The Second Cthulhu Mythos MEGAPACK®

by Lovecraft, H. P.

  “Run!” he shrieked, “run for your life! You don’t know what you’ve done! I never told you the whole thing! There were things I had to do—the picture talked to me and told me. I had to guard and keep it—now the worst will happen! She and that hair will come up out of their graves, for God knows what purpose!

  “Hurry, man! For God’s sake let’s get out of here while there’s time. If you have a car take me along to Cape Girardeau with you. It may well get me in the end, anywhere, but I’ll give it a run for its money. Out of here—quick!”

  As we reached the ground floor I became aware of a slow, curious thumping from the rear of the house, followed by a sound of a door shutting. De Russy had not heard the thumping, but the other noise caught his ear and drew from him the most terrible shriek that ever sounded in human throat.

  “Oh, God—great God—that was the cellar door—she’s coming—”

  By this time I was desperately wrestling with the rusty latch and sagging hinges of the great front door—almost as frantic as my host now that I heard the slow, thumping tread approaching from the unknown rear rooms of the accursed mansion. The night’s rain had warped the oaken planks, and the heavy door stuck and resisted even more strongly than it had when I forced an entrance the evening before.

  Somewhere a plank creaked beneath the foot of whatever was walking, and the sound seemed to snap the last cord of sanity in the poor old man. With a roar like that of a maddened bull he released his grip on me and made a plunge to the right, through the open door of a room which I judged had been a parlour. A second later, just as I got the front door open and was making my own escape, I heard the tinkling clatter of broken glass and knew he had leapt through a window. And as I bounded off the sagging porch to commence my mad race down the long, weed-grown drive I thought I could catch the thud of dead, dogged footsteps which did not follow me, but which kept leadenly on through the door of the cobwebbed parlour.

  I looked backward only twice as I plunged heedlessly through the burrs and briers of that abandoned drive, past the dying lindens and grotesque scrub-oaks, in the grey pallor of a cloudy November dawn. The first time was when an acrid smell overtook me, and I thought of the candle de Russy had dropped in the attic studio. By then I was comfortably near the road, on the high place from which the roof of the distant house was clearly visible above its encircling trees; and just as I expected, thick clouds of smoke were billowing out of the attic dormers and curling upward into the leaden heavens. I thanked the powers of creation that an immemorial curse was about to be purged by fire and blotted from the earth.

  But in the next instant came that second backward look in which I glimpsed two other things—things that cancelled most of the relief and gave me a supreme shock from which I shall never recover. I have said that I was on a high part of the drive, from which much of the plantation behind me was visible. This vista included not only the house and its trees but some of the abandoned and partly flooded land beside the river, and several bends of the weed-choked drive I had been so hastily traversing. In both of these latter places I now beheld sights—or suspicions of sights—which I wish devoutly I could deny.

  It was a faint, distant scream which made me turn back again, and as I did so I caught a trace of motion on the dull grey marshy plain behind the house. At that human figures are very small, yet I thought the motion resolved itself into two of these—pursuer and pursued. I even thought I saw the dark-clothed leading figure overtaken, seized, and dragged violently in the direction of the now burning house.

  But I could not watch the outcome, for at once a nearer sight obtruded itself—a suggestion of motion among the underbrush at a point some distance back along the deserted drive. Unmistakably, the weeds and bushes and briers were swaying as no wind could sway them; swaying as if some large, swift serpent were wriggling purposefully along on the ground in pursuit of me.

  That was all I could stand. I scrambled along madly for the gate, heedless of torn clothing and bleeding scratches, and jumped into the roadster parked under the great evergreen tree. It was a bedraggled, raindrenched sight; but the works were unharmed and I had no trouble in starting the thing. I went on blindly in the direction the car was headed for; nothing was in my mind but to get away from that frightful region of nightmares and cacodaemons—to get away as quickly and as far as gasoline could take me.

  About three or four miles along the road a farmer hailed me—a kindly, drawling fellow of middle age and considerable native intelligence. I was glad to slow down and ask directions, though I knew I must present a strange enough aspect. The man readily told me the way to Cape Girardeau, and inquired where I had come from in such a state at such an early hour. Thinking it best to say little, I merely mentioned that I had been caught in the night’s rain and had taken shelter at a nearby farmhouse, afterward losing my way in the underbrush trying to find my car.

  “At a farmhouse, eh? Wonder whose it could’a been. Ain’t nothin’ standin’ this side o’ Jim Ferris’ place acrost Barker’s Crick, an’ that’s all o’ twenty miles by the rud.”

  I gave a start, and wondered what fresh mystery this portended. Then I asked my informant if he had overlooked the large ruined plantation house whose ancient gate bordered the road not far back.

  “Funny ye sh’d recolleck that, stranger! Must a ben here afore some time. But that house ain’t here now. Burnt down five or six years ago—and they did tell some queer stories about it.”

  I shuddered.

  “You mean Riverside—ol’ man de Russy’s place. Queer goin’s on there fifteen or twenty years ago. Ol’ man’s boy married a gal from abroad, and some folks thought she was a mighty odd sort. Didn’t like the looks of her. then she and the boy went off sudden, and later on the ol’ man said he was kilt in the war. But some o’ the negroes hinted queer things. Got around at last that the ol’ fellow fell in love with the gal himself and kilt her and the boy. That place was sure enough haunted by a black snake, mean that what it may.

  “Then five or six years ago the ol’ man disappeared and the house burned down. Some do say he was burnt up in it. It was a mornin’ after a rainy night just like this, when lots o’ folks heard an awful yellin’ across the fields in old de Russy’s voice. When they stopped and looked, they see the house goin’ up in smoke quick as a wink—that place was all like tinder anyhow, rain or no rain. Nobody never seen the ol’ man again, but onct in a while they tell of the ghost of that big black snake glidin’ aroun’.

  “What d’ye make of it, anyhow? You seem to hev knowed the place. Didn’t ye ever hear tell of the de Russys? What d’ye reckon was the trouble with that gal young Denis married? She kinder made everybody shiver and feel hateful, though ye’ couldn’t never tell why.”

  I was trying to think, but that process was almost beyond me now. The house burned down years ago? Then where, and under what conditions, had I passed the night? And why did I know what I knew of these things? Even as I pondered I saw a hair on my coat sleeve—the short, grey hair of an old man.

  In the end I drove on without telling anything. But did I hint that gossip was wronging the poor old planter who had suffered so much. I made it clear—as if from distant but authentic reports wafted among friends—that if anyone was to blame for the trouble at Riverside it was the woman, Marceline. She was not suited to Missouri ways, I said, and it was too bad that Denis had ever married her.

  More I did not intimate, for I felt that the de Russys, with their proudly cherished honour and high, sensitive spirits, would not wish me to say more. They had borne enough, God knows, without the countryside guessing what a daemon of the pit—what a gorgon of the elder blasphemies—had come to flaunt their ancient and stainless name.

  Nor was it right that the neighbours should know that other horror which my strange host of the night could not bring himself to tell me—that horror which he must have learned, as I lea
rned it, from details in the lost masterpiece of poor Frank Marsh.

  It would be too hideous if they knew that the one-time heiress of Riverside—the accursed gorgon or lamia whose hateful crinkly coil of serpent-hair must even now be brooding and twining vampirically around an artist’s skeleton in a lime-packed grave beneath a charred foundation—was faintly, subtly, yet to the eyes of genius unmistakably the scion of Zimbabwe’s most primal grovellers. No wonder she owned a link with that old witch-woman—for, though in deceitfully slight proportion, Marceline was a negress.

  PERCHANCE TO DREAM, by Lin Carter

  Originally published in Crypt of Cthulhu #56, May 1988.

  CHAPTER 1.

  China Alley

  The cab drove past Fourteenth Street and continued south, driving between Chinatown and the river. This part of town was shadowy and disreputable—the streets grew narrow, crooked, the corner lamps dim, the shadows deeper, the people fewer and more furtive. There were Levantines and Turks, Portuguese, Lascars: the gutter-scrapings of half a hundred Eastern ports. The shops became smaller and their signs and windows bore inscriptions in queer Oriental letters. Heaven alone knew what crimes were plotted in these black alleys, these crumbling tenements…

  Of all these matters, Parker Winfield was all too uncomfortably aware, and with every block his taxi bore him deeper into a tangled maze of decaying slums, his discomforture grew. Damn that nosy Muriel Vanvelt for goading him into making the appointment, which made him come into parts of the city that he had always instinctively avoided, far from the luxurious clubs and fashionable, expensive restaurants that were his usual habitat! And damn the mystery-man, this seeker into strange lore and forbidden places, for daring to dwell in such a hellish neighborhood!

  Fog was drifting in from the riverfront as the cab drew up to the yawning mouth of one black alley, whose gloom was feebly dispelled by a lone lamp that shone above a doorway off Levant Street.

  “That’s it, buddy, Number Thirteen China Alley,” announced the cabdriver. Parker peered at the narrow cobbled way with strong emotions of misgiving.

  “You’re quite sure?” he quavered. The driver nodded curtly.

  “Sure. Number Thirteen China Alley, between River Street and Levant. That’ll be six seventy-five.”

  Winfield tossed him a crisp ten dollar bill and got out of the cab.

  “How the hell do I get back?” he demanded petulantly. The driver shrugged and pressed a card into his hand.

  “Call the garage—if they got a phone in there,” he muttered, with a dubious glance at the one dim light that glowed above the door. Then he drove off, mist swirling in gray tendrils in his wake. Hesitantly, Parker Winfield drew his expensive topcoat more closely about him to ward off the damp and chill and entered the alley’s yawning mouth. The glow of a streetlight illuminated his features, revealing a spoiled young man with lines of dissipation under watery eyes and a weak, indecisive mouth which a costly Bermuda tan did little to disguise.

  The house was narrow and small, two stories in height, shouldered to either side by taller brick tenements. The door, surprisingly, was a heavy slab of polished oak with stout hinges. A small brass plaque above the doorbell bore the single word Zarnak. The visitor thumbed the bell and waited, wishing he had never let Muriel Vanvelt talk him into coming.

  The door was opened by a tall man in a turban, lean and rangy, his aquiline features swarthy, hawk-like. Keen eyes sharp as dagger points scrutinized Winfield from top to toe.

  “You will be Mr. Winfield,” said the turbaned man in flawless English. “Pray enter; the sahib is expecting you.”

  As the door was shut behind him and steel bolts slid home, Winfield gave the servant his hat and topcoat, staring about him with vague astonishment. He had not known quite what to expect, but certainly nothing like this. The small foyer bore an immense bronze incense-burner on a teak wood stand; Tibetan scroll-paintings hung on walls covered with silk brocade; lush Persian carpets were soft underfoot.

  He was ushered into a small study.

  “Pray make yourself comfortable, sir; the sahib will attend you in one moment,” said the Indian servant. Left alone, Winfield glanced with dazed eyes about the room. Furniture, evidently of antique workmanship, stood here and there, all of heavy, polished teak inlaid with ivory or mother-of-pearl. Damask-hung walls displayed illuminated cabinets crowded with curiosities, among them Etruscan, Hittite, Egyptian, Creek artifacts. The carpeting underfoot was ancient Ispahan, faded but still glorious. A subtle fragrance sweetened the air, rising in lazy blue whorls from the grinning jaws of a brass idol.

  Bookshelves held hundreds of scholarly-looking tomes; Winfield scanned them absently but they were in Latin, German, French, with titles unknown to him…Unaussprechlichen Kulten, Livre d’Ivonis, Cultes des Goules.

  A desk also of old, carven teak, was covered with a clutter of papers, notebooks, leather-bound volumes. Egyptian tomb-figurines of blue faience, heavy scarabs of schist, Sumerian tablets inscribed with cuneiform inscriptions, served as paperweights. Above the desk a leering devil-mask, painted scarlet, black and gold, snarled down from the wall, symbolic gold flames coiling from fanged mouth and dilated nostrils. Winfield gaped at it.

  “Tibetan,” said a quiet voice from behind him. “It represents Yama, King of Demons; in prehistoric Lemuria he was worshipped as Yamath, Lord of Fire.”

  Winfield flinched at the unexpected voice and turned to view his host, a lean saturnine individual of indeterminate age, wrapped in a gold-and-purple dressing-gown. His skin was sallow, his eyes dark and hooded, his black hair seal-slick, with a dramatic streak of pure silver that zigzagged from his right temple.

  “You’re Zarnak, I guess,” blustered Winfield rudely. His host gave a slight smile. Seating himself behind the long, cluttered desk, he gestured towards a marble-topped table where decanters of cut crystal reposed.

  “To quote an old adversary rather imprecisely, I have a doctorate in medicine from Edinburgh University, a doctorate in theology from Heidelberg, a doctorate in psychology from Vienna, and a doctorate in metaphysics from Miskatonic; my guests usually address me as Doctor Zarnak. Please help yourself to some brandy, and tell me of what service I can be.”

  Probably some damnable spic or dago rotgut, thought Winfield, taking up a bell-shaped glass. But the bottle was crusted with age and from the first gulp, Winfield felt as though he were drinking liquid gold.

  “Imperial Tokay,” murmured Zarnak, opening a notebook and selecting a pen. “From the cellars of the late Emperor Franz-Joseph. Now: how can I help you?”

  CHAPTER 2.

  The City in the Sea

  “It’s these damned dreams, you know,” began Parker Winfield, settling into a chair. “Always the same damned dream, night after night…I’m sinking under the sea: at first, the water’s light green, like muttonfat jade, then darker, like turquoise, then malachite. Finally, it’s a green so dark it’s almost black. I…I get near the sea-bottom. There is a city there, all ruins, a tumble of huge stone blocks, thick with seaweed, slimy with mud. There’s a central building, a temple of some sort; virulent green light shines through the portal, luring me towards it—”

  “Does this city have a name in your dream?” inquired Doctor Zarnak. Winfield’s weak mouth twisted sneeringly.

  “Sure does! Nonsense, though…‘Arlyah.’”

  Zarnak made a note in a small, precise hand. “Please continue,” he said softly. Winfield shrugged uncomfortably.

  “That’s really all there is,” he admitted. “Except that in the dream, I’m damnably afraid! And every night I get nearer and nearer to that green-lit portal…before I wake, drenched in cold perspiration. And then, there’s the chanting, you know…some damnable Eastern gobbledygook…sheer mumbo-jumbo…”

  “Can you recite any of it?” asked Zarnak. The other nodded, with a small shud
der.

  “Certainly can: I’ve heard the nonsensical words often enough…sounds like ‘fuh, nug, louis, muggle, waffle, klool, yu, arlyah, waggle, naggle, fong.’”

  He broke off, eyes defensive. “You must think I’m nuts! Everybody does. Tell me to see an analyst, but they’re just a bunch of witch-doctors after your wallet!”

  “Have you consulted a physician of any kind concerning these dreams of yours?”

  Winfield nodded. “Dr. Cartwright on Park Avenue; family physician, you know.”

  “An excellent man,” murmured Zarnak. “What was his conclusion?”

  Winfield laughed harshly. “Too much champagne, too late hours, not enough exercise, rich diet…that sort of thing.”

  “I believe that when you phoned you mentioned that it was Miss Vanvelt who suggested that you consult me?” Zarnak murmured meditatively.

  “Yes, it was Muriel.” Winfield muttered. “I thought you’d be some fancy, high-priced nerve specialist on Fifth Avenue or Sutton Place…why in the world do you live down in this filthy neighborhood?” Winfield suddenly asked.

  Zarnak smiled. “The denizens of River Street and its environs know how to mind their own business since many of them hide guilty secrets in their hearts and a lack of curiosity about their neighbors is an excellent means of preserving their own lives. Also, I have many scholarly colleagues among the Asian populace down here, and thus access to obscure and arcane information…but let me change the subject, if I may. You mentioned muttonfat jade and gemstones a moment or so earlier: may I assume that you collect antiquities or rare minerals?”