... For whose purpose, perhaps we should say.
“And are we never to know; must we remain ever chained to this miserable little planet? I think not, Tlaviir. Man in a million years may master the stars. But that will not come in my time; and I cannot wait; and besides, my greed is greater than mere mastery of stars. Look, Tlaviir: suppose that one could discover a way to project himself out, not among the stars, but beyond—outside of the cosmic globe of stars! To attain a point entirely outside . . . from there to watch the working of the cosmic dust in the fluid of time. Why, there is no time, after all, is there?—must not space and time be one and the same thing, co-existent and correlative, one to the other? Do you not see? And to project one’s self quite outside of it—would not that be the realization of our vaunted immortality? And rest assured, there is a way.”
I could not quite digest this fantastic bit of reasoning, but did not deny the possible truth of his theories. There were several old books to which he often made reference, and I think it was these books which caused his theorizing at times to take a somewhat tangential trend:
“What of those superstitions, Tlaviir, that have come down to us from the ancients who inhabited Vhoorl eons ago? And why must we say superstitions and myths? Why must man scoff at that which he cannot understand? It is only logical that these superstitions and myths had a definite reason for being: my perusal of certain ancient manuscripts has convinced me of that. Who knows?—perhaps probing fingers from outside reached in and touched Vhoorl ages ago, thus giving rise to those tales that we know very well could not have had birth in mere imagination. That, Tlaviir, is why I sometimes think I may be wrong in seeking the way outside; perhaps it were best for man not to try: he might learn things that it is best not to know.”
But these latter reflections of his came only seldom. More often he would show me sheafs of paper covered with calculations, and others filled with geometrical drawings, infinite angles and curves such as I
had never before seen, some of which seemed so diabolically distorted as to leap from the paper out at me! When he would try to explain his calculus I was never quite able to follow his reasoning beyond a certain point, although his explanation plus his enthusiasm made it all seem quite logical.
So far as I was able to grasp it, there exists an almost infinite number of space-dimensions, some of which impinge on our own and might be used as catapults if one could but penetrate the invisible and tenuous boundary between our space and these hyper-spaces. I had never given much credence to any dimensions beyond our familiar three, but Kathulhn seemed very certain.
“There must be a way, Tlaviir. I have ascertained that beyond doubt. And I am sure now that I am working toward the correct solution. I shall find it before long.”
Aye, he found it. He found it indeed, and went further than any mortal has ever gone or will ever go again. He could not have known....
It was but shortly after my last conversation with him that he disappeared, without trace or reason: was given up as dead, and even I, to whom he had confided all his hopes, did not suspect that I was ever to see him again. But I did.
It was twenty long years later when Kathulhn returned as suddenly as he had gone; came direct to me. The marvel of it is that he looked not a day older than when I had last seen him, those twenty long years ago! But the years had lain heavily on me, and Kathulhn seemed shocked at the change.
He told me his story.
“I succeeded, Tlaviir. I knew I was on the right track with my calculus, but it might have gone for nought had I not interpreted a certain passage from one of those ancient books; it was a sort of incantation, the very essence of evil, which opened the door when spoken in correlation with my dimension calculus. The purport of this incantation I cannot tell you now, but it should have warned me that the thing I was doing was for no good. Nevertheless, I dared; I had already gone too far to turn back.
“I carried the thing through, feeling a little foolish perhaps, only hoping, but not knowing, that this was the combination I had so long sought for. For a moment it seemed that nothing had happened, and yet I was aware of a change. Something had happened to my vision; things were blurred, but were rapidly emerging into a clear grotesquerie of impossible angles and planes.
“But before this vision could become quite definite, I was jerked outward, Tlaviir; out beyond the curvature of space, out into the space beyond space where even light turns back upon itself because of the non-existence of time! All things ceased: sight and sound, time and dimension and comparison. There was left to me only an awareness, but an awareness infinitely more acute than our mere physical one. I—I was Mind!
“As to Them—now I know, Tlaviir, and it is even as I feared. They are not to be imagined as Beings, or Things, or anything familiar to us—no word is adequate. They are forces of pure Evil, the source of all the evil that ever was, and is, and will be! Sometimes They reach in. There is a purpose.”
Kathulhn’s hand brushed his forehead.
“There is much—so very much, Tlaviir. All is not as clear as it was. But I am beginning to remember! I am beginning . . . I think those entities of Evil were amused, Tlaviir—with a kind of amusement I cannot now understand. Amused, perhaps, that I should have managed to come out there among Them. Assuredly no mere being had ever done that before. I realize now that had They wished, They could have uttered a word that would have blasted and annihilated me. Had They wished! Instead, They kept me among Them. There was something—something about Their amusement.
“Do you remember a certain conversation of long ago, Tlaviir, wherein I said that our universe was but a particle among other particles, rushing away somewhere, on to some destiny, for some—purpose? Do you remember also that I said perhaps it was best that man should not know—certain things?
“I have learned many things, Tlaviir, things that I now wish I did not know. Monstrous things. Whence the Cosmos came . . . and why . . . and its ultimate destiny—not a pleasant one. Most horrible of all is that I am beginning to remember...rites...performed by those Evil Ones . . . rites involving the Cosmos in a most diabolic way....
“I could not even wonder at my presence out There. All was Mind and Mind was all. It would seem that I was large among Them—willfully one of Them—assisting in certain of those colossal rites—partaking of Their evil joy. But at one and the same time, by some unexplainable and inconceivable ultracircumstance, it seemed that I was aloof and insignificant, a spectator of only some small part of the whole. It seemed that I mingled there among Them for countless millenniums, but again it seemed but the smallest fraction of what we call ‘time.’
“But now—now I know that They merely toyed with me awhile, as a child toys with and then tires of a new plaything. They thrust me back, Tlaviir, and here I am upon Vhoorl again. At first I thought I had awakened from a very bad dream, but it didn’t take me long to discover that Vhoorl had traveled twenty years upon its destined path during those many millenniums, or those few seconds, that I was in that timeless place!”
“And you will go back again?” I asked eagerly, for by his very sincerity I believed his story.
“I cannot, even if I would, nor can any mortal again. They have closed the route now for all time, and it is well so.
“To Them, as I have said, I was but a moment’s amusement, but not too insignificant, for all that—because They gave me warning! They thrust me back, and this was the warning: if ever I made known to another mortal the slightest of the secrets I had learned, or mentioned any part or purpose of the awful rites I had seen enacted, my soul would be shattered into a million fragments and these tortured fragments scattered shrieking throughout the entire Cosmos! That is why, Tlaviir, I dare not tell you more than I have. More and more memory floods in upon me, but I dare not speak of things.
“Because—I know that They can reach in!”
From that day neither Kathulhn nor I again mentioned his sojourn “outside.” For a long time I could not forget the things he had hinted at, but how terrible must have been that which he did not—dared not—tell!
Several years passed, and the whole thing became more or less a myth in my mind. But not so with Kathulhn, it was easy to see. The twenty years that had ignored him now reached out malign fingers and took their toll. Vexation, discontent, restless broodings of the mind, all served to change him pitiably.
He came to me then, one day, and broached the thought that had been preying upon him. He could not, he said, remain silent longer. He was sick of the blind groping of men after knowledge. It lay in his power to give them the answers to cosmic secrets which they had sought out slowly for years—and things besides, of which they had never guessed. And, terrible though those secrets were, man should know all. Thoughts and memories crowding upon Kathulhn’s tortured brain screamed for outlet, and there was but one resource: he had determined to write down the history of his adventure “outside,” to tell of all the things he had experienced and learned.
As to the warning which the Entities of evil had given him, it was nothing. Years had gone by, Kathulhn reasoned, and surely They must have forgotten; we were puny, and They reckoned with universes.
I did not demur. Like Kathulhn, now that the years had passed I felt that the warning of those Outer Ones was a little thing.
Thus was the beginning of the jest....
Never can I forget that night when doom descended upon the city of Bhuulm. I had left the city but a few hours before, accompanying one of my caravans into the near neighboring town, access to which led through a tortuous passage in the encircling mountain range. The passage was made without mishap, and, my business transacted, I was hurrying homeward, alone, and was well into the mountains when that strange darkness descended so mysteriously and prematurely. Shortly thereafter I saw the long livid streamer that came flickering out of space, to hesitate a moment and then dart out of sight directly behind the range ahead of me.
I spurred hurriedly forward, already
with a feeling of disaster.
When I finally pushed through the passage and came in sight of the city, the streamer was gone and everything was quiet with a stillness that seemed to shriek in agony to the pale stars peering fearfully down.
I entered the city and came upon a person groveling in the street, and when I bent to help him he seemed not to see me, but shrieked, over and over again, something about the “shape” that had come slithering down the streamer. He lapsed then into a drooling insanity, and I left him lying there and passed on into the heart of the city.
It was not long before full unhallowed horror burst upon me. The entire populace had been rendered not only gibberingly insane, but stark blind. Some lay quite still in the streets, in merciful oblivion; some still writhed and mouthed unintelligibly of the thing that had descended to blast their minds and their sight, and others groped pitifully about, dazed and whimpering.
I rushed to the house of my friend Kathulhn, but already knew I was too late. I found what I had expected: he was dead. But his body, as I gazed on it, was scarcely recognizable as the one I had known. It was entirely covered with tiny blue perforations, gruesomely suggestive. His limbs were horribly distorted and broken. His eyes had been torn from their sockets, and two great holes gaped in his face from which something oozed. And his lips were drawn back in such a frozen, exaggerated grin that I turned quickly away.
Scattered about in profusion were loose pages upon which I recognized my friend’s fine writing. Well did I know what that writing was and what it portended; and in a sudden insane frenzy I gathered them all up, stuffed them into my clothes and fled from there in precipitate horror.
I crossed the three great oceans of Vhoorl, and after many mishaps reached the Abhorred Continent of Dluuhg. I ascended the tortuous Inner Mountains and descended into the lowlands fraught with those creatures supposed to have passed from the face of Vhoorl eons ago. Slowly, relentlessly, I thrust my perilous way forward; and finally, half dead from hurt and fatigue, reached my objective: the half-mythical city of a mysterious and fanatical priestlike sect so secluded that only the veriest rumors of its existence ever reached the outer realms of Vhoorl.
Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos Page 35
