The Lurker at the Threshold: Posthumous Collaborations

by August Derleth

  Among these books, however, were others, which were not at all orthodox, some very worn, some of leather smoothed by wear decades ago. Of these a very few were in languages foreign to me, a few others in Latin, and some in English black-letter, while four of them were manuscript transcriptions—apparently incomplete—though bound. It was among this latter group that I hoped to find what I sought.

  I thought at first that either Richard or Alijah Billington had made the laborious transcriptions, but only a little examination was enough to inform me that such was not the case, for the spelling was often too crude for it to be that of persons of education, such as both Billingtons were, to the best of my knowledge. Moreover, there were annotations made in a later hand, which was almost certainly that of Alijah Billington. There was nothing to show that any of the manuscript books had ever belonged to Richard Billington, but they might have been his property, for most of them were quite old, and, while no date appeared anywhere in the script, it seemed very probable that the greater portions of the scripts antedated Alijah Billington.

  I selected one of these manuscript volumes, not a thick or heavy book, by any means, and sat back to examine it carefully. It bore no title on its cover, which was of a peculiarly smooth leather, and of a texture which suggested human skin; but on one of the inner sheets, preceding some script which began immediately thereafter, without preamble, appeared the legend: Al Azif—Ye Booke of Ye Arab. I leafed rapidly through it, and decided that it was composed of fragmentary translations from some other text or texts, at least one of which was in Latin, and one in Greek. Moreover, there were plainly seen creases in many of the sheets, and annotations in themselves cryptic—“Br. Museum,” “Bib. Nationale,” “Widener,” “Univ. Buenos Aires,” “San Marcos,”—though a little study convinced me that these notes indicated origin, and referred to various famed museums, libraries, and universities in London, Paris, Cambridge, Buenos Aires, and Lima; there occurred also significant dissimilarities in the script, which gave ample evidence that a number of hands had assisted in the compilation. All this plainly suggested that someone—possibly Alijah himself— had been desperately anxious to obtain the essential parts of this book, and had evidently paid various persons to visit the repositories which contained copies of it, for it must have been exceedingly rare, to transcribe pages which he might assimilate and bind for his own shelves. It was manifest, however, that the book was far from complete, and there was little attempt at order, though the annotations indicated that whoever had prepared it for binding had struggled desperately at first to find some coherence in the pages which must have been sent to him from all over the world.

  As I was going through its pages for the second time, somewhat more slowly, I caught sight for the first time of one of those names associated with the trouble in the Wood, and held the page, which was in a very thin, spidery script, not easily legible, but scholarly. I turned it closer to the light, and read.

  “Never is it to be thought that man is either oldest or last of the Masters of Earth; nay, nor that the great’r part of life and substance walks alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces known to us, but between them, They walk calm and primal, of no dimensions, and to us unseen. Yog-Sothoth knows the gate, for Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and the guardian of the gate. Past, present, future—what has been, what is, what will be, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through in time to come until the Cycle is complete. He knows why no one can behold Them as They walk. Sometimes men can know Them near by Their smell, which is strange to the nostrills, and like unto a creature of great age; but of Their semblance no man can know, save seldom in features of those They have begotten on mankind, which are awful to behold, and thrice awful are Those who sired them; yet of those Offspring there are divers kinds, in likeness greatly differing from man’s truest image and fairest eidolon to that shape without sight or substance which is Them. They walk unseen, They walk foul in lonely places where the Words have been spoken and the Rites howled through at Their Seasons, which are in the blood and differ from the seasons of man. The winds gibber with Their voices; the Earth mutters with Their consciousness. They bend the forest. They raise up the waves, They crush the city—yet not forest or ocean or city beholds the hand that smites. Kadath in the cold waste knows them, and what man knows Kadath? The ice desert of the South and the sunken isles of Ocean hold stones whereon Their seal is engraven, but who has seen the deep frozen city or the sealed tower long garlanded with seaweed and barnacles?

  Great Cthulhu is Their cousin, yet can he spy Them only dimly. As a foulness shall They be known to the race of man. Their hands are at the throats of men forever, from beginning of known time to end of time known, yet none sees Them; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold. Yog-Sothoth is the key to the gate whereby the spheres meet. Man rules now where once They ruled; soon They shall rule again where man rules now. After summer is winter, and after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again, and at Their coming again none shall dispute Them and all shall be subject to Them. Those who know of the gates shall be impelled to open the way for Them and shall serve Them as They desire, but those who open the way unwitting shall know but a brief while thereafter.”

  There followed an hiatus, and soon another page began. But this was in another hand, from another source; it appeared to be of much older origin than the page I had just read, for not only was the paper itself yellower, but the script was almost archaic.

  “‘Twas done then as it had been promis’d aforetime, that He was tak’n by Those Whom He Defy’d, and thrust into ye Neth’rmost Deeps und’r ye Sea, and placed within ye barnacl’d Tower that is said to rise amidst ye great ruin that is ye Sunken City (R’lyeh), and seal’d within by ye Elder Sign, and, rag’g at Those who had imprison’d Him, He furth’r incurr’d Their anger, and They, descend’g upon him for ye second time, did impose upon Him ye semblance of Death, but left Him dream’g in that place under ye great waters, and return’d to that place from whence they had come, Namely, Glyu-Vho, which is among ye stars, and looketh upon Earth from ye time when ye leaves fall to that time when ye ploughman becomes habit’d once again to his fields. And there shall He lie dream’g forever, in His House at R’lyeh, toward which at once all His minions swam and strove against all manner of obstacles, and arrang’d themselves to wait for His awaken’g powerless to touch ye Elder Sign and fearful of its great pow’r know’g that ye Cycle returneth, and He shall be freed to embrace ye Earth again and make of it His Kingdom and defy ye Elder Gods anew. And to His brothers it happen’d likewise, that They were tak’n by Those Whom They Defy’d and hurl’d into banishment, Him Who Is Not to Be Nam’d be’g sent into Outermost space, beyond ye Stars, and with ye others likewise, until ye Earth was free of Them, and Those Who Came in ye shape of Towers of Fire, returned whence They had come, and were seen no more, and on all Earth then peace came and was unbrok’n while Their minions gather’d and sought means and ways with which to free ye Old Ones, and waited while man came to pry into secret, forbidd’n places and open ye gate.”

  I turned resolutely to the next sheet, which was somewhat smaller in size, and on an onion-skin paper, and bore every sign of having been written surreptitiously, perhaps under the eye of some watcher, for the writer had made all manner of abbreviations, so that it was necessary to pause from time to time, what with the added difficulty of his script, to figure out what it was that he wrote. This third entry appeared to follow the second more closely than the second had followed the initial sheet I had read.

  “Concern’g ye Old Ones, ’tis writ, they wait ev’r at ye Gate, & ye Gate is all places at all times, for They know noth’g of time or place but are in all time & in all place togeth’r without appear’g to be, & there are those amongst Them which can assume divers Shapes & Featurs & any Giv’n Shape & any giv’n Fac
e & ye Gates are for Them ev’rywhere, but ye 1st. was that which I caused to be op’d, Namely, in Irem, ye City of Pillars, ye city under ye desert, but wher’r men sett up ye Stones and sayeth thrice ye forbidd’n Words, they shall cause there a Gate to be establish’d & shall wait upon Them Who Come through ye gate, ev’n as Dhols, & ye Abomin.

  Mi-Go, & ye Tcho-Tcho peop., & ye Deep Ones, & ye Gugs, & ye Gaunts of ye Night & ye Shoggoths, & ye Voormis, & ye Shantaks which guard Kadath in ye Colde Waste & ye Plateau Leng. All are alike ye Children of ye Elder Gods, but ye Great Race of Yith & ye Gr. Old Ones fail’g to agree, one with another, & boath with ye Elder Gods, separat’d, leav’g ye Gr. Old Ones in possession of ye Earth, while ye Great Race, return’g from Yith took up Their Abode forward in Time in Earth-Land not yet known to those who walk ye Earth today, & there wait till there shall come again ye winds & ye Voices which drove Them forth before & That which Walketh on ye Winds over ye Earth & in ye spaces that are among ye Stars for’r.”

  Here there occurred a break of some proportions, as if what had been written there had been carefully expunged, though how, I could not see, for the paper revealed nothing. A short paragraph concluded the excerpt.

  “Then shal They return & on this great Return’g shal ye Great Cthulhu be fre’d from R’lyeh beneath ye Sea & Him Who Is Not To Be Nam’d shal come from His City which is Carcosa near ye Lake of Hali, & Shub-Niggurath shal come forth & multiply in his Hideousness, & Nyarlathotep shal carry ye word to all the Gr. Old Ones & their Minions, & Cthugha shal lay His Hand upon all that oppose Him & Destroy, & ye blind idiot, ye noxious Azathoth shal arise from ye middle of ye World where all is Chaos & Destruction where He hath bubbl’d & blasphem’d at Ye centre which is of All Things, which is to say Infinity, & Yog-Sothoth, who is ye All-in-One & One-in-All, shal bring his globes, & Ithaqua shal walk again, & from ye black-litt’n caverns within ye Earth shal come Tsathoggua, & togeth’r shal take possession of Earth and all things that live upon it, & shal prepare to do battle with ye Elder Gods when ye Lord of ye Great Abyss is apprised of their return’g & shal come with His Brothers to disperse ye Evill.”

  The afternoon was now coming to an end, and, though filled with a strange conviction that within these ancient pages lay the key to the mystery, even though it was not given to me to understand it correctly, the waning light and my cousin’s activity in the kitchen forced me to abandon the reading for the time being. I put the book aside, my perplexity very great in the face of these sinister and terrible allusions to something apparently primordial and completely beyond my ken; I was convinced that this compilation of fragments had been begun at the instigation of that Richard Billington who had been “destroy’d by the Thing he call’d out of the Sky,” and continued at the direction of Alijah, but to what end was not apparent, unless it was to add to their store of a knowledge which must certainly have been forbidden to mankind. The implications of the Billingtons having known how properly to interpret what they read and how to use that knowledge were terrible, especially so in the light of the events which had been contemporaneous with their existence.

  As I turned away and rose to make my way to the kitchen, my eyes involuntarily sought the leaded window, and I received a profound and frightening shock, for the last red sunlight lay upon the stained glass in such a way as to outline in that place an unutterably hideous caricature of an inhuman face of some great, grotesque being whose features were horribly distorted, eyes—if such there were—sunken into pits, without anything resembling a nose, though there seemed to be nostrils; a bald and gleaming head, the entire lower half of which terminated in a mass of writhing tentacles; and at the same time that I gazed in horror at this apparition, I was conscious once again of an overpowering malignance, and once more that terrible awareness of evil smote me from all sides, pressing down upon me like something sentient flowing from walls and windows, as if eager to destroy all life within its range—and briefly, too, it seemed, my nostrils were assailed by a noxious stench, a charnel odour which was the epitome of all that was nauseating and frightful.

  Shaken though I was, I resisted the impulse to close my eyes and turn away, but continued to gaze at the window, certain that I was the victim of an hallucination, doubtless given substance by what I had been reading; whereupon the hideous image diminished and faded, the window resumed its normal appearance, and the horrible smell in my nostrils impinged no more. But what next took place was in a way even more terrifying, and I invited its occurrence.

  Not content with having proved to myself that I had been made the victim of an optical illusion which had previously frightened my cousin Ambrose, I climbed once more to the top of the case below the window, and looked through the central pane, the uncolored pane, in the direction of the stone .tower, which I confidently expected to see, as before, outlined among the trees in the pale light of the setting sun. But, to my unutterable horror, I looked instead upon a landscape completely alien to me, completely foreign to anything within my experience. I almost fell from the case where I knelt, but I held myself with my face turned outward, for the landscape before my eyes was pitted and torn, and was assuredly non-terrestrial, and the sky overhead was filled with strange, baffling constellations, of which I knew none save one, very close, which bore a resemblance to the Hyades, as if that group had come closer to earth by thousands upon thousands of light years. And there was movement in what I saw—movement in those alien heavens, movement on that blasted landscape, as of great, amorphous beings which came rapidly toward me with manifestly evil intent, grotesque octopoid representations, and awful things that flew on great black rubbery wings and dragged repellent claw-like feet.

  My head reeling, I turned away and climbed back down; but at once, surrounded again by the prosaic setting of the study, the reaction came; I climbed back up, nerving myself all the way, and once more applied my eyes to that circle of plain window—and saw what I had expected in the beginning to see—the tower and the trees and the setting sun. But it was a considerably subdued man who made his way back to the study floor. I might be able to write off my impression of the hideous face in the leaded window as an hallucination; but what was there left to say of what I had seen through that glass? I realized instantly that I could not tell Ambrose of what I had seen; he might readily believe me, and thus aggravate his own condition. If indeed I had seen what I felt certain I had, upon what landscape had I looked, what place, what corner of the universe that it could be so frightfully alien and terrible?

  I stood for a few moments beneath the window, gazing up at it from time to time, half-expecting to see again that horrible metamorphosis, but nothing happened. I was aroused at last from my contemplation by the sound of my cousin’s voice calling me to the evening meal, and, shouting an answer, I left the study—not without a last fearful glance over my shoulder for the now darkening pane—and made my way to the kitchen where Ambrose waited before the repast he had prepared.

  “Did you find anything in his books?” asked Ambrose.

  Something in the tone of his voice gave me pause. I glanced at him, and saw that his expression was, while not hostile, certainly not friendly, and I divined that his question was in the nature of one seeking information it would not be wise to give. Yet I answered him truthfully enough, that I had read here and there, and could understand nothing whatsoever of what I had read.

  This seemed to satisfy him, yet there was evident that inner conflict of which he was himself aware, if the momentary puzzlement of his features was any indication. I offered nothing more, however, nor did he; so we passed through the meal in silence.

  Both of us, being tired, sought our rooms early that night.

  I had resolved to broach the subject of Ambrose’s coming to spend the winter with me in Boston, and I saw by the light snow which had begun to fall, that I must do so at the earliest opportunity; yet, that opportunity would not come until I could be assured that my cousin was once more amenable to such suggestion, and that he would not be so l
ong as he appeared in any way hostile to me.

  The surroundings were quiet, the only sound being the sifting of the snowflakes upon the window-panes, and I was soon asleep. Sometime in the night, however, I was awakened by what I took to be the slamming of a door. I sat up to listen, but heard nothing more; and, thinking that my cousin might again have gone out, I got up then, quietly, and crossed the hall to his room.

  Trying the door, I found it open, and entered silently; but my silence was to no account, since Ambrose had indeed gone out. My first impulse was to follow him, but this I deemed unwise, after due thought, for in the snow it was possible for him to see my footprints; by the same token, it would be quite possible for me to follow his tracks in the morning, since the snow had ceased to fall. I lit a match and consulted my watch; it was two o’clock in the morning.

  I was about to return to my own room when I was conscious of an alien sound—of music! I listened and heard a strange flute-like playing, for the most part in minor key, which was accompanied by a humming or throbbing or chanting as of a human voice. This rose, as nearly as I could determine, from somewhere west of the house; and I opened the window in my cousin’s room a trifle to satisfy myself that this was so, and, having satisfied myself, closed it again. I was more than ever impelled to follow my cousin and ascertain what he did, consciously or in sleep, but caution stayed my footsteps,—caution, and a residual memory of what had happened to certain other pryers in time past who had followed someone into the wood.