“What is it?” Mason asked behind me.
I picked up the—the—whatever it was. Then I got a severe shock, for it began to slip through my hand! It was being pulled away from me, and as I stared the end slipped through my fingers and whipped into the darkness. I craned out the window.
“There’s somebody outside!” I flung over my shoulder. “I saw—” I felt a hand seize me, shove me aside. “Shut that window,” Hayward gasped. He slammed it down, locked it. And I heard a gasping, inarticulate cry from Mason.
He was standing in the open doorway, glaring out. His face was changing, becoming transfigured with amazement and loathing. From outside the portal came a shrill, mewing cry—and a blast of great winds. Sand swirled in through the doorway. I saw Mason stagger back, his arm flung up before his eyes.
Hayward leaped for the door, slammed it. I helped the now shuddering Mason to a chair. It was terrible to see this usually imperturbable man in the grip of what could only be called panic. He dropped into the seat, glaring up at me with distended eyes. I gave him my flask;
his fingers were white as they gripped it. He took a hasty gulp. His breathing was rapid and uneven.
Hayward came up beside me, stood looking down at Mason, pity in his face.
“What the devil’s the matter?” I cried. But Mason ignored me, had eyes only for Hayward.
“G-God in heaven,” he whispered. “Have I—gone mad, Hayward?”
Hayward shook his head slowly. “I’ve seen them, too.”
“Bill,” I said sharply. “What’s out there? What did you see?”
He only shook his head violently, trying to repress the violent paroxysms of trembling that were shaking him.
I swung about, went to the door, opened it. I don’t know what I expected to see—some animal, perhaps—a mountain-lion or even a huge snake of some kind. But there was nothing there—just the empty white beach.
It was true there was a disk-shaped area of disturbed sand nearby, but I could make nothing of that. I heard Hayward shouting at me to close the door.
I shut it. “There’s nothing there,” I said.
“It—must have gone,” Mason managed to get out. “Give me another drink, will you?”
I handed him my flask. Hayward was fumbling in his desk. “Look here,” he said after a moment, coming back with a scrap of yellow paper. He thrust it at Mason, and Bill gasped out something incoherent. “That’s it,” he said, getting his voice under control. “That’s the—the thing I saw!”
I peered over his shoulder, scrutinizing the paper. It bore a sketch, in pencil, of something that looked as if it had emerged from a naturalist’s nightmare. At first glance I got the impression of a globe, oddly flattened at the top and bottom, and covered with what I thought at first was a sparse growth of very long and thick hairs. Then I saw that they were appendages, slender tentacles. On the rugose upper surface of the thing was a great faceted eye, and below this a puckered orifice that corresponded, perhaps, to a mouth. Sketched hastily by Hayward, who was not an artist, it was nevertheless powerfully evocative of the hideous.
“That’s the thing,” Mason said. “Put it away! It was all—shining, though. And it made that—that sound.”
“Where did it go?” Hayward asked.
“I—don’t know. It didn’t roll away—or go into the ocean. I’m sure of that. All I heard was that blast of wind, and sand blew in my eyes. Then—well, it was gone.”
I SHIVERED.
“It’s cold,” Hayward said, watching me. “It always gets cold when they come.” Silently he began to kindle a fire in the stone fireplace.
“But such things can’t exist!” Mason cried out in sudden protest. Then in tones of despair: “But I saw it, I saw it!”
“Get hold of yourself, Bill,” I snapped.
“I don’t give a damn what you think, Gene,” he cried. “I saw something out there that—why, I’ve always laughed at such things—legends, dreams—but, God! when one sees it—oh, I’m not trying to fool you, Gene. You’ll probably see the thing yourself before long.” He finished with a curious note of horror in his voice.
I knew he wasn’t lying. Still—“Are you sure it wasn’t a—a mirage?” I asked. “The spray, perhaps—an optical illusion?”
Hayward broke in. “No, Gene.” He faced us, grim lines bracketing his mouth. “It’s no illusion. It’s the stark, hideous truth. Even now I sometimes try to make myself believe I’m dreaming some fantastic, incredible nightmare from which I’ll eventually awaken. But no. I—I couldn’t stand it any longer—alone. The things have been here for two days now. There are several of them—five or six, perhaps more. That’s why I sent you the wire.”
“Five or six of what?” I demanded, but Mason interrupted me quickly. “Can’t we get out? My car is down the road a bit.”
“Don’t you think I’ve tried?” Hayward cried. “I’m afraid to. I’ve my car too. As a matter of fact, I did start for Santa Barbara last night. I thought I might get away under cover of dark. But the noises—those sounds they make—got louder and louder, and I had the feeling, somehow, that they were getting ready to drop on me. I flagged a man and paid him to send you the wire.”
“But what are they?” Mason burst out. “Have you no idea? Such things don’t just appear. Some hybrid form of life from the sea, perhaps—some unknown form of life—”
Hayward nodded. “Exactly. An unknown form of life. But one totally alien, foreign to mankind. Not from the sea, Bill, not from the sea. From another dimension—another plane of existence.”
This was too much for me. “Oh, come, Hayward,” I said. “You can’t really mean—why, it’s against all logic.”
“You didn’t see it,” Mason said, glaring at me. “If you’d seen that frightful, obscene thing, as I did—”
“Look here,” cut in Hayward abruptly. “I—I shouldn’t have brought you into this. Seeing what it’s done to Bill has made me realize—you’re still free to go, you know. Perhaps it would be better—”
I shook my head. I wasn’t going to run from a cry in the night, an odd-looking vine, an optical illusion. Besides, I knew what an effort it had cost Hayward to get out those words of renunciation. But before I could speak, a strange, shrill cry came from outside the house. Hayward glanced quickly at the window. He had pulled the shade down.
His face was grave. “I’ve changed my mind,” he said. “You mustn’t leave the house tonight. Tomorrow, perhaps—”
He turned to his desk, picked up a small pill-box. Mutely he extended his hand, on which he had dropped a few round, blackish pellets.
I picked one up, sniffed at it curiously. It had a pungent, unfamiliar odor. I felt an odd tickling sensation in my nostrils, and suddenly, for no apparent reason, thought of a childhood incident long buried in the past—nothing important, merely a clandestine visit to an apple orchard with two youthful chums. We had filled two gunny-sacks—
WHY should I remember this now? I had entirely forgotten that boyhood adventure—at least, I hadn’t thought of it in years.
Hayward took the pellet from me rather hastily, watching my face. “That was the beginning,” he said after a pause. “It’s a drug. Yes,” he went on at our startled expressions. “I’ve been taking it. Oh, it’s not hashish or opium—I wish it were! It’s far worse—I got the formula from Ludvig Prinn’s De Vermis Mysteriis.”
“What?” I was startled. “Where did you—”
Hayward coughed. “As a matter of fact, Gene, I had to resort to a little bribery. The book’s kept in a vault in the Huntington Library, you know, but I—I managed to get photostatic copies of the pages I needed “
“What’s it all about, this book?” Mason asked, impatiently.
“Mysteries of the Worm,” I told him. “I’ve seen it mentioned in dispatches at the paper. It’s one of the tabooed references—we’ve got orders to delete it from any story in which it appears.”
“Such things are kept hushed up,” Hayward said. “Sc
arcely anyone in California knows that such a book exists in the Huntington Library. Books like that aren’t for general knowledge. You see, the man who wrote it was supposed to be an old Flemish sorcerer, who had learned forbidden lore and evil magic—and who wrote the book while he was in prison awaiting trial for witchcraft. The volume’s been suppressed by the authorities in every country in which it’s been issued. In it I found the formula for this drug.”
He rattled the pellets in his hand. “It’s—I may as well tell you—it’s the source of my weird stories. It has a powerfully stimulating effect on the imagination.”
“What are its effects?” I asked.
“It’s a time drug,” Hayward said, and watched us.
We stared back at him.
“I don’t mean that the drug will enable the user to move in time—no. Not physically, at any rate. But by taking this drug I have been able to remember certain things that I have never experienced in this life.
“The drug enables one to recall his ancestral memories,” he went on swiftly, earnestly. “What’s so strange about that? I am able to remember past lives, previous reincarnations. You’ve heard of transmigration of souls—over one-half the population of the world believes in it. It’s the doctrine that the soul leaves the body at death to enter another—like the hermit crab, moving from one shell to another.”
“Impossible,” I said. But I was remembering my strange flash of memory while I was examining one of the pellets
“And why?” Hayward demanded. “Surely the soul, the living essence, has a memory. And if that hidden, submerged memory can be dragged from the subconscious into the conscious—the old mystics had strange powers and stranger knowledge, Gene. Don’t forget that I’ve taken the drug.”
“What was it like?” Mason wanted to know.
“It was—well like a flood of memory being poured into my mind—like a moving picture being unfolded—I can’t make it clearer than that.
“It brought me to Italy, the first time. It was during the Borgia reign. I can remember it vividly—plots and counterplots, and finally a flight to France, where I—or rather this ancestor of mine—died in a tavern brawl. It was very vivid, very real.
“I’ve kept taking the drug ever since, although it isn’t habit-forming. After I wake up from my dream-state—it lasts from two to four hours, generally—my mind feels clear, free, unleashed. That’s when I do my writing.
“You have no idea how far back those ancestral memories go. Generations, ages, inconceivable eons! Back to Genghis Khan, back to Egypt and Babylon—and further than that, back to the fabulous sunken lands of Mu and Atlantis. It was in those first, primal memories, in a land which exists today only as a memory and a myth, that I first encountered those things—the horror you saw tonight. They existed on earth then, uncounted milleniums ago. And I—”
Again the skirling, shrill cry shrieked out. This time it sounded as if it came from directly above the cottage. I felt a sudden pang of cold, as though the temperature had taken an abrupt drop. There was a heavy, ominous hush in which the crashing of the surf sounded like the thunder of great drums.
SWEAT was standing out in beads on Hayward’s forehead.
“I’ve called them to earth,” he muttered dully, his shoulders drooping. “The Mysteries of the Worm gave a list of precautions to be taken before using the drug—the Pnakotic pentagon, the cabalistical signs of protection—things you wouldn’t understand. The book gave terrible warnings of what might happen if those precautions weren’t taken—it specifically mentioned those things—‘the dwellers in the Hidden World’, it called them.
“But I—I neglected finally to safeguard myself. I didn’t foresee—I thought I might get a stronger effect from the drug if I didn’t take the directed precautions, improve my stories. I unbarred the gateway, and called them to earth again.”
He stared into space, his eyes blank and unseeing. “I have committed terrible sin by my neglect,” he muttered, it seemed to himself.
Mason was suddenly on his feet, his whole body shaking. “I can’t stay here! It’ll drive us all mad. It’s only an hour’s drive to Santa Barbara—I can’t stand this waiting, waiting, with that thing outside gloating over us!”
Was Mason, too, losing his nerve!
His mind! In the face of this unseen menace, whatever it was?
Sea-birds, a mirage of spray—men, perhaps—were responsible for Mason’s fear—I tried to tell myself that.
But deep in my heart I knew that no ordinary fear could have driven my two companions to the verge of craven hysteria. And I knew that I felt a strange reluctance to go out into that brooding, silent darkness on the beach.
“No,” Hayward said. “We can’t—that’d be walking right into the thing. We’ll be all right in here—”
But there was no assurance in his voice.
“I can’t stay here doing nothing!” Mason shouted. “I tell you, we’ll all go crazy. Whatever that thing is—I’ve got my gun. And I’ll stake bullets against it any time. I’m not staying here!”
He was beside himself. A short time ago the thought of venturing outside the cottage had seemed horrible to him; now he welcomed it as an escape from nerve-racking inaction. He pulled a vicious, flat automatic from his pocket, strode to the door.
Hayward was on his feet, stark horror in his eyes. “For the love of God, don’t open that door!” he shouted.
But Mason flung open the door, ignoring him. A gust of icy wind blew in upon us. Outside fog was creeping in, sending greasy tendrils coiling like tentacles toward the doorway.
“Shut the door!” Hayward screamed as he lunged across the room. I made a hasty move forward as Mason sprang out into the darkness. I collided with Hayward, went reeling. I heard the gritty crunch of Mason’s footsteps on the sand—and something else.
A shrill, mewing cry. Somehow—fierce, exultant. And it was answered from the distance by other cries, as though dozens of sea-birds were wheeling high above us, unseen in the fog.
I heard another strange little sound—I couldn’t classify it. It sounded vaguely like a shout that had been clipped off abruptly. There was a rushing howl of winds and I saw Hayward clinging to the door, staring out as though stupefied.
In a moment I saw why. Mason had vanished—utterly and completely, as though he had been borne off by a bird of prey. There was the empty beach, the low dunes to the left—but not a sign of Bill Mason.
I was dazed. He couldn’t have sprinted from sight during the brief time my eyes had been turned away. Nor could he have hidden beneath the house, for it was boarded down to the sand.
Hayward turned a white, lined face to me. “They’ve got him,” he whispered. “He wouldn’t listen to me. Their first victim—God knows what will happen now.”
Nevertheless we searched. It was vain. Bill Mason had vanished. We went as far as his car, but he wasn’t there.
If the keys of the car had been in the dashboard, I might have urged Hayward to get into the car with me, to race from that haunted beach. I was growing afraid, but I dared not admit my fear even to myself.
WE went back to the cottage slowly.
“It’s only a few hours till dawn,” I said after we had sat and stared at each other for a while. “Mason—we can find him then.”
“We’ll never find him,” Hayward said dully. “He’s in some hellish world we can’t even imagine. He may, even be in another dimension.”
I shook my head stubbornly. I couldn’t, wouldn’t believe. There must be some logical explanation, and I dared not lower my defences of skepticism and disbelief.
After a time we heard a shrill mewing from outside. It came again, and then several sharp cries at once. I lit a cigarette with trembling fingers, got up and paced the room nervously.
“That damned drug,” I heard Hayward muttering. “It’s opened the gateway—I have committed sin—”
I paused, my attention caught by a word, a sentence, on a sheet of paper in Hayward’s typewriter
. I ripped it from the platen.
“Material for a story,” Hayward said bitterly, glancing up at the sound. “I wrote that two nights ago, when I first got the memory of the things. I’ve told you how those damnable pills work. I got the—the memory in the afternoon, and sat down to hammer out a story from it that night. I was—interrupted.”
I didn’t answer. I was reading, fascinated, that half-page of type. And as I read, an eerie spell of horror seemed to settle down over me, like a chill shroud of dank fog. For in that eldritch legend Hayward had written, there were certain disturbing hints of things that made my mind shudder away from their frightfulness, even while I recognized them.
The manuscript read:
I dwelt in an archaic world. A world that had been long forgotten when Atlantis and Cimmeria flourished, a world so incredibly ancient that none of its records have ever come down through the ages.
The first human race dwelt in primal Mu, worshiping strange, forgotten gods—mountain-tall Cthulhu of the Watery Abyss, the Serpent Yig, Iod the Shining Hunter, Vorvadoss of the Gray Gulf of Yarnak.
And in those days there came to earth certain beings from another dimension of space, inhuman, monstrous creatures which desired to wipe out all life from the planet. These beings planned to leave their own dying world to colonize earth, building their titanic cities on this younger, more fruitful planet.
With their coming a tremendous conflict sprang into being, in which the gods friendly to mankind were arrayed against the hostile invaders. Foremost in that Cyclopean battle, mightiest of earth’s gods, was the Flaming One, Vorvadoss of Bel-Yarnak, and I, high priest of his cult, kindled—
There the manuscript ended.
Hayward had been watching me. “That was my—dream, Gene, when I last took the time-drug. It wasn’t quite as clear as most of them—there are always blind spots, odd gaps where my memory somehow doesn’t work. But the drug showed me what had happened in that prehistoric lifetime of mine, so many incarnations ago. We won—or rather our gods won. The invaders—those things—”
Collected Fiction Page 76
