The Taint and Other Novellas

by Brian Lumley

  As Larner spoke, something he said rang a bell in the student’s mind. Spellman had glimpsed in his brief scanning of the contents of the madman’s book a passage or two containing certain chants or invocations, the Sathlattae, and he made a mental note that later he must go back to that strange volume and discover whatever he could of them…and also of this— creature?—Yibb-Tstll.

  But then, speaking again, Larner broke into his thoughts; and again the lunatic’s expression had changed, his eyes being wide and steady now in his white face. “Well, nurse Spellman, would it be possible for you to—to do me a little harmless service?”

  “You’ll have to say what it is first.”

  “Quite simply—I’d like you to make me a copy of the Sixth Sathlatta from the Cthaat Aquadingen, and bring it to me. No harm in that, is there?”

  Spellman frowned: “But haven’t you just this moment blamed your being here on that very book?”

  “Ah!” Larner made to explain. “But then I didn’t know what I was doing. It’s different now—except I can’t remember how the thing goes: the Sixth Sathlatta, I mean. It’s been almost ten years….”

  “Well, I really don’t know,” Spellman carefully considered. “But see here, Larner, favors work two ways, you know? You still haven’t answered my question. I might be able to do as you ask, but are you willing to tell me what happened the night Merritt died?”

  Larner’s eyes, however, had gone furtive, nervous again. He turned his face away. “We’ll handle it ourselves, Spellman, no matter the price,” he muttered. Then he glanced sharply back at the face of the student framed in the barred window, and again Spellman was amazed at the mercurial property of the man’s character. Now his eyes were penetrating, almost sane. “Nothing happened. Merritt took a fit, that’s all. He was a madman—you know?” Again Larner turned away, this time to walk over to his bed and lie down in his former position.

  Spellman, knowing that their “chat” was over, continued slowly down the stark corridor, peering in at the barred spy-holes as he went.

  The remainder of that night, despite the fact that he knew all was in order, Martin Spellman could not rid his subconscious of distant alarm bells, and as he walked the nighted halls he found himself occasionally glancing nervously over his shoulder.

  • • •

  Spellman had the next weekend free of duty, and he used his Saturday to track down Larner’s strange references in the Cthaat Aquadingen. He eventually found a decidedly alien-looking—chant?—hidden away in one of the manuscript’s four coded sections under the legible heading “Sixth Sathlatta.” Almost without knowing, he copied the weirdly jumbled letters down onto a sheet of paper, attempting a tongue-twisting pronounciation as he did so:

  “Ghe ‘phnglui, mglw’ngh ghee’yh, Yibb-Tstll,

  Fhtagn mglw y’tlette ngh’wgah, Yibb-Tstll,

  Ghe’phnglui mglw-ngh ahkobhg’shg, Yibb-Tstll,

  THABAITE!—YIBB-TSTLL, YIBB-TSTLL, YIBB-TSTLL!”

  Then, before searching for further references to Yibb-Tstll, the young nurse spent a few more minutes vainly trying to make something of what he had written down. Finally he gave up the hopeless task, moving on eventually to find the notes he sought—crowded marginalia apparently deciphered from the coded pages, so-called methods of evocation—in another of the book’s sections. To clarify the “message” of these notes, and to make of them something of a readable passage, again, as with the Sixth Sathlatta, he neatly copied the words down onto paper:

  (1) TO CALL THE BLACK:

  This method involves a wafer, of (flour?) and water composition—printed with the Sixth Sathlatta in the original symbols—handed to the victim with the summoning chant (Necronomicon, p. 224, under heading Hoy-Dhin) called out aloud within the said victim’s hearing. This will not produce Yibb-Tstll but his Black Blood, which has the property of being able to live apart from Him; called from a universe so alien that it is known only to Yibb-Tstll and Yog-Sothoth, conterminous with all spaces and times. The victim is taken when the Black Blood settles like a mantle about him and smothers him. Then the juice of Yibb-Tstll returns with the soul of the victim to the body of The Drowner in His own continuum….

  (2) TO SEE YIBB-TSTLL IN DREAMS:

  …& the Sixth Sathlatta may be used…that one might scry in Dreams the Form of The Drowner, Yibb-Tstll, who walks in all Times & Spaces. It must however be observed that the Chant should be used sparingly—once only—before each Sleep wherein the Scrying is to be done, lest the Seer impart into That on which he gazes a Perception of the Gate of his Mind; & that, in using this Gate to enter from Outside, & in returning thither through this same Gate, Yibb-Tstll may burn out the Mind & Gate & all in His coming & going…for the Agony is great & Death certain. Nor, in such a visitation, would His Actions in this Sphere be controlled; The Drowner’s Appetite was well known to the Adepts of old….

  (3) TO CALL YIBB-TSTLL:

  This method again involves the use of the Sixth Sathlatta: called out three times by thirteen adepts in unison at midnight of any First Day. Note: any thirteen callers will find the ritual as described answered, provided at least one amongst them is an adept; but unless at least seven of the callers are adepts—and unless, on the night before the midnight of a calling, they first seal their souls with the Naach-Tith Barrier—they may well suffer hideous reversals and penalties!

  • • •

  There was a note here in red ink, added by Larner to the foregoing marginalia: “Must try to find the remainder of the words to raise the barrier of Naach-Tith….” Obviously, Spellman thought, at the time the man in the ward called Hell had written that last cryptic note, he had already been well along the strange paths of insanity.

  For the rest of the afternoon Spellman left the pages of his rapidly shaping manuscript alone and turned to his studies, only making a break for a meal at about six and returning to his textbooks immediately after. At eight he brewed a pot of coffee, which, rather than giving him a lift, seemed to make him somewhat weary so that he lay down on his bed for a few minutes. He had been more tired than he thought, however, waking up cramped and chilly some three hours later when a nightmare—the nature of which he could not remember—shocked him from his sleep.

  He turned on his gas fire then, brewing another cup of coffee before taking out his manuscript to make a few small alterations and further notes. He worked solidly until two in the morning, only undressing and climbing into bed when he was satisfied that the current chapter of his book was going well. But before sleeping he took up the loose sheets of paper bearing those notes copied earlier from the Cthaat Aquadingen.

  Again, out loud, he commenced to attempt a pronounciation of that weird jumble of letters entitled the Sixth Sathlatta, fancying that his low utterances this time sounded more nearly like they should. But before reaching the end of the second line, when he felt a strange dread welling up inside him, he paused. An involuntary shudder ran the length of his spine.

  What was it he had read of this so-called “invocation”? Yes, there it was, just as he had copied it down: “…& the Sixth Sathlatta may be used…that one night scry in Dreams the Form of The Drowner, Yibb-Tstll, who walks in all Times & Spaces.”

  An odd dizziness seemed to come over him and he shook his head to clear it; but though this steadied him somewhat, nonetheless he put away his papers and settled himself down in bed. Something was wrong with his nerves, that was plain. It must be this place and its inmates. He would have to get himself down into Oakdeene village more often with Harold Moody.

  Again Spellman dropped quickly off to sleep, and once more his dreams were of a nightmarish nature….

  There were weird scenes of alien herbage and evil-looking monochrome flowers. Jungles of darkly exotic ferns stretched writhing fronds toward starless, dark green skies through which fantastic birds slid on veined and pulsating wings. There was a clearing close by in the hellish tangle of unknown growths, towards which Spellman’s subconscious spirit seemed drawn
in some inexplicable fashion. Fungoid shrubs drew back from him as he moved toward the clearing, and huge insects buzzed evilly as they burst from the bells of poisonous-looking blooms at his approach. He realized that he was the alien in this monstrous dimension of dream, and that the reluctance of its denizens was such as his own might be were the roles reversed.

  Soon he reached the clearing, a great scabrous area of bleached and sterile earth stretching for at least a mile before the jungle took up again on the other side. In the center of this hideous expanse The Thing stood, and at that distance Spellman judged It to be at least three times as tall as a man. As he drew closer across the crumbling and scabby ground he saw that The Thing was turning, slowly turning about on feet hidden from his view by a great green cloak, a cloak that bulged and jerked and writhed as it fell from just beneath the—head?—to the corroded and powdery surface on which it stood. Drawing still closer, the dream-Spellman felt a scream welling in his throat as the great figure turned towards him and he saw the face clearly for the first time. Had the terrible shape not gone on turning—had those eyes noticed him for a single moment—Martin Spellman knew he must shriek out loud, but no, The Thing in Green continued Its apparently aimless turning, and Its voluminous cloak was alive with uncanny motion….

  When Spellman was very close to the giant, no more than a score of paces away, his movement towards It ceased. The Thing had still been turning away from him, but, as he came to a halt, Its motion also faltered.

  Then The Thing stopped turning altogether!

  For a moment the scene seemed frozen, the only movement being the fantastic billowing of the green cloak, then, slowly but inexorably, the monstrous form began to turn back towards the paralyzed dreamer.

  Soon the great figure halted again, facing squarely in Spellman’s direction, and he screamed voicelessly as the blasphemous cloak billowed out more violently than ever, parting to permit the dreamer one mad glimpse beneath its green folds. There, about the pulsating black body of the Ancient One, hugely winged reptilian creatures without faces cluttered and clutched at a multitude of blackly writhing, pendulous breasts!

  This much Martin Spellman saw—

  —And the next thing he knew was that he was being roughly shaken and slapped awake!

  Harold Moody, pleasantly drunk, having just returned on foot from Oakdeene village, had “dropped in” to see if Martin fancied a brew of coffee; he knew that Martin often worked quite late. But he had found his young friend in the throes of nightmare. Never was a man—half inebriated or not and despite the hour—more welcome than Harold Moody; for, even realizing now that he had only been dreaming, Spellman sat and shivered uncontrollably on his bed while has late visitor brewed hot coffee. He could remember his nightmare clearly, and what he remembered was quite the most hellish thing he had ever known.

  The monstrous dream-jungle had been bad enough…and the blossom-bloated insects…and the clearing of dead and crumbling earth. Worse still had been the membranous, blind, winged creatures beneath the sickening green cloak of the giant. But worst of all had been the eyes in the head of that slowly turning colossus….

  • • •

  The next morning, despite an odd listlessness against which he had to fight very hard, Spellman set himself to the long task of searching diligently through the Cthaat Aquadingen. The dream of the previous night had been so real—and yet for his life he could not remember having seen in Larner’s “Black Book” a description of anything remotely like the nightmare vision he had experienced. Even in broad daylight, with a weak December sun shining in through his window facing the exercise yard, Spellman shuddered as he recalled The Thing of his dream. Other than Ernst Kant’s description of “a thing with black breasts and an anus within its forehead”—not from the Cthaat Aquadingen but a comparatively modern work on singular foreign mental cases, similar to the book Spellman was trying to write—there was nothing. From where, then, had his subconscious conjured up the monster of the dream?

  Spellman realized that he must after all have a mind far more open to suggestion than he would ever have formerly believed. He had, of course, dreamed of The Thing after reading of the supposed method of “scrying Yibb-Tstll in Dreams.” Ridiculous though it all was, the idea had strongly influenced his subconscious, and the nightmare had been the result….

  • • •

  For the next ten days and through Christmas, Spellman’s time was taken up in the main with matters far less to his liking than the work he had thus far been doing. In short, while he was free most nights, his day-duties included being instructed in methods of keeping the more dangerous inmates “neat and tidy.” He had to learn how to feed and bathe violent patients, and how to clean out the cells of those disposed to animal-like habits. He was glad when the lessons had passed, when he could settle once more to his old routine.

  It was the 27th December before Spellman found himself on night-duty again, and as the fates would have it his name appeared on the roster opposite that especially offensive duty: the lower wards, and particularly the one called Hell.

  That night, on his very first visit to Hell, Spellman found Larner waiting for him at the spy-hole of his cell.

  “Nurse Spellman—at last, it’s you! Did you…did you…?” Eagerly he peered out through the bars.

  “Did I what, Larner?”

  “I asked you to copy down the Sixth Sathlatta—from the Cthaat Aquadingen. Did you forget?”

  “No, I didn’t forget, Larner,”—though in fact, he had—“but tell me—what do you intend to do with…with the, er, Sixth Sathlatta?”

  “Do with it? Why!—it’s—it’s an experiment! Yes, that’s it, an experiment. In fact, Nurse Spellman, you might like to help us out with it?”

  “Us, Larner?”

  “Me—I meant me—you might like to help me with it!”

  “In what way?” Spellman found himself interested, and despite the circumstances he was impressed with the lunatic’s apparent lucidity.

  “I’ll let you know later—but you’ll have to let me have the Sixth Sathlatta soon—and a few sheets of paper and a pencil….”

  “A pencil, Larner?” Spellman frowned suspiciously. “You know I can’t give you a pencil.”

  “A crayon, then,” the man in the cell begged in seeming desperation. “Surely I can’t do any harm with a crayon?”

  “No, I don’t suppose so. A crayon would be all right, I should think.”

  “Good! Then you will—” The madman let the question hang.

  “I can’t promise, Larner—but I’ll think about it.” It would be interesting, though, Spellman told himself, his hideous dream of a fortnight gone dim now in his memory, to see just what Larner would do with the Sixth Sathlatta.

  “Well, all right—but think quickly!” the man’s voice cut into his thoughts. “I’ll have to have the things I need well before the end of the month. If I don’t—well, the experiment would be no good—not for another year, at any rate.”

  Then Larner’s eyes quickly went wide and vacant, his positive expression altering until his features seemed vague and weak. He turned and walked slowly over to his bed with his hands behind his back.

  “I’ll see what I can do for you, Larner,” Spellman spoke to the man’s back. “Probably tonight.” But Larner had apparently lost all interest in their conversation.

  It was the same later, when Spellman returned to the basement ward after a quick visit to his room. He spoke to Larner, passing through the bars a crayon, blank paper, and that sheet with the Sixth Sathlatta copied from Larner’s book, but the lunatic sat on his bed and made no attempt to answer. Spellman had to let the articles the man had requested fall to the floor within the cell, and even then Larner showed not the slightest flicker of interest.

  Toward morning, however, when the stain of approaching dawn was already making itself known through the snow-laden clouds to the east, the young nurse noticed that Larner was busy writing; working furiously with his crayon and p
aper, but as before he ignored all of Spellman’s efforts at communication.

  • • •

  It happened two days later that after his mid-morning break Spellman went down to his room for one of his rare cigarettes before beginning his afternoon duties. As he pulled at the cigarette he peered contemplatively out through the bars of his window (Harold Moody had once jovially explained that the bars were not to keep him in—no one doubted his sanity—but to keep exercising madmen out!) at the dozen inmates of Hell as they walked or shambled up and down the high-walled yard. The worst of them were shackled at the feet, so that their movements were restricted and much slowed down, but at least half of them knew no physical restrictions whatever—except the watchful vigilance of their half-dozen white-clad warders.

  The latter seemed especially lethargic that day, or so it appeared to the curious observer, for from his vantage point it was plain to him that Larner was up to something. Spellman saw that every time Larner came within speaking distance of another inmate he would say something, and that then his hand would stray suspiciously close to that of the other. It looked for all the world as though he was passing something around. But what? Spellman believed he knew.

  He also realized that it was his duty to warn the warders in the yard that something was up—and yet he did not do so. It was quite possible that, should he bring Larner’s activities to the attention of the others, he would in the end be causing trouble for himself; for he believed Larner to be passing around copies of the Sixth Sathlatta! Spellman smiled. No doubt the madman intended making an attempt at raising Yibb-Tstll. How the lunatic mind contradicts itself, he thought, turning away from the window. Why! You could hardy call the twelve creatures in the the exercise-yard “adepts,” now could you? And in any case, Larner was one man short!