Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  He broke off as a mewing cry sounded, very near, and then resumed in an unsteady voice. “They were driven back into their own world, their own dimension—and the gateway was closed, so they could not return. It’s remained closed through all these eons.

  “It would still be closed,” he went on bitterly, “if I hadn’t opened it with my experiments, or had taken the precautions the Mysteries of the Worm gave. Now they’ve got Mason—and that’s all they need. I know that, somehow. A sacrifice to open the gate between this world and their own frightful dimension, so that their hordes can come pouring upon earth—

  “That’s how they got in before. By a human sacrifice—”

  “Listen!” I held up my hand urgently. The mewing cries had died, but there was another sound—a faint highpitched moaning coming from outside the cottage. Hayward didn’t move.

  “It may be Mason,” I jerked out as I went to the door. Momentarily I hesitated, and then swung it open, stepped out on the sand. The moaning grew louder. Hayward slowly came up by my side. His eyes were sharper than mine, for as he peered into the fog-banks he gave a startled exclamation.

  “Good God!” He flung out his arm, pointing. “Look at that!”

  THEN I too, saw it, and I stood there glaring at the thing, unable to move.

  There, on that Pacific beach, with the yellow light from the open door pouring out into the fog, something was dragging itself painfully over the sand toward us—something distorted, misshapen, uttering little whimpering cries as it pulled itself along. It came into the beam of light and we saw it distinctly.

  Beside me Hayward was swaying back and forth, making hoarse sounds as though he were trying to scream and couldn’t. I stumbled back, flinging up my arm to shield my horrified eyes, croaking, “Keep away! For God’s sake, stay back—you—you—you’re not Bill Mason—damn you, stay back!”

  But the thing kept on crawling toward us. The black, sightless hollows where its eyes had been were grim shadows in the dim light. It had been flayed alive, and its hands left red marks on the sand as it crept. A patch of bare white skull shone like a frightful tonsure on the crimsoned head.

  Nor was that all—but I cannot bring myself to describe the dreadful and loathsomely abnormal changes that had taken place in the body of the thing that had been Bill Mason. And even as it crawled it was—changing!

  A dreadful metamorphosis was overtaking it. It seemed to be losing its outline, to sprawl down until it wriggled rather than crawled along the sand. Then I knew! In the space of seconds it was reversing the entire evolutionary upsurge of the human species! It squirmed there like a snake, losing its resemblance to anything human as I watched, sick and shuddering. It melted and shrank and shrivelled until there was nothing left but a loathsome foul ichor that was spreading in a black puddle of odious black slime. I heard myself gasping hysterical, unintelligible prayers. And suddenly a piercing shock of cold went through me. High in the fog I heard a mewing, shrill call.

  Hayward clutched at my arm, his eyes blazing. “It’s come,” he whispered. “It’s the sacrifice—they’re breaking through!”

  I swung about, leaped for the open door of the cottage. The icy, unnatural chill was numbing my body, slowing my movements. “Come on,” I shouted at Hayward. “You fool, don’t stay out there! There has been one sacrifice already! Must there be others!”

  He flung himself into the house and I slammed and locked the door.

  Shrill, unearthly cries were coming from all directions now, as though the things were calling and answering one another. I thought I sensed a new note in the cries—a note of expectation, of triumph.

  The window-shade rolled up with a rattle and a snap, and the fog began to move past the pane, coiling and twisting fantastically. At a sudden gust the window shook in its casing. Hayward said under his breath, “Atmospheric disturbances—oh, my God! Poor Mason—watch the door, Gene!” His voice was strangled.

  For a moment I saw nothing. Then the door bulged inward as though frightful pressure had been applied from without. A panel cracked with a rending sound, and I caught my breath. Then—it was gone.

  The metal doorknob had a white rime of frost on it. “This—this isn’t real,” I said madly, although I was shuddering in the icy cold.

  “Real enough. They’re breaking through—”

  Then Hayward said something so strange that it brought me around sharply, staring at him. Gazing vacantly at me, like a man in a hypnagogic state, he muttered in a queer guttural voice:

  “The fires burn on Nergu-K’nyan and the Watchers scan the night skies for the Enemies—ny’ghan tharanak grii—”

  “Hayward!” I seized his shoulders, shook him. Life came back into his eyes.

  “Blind spot,” he muttered. “I remembered something—now it’s gone. . . .”

  HE flinched as a new outburst of the mewing cries came from above the house.

  But a strange, an incredible surmise, had burst upon my brain. There was a way out, a key of deliverance from evil—Hayward had it and did not know it!

  “Think,” I said breathlessly. “Think hard! What was it—that memory?”

  “Does that matter now? This—” He saw the expression on my face, its meaning flashed across to him and he answered, not quickly, not slowly, but dreamily: “I seemed to be on a mountain peak, standing before the altar of Vorvadoss, with a great fire flaming up into the darkness. Around me there were priests in white robes—watchers—”

  “Hayward,” I cried. “Vorvadoss—look here!” I snatched up the half-page of manuscript, read from it hastily. “ ‘The gods friendly to man were arrayed against the invaders—’ ”

  “I see what you mean!” Hayward cried. “We triumphed—then. But now—”

  “Hayward!” I persisted desperately. “Your flash of memory just now! You were standing on a mountain while the Watchers scanned the night skies for the Enemies, you said. The Enemies must have been those creatures. Suppose the Watchers saw them?”

  Suddenly the house shook under an impact that was not the work of the screaming wind. God! Would my efforts bear fruit too late?, I heard an outburst of the shrill cries, and the door creaked and splintered. It was dreadfully cold. We were flung against the wall, and I staggered, almost losing my balance. Again the house rocked under another battering-ram impact. My teeth were chattering, and I could hardly speak. A black dizziness was creeping up to overwhelm me, and my hands and feet had lost all feeling. Out of a whirling sea of darkness I saw Hayward’s white face.

  “It’s a chance,” I gasped, fighting back the blackness. “Wouldn’t there—have been some way of summoning the gods, the friendly gods—if the Watchers saw the Enemies? You—you were high priest—in that former life. You’d know—how—to summon—”

  The door crashed, broke. I heard wood being torn ruthlessly apart, but I dared not turn.

  “Yes!” Hayward cried. “I remember—there was a word!”

  I saw his frightened gaze shift past me to the horror that I knew was ripping at the broken door. I fumbled for his shoulders, managed to turn him away. “You must! Think, man—”

  Abruptly a light flared in his eyes. He was reacting at last.

  He flung up his arms and began a weird, sonorous chant. Strangely archaic-sounding words flowed from his tongue fluently, easily. But now I had no eyes for him—I was glaring at the horror that was squeezing itself through the splintered gap it had torn in the wall.

  IT WAS the thing Hayward had sketched, revealed in all its loathsome reality!

  My dizziness, my half-fainting state, saved me from seeing the thing too clearly. As it was, a scream of utter horror ripped from my throat as I saw, through a spinning whirlpool of darkness, a squamous, glowing ball covered with squirming, snake-like tentacles—translucent ivory flesh, leprous and hideous—a great faceted eye that held the cold stare of the Midgard Serpent. I seemed to be dropping, spinning, falling helplessly down toward a welter of writhing, glossy tentacles . . . and dimly I could hear
Hayward still chanting. . . .

  “Ia! Rhyn tharanak—Vorvadoss of Bel-Yarnak! The Troubler of the Sands! Thou Who waiteth in the Outer Dark, Kindler of the Flame—n’gha shugg y’haa—”

  ‘He pronounced a Word. A Word of Power, which my stunned ears could scarcely hear. Yet hear it I did. And I felt that beyond the borders of human consciousness and understanding, that Word was flashing and thundering, through the intergalactic spaces to the farthest abyss. And in primeval night and chaos Something heard, and rose up, and obeyed the summons.

  For, with the suddenness of a thunderclap, blackness fell on the room, hiding from my sight the monstrous glowing thing that was plunging toward us. I heard a dreadful skirling cry—and then there was utter silence, in which I could not even hear the recurrent crashing of the surf. The abysmal cold sent sharp flashes of pain through me.

  Then, out of the darkness, there rose up before us a Face. I saw it through a haze of silvery mist that clung about it like a veil. It was utterly inhuman, for the half-seen features were arranged in a pattern different to mankind, seeming to follow the strange pattern of some unfamiliar and alien geometry. Yet it did not frighten, it calmed.

  Through the silver mist I made out strange hollows, fantastic curves and planes. Only the eyes were clear, unmistakable—black as the empty wastes between the stars, cold in their unearthly wisdom.

  There were tiny dancing flames flickering in those eyes, and there were little flames, too, playing over the strange, inhuman countenance. And although not a shadow of emotion passed over those brooding, passionless eyes, I felt a wave of reassurance. Suddenly all fear left me. Beside me, unseen in the darkness, I heard Hayward whisper, “Vorvadoss! The Kindler of the Flame!”

  Swiftly the darkness receded, the face faded to a shadowy dimness. I was looking, not at the familiar walls of the cottage, but at another world. I had gone down with Hayward into the profundities of the past.

  I seemed to be standing in a vast amphitheatre of jet, and around me, towering to a sky sprinkled with an infinite multitude of cold stars, I could see a colossal and shocking city of scalene black towers and fortresses, of great masses of stone and metal, arching bridges and Cyclopean ramparts. And with racking horror I saw teeming loathsomely in that nightmare city the spawn of that alien dimension.

  HUNDREDS, thousands—surging multitudes of them, hanging motionless in the dark, clear air, resting quiescent on the tiers of the amphitheatre, surging across the great cleared spaces. I caught glimpses of glittering eyes, cold and unwinking; pulpy, glowing masses of semitransparent flesh; monstrous reptilian appendages that swam before my eyes as the things moved loathsomely. I felt contaminated, defiled. I think I shrieked, and my hands flew up to shut out that intolerable vision of lost Abaddon—the dimension of the Invaders.

  And abruptly that other-world vision snapped out and vanished.

  I saw the godlike, alien Face fleetingly, felt the cool glance of those strange, omniscient eyes. Then it was gone, and the room seemed to rock and sway in the grip of cosmic forces. As I staggered and almost fell I saw again around me the walls of the cottage.

  The unbearable chill was no longer in the air; there was no sound but the pounding of the surf. The wind still sent the fog twisting past the window, but the brooding, oppressive feeling of age-old evil had utterly vanished. I sent an apprehensive glance at the shattered door, but there was no trace of the horror that had burst into the cottage.

  Hayward was leaning limply against the wall, breathing in great gasps. We looked at each other dumbly. Then, moved by a common impulse, we went, half staggering, to the splintered gap where the door had been, out on to the sand.

  The fog was fading, vanishing, torn into tatters by a cool, fresh wind. A starlit patch of night sky glittered above the cottage.

  “Driven back,” Hayward whispered. “As they were once before—back to their own dimension, and the gateway locked. But not before a life was taken by them . . . the life of our friend . . . may Heaven forgive me for that. . . .”

  Suddenly he turned, went stumbling back into the cottage, great dry sobs racking him.

  And my cheeks, too, were wet.

  He came out. I stood at his side as he threw the time-pellets into the sea. Never again would he go back to the past. He would live henceforth in the present, and a little in the future—as was more fitting, decenter, for human beings to do. . . .

  THE FROG

  Ghosting Out of the Dismal North Swamp, a Batrachian Horror Howls Through Monk’s Hollow in a Witch’s Holocaust!

  NORMAN HARTLEY knew little about the black legends which clustered about Monk’s Hollow, and cared less. Hidden in a secluded valley in the eastern hills, the ancient town had lain dreaming for generations, and a quaint and unpleasantly morbid folklore had sprung up from the tales the oldsters whispered about the days when witches had worked detestable sorceries in the festering North Swamp, a region which even yet was shunned by the villagers.

  Monstrous things had dwelt in that stagnant morass long ago, they said, and the Indians had had good cause to name it the Forbidden Place. The witches had passed, and their terrible books had been burnt, their curious implements destroyed.

  But the dark lore had come down furtively through the generations, and there were still some who could remember the night when, summoned by agonized shrieks, men had broken into half-witted old Betsy Codman’s cottage and found her still-quivering body dangling in a Witch’s Cradle.

  Norman Hartley, however, saw in Monk’s Hollow only a quiet, lonely little village where he might find the privacy which had been impossible in New York. Convivial friends were continually bursting into his studio, and instead of working on his canvases Hartley would find himself visiting the night clubs.

  His work had suffered. In the ancient, gambreled house he had rented, two miles from the village, he felt that he could recapture the inspiration that had made his paintings famous.

  BUT the Witch Stone bothered him.

  It was a roughly chiseled block of gray stone, perhaps three feet high and two feet square, which stood in the flower garden behind the house. Hartley’s sense of artistic values was outraged every time he looked out of his window at the stone.

  Dobson, the caretaker, had tried to train the flowers so as to shield it from sight; he had planted creepers about it, but the ground was apparently sterile. There was a little clearing of bare brown soil about the Witch Stone where nothing grew—not even weeds.

  Dobson said it was because of Persis Winthorp, but Dobson was superstitious and a fool.

  Whether Persis Winthorp actually lay buried beneath the stone or not, the fact remained that the block was an eyesore. One’s gaze passed casually over the gay colors of the garden, drawn irresistibly by the little barren clearing where the stone stood. Hartley, to whom beauty was almost a religion, found himself becoming irritated whenever his eyes rested on the Witch Stone.

  Finally he told Dobson to move it. The old caretaker, his seamed brown face puckered with apprehension, scraped his wooden leg across the floor and demurred.

  “It don’t do no harm,” he said, giving Hartley a sideways glance out of watery blue eyes. “Besides, it’s a sort of landmark.”

  “Look here,” Hartley said, unreasonably annoyed. “If I’m renting this house I’ve a right to move the stone out of the way if I don’t like it. And I don’t—it’s like a great ugly splotch of green in a sunset. It throws the garden out of symmetry. I can’t understand you, Dobson. One would think you were afraid to touch it.” Hartley’s thin, studious face was flushed.

  Dobson shifted uneasily. “Well, sir, they do say—my granddad told me they put the stone there for a reason.”

  Hartley snorted, but the caretaker went on seriously. “I mind he told me once old Persis cursed Monk’s Hollow when they were ducking her in the pond. And they couldn’t drown her, either—not with the father she had, that came out of the North Swamp one night to—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Ha
rtley said disgustedly. “So if the stone is moved she’ll pop up, eh?”

  Dobson caught his breath. “You shouldn’t say things like that, Mr. Hartley. Persis Winthorp was a witch—everybody knows that. There used to be awful things going on in this house when she lived here.” Hartley turned away. They were standing in the garden and he moved aside to examine the stone.

  There were curious marks upon it, seemingly chiseled by inexpert hands. The rough figures had a vague resemblance to Arabic, but Hartley could make nothing of them. He heard Dobson stump up beside him.

  “He said—my granddad—that when they were ducking her they had to get the women folks away. She came up out of the water all green and slimy, with her great mouth croaking out spells to nobody knows what heathen gods—” Hartley looked up quickly at the sound of a motor. A truck was chugging into view around the bend of the road. He glanced at the Witch Stone, and then, making up his mind, hastily sprinted for the road. Behind him he heard Dobson muttering some obscure reference to Persis Winthorp’s mysterious father.

  The truck was loaded with gravel. He flagged it, and as it ground to a halt swung himself on the running board.

  “I wonder if you’d do a little job for me,” he said to the two men in the truck. “I want to get a good-sized rock out of my garden, and it’s a bit too heavy for me to handle. It’ll only take a minute.” He pulled out his wallet.

  The driver, an unshaved, bullnecked Irishman, turned inquiringly to his companion, exchanged glances with him, and then grinned at Hartley. “Sure, buddy. Glad to oblige.”

  “Good,” Hartley said, and, half to himself: “We can dump it under a bush, out of sight.”

  LATER, Hartley stood by his window, frowning. The moon was rising beyond the ridge, but the garden was still in shadow. Somehow he had the impression that something had moved in that dim black sea of gloom. Crickets were shrilling monotonously, and he felt unreasonably nervous. From below came a recurrent tap and shuffle as Dobson puttered about the kitchen.