The House of Cthulhu: Tales of the Primal Land Vol. 1

by Lumley, Brian

  For already I could feel the poison from the darts working in my system, numbing my mind and body and blurring my vision, though the darts themselves had been shaken loose during our flight through the swamp. Phata, having taken perhaps half-a-dozen darts—a lethal dose according to Atmaas—must have been in an even worse condition, but so far his enormous vitality was buoying him up. Even he was beginning to succumb, however, and as he swayed before me where I sat with my back to the tree I could see that it would soon be all up with him.

  “Well, old friend,” I said in a gasping voice which surprised me with its faintness. “Is this the end for us, then?”

  “For me, most likely,” he answered, “for I took too many of their damned darts. And you?”

  “Just two—but enough to stretch me out for a while, I fancy. The swamp will do the rest.”

  “At least you have a chance—” Phata began, but I angrily cut him off with:

  “You would have had a far better chance, great fool—all the chance in the world—if you’d just looked after yourself! A man like you, why!—it would take more than this measly swamp to stop you!”

  “I’ve no regrets, my friend,” he grunted, “except perhaps I would dearly have loved to snap Ow-n-ow’s twiggy neck! Also, it’s a bit of a disappointment to die rich . . .”

  I tried to stand, to embrace him, to weep in my frustration, but no longer had the strength for any of these things. Instead I merely collapsed against my tree, shivering in a poison-induced fever, barely aware that Phata had broken off a stout branch for a weapon and now stood over me, legs spread, club dangling from his great hand.

  When he spoke again his voice seemed to come to me from a thousand miles away, but even so it carried hope. He was never one to give in easily, Phata Um.

  “If you can make it through the night, perhaps you’ll get out of here yet. And if I can stay active long enough—who knows? Maybe the poison is less potent than Atmaas believes. I may yet work it out of my system.”

  “Phata,” I managed to mumble, “you could be right. I pray that you are . . .” And after that, all else was a drugged nightmare.

  A nightmare, yes, for the things I seem to remember of that night were never meant to be in any ordered, sane or waking world. How best to describe it?

  I became for the most part unconscious, but every now and then I would stir up from the grip of the drug, usually to discover that I had been awakened by the sounds or commotions of combat! Combat, aye, for Phata had not succumbed (though I shall never be able to comprehend the sheer, raw power of will and physical energy which kept him on his feet) and now he had the swamp’s predators to deal with.

  Up they came out of that near-luminous murk; the sliding things, the snapping things, and always Phata there to greet them with his club. And oh the snarls of crocodiles with broken jaws and shattered skulls, the hissing of snakes split asunder, the squelching of crushed leech-things fat as a man’s thigh, and the squeal of great bats knocked clean out of the misty, reeking air before they could make clear their intent! And never a one of them allowed to touch me, not while Phata Um retained what little must now remain of his strength and senses.

  But in the end he was done, even Phata, and I felt his hands on my numb face and heard his whisper in my weirdly singing ears:

  “Eythor,” he said, kneeling beside me, his huge shoulder to the bole of the squat tree, his arms hanging limp. “The night is near spent and a dull glow lights the eastern sky. I too am spent, however, and I know it. It is the heart, the lungs, the organs which the pigmy poisons attack, and I have not worked them out of my system but into it . . .” And he paused for long moments, his breathing ragged where he slumped against me.

  “I have noted,” he finally continued, “how in this last hour the swamp’s lesser monsters have moved away—and I know why. The great slugs, in their nocturnal foraging, are headed this way. The sacrifices were doubtless succulent and welcome, but not enough. The slugs are night-feeders, Eythor, and as dawn approaches they feed all the more rapidly, taking their fill before returning to some secret place to sleep out the day.

  “Now, I am finished and I know it—but you can survive. You may live—but not if the slugs find you. So I have split my club to give it a sharp point, and now I go to do what I can to keep the great beasts at bay. I think they are simple creatures, like their lesser cousins, and if so they may fear me and my stick more than I fear them.

  “You may not see me again, Eythor, for which reason I now say farewell!” Then I felt his cold lips on my brow, and somehow I forced open my eyes to see him lurch to his feet and stagger away into swirling, misty mire. I would have called him back, but my paralysis was now almost complete, my fever at its peak.

  The last I saw of him, his silhouette was limned against an oh so faint, uncertain light—that of the coming dawn. But there were other lights, and far less friendly: gliding blue ghosts that told of the rapid encroachment of the swamp’s giant gastropods. Then, for what seemed a very long time, I knew no more . . .

  VII

  . . . When next I recovered consciousness I was very weak, but I knew that I had survived the ordeal. The dullness had passed from my senses and though my body and limbs felt like lead, still they were mine once more—and at least they had feelings! So it may be imagined the degree of my shock and horror when, upon opening my eyes, I found myself staring up into the brown orbs of a grimacing pigmy face!

  For a single instant my heart almost stopped—but in the next moment I knew that this was Atmaas, that the grimace was no more than a concerned, questioning smile distorted in my eyes by the abnormal bulge of his head, and that somehow Lady Fortune once more beamed upon me. I tried to smile in return—and immediately remembered Phata Um.

  The joy occasioned by my awakening passed from Atmaas’ face as a cloud passing over the face of the sun, and so I knew the worst. After that I quickly grew very tired—indeed, I believe a great deal of my spirit passed out of me—and I desired to know no more. Before I slept a pigmy girl, my own sweet concubine, fed me a warming broth (for certainly I could not feed myself), following which exhaustion overtook me . . .

  MY RECOVERY FROM that time forward was slow but sure, and as time passed so I pieced together the story of what had happened—at least from Atmaas’ point of view—during my long period of unconsciousness. Which leads me to the final and strangest part of my story.

  All through that first long night, while I lay in a drugged coma at the foot of a tree on that small island in the mud, and while Phata Um stood over and protected me, the pigmies had waited to see what they might see. When we escaped and ran (rather, when Phata ran with me draped over his shoulder), Ow-n-ow had described our flight as a declaration of guilt, for rather than stay and face the justice of the slug-gods we had chosen the unknown terrors of the swamp. It would avail us naught; the pigmies would wait until morning and if we had not returned by then they would know for certain that we were finished.

  Then they had sat in the safety of their canoes and watched the glowing gastropods as they glided through the glade of the sacrifice and took their burnt offerings. And the hours had slipped by and Gleeth the smiling moon-god walked the night sky of Theem’hdra, so that when the first glow of dawn was glimpsed down the river, then Ow-n-ow declared that we must be dead and the slug-gods appeased. With the departure of the great gastropods from the island, the chief and his councillors, the nganga too and certain of the tribal elders, returned to make sure that indeed the sacrifice had been received.

  And it was seen that all the offerings had been taken, to the very last pig, and so for a further quarter the N’dolas would surely prosper. Then, after clearing away the gory debris of that vast repast, lesser dishes were prepared and the pigmies broke their fast and conjectured amongst themselves upon the fate of the two who had dared profane the temple of the slug-gods.

  Most certainly we were dead and gone, they were all agreed, devoured by the swamp’s predators or sunken in its qu
icksand coils; for the marksmen with their blowpipes were certain that their fusillade had been utterly lethal. And so the sun rose up higher in the sky and steamed away the mists, and the N’dolas prepared to take their leave of the place. Which was when, in broad daylight, the incredible and completely unbelievable took place before their very eyes.

  Out from the swamp (where by now it should be resting in some deep, shaded and secret grove), up on to the island of the sacrifice, glided the lone shape of a great gastropod. And beneath its waving eyestalks, held loosely in a mouth of rough plates like giant rasps, the figure of a man was clearly discernible, head down and limbs limply dangling. My figure, as Atmaas was later to discover. As the pigmies on the island fled before the gliding shape of this mighty Lord of the Morass, so the creature proceeded to the centre of the clearing where I was deposited gently upon the sun-dried sward.

  Safely out on the river once more and anchored to its bed, the log craft of the pigmies bobbed gently as their boggling crews followed in astonishment the actions of the slug-god where its slate-grey bulk stood over my crumpled form. And there they stayed as the day drew on and the sun rose to its highest, hottest point. And all the while they whispered about what it all meant, that this great slug-god should thus jeopardise its own life by standing out in the searing rays of the sun and giving shade to one who had robbed its temple.

  Or could it perhaps be, the whisper began to be heard, that the outsiders had not been guilty after all?

  Ow-n-ow heard the whisper, too, and grew wrathful. No, he protested, the man had been brought back by the great gastropod as a punishment. Plainly the man was not yet dead, for every now and then he would give a twitch, or move however fitfully. Patently the slug-god waited for him to awaken, when without a doubt it would straightway devour him—but not before he was made to see the end to which his iniquities had brought him.

  But An’noona, who was growing more doubtful by the hour, could find little of any merit in Ow-n-ow’s assessment of the situation; moreover, Atmaas was openly critical of the evil nganga’s explanation of this hitherto unheard of occurrence. Why, it could plainly be seen (Atmaas declared) that the slug-god stood guard over the outsider! It suffered the very rays of the sun upon its hide, which must in the end destroy it, simply to give him shade!

  So the day wore on, and the sun beamed down as its orb moved across the sky, and the corrugated hide of the slug-god dried out and lost its greyish sheen. Occasionally a great croc would slide out of the swamp on its belly and make its way to where I lay—only to have the vast gastropod block its path with great grey body and cavernous grinding jaws . . .

  By the time the shadows of afternoon began to lengthen the slug-god was plainly suffering. Its hide, completely dry now and beginning to turn a dull, sickly purple, had developed sores and cracks, and its movements had lost all of their previous co-ordination and rhythmic sinuosity. The creature was dying, which anyone but a fool must surely see.

  And that could only mean that Ow-n-ow was a fool, for still he insisted—however blusteringly—that he was correct. A fool, aye . . . or a damned liar!

  Finally An’noona lost his temper and put it to the nganga that if he was so well versed in the ways of the gods, perhaps he should go ashore on to the island and ask the great creature what it was about. Ow-n-ow, to give him his due, turned on the chief and demanded to know if An’noona had lost faith in his nganga? At which Atmaas had leaped to his feet in the chief’s trimaran to confront the furious witch-doctor and curse him roundly for a liar and a blackguard.

  And Ow-n-ow had no other choice but to do as the chief had suggested, for as a man the N’dolas were on their feet behind An’noona and his chief councillor, and the nganga could see that to refuse the challenge would be to lose face irretrievably and relinquish forever his power in the tribe of the N’dolas.

  Nor was he given the chance to wriggle out of it; for while no order had been given, still the crew of the chief’s craft brought the trimaran around until the tip of its larboard outrigger was touching the island, and all eyes were on the nganga when at last he stepped ashore. For a moment he stood there, seemingly undecided, with his back to the river and its flotilla of canoes; but then he squared up, stood erect, and finally he stepped forward. Right up to the rear of the slug-god he went, where its hide was cracked now like old leather, with some vile ichor oozing out of the cracks, and reaching out his hand he touched the purplish bulk of the thing.

  At this a low, awed murmur went up from the pigmies in their massed canoes; but the gastropod moved not at all, though its great body pulsed as it had pulsed for many a long hour, listlessly and with no sign of cognition. Only the mighty head showed life, and even there the eyestalks drooped and were visibly a-tremble; and occasionally the great mouth would grind on nothing, in a sort of dumb agony.

  Taking heart, Ow-n-ow moved slowly along the length of the slug’s body until he approached its head. There he paused, and the eyes at the end of their rubbery stalks gazed dully upon him where he stood. At that very moment, even as the tiny witch-doctor and the massive gastropod came face to face, so I had chosen to move. With spastic jerks and twitches I changed my position on the ground where I lay; whereupon Ow-n-ow gave a cry of rage, snatched a long, curving knife from his belt and hurled himself upon me—or would have done but for the intervention of the mighty slug.

  As if seeing Ow-n-ow for the first time—even as the nganga flew at me where I lay in a helpless heap—the slug-god was suddenly galvanised into action. The massive head swung down, the great jaws opened and snapped shut on Ow-n-ow’s small black body, and the grinding plates moved with the inexorable, utterly undeniable motion of glaciers. The nganga screamed—once—and then was still; and with a toss of its slaty head the huge beast hurled his mutilated doll corpse into the swamp.

  Then the body of the beast stiffened and in another moment it rolled slowly over on to its side. But even dying it was careful that I was not crushed. And finally all was still, and the gastropod lay beside me, its monstrous head close to my own.

  For a long, long time then there were only the lapping of the river and the sounds of the swamp, and even these seemed muted. Then An’noona commanded that I be lifted up and taken aboard his trimaran; and finally, silently, overawed by all they had seen and with low-mouthed prayers on their lips, the pigmies departed from the swamp of the slug-gods and returned to their island village.

  WHEN I WAS well again I went back to the swamp with Atmaas and together we ventured into the glade of the sacrifice. There the remains of the slug-god—its tremendous, cartilaginous skeleton and huge rough plates of vestigial shell—lay where the beast had fallen, picked clean by lesser monsters. There, too, was that which explained everything, at least to me.

  Amidst shreds of corrugated hide and fragments of chalky bone I found a smaller skeleton, that of a man. The rings on its fingers were Phata’s, and round the bony neck was the heavy golden chain given him in friendship by An’noona.

  The Wine of the Wizard

  Editorial Note:

  Patently this penultimate tale is a fiction; but knowing what I do of Thelred Gustau’s own disappearance, and something of the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of his nephew at that earlier time, I like to conjecture that its words fly perhaps not too wildly astray of the mark. As for the actual meat of the story, which commences proper with Chapter III: that is a direct translation from Teh Atht’s writings.

  MYLAKHRION’S POWDER, CONCOCTED AT GREAT EXPENSE FROM HIS OWN FORMULA & WITH EXACT REGARD TO MEASURES & INGREDIENTS, MUST I FEAR REMAIN AN UNKNOWN QUANTITY. THE MEREST PINCH, TAKEN AS SNUFF, PRODUCES MARVELS GALORE, WHOSE EFFECTS ARE SO WONDERFUL THAT THE POWDER COULD WELL PROVE ADDICTIVE. WHAT, THEN, ITS POTENCY WHEN BREWED UP IN A MEASURE OF WINE SUCH AS MY AWFUL ANCESTOR WAS WONT TO IMBIBE?

  . . . TEH ATHT.

  I

  “Do not drink it!” Thelred Gustau warned his nephew, Erik, as he passed him a tiny phial of greenish powder. “Merely p
repare the wine—a sort of sherry, you say—and let me have it when the stuff is properly mature. I require it for certain tests, and of course I don’t know exactly what this powder is or what it can do. Its mildest effect, I suspect, is to produce grotesque hallucinations. We shall see. But since Teh Atht specifies that it might be used in this wine of his ‘awful ancestor,’ and since you have a talent for producing these home-brewed concoctions—”

  “Sherry,” said Gustau’s young visitor. “Quite definitely. But uncle, how old did you say this recipe is?” And he smiled, however wanly.

  His uncle glanced up from his work-bench, where already he was absorbed once more in his work, and said, “Hmm?—its age?” The scientist frowned. “Why, no,” he answered, “I can’t really tell you how old it is—not with any measure of certainty—but I believe it predates the dinosaurs.”

  “That’s what I thought you said.” Erik managed another smile. “Very well, I’ll brew your wine for you. Perhaps it will help take my mind off things.”

  Now his uncle suddenly grew concerned. He stood up and came round his oddly littered bench to lay a solicitous hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “Listen, Erik. I know how bad things have been for you, and I don’t want to sound cruel or uncaring, but you’re not the first man who has had to face up to such a thing. Give yourself time. I know she meant everything to you and there’s a place inside you that feels empty and dead, but it will pass. Believe your old uncle, it’s not the end of the world.”

  Erik Gustau nodded. “I know, I know. But it feels like the end of my world. Uncle, she was so young! How do such things happen? If there’s a God, how can He let such things happen?”