"Yes, he was.”
"Well, I was thinking, now that we have so many, that we should send him a couple as a gift."
"Yeah, that would be nice."
We had intended to spend a coupl more days vacationing, but after we got the books loaded into the wagon we decided to head home right away. This cargo was too valuable to risk theft in a hotel parking lot. We made it to Amherst Massachusetts a few hours later, with only a few odd looks from the toll booth attendants on the turnpike.
The two of us spent the following week taking inventory of what we had, comparing them against prices in catalogues and reading some. The name of Latham Knucklebury came to me again in a very odd way, as I found another message written in a book, in the same hand that had marked out Shakespeare. It was on the flyleaf of an edition of Van Prims and read:
HAVEN'T YOU EVER WONDERED WHY THESE BOOKS ALWAYS TURN UP, DESPITE THEIR ALLEGED RARITY?
LK
Latham Knucklebury! It had to be.
"I have to be going dear.”
"Why? Where?"
"To Arkham," I said. "I’ll tell you more about it later. Hold the fort for me in the meantime. Bye."
And I was gone. West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and the roads are narrow, steep and treacherous through those deep woods that no axe has ever cut. Still I drove like a maniac, spewing dust and gravel in my wake. I showered a bearded old man and he raised his hand to make an odd sign against me, but I was gone around a bend in an instant.
***
“So you have come at last. Good," Latham Knucklebury said as he met me before the locked gates of the Miskatonic University campus.
"I knew you would be here. Your curiosity would force you to come."
He walked away from the gate, over the grass and along the wall.
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"I know a way in. I still have a key. Several keys in fact."
He took me through a tiny gate around the back, and we walked briskly across the empty campus, past rows of dormitories with gabled roofs and fanlighted doorways, until we came to a large brick building the size of a barn with no windows on the first floor. It had only one opening, a massive slab of metal which slid aside after Latham had inserted and turned a six-inch key.
"Now you see my work, and I hope you'll understand," he announced.
Inside was a single room, almost completely filled with a fantastic array of machinery of completely alien design. There were huge globes of transluscent glass, coils of tubing, cyclopean columns of a greenish metal, gigantic cubes, pyramids and cylinders, rhomboid-sided solids of impossible crystals, blue, red, and yellow, and some shapes defying any geometry I knew altogether. In front of all of it stood the image of what I took to be an animal, perhaps an incomplete specimen. It was as tall as an elephant, with four long, tapering legs, and covered all over with a rope-like hair of a vaguely purplish colour. It had no visible head or tail, and I wasn't sure which end was the front.
Latham Knucklebury climbed in among the machines, onto a three-pronged operator's pedestal obviously designed for anatomies other than human.
"Behold around you," he said, waving his hand showmanlike, "the innermost secret of Miskatonic University."
There was a faint humming sound coming from the hardware, which seemed to get a little louder as he spoke.
"Some secret; What's the hairy thing?"
"That's the builder of this apparatus, Richard, a being from beyond the Earth. Alone it came from distant Shaggai in centuries past. It transported all this machinery here and assembled it, then went into suspended animation when the task was completed. It is actually a low form of Shaggaian life, more like a dog than anything else in the ecology of that world."
"A Shaggai dog built this?"
"Yes. You see, the Old Ones are so advanced and incomprehensible to mankind, that they never lower themselves to touch mechanical objects at all. But this device was a vital part of their overall plan, so they sent the creature you see before you to set it up."
"Now wait a minute! This mutt looks stuffed to me." I tried to touch the thing with my finger, but suddenly a blue light arced over it, and I felt a strong electrical shock. I drew back, and found that my arm was numb past the elbow.
"Not stuffed,";said Knucklebury. "It's in a kind of time stasis. The beings of Shaggai have long since harnessed Time.”
"Tell me more," I said, nursing my arm.
Latham was no longer merely conversing. He began to take on a fanatical tone, like a soapbox preacher ranting for revolution. He got down from his stool and began to shout and point.
"The Old Ones are the masters of all cosmic forces, Richard, and they have bided their time while the superstitious rabble forgot them and went on to new hysterias. The men who first discovered this equipment were persecuted as witches. Later others came, and to hide the frightful object from view they built this hall around it and locked the massive door, after the Shaggaian machinery proved indestructable despite all the childish efforts of the Puritans to smash it as a work of the Devil. Eventually braver and wiser souls arrived, men who understood. They built Miskatonic University on this site to mask their true activities. Only a few of all those who have studied here ever came inside this building. When I was here in my last year there were only nine professors and three graduate students who were part of our brotherhood.
We alone knew, and had the power-"
"What power? What does this gizmo do?”
"Have you never heard of the Great Old Ones, who came to this world ere mankind was even an idea in the mind of a deranged amobea?
The-Old Ones are; the Old Ones were; the Old Ones shall be. They came from the stars and ruled over the Earth in Their mysterious ways, until they were cast down by forces even more terrible. But They shall come again and drive the human scum from the globe. I tell you -"
"You tell me just what all this is about, because I still haven't the slightest idea. What has this contraption and that - that whatever it is - got to do with anything? Where did those old books come from, and how did you know we would come to that particular house? We didn’t know ourselves until we got there."
"Like I said, the Old Ones have made Time their servant. I merely looked ahead, saw that you would go there, and deposited what I wanted you to find. By our science such a thing is inconcievable, but to the Old Ones it is nothing."
"Well thanks, but I really couldn't take them all from you -"
"Richard, you will take them and you will read them and you will -"
"I won't do anything unless you tell me where they came from."
"Alright then, if you must know, this device here bends the fabric of space. When you do that something coexists with itself. I merely took the extra copy each time."
"Huh?"
"Did you by chance notice the stamps on the wrapping to the Shakespeare book?”
"No, I didn't."
"Well you should have, because they're all 1856 British Guiana one cent magenta, the rarest stamp in the world, worth easily $75,000.
Only one copy is known to exist, and you have six. And that is a demonstration of my power. It has nothing to do with my true purpose."
"Tell me, did you get Shakespeare's autograph with your space bending machine?"
"Of course. I took the book back, asked him to autograph it, and brought it to our own time again. He took me for a magician, and said I had inspired him to write a play about a magician.”
"The Tempest."
"Maybe so, but in any case, They of Shaggai and Yuggoth have no interest in Shakespeare. This machine was designed to mass produce mouldering and unquestionably authentic copies of the Necronomicon, the Book of Eibon, and all the rest, so they would get wide circulation and inevitably fall into the hands of those who know how to use them."
"Wouldn't it be a lot simpler just to publish the Necronomicon in paperback?"
"What? No, don't be silly. It would vanish into the occult racks without a ripple. Peop
le would think Lin Carter wrote it. I want these copies to be believed."
He was clearly mad, or at least half mad. I didn't understand half of what he said, but what was clear was simply more of his screwball ravings magnified enormously. I didn't feel like humouring him any more.
"Is this your idea of a joke?"
At that he grew wild with rage.
"Joke? Do you take me for a prankster? No, I tell you it is my plan to bring the Old Ones back in our own time! When I am done every occultist, every satanist, every teenaged witch, every person on the planet with the slightest amount of curiosity will have a copy of Alhazred. They'll read it aloud, speak spells they don't understand, and the gates will be ripped back, and the Old Ones will come through and clear the world of all human garbage. Nothing will be left of what was!"
This was ridiculous. I didn't know whether to laugh or feel sorry for him. I tried to show him the illogic of his fantasy.
"Yes, but if that happens, won’t everybody be killed, including you, Latham Knuokleberry?”
"No, I shall not die, for the blood of Dagon and Cthulhu runs deep in me. Those who are touched by Them and who serve Them shall live on in new and glorious life."
"You really are crazy. Chambers was right."
"No, I am not crazy, Richard. I am not entirely human, nor are you."
"Me? What do you mean I'm not human?"
"Through my machines I know more than you think, about the world, about you, Professor Richard Brown. What happened to those tentacles on your chest?"
"How did you ever -? The doctor cut them off when I was a baby! A birth defect."
"Your tail, Richard! The scales down your back. What of them?"
"What the hell are you, some kind of peeping tom?”
"Richard, I know you have webbing between your toes!"
"Shut up you madman! Shut up!"
"la Hastur! Tonight the stars are right! The time of Their return is at hand!"
I turned and fled from that place in blind terror. Behind me the machinery began to whir and clank. As I passed a copy of Cultes des Ghoules slid down a chute and fell into a basket. The blue light arced again and the nameless creature from Shaggai began to stir. I glimpsed over my shoulder - God, that I had not! - and saw that the creature 's head was not at the front or the back, but in the middle!
The last thing I heard was the shrill voice of Latham Knucklebury cackling in hideous, obscene triumph .
"Run you coward! Run and die; You won't escape Them. Ia! Ia Hastur! We want a touchdown! Ia! Harken ye, O Dark Ones, to the ancient words! Ia Shub-Niggurath! Yog-Sothoth! Yog-Sothoth.”
***
Three months have passed since that frightful spectacle at Miskatonic University, and I know now that I should not have run away. I should have allied myself with Latham Knucklebury and the demonic forces he served, for then I would have had some hope of survival .
Since last I saw him there have been signs and wonders, reports of strange lights in the sky, unheard of shapes rising out of the seas, monsters roaming the countryside, and even a walking winged statue haunting New England.
This morning the sun did not rise. There are no stars, and a black shroud has fallen over the world. I can hear nothing but static on the radio and my watch has stopped, so I know not what hour it is, but I know that all over the globe cities are in flame, and humankind reels before its last, irresistable nemesis. The Old Ones have returned and again they walk the face of their ancient home!
I shall not live long now! The last news bulletin was two days ago, and Professor Chambers has been found murdered in his office, with inhuman three-toed footprints in blood on the ceiling. A similar doom awaits me -
God! Downstairs! My wife is screaming. Something has shattered the living room window! I hear the flapping of leathern wings! Outside in the hall! The house is filled with smoke! Terrible stench! Hell-wind!
"Help me The three-lobed burning pustule..."
Harold’s Blues
by Glen Singer
Editor’s Note:
The following material concerns the legendary blues guitarist Harold Robinson, who in a short but full life produced twenty-four records which had a very profound influence upon later blues musicians. His intricate slide-guitar technique became a definitive factor in the development of the post-World War II urban electrified blues. The editor hopes that this interview will fill in many important gaps in Robinson’s biography, despite some of the fanciful notions described within it.
The interview itself was recorded in the field, near Tillman’s Station, Mississippi, on September 28, 1943, by Pete Ford and Gregory Koplowitz. The subject of the interview was Hanson Kirkland, a guitarist of slight renown who appears to have been Robinson’s closest acquaintance. The material of the following interview was transcribed from tape by the authors and was to have appeared in a projected book entitled The Folk Roots of America. Unfortunately, this project was never completed, for both Ford and Kopowitz were killed in an automobile accident outside Helena, Arkansas, on June 21, 1947. Some of the Ford-Koplowitz material was published in Leslie Baum’s American Negro Music (New York: Holcomb House, 1951). This, however, is the first publication of the Kirkland interview.
An expression of gratitude is due to the executors of the Koplowitz estate, who were of great assistance in the publication of the document.
* * * * *
Now, Harold, many people say he’s dead; but others, they don’t agree. Me, I know. The story has it a bunch of mad women got hold of him around Jackson and give him poison. That ain’t true. ’Course, that’s a good story to believe, ’cause, at times, Harold did have a way with the ladies. At least, that’s what I heard, though that weren’t the way that he was when I first knew him. He was opposite to that, all the way.
The first I remember about Harold was when he was still just a kid, wide-eyed and full of dreaming. He couldn’t play nothing then. I first saw him when Yancey and I and Pa Simms come down to Dumphy, for one of them barbecues they used to have in those days. He sat there the whole time, never saying a word, just sat, looking and watching. A long string-bean kid, kind of light and, like I say, all eyes. He watched us way late into the evening, when all the other folks was pulling out the cork and not caring much about our music. He come over then, when I was taking a blow, catching a little wind, and asked me straight off to teach him to play. I showed him some few things, but it all seemed to come hard to him. So, I told him to take time and learn some. He nodded and shucked a little, then split, real scared- like. Plenty of other kids are the same.
After that time, whenever we come down, he was always there, and after a while he come up again and said he’d learned some stuff. He showed me what he knew. I have to say it weren’t much, kind of scratchy noise, that’s all. So I smiled, like I should with a kid, and told him to keep on trying and that more would come.
About that time I got married to my first wife, Glory, and it turns up that Harold’s her cousin. So, I guess that it was really then that I started knowing Harold. Right after we got together, Glory and I and her ma went over to see Harold’s pa—he was Glory’s cousin—down at Griffen’s Farm, near Lake Chataw. Glory’s ma and pa, they were easy-type folks and didn’t mind me and my Saturday-night devil music at all. But Harold’s folks, that was a different story. They was halle-lujah-people with a set of rules that run a solid mile. I never did see a people in one family so different. They had Harold running here and there all the time, doing chores and working, whenever he could, in the fields. On Sunday, they dragged him off to the meetinghouse as soon as the sun come up. It was all he could do to sneak a little time off by himself, behind the bam. How he ever made it to those barbecues of ours, I’ll never know either. I guess he just paid with the back of his britches.
Later on, Harold’s pa died and he come up to live with me and my wife. That was around ’36 or so. He was about sixteen then, and his oats was fit to bust out all over. When he come to the house first day, I give him
an old cigar box I’d made and strung, when I was still learning, and told him to get down to his stuff on that Harold still didn’t quite get the knack of the thing. He kept on playing every day, practiced real hard, but to no use. At the time, I was working on Moore’s Farm, near here, and I was playing every weekend. I didn’t want to push Harold to work none, ’cause we had money enough and I figured he could use some time to himself. And that boy, man, he wanted to play, but it wouldn’t come. Sometimes he got fierce over it, mad enough to cry. The boy had the music in him, the blues, I mean, but they just stayed there inside.
Harold and me and Glory was all together about a year and some months, then Glory and me took to fighting and kicking and the whole thing busted up. All of us went our own ways. I stayed at Moore’s, and where Glory went I don’t know. Harold, I think, went back down by Griffen’s—I’m not sure; didn’t see him for a long time.
Really, when I think on it, there ain’t much more to tell about Harold as a kid. I mean, he was just like any kid, though maybe a little more hard on himself, that’s all. After he lived with me and Glory, I guess I only seen him twice again, at the beginning and the end. But I’ll tell all that.
*
It was a couple of years later I next seen him. It was almost like he was waiting. I was back at Dumphy, playing, and Harold come over during our time out; I asked if he was still playing and such like, and he says, yes. He’d filled out by now, and was something around nineteen then. He’d a fine-looking girl with him, though now I can’t remember her name. He said he was going down by Bachelar Creek to play a house party and he told me to come over after I finished up, if I could. I said I’d try; he told me where the house was, then he took off.
I stayed around pretty late that night, and since I wasn’t together with no woman, I really put away quite a bit. I mean, I was wobbly. Anyway, about two, I took off to see Harold. The wind had come up and was whaling around in the leaves. There was that summer lightning, all silent, lighting up the sky every now and then. I stumbled and I staggered down toward Bachelar and cut myself all up on the branches and fell down badly a couple of times. The lightning stopped, but then the sky got terrible black and it was hard to find the way. And the old wind kept whipping up those trees.
Pyrate Cthulhu: Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Volume 1 (4.0) Page 9
