The Collected Short Fiction

by Ramsey Campbell

  "Listen, young Sir, 'tain't as if I haven't ben mixed up in turrible doin's. I had a friend once as would go down to the Devil's Steps, an' he swore as he'd soon have them Yuggoth ones about him, ministerin' at every word he spoke. He thaought he had words as would overcome them that fly over the steps. But let me tell yew, he went too far. They faound him out in the woods, and 'twas so horrible a sight that three of them as carried him wasn't never the same since. Bust open, his chest and his throat was, and his face was all blue. Said as haow it was ungodly, them from Arkham did. But those as knew, they said those up the steps flew off with him into space where his lungs bust.

  "Don't be hasty naow, young Sir. 'Tis too dangerous to go and seek up them Devil's Steps. But there's something out in the woods by the Aylesbury Road that could give you what you want, mebbe, and it ain't so much a hater of men as them from Yuggoth nohaow. You may've ben to it—it's under a slab of rock, and the Aklo Sabaoth brings it—but mebbe ye didn't think of asking for what ye need? It's easier to hold, anyhaow—ye don't even need Alhazred for the right words. An' it might get things from them from Yuggoth for ye. 'Tis worth a try, anyhaow—before ye gets mixed up in what might kill ye."

  Armitage, dissatisfied, could gain no more information concerning the outpost at Devil's Steps, that vast geological anomaly beyond Arkham. He left the farmhouse in an uncertain frame of mind. A few nights later, he records, he visited the titan slab in the woods west of the Aylesbury Road. Seemingly the alien ritual had little effect, needing a larger number of participants; at any rate, he heard sounds below as of a vast body stirring, but nothing else.

  The next recorded trip is that to Harvard University, where he searched the pages of their copy of Alhazred's massive hideous blasphemy. Either theirs was an incomplete edition, or he was mistaken in thinking that the volume contained the terrible words, for he came away enraged and convinced that he needed the R'lyeh Text, the only copy of which, he was aware, resided at Miskatonic University.

  He returned the next day to Arkham, and proceeded to call at the Enoch Pierce homestead again. The old farmer listened uneasily to Armitage's tale of his lack of success, both in raising the daemon in the clearing and at Harvard. The recluse seemed to have had an even greater change of heart since his visitor had last seen him, for at first he even declined to aid the seeker in raising the thing in the wood. He doubted, so he said, that it would be able to supply Edward with the necessary incantations to subdue the crustaceans from Yuggoth; he also doubted that even two participants would be capable of stirring it from below its slab. Also, quite frankly, he was slightly disturbed by the whole proceedings. He disliked to be connected with anything concerning those Armitage ultimately wished to contact, even so indirectly as this would concern him. And, finally, he might be able to tell Armitage where to procure the incantation.

  Armitage, however, was adamant. He meant to call up that below the slab off the Aylesbury Road, and he would try this before following any more of the venerable rustic's doubtfu recommendations; and since it was unlikely that anyone else would accompany him to this ritual, it would be necessary to ask the aid of Pierce. When the man further demurred, Armitage spoke a few words, of which only the hideous name Yog-Sothoth was intelligible. But Pierce (so the other recorded in that invaluable notebook) paled, and said that he would consider the suggestions.

  The Aklo Sabaoth only being useful for the invocation of daemons on nights of the first phase of the moon, the two had to await the crescent moon for almost a month. 1918 was a year of mist and storm over Arkham, so that even the full moon was only a whitish glow in the sky in that month of March. But Armitage only realised the necessity of deferring the ritual when the night of the first quarter arrived moonless, a definitely adverse condition.

  These unfortunate meteorological conditions did not end, in fact, until early 1919, Armitage now being twenty years of age. Not many of the neighbours realised he was so young—the monstrous wisdom he had acquired from reading the forbidden books in his library and that at the Miskatonic— and those who knew about his real age somehow did not dare to speak what they knew. That was why nobody was able to stop him as he left the house at dusk, one night in April 1919.

  The wind howled over the countryside as the sports car drew up at the end of the driveway to the Pierce farmhouse. The countryside, in the lurid light across the horizon with faint threads of mist rising from the marshy field, resembled some landscape out of hideous Leng in central Asia. A more sensitive person might have been uneasy at the brooding eldritch country; but Armitage would not be affected by this, for the sights he was to see that night were far more horrible, such as give threats to sanity and outlook. Muttering certain words at the not-yet-risen sliver of moon, he pounded on the oaken door.

  The old man mumbled affrightedly at the sight of his visitor, and tried to turn him away with pleas of something to be done that night which was very pressing. But he had promised Armitage that he would accompany him, and his visitor held him to that promise though it had been made over a year before. He escorted Pierce out to the waiting sports car, in which they drove off across the grim, primeval landscape. All too soon they turned off to reach the Aylesbury Road. The drive down it was a nightmarish affair of close half-demolished lichenous brick walls, grassy verges with huge darkly-coloured pools, and stunted trees, twisted into grotesque shapes which creaked in the screaming wind and leaned terrifyingly toward the road. But however morbid the drive may have seemed, it could have been no consolation to Pierce when the car drew off the road near an especially dense belt of forest.

  The trip down the pathway between the towering trees may only be imagined. But the walk through the fungoid-phosphorescent boles and pathblocking twisted roots soon widened out into a clearing—the clearing of that horrible survival from aeons before humanity occurred. Armitage waited impatiently as the moon's thin rays began to trickle across the boundary of the clearing. He had insisted that Pierce stand near the slab of vast mineral, and that person now shuddered as he watched the accursed sliver of moon creep up toward the zenith.

  Finally, as the first beam of pallid light struck the circular stone, the searcher began to shriek those mercifully forbidden words in the Aklo language, the terrified farmer joining in the responses. At first, no sound could be heard except certain movements far off among the trees; but as the moonbeams progressed across the pitted grey expanse both Armitage and his disturbed companion began to hear a sound far below in the earth, as of some Cyclopean body crawling from unremembered abysses. The thing scrabbled monstrously in some black pit under the earth, and so greatly was the sound muffled that it was not until the slab began to creak upward hideously that the watchers realised the nearness of the alien horror. Enoch Pierce turned as if to flee, but Armitage screamed that he should hold his ground, and he turned back to face whatever monstrosity might rise from the pit. First of all came the claws and arms, and when Pierce saw the number of arms he almost screamed outright. Then, as these dug into the soil around that hole into nether deeps, the thing raised itself almost out of the hole, and its head came into sight, pressing up the impossibly heavy slab of unknown material. That bloated, scaly head, with its obscenely wide mouth and one staring orb, was in view for but an instant; for then the arm of the hideousness shot out into the moonlight, swept up the hapless Pierce, and whipped back into the blackness. The stone slab crashed back into place, and a ghastly shriek from the victim yelled out beneath the stone, to be cut off horribly a second later.

  Then, however, Armitage, shaken by the horror he had seen but still mindful of his mission, pronounced the final invocation of the Sabaoth. A terrible croaking rang out in the clearing, seeming to come across incredible gulfs of space. It spoke in no human tongue, but the hearer understood only too perfectly. He added a potent list of the powers which he had called out of space and time, and began to explain the mission on which he had sought the abomination's aid.

  It is at this point in the notes of Edward Win
gate Armitage that an air of puzzlement is remarked by all commentators. He recounts, with a growing air of disbelief and definite unease, that he explained to the lurker below the slab that he wished to learn the long invocation of the powers of Azathoth. On the mention of that monstrous and alien name, the shambler in the concealed pit began to stir as if disturbed, and chanted hideously in cosmic rhythms, as if to ward off some danger or malefic power. Armitage, startled at the demonstration of the potency of that terrific name, continued that his reason for wishing to learn this chant was to protect himself in traffic with the crustacean beings from black Yuggoth on the rim. But at the reference to these rumoured entities, a positive shriek of terror rang out from below the earth, and a vast scrabbling and slithering, fast dying away, became apparent. Then there was silence in the clearing, except for the flapping and crying of an inexplicable flock of whippoorwills, passing overhead at that moment.

  III

  One can learn little more about the ways of Edward Wingate Armitage for the next few years. There are notes concerning a passage to Asia in 1922; the seeker apparently visited an ancient castle, much avoided by the neighbouring peasantry, for the seemingly deserted stronghold was reputed to be on the edge of a certain abnormal Central Asian plateau. He speaks of a certain tower room in which something had been prisoned, and of an awakening of that which still sat in a curiously carved throne facing the door. To this certain commentators link references to something carried on the homeward passage in a stout tightly-sealed box, the odour of which was so repulsive that it had to be kept in the owner's cabin at the request of other passengers. But nothing could be gleaned from whatever he brought home in the box, and it can only be conjectured what was done with the box and its contents; though there may be some connection with what a party of men from Miskatonic, summoned by an uneasy surgeon at St Mary's, found in Armitage's house and transported out to a lonely spot beyond Arkham, after which they poured kerosene over it and made certain that nothing remained afterward.

  In early 1923 Armitage journeyed to Australia, there being certain legends of survivals there that he wished to verify. The notes are few at this point, but it seems likely that he discovered nothing beyond legends of a shunned desert stretch where a buried alien city was said to lie. Upon making a journey to the avoided terrain, he remarked that frequent spirals of dust arose in the place for no visible reason, and often twisted into very peculiar and vaguely disturbing shapes. Often, also, a singular ululation—a fluted whistling which seemed almost coherent—resounded out of empty space; but no amount of invocation would make anything appear beyond the eldritchly twining clouds of dust.

  In the summer of 1924 Armitage removed from the High Street residence to an extensive place at the less-inhabited end of the Aylesbury Road. Perhaps he had grown to hate the pressing crowds in the city; more likely, however, he wished to follow certain pursuits that must not be seen by anyone. Frequent trips to that abnormality beneath the stone in the woods are recorded; but presumably the lack of participants made the ritual useless, for no response could be elicited. Once or twice there is a rise of defiance, noticeable in the tenor of the notes, but before he actually visited the Devil's Steps and its monstrous secrets, he would always repent his foolhardiness. Even so, he was becoming desperate with the lack of that unearthly mineral that he needed. It is better not to think of what his actions and fate might have been, had he not finally discovered a route to learning that long-sought and forbidden incantation.

  But it was soon after, in March of the memorable year 1925, that Armitage recollected words of Enoch Pierce before that last horrible April night in the haunted clearing. Perhaps he had been rereading his notes; at any rate, he remembered Pierce's plea that he might be able to tell him where to procure the incantation, one day in 1918. At the time he had believed that this was merely a lie to defer the awful moonlight ritual; but now he wondered if it might not have had some foundation in reality, for the rustic had known a number of people possessing rare occult knowledge. One of these might conceivably know that incantation.

  The next day he drove to the homestead, which was even more decayed and tottering than he remembered. Pierce's wife was dead, and the two sons now lived there alone, eking out a meagre income from the pitiful herd of cattle and few poultry. They were extremely displeased to see him, suspecting that their father's inexplicable disappearance had been effected by something which Armitage had "called aout of space"; but their fear overcame their hatred, so that they invited him into the parlour, albeit with unintelligible whisperings to each other. One, the younger, excused himself to tend the herd; the other listened uneasily to the visitor's questions. Who were the friends of his father who might have been connected with witchcraft, black magic and the like? Which, if any, were alive today? Where did they live? And, most important, which would be likely to know more than had Enoch Pierce?

  The son's slow response resembled that of his vanished father. Most of the men who had aided Pierce in his forbidden searching were all gone now. He had had one who had only come after his father made certain actions and spoke alien words, and it had once been let drop that he had been hung in that all-embracing purgation at Salem in 1692. The great majority of the rest had also vanished inexplicably after the father had not returned, and his son seemed to consider that these were of the same kind as the fugitive from Salem. One who had come up from Portsmouth, however, kept house just outside Dunwich, or had used to. But he thought that even he might have died, and only been present in the house at Dunwich when called by the vanished Pierce to aid him with the volumes there.

  Excitement now began to take hold of Armitage. A man who had come from Portsmouth probably would have been driven to his new home by witchcraft frenzy in 1692, if this peculiar reference to his death before Pierce met him was to be taken literally. Pierce had had a startling amount of knowledge, but if this eldritch being had been called to his aid, it might conceivably be much more wise. And the references to the many tomes in the house outside Dunwich—why, this private library might even include the Rlyeh Text of nameless wisdom! So great was his excitement at the possible long-forgotten vistas that might be opening before him, that Armitage even stopped to thank the plainly hostile being before him as he hurried out to his waiting car.

  But disappointment awaited him at the end of his frenzied drive to Dunwich. The house of the Portsmouth refugee was found easily enough, on the crest of a hill—or, rather, what was left of the house. Only three nights before it had caught fire. A party of men, in the vicinity for no particular reason, somehow neglected to call the fire brigade; and the ancient house, with all its rumoured contents, was destroyed except for one or two incombustibles—such as a skeleton, human only as to the skull, but otherwise so unearthly that only voluminous clothing could allow its living counterpart to pass for a human being.

  Bitterly disappointed and desperate, Armitage returned to his house off the Aylesbury Road. He began to search, it would appear, for a parallel formula in the books of the library. But even this could not be found; and he began to slip into a lassitude and depression born of desperation.

  It is pointed out by those commentators wishing to see a sane and wholesome explanation for that last occurrence in the woods between Dunwich and Arkham that in early 1928 Armitage began to take drugs. Previously he had been without hope of any road to the ritual he wanted; now, with the foolhardiness of his sudden addiction, came a resolve to carry out a quickly-conceived plan to enter Miskatonic University and carry off their copy of the volume he sought. He would need a dark night, and even the March of that year had phenomenally light nights. He was forced to wait impatiently until October, when a series of heavy rainstorms all over the region forced him to procrastinate still further. It was not until December that the series of deluges ended; and on the day before he was to carry out his individual assault on the university, he happened to buy a copy of the Arkham Advertiser, and in so doing he became aware of the first of a series of events
which were to lead to that frightful outcome.

  The piece which caught his eye was in the inside pages of the paper, for the editor believed that it was so choked with hellish speculation as to be of little portent. It dealt with a hill in the Dunwich country already known for a disaster in 1925. The lower regions of the hill had been inundated in the phenomenal floods in that region, and when the hill had been revealed fully again by the sinking of the water, a tunnel into inner depths was seen. It led to a door in the rock below the soil, securely sealed, so that the water had not passed it. The inhabitants of the neighbourhood seemed to be afraid of approaching the place; and the reporter said humorously that it was unlikely that anyone from Arkham would be interested in investigating, so that it might remain an unsolved mystery. A rather ironic pronouncement, for Armitage, as soon as he realised what might be in that room, returned home and drove as fast as possible to the hill beyond Dunwich.

  He drew up in a side road, which would have led past the hill of the revealed secret but for the lower part of the road's being covered in water. Leaving the car in the higher section of the road, Armitage began to approach the newly-found room, walking on raised ground at the side of the route, dry but slightly yielding. Soon reaching the passage into the hill, he began to walk down the twilit tunnel, which was now completely free from moisture. The door at its end swung open at a touch—for although it was so completely sealed, the portal was balanced, in reality, in a manner once very well known in various pre-human civilisations.

  The place was unlit, and the searcher was forced to switch on a torch which he had carried with him. The place revealed was a small room with walls of bare rock, bookcases around three of the walls, that facing the door being piled high with large and peculiarly-shaped boxes, covered with moss, charred earth and other less describable materials. In the higher shelf of the left-hand set were a large number of papers and envelopes. But Armitage's eye did not linger on this, for below were various hide-covered volumes, and in the centre of the shelf was a copy of the aeons-old Rlyeh Text. He took this down, noting that it seemed as complete as that up at Miskatonic, and made to carry it out to the car. As an afterthought, he decided to include the bundles of letters and papers on the top shelf, for the private documents of such a person of wisdom might yield much of interest to such a delver into fearful knowledge. He was not seen by anyone as he entered the car and drove off—not even that party of men who arrived with dynamite a few minutes after and caused the destruction later reported in a slightly satirical half-column in the Advertiser.