Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos

by Robert M. Price

  Close upon this illogical chain of thought came another, with a suddenness so terrifying that I knew it had not originated in my own mind; it was one of those thoughts out of nowhere. It was simply the plain and uncompromising knowledge that this was all real, no hoax, no farce, but that I was faced with the most stupendous thing that had ever come to this Earth, and must conquer it or be conquered; I knew, too, with a sudden wild hope, that I would not be alone in fighting it. Those forces surging ever closer about me were there for a purpose, presaged something in my favor.

  I turned then with a slow deliberateness and faced the tiny man who was waiting. No word was spoken as my eyes met his very black and bottomless ones....

  I was lost! Too late I knew it. Everything around me vanished as those eyes grew, expanded, became two huge pools of space black and boundless beyond all imagining. I had been caught by the suddenness of it, but with a feeble instinct I fought against those eyes which seemedtodrawme....Buttherewerenolongeranyeyes...myfeet were no longer on the floor . . . I was floating serenely along somewhere a million miles out in that black space . . . serenely . . . but no—I was no longer floating now; a touch had brought me back. My feet were on the floor again and I stood close against the table. But something—some part of me—seemed still to move along against my own volition. That was funny! I wanted to laugh. It was my hand that was no longer a part of me, that was creeping, crawling, sliding like some sinuous serpent across the smooth table-top . . . toward the Book!

  Yes, I remembered then, in a vague sort of way. There was a book on the table, a book that lay open and waiting, a book that for some terrible reason I must not touch. What was that reason? Slowly, slowly I remembered. There was a queer little man with very black eyes, who had told me an awful fact about the book, who had wanted me to read . . . to touch it would mean that I should read . . . and read . . . no turning back....

  Ah, how fully did comprehension then flee back to me, through my rising panic, as I sought in vain to stay the hand that crept along the table there like some Judas that would betray its master! How that churning confusion about me did increase, warningly, sweeping around me in an undulating wave as if they, too, knew something of the panic that was upon me! How they closed in around me, those unseen forces, from behind, from all sides, purposeful, as if they would press me back away from the table, away from the menace of the Book! I almost heard tiny warning voices flitting past my ear, almost felt fingers tugging valiantly at my own, and for a moment I thought I comprehended. These forces—rallying valiantly about me—had they once succumbed to the Book, in ages past—countless beings from all parts of the universe—come now to aline themselves with me against the forces of the Book?

  I may have guessed close to the truth—I shall never know. Nor shall I ever know by what terrific effort I finally hurled myself away from that table. I do not remember it. I only know that I stood at last supporting myself on the back of my chair, trembling in body and weak in mind; knew that the tension of that terrible moment was gone, and that the forces which had rallied around me were once again quiet, waiting. That this was but a temporary respite in the battle I well knew, and knew too that my exhausted brain could not endure another such assault.

  A half-dozen feet away the Book lay face up on the table, a menacing, mocking thing....Opposite it, that tiny man still stood on the selfsame spot where I had first glimpsed him in the room; in those black eyes was now a luster, a bright luster of hate for those forces which had fought with me against him—those which he must have known would come. How many times had they defeated him, I wondered! Had each of them once been a guardian of the Book as he was now? If ever he won release from the Book, would he in turn join forces with those who fought against it? Would they ever become strong enough to defeat those Outer Ones who had conceived this entire plot?

  I must not waste my strength in wondering, but prepare for the assault that must surely come again. In a sudden flash of illumination I knew that I must hold on—just a little longer—hold on until twelve o’clock. That’s why he had watched the clock there on the mantel, over my shoulder! It must be very near the hour now, and if I could but hold on—stay away from that table—avoid those eyes—not be caught off guard again!

  But how futile a thought! In that very instant the huge swimming blackness of those eyes again caught me with that fierce tenacity, again swept me up and away beyond all suns and stars, out into that vast darkness which cradles the universe. I was like a man drowning, who in a few brief seconds sees his entire past unfolded; but saw instead my future, a future of dark terror and torture amid the vague forms and fears of that outer place. Even as I floated serenely in that terrible darkness I could seem to see those forms, those Outer Ones, indescribably repulsive for all their vagueness, peering past me with malicious glee at some drama being enacted for them as it had been how many times before! And this time I was a part of that drama.

  And yet there seemed to be another part of me, far away and unimportant—a part of me that tried to make me see that this darkness was the illusion, not the reality—that struggled with a feeble sort of intensity to thrust this darkness away . . . how foolish!...how useless!... Now that other part of me was trying to remember— something—that had seemed important a long time ago—something to do with . . . but no—it was useless....

  Wait! Had not that darkness all about me suddenly shivered, like water whose smooth surface is disturbed? Again! Now fading, receding!...

  Had not something brushed my cheek just then? Was that a whisper in my ear? A number of whispers now, eager, urgent....

  The blackness around me receded rapidly, dissolved into two ebony pools that fled far away into space, becoming tinier, tinier, until they stopped to peer back at me.

  With a shock, I was once again back in the familiar room, felt the floor under me, stood close against the table and was gazing at the twin ebony pools that were the tiny man’s eyes. But in those eyes was now something of consternation and distress! Dismay in those eyes!

  As before, with no volition of mine, my hand was gliding smoothly across the table-top toward the Book. As before, that surging of unseen forces was all about me—but now there was no confusion, no haste, no panic; there was instead a kind of unseen jubilation and pulsing of triumph!

  But still those flitting little voices past my ear, faint and not quite heard, but seeming to urge me in something that I could not quite grasp.

  I must try to be ready for whatever would come.

  My hand touched the Book! It moved over the opened page. . . .

  “Now! Act now, act, act!”

  The hand, which before had tried to betray me, now acted in a flash. I seized the Book, whirled, and cast it straight into the blazing fire behind me.

  Immediately everything about me was a wild joy of triumph, but this lasted only a moment, and then all was quiet and still. Those forces, or beings, or whatever they were, had once more triumphed, and now were gone back to whatever realm they had come from.

  But as I look back at it all now, it seems a nightmare and I cannot be sure. I am not even sure whether those words “Act now, act!” were whispered in my ear, or whether they came screaming from my own throat in the tenseness of that moment. I am not sure whether some force entirely outside of myself caused me to seize and fling that book, or whether it was a purely reflex action on my part. I had no intention of doing it.

  As for that tiny man beyond the table—he did not even leap to intercept. He did not move. He seemed to become even smaller. His eyes were once more very black, but somehow pitiable, not even reflecting the fire into which he gazed. For a few seconds he stood there, the very aspect of infinite sorrow and utter hopelessness. Then, very slowly, he walked over to the fireplace and reached a thin hand, as it seemed to me, into the very flames—and from those flames picked out the Book, the age-old parchmentlike pages of which had not even burned!

  Of what happened next, I hesitate to write; for I can never be sure how
much of it was real and how much hallucination. In my fall to the floor I must have struck my head a pretty hard wallop, for I was several days in the care of a doctor who for a while feared for my mind.

  As I said, the tiny man had picked out the Book from the flames. I am sure no word was spoken. But the next thing that happened was a sound, and it was a chuckling sound of such portentous diabolism as I hope never to hear again, seeming to come from far away but approaching nearer and nearer until it seemed to emanate from the four walls of the room. Then came a blinding glare of light. That sounds trite, somehow, but it was exactly that; “blinding” hardly describes it, but I know of no stronger word. And it’s at this point that I am not certain: I may have fallen and struck my head and become unconscious right after that glare of light, or I may really have seen what I seemed to see. I’m rather inclined to the latter belief, so vivid did it seem at the time.

  How often I have read stories in which the author, attempting to describe some particularly awful thing or scene, has said: “It is beyond the power of my pen to describe”—or words to that effect. And how often I have scoffed! But I will never scoff again. There before me in that moment was the indescribable in reality!

  I will, however, make a feeble attempt. What I saw or seemed to see must have been that same thing from Outside which Tlaviir described in the Preface of the Book. One moment it was there. I suppose the glare of light occurred in that interval between the wasn’t and the was. But there it was.

  I can look back upon it now with a sort of grim humor.

  It was pretty big, and seemed to be sticking through from some other space or dimension, just as the fellow had said in the Preface. It wasn’t an arm, or a face, or a tentacle, or a limb of any sort, nothing but a part, and I wouldn’t want to say what part. It was all colors and colorless, all shapes and shapeless, for the simple reason that it changed color and shape very rapidly and continually, always disappearing at the edges, not touching the floor or any part of the room.

  More than that I cannot say; I had looked upon it for barely the count of one-two-three, when everything was suddenly black and I could not feel the floor under me at all.

  But just before my mind slipped entirely away into the abyss, I heard a monstrous Word, a Name, shrieked in that shrill voice that belonged to the tiny man with the Book . . . and once again that Name shrieked in agony, shrill, faint, floating down along the star path, fainter . . . fainter....

  The first thing I did when able to leave my bed was to pay another visit to that bookstore.

  As I approached the narrow frame building, its air of utter desolation dawned upon me. I tried the door, but it was locked, and peering through a grimy window I perceived the books piled around haphazardly on the floor and on the shelves, everything covered with a gray depth of dust. That was peculiar. A curious apprehension seized me. I was sure this was the right bookstore; there could be no mistaking it.

  I had considerable difficulty finding out who the owner was, but I finally located him, a tall, raw-boned, rather unkempt man.

  “Oh,” he said, in answer to my question, “you mean the place down on Sixth Avenue. Yes, I own the place, used to run a bookstore there; business bad, so I locked it up—all of six months ago, I reckon it was. I might make another stab at it sometime....No,I’ve never unlocked the place since....Yes, sure, of course I’m sure.... What? A man about four feet tall with gray skin and no eyebrows? Hell, no!”

  He looked at me as though he thought I was crazy, so I didn’t pursue the matter further.

  But I don’t think I want to read the Necronomicon, after all.

  The Abyss

  Robert W. Lowndes

  We took Graf Norden’s body out into the November night, under the stars that burned with a brightness terrible to behold, and drove madly, wildly up the mountain road. The body that was entirely drained of blood without the slightest trace of a wound, the body whose flesh was covered with abhorrent, luminous markings, designs that shifted and changed form before one’s eyes. We wedged what had been Graf Norden tightly behind the wheel, put a makeshift fuse in the gas tank, lit it, then shoved the car over the side of the road, where it plummed down to the main highway, a flaming meteor.

  Not until the next day did we realize that we hal all been under Dureen’s spell-even I had forgotten. How else could we have rushed out so eagerly, leaving him to gloat over his triumph? From that terrible moment when the lights came on again, and we saw the thing that had, a moment before, been Graf Norden, we were as shadowy, indistinct figures rushing through a dream. All was forgotten save the unspoken commands upon us as we watched the blazing car strike the pavement below, observed its demolition, then tramped dully each to his own home.

  When, the next day, partial memory returned to us and we sought Dureen, he was gone. And, because we valued our freedom, we did not tell anyone what had happened, nor try to discover whence Dureen had vanished. We wanted only to forget.

  I think I might possibly have forgotten had I not looked into the Song of Yste again. With the others, there has been a growing tendency to treat it all as illusion, but I cannot: I have learned a small part of reality. For it is one thing to read of books like the Necronomicon, Book of Eibon,or Song of Yste, but it is quite different when one’s own experience confirms some of the dread things related therein. Many have read excerpts from the Necronomicon, yet are reassured by the thought that Alhazred was mad: what if they were to discover that, far from being mad, Abdul Alhazred was so terribly sane that others dubbed him mad simply because they could not bear the burden of the facts he uncovered?

  Of such truths, I found one paragraph in the Song of Yste and have not read farther. The dark volume, along with Norden’s other books, is still on my shelves; I have not burned it. But I do not think that I shall read more—but let me tell you of Dureen and Graf Norden, for around these two lie the reasons for my reluctance for the further pursuance of my studies.

  I met Graf Norden at Darwich University, in Dr. Held’s class in Mediaeval and early-Renaissance history, which was more a study of obscure thought, and often outright occultism.

  Norden was greatly interested; he had done quite a bit of exploring into the occult; in particular was he fascinated by the writings and records of a family of adepts named Dirka, who traced their ancestry back to the pre-glacial days. They, the Dirkas, had translated the Song of Yste from its legendary form into the three great languages of the dawn cultures, then into the Greek, Latin, Arabic, and finally, Elizabethan English.

  I told Norden that I deplored the blind contempt in which the world holds the occult, but had never explored the subject very deeply. I was content to be a spectator, letting my imagination drift at will upon the many currents in this dark river; skimming over the surface was enough for me—seldom did I take occasional plunges into the deeps. As a poet and dreamer, I was careful not to lose myself in the blackness of the pools where I disported—one could always emerge to find a calm, blue sky and a world that thought nothing of these realities.

  With Norden, it was different. He was already beginning to have doubts, he told me. It was not an easy road to travel; there were hideous dangers, hidden all along the way, often so that the wayfarer was not aware of them until too late. Earthmen were not very far along the path of evolution; still very young, their lack of knowledge, as a race, told heavily against such few of their number who sought to traverse unknown roads. He spoke of messengers from beyond and made references to obscure passages in the Necronomicon and Song of Yste. He spoke of alien beings, entities terribly unhuman, impossible of measurement by any human yardstick or to be combatted effectively by mankind.

  Dureen came into the picture at about this time. He walked into the classroom one day during the course of a lecture; later, Dr. Held introduced him as a new member of the class, coming from abroad. There was something about Dureen that challenged my interest at once. I could not determine of what race or nationality he might be—he was very close to
being beautiful, his every movement being of grace and rhythm. Yet, in no way could he be considered effeminate; he was, in a word, superb.

  That the majority of us avoided him troubled him not at all. For my part, he did not seem genuine, but, with the others, it was probably his utter lack of emotion. There was, for example, the time in the lab when a test tube burst in his face, driving several splinters deep into the skin. He showed not the slightest sign of discomfort, waved aside all expressions of solicitude on the part of some of the girls, and proceeded to go on with his experiment as soon as the medico had finished with him.

  The final act started when we were dealing with hypnotism, one afternoon, and were discussing the practical possibilities of the subject, following up the Rhine experiments and others. Colby presented a most ingenious argument against it, ridiculed the association of experiments in thought transference or telepathy with hypnotism, and arrived at a final conclusion that hypnotism (outside of mechanical means of induction) was impossible.

  It was at this point that Dureen spoke up. What he said, I cannot now recall, but it ended in a direct challenge for Dureen to prove his statements. Norden said nothing during the course of this debate; he appeared somewhat pale, and was, I noticed, trying to flash a warning signal to Colby. My frank opinion, now, is that Dureen had planned evoking this challenge; at the time, however, it seemed spontaneous enough.

  There were five of us over at Norden’s place that night: Granville, Chalmers, Colby, Norden, and myself. Norden was smoking endless cigarettes, gnawing his nails, and muttering to himself. I suspected something irregular was up, but what, I had no idea. Then Dureen came in and the conversation, such as it had been, ended.

  Colby repeated his challenge, saying he had brought along the others as witnesses to insure against being tricked by stage devices. No mirrors, lights, or any other mechanical means of inducting hypnosis would be permitted. It must be entirely a matter of wills. Dureen nodded, drew the shade, then turned, directing his gaze at Colby.