The Book of Cthulhu 2

by Lockhart, Ross

  “I’m sorry, Georg, to be such a troublesome and seemingly ungrateful guest,” he said, forcing himself with a great effort to speak coherently and calmly (though most imperatively), “but really you and I must get out of here at once. There’s no place safe for us this side of Arkham—which is not safe either, but there at least we’ll have the counsel and support of salted veterans of the Miskatonic project whose nerves are steadier than mine. Last night I got (and concealed from you—I was sure it had to be wrong) a reading of fifteen down there under the carving—centimeters, Georg, not meters. Tonight I have confirmed that reading beyond any question of a doubt, only it’s shrunk to five under the carving. The floor there is the merest shell—it rings as hollow as a crypt in New Orleans’s St. Louis One or Two—they have been eating at it from below and are feasting still. No, no arguments! You have time to pack one small bag—limit yourself to necessities, but bring that registered parcel from Rodia, I’m curious about it.”

  And with that he strode to his bedroom, whence he emerged in a short while with his packed valise and carried it and the black box out to the car.

  Meanwhile I’d nerved myself to go down in the basement. The floor did ring much more hollowly than it had last night—it made me hesitate to tread upon it—but otherwise nothing appeared changed. Nevertheless it gave me a curious feeling of unreality, as if there were no real objects left in the world, only flimsy scenery, a few stage properties including a balsa sledgehammer, a registered parcel with nothing in it, and a cyclorama of nighted hills, and two actors.

  I hurried back upstairs, took the steaks off the grill and set them on the table in front of the softly roaring fire (for they were done) and headed after Albert.

  But he anticipated me, stepping back inside the door, looking at me sharply—his eyes were still wide and staring—and demanding, “Why aren’t you packed?”

  I said to him steadily, “Now look here, Albert, I thought last night the cellar floor sounded hollow, so that is not entirely a surprise. And any way you look at it, we can’t drive to Arkharn on nervous energy. In fact, we can’t get even decently started driving east without some food inside us. You say yourself it’s dangerous everywhere, even at Miskatonic, and from what we (or at least I) saw at my father’s grave there may be at least one of the things loose already. So let’s eat dinner—I have a hunch terror hasn’t taken away your appetite entirely—and have a look inside Rodia’s package, and then leave if we must.”

  There was a rather long pause. Then his expression relaxed into a somewhat wan smile and he said, “Very well, Georg, that does make sense. I’m frightened all right, make no mistake of that, in fact I’ve walked in terror for the past ten years. But in this case, to speak as honestly as I’m able, I have been even more concerned for you—it suddenly seemed such a pity, such a disservice, that I should have dragged you into this dreadful business. But as you say, one must bow to necessity, bodily and otherwise…and try to show a little style about it,” he added with a rather doleful chuckle.

  So we sat down before the dancing, golden fire and ate our steaks and fixings (I had some burgundy, he stayed with his sweet black coffee) and talked of this and that—chiefly of Hollywood, as it turned out. He’d glimpsed a bookstore on our headlong drive, and now he asked about it and that led to other things.

  Our dinner done, I refilled his cup and my glass, then cleared a space and opened Rodia’s parcel, using the carving knife to cut its cords and slit its seals. It contained, carefully packed in excelsior, the casket of embossed copper and German silver which sits before me now. I recognized my father’s handiwork at once, which reproduced quite closely in beaten metal his stone carving in the basement, though without the “Gate of Dreams” inscription. Albert’s finger indicated the Cutlu eyes, though he did not speak the name. I opened the casket. It contained several sheets of heavy bond paper. This time it was my father’s handwriting I recognized. Standing side by side, Albert and I read the document, which I append here:

  15 Mar 1925

  My dear Son:

  Today you are 13 but I write to you and wish you well when you are 25. Why I do so you will learn as you read this. The box is yours—Leb’wohl! I leave it with a friend to send to you if I should go in the 12 years between—Nature has given me signs that that may be: jagged flashes of rare earth colors in my eyes from time to time. Now read with care, for I am telling secrets.

  When I was a boy in Louisville I had dreams by day and could not remember them. They were black times in my mind that were minutes long, the longest half an hour. Sometimes I came to in another place and doing something different, but never harmful. I thought my black daydreams were a weakness or a judgment, but Nature was wise. I was not strong and did not know enough to bear them yet. Under my father’s rule I learned my craft and made my body strong and always studied when and as I could.

  When I was 25 I was deep in love—this was before your mother—with a beautiful girl who died of consumption. Pining upon her grave I had a daydream, but this time by the strength of my desire I kept my mind white. I swam down through the loam and I was joined with her in full bodily union. She said this coupling must be our last, but that I now would have the power to move at will under and through the earth from time to time. We kissed farewell forever, Lorchen and I, and I swam down and on, her knight of dreams, exulting in my strength like some old kobold breasting the rock. It is not black down there, my son, as one would think. There are glorious colors. Water is blue, metals bright red and yellow, rocks green and brown, undsoweiter. After a time I swam back and up into my body, standing on the new-made grave. I was no longer pining, but profoundly grateful.

  So I learned how to divine, my son, to be a fish of earth when there is need and Nature wills, to dive into the Hall of the Mountain King dancing with light. Always the finest colors and the strangest hues lay west. Rare earths they are named by scientists, who are wise, though blind. That’s why I brought us here. Under the greatest of oceans, earth is a rainbow web and Nature is a spider spinning and walking it.

  And now you have shown you have my power, mein Sohn, but in a greater form. You have black nightdreams. I know, for I have sat by you as you slept and heard you talk and seen your terror, which would soon destroy you if you could recall it, as one night showed. But Nature in her wisdom blindfolds you until you have the needed strength and learning. As you know by now, I have provided for your education at a good Eastern school praised by Harley Warren, the finest employer that I ever had, who knew a lot about the nether realms.

  And now you’re strong enough, mein Sohn, to act—and wise, I hope, as Nature’s acolyte. You’ve studied deep and made your body strong. You have the power and the hour has come. The triton blows his horn. Rise up, mein Iieber Georg, and follow me. Now is the time. Build upon what I’ve built, but build more greatly. Yours is the wider and the greater realm. Make your mind white. With or without some lovely woman’s help, now burst the gate of dreams!

  Your loving Father

  At any other time that document would have moved and shaken me profoundly. Truth to tell, it did so move and shake me, but I had been already so moved and shaken by today’s climactic events that my first thought was of how the letter applied to them.

  I echoed from the letter, “Now burst the gate of dreams,” and then added, suppressing another interpretation, “That means I should take Morgan’s drug tonight. Let’s do it, Albert, as you proposed this morning.”

  “Your father’s last command,” he said heavily, clearly much impressed by that aspect of the letter. Then, “Georg, this is a most fantastic, shattering missive! That sign he got—sounds like migraine. And his references to the rare-earth elements—that could be crucial. And colors in the earth perceived perhaps by extrasensory perception! The Miskatonic project should have started investigating dowsing years ago. We’ve been blind—” He broke off. “You’re right, Georg, and I am strongly tempted. But the danger! How to choose? On the one hand a supreme paren
tal injunction and our raging curiosities—for mine’s a-boil. On the other hand Great Cthulhu and his minions. Oh, for an indication of how to decide!”

  There was a sharp knocking at the door. We both started. After a moment’s pause I moved rapidly, Albert following. With my hand on the latch I paused again. I had not heard a car stop outside. Through the stout oak came the cry, “Telegram!” I opened it.

  There was revealed a skinny, somewhat jaunty-looking youth of pale complexion scattered with big freckles and with carrot red hair under his visored cap. His trousers were wrapped tightly around his legs by bicycle clips.

  “Either of you Albert N. Wilmarth?” he inquired coolly. “I am he,” Albert said, stepping forward.

  “Then sign for this, please.”

  Albert did so and tipped him, substituting a dime for a nickel at the last instant.

  The youth grinned widely, said, “G’night,” and sauntered off. I closed the door and turned quickly back.

  Albert had torn open the flimsy envelope and drawn out and spread the missive. He was pale already, but as his eyes flashed across it, he grew paler still. It was as if he were two-thirds of a ghost already and its message had made him a full one. He held the yellow sheet out to me wordlessly:

  LOVECRAFT IS DEAD STOP THE WHIPPOORWILLS DID NOT SING STOP TAKE COURAGE STOP DANFORTH

  I looked up. Albert’s face was still as ghostly white, but its expression had changed from uncertainty and dread to decision and challenge.

  “That tips the balance,” he said. “What have I more to lose? By George, Georg, we’ll have a look down into the abyss on whose edge we totter. Are you game?”

  “I proposed it,” I said. “Shall I fetch your valise from the car?”

  “No need,” he said, whipping from his inside breast pocket the small paper packet from Dr. Morgan he’d shown me that morning. “I had the hunch that we were going to use it, until that apparition at your father’s tomb shattered my nerves.”

  I fetched small glasses. He split evenly between them the small supply of white powder, which dissolved readily in the water I added under his direction. Then he looked at me quizzically, holding his glass as if for a toast.

  “No question of to whom we drink this,” I said, indicating the telegram he was still holding in his other hand.

  He winced slightly. “No, don’t speak his name. Let’s rather drink to all our brave comrades who have perished or suffered greatly in the Miskatonic project.”

  That “our” really warmed me. We touched glasses and drained them. The draft was faintly bitter.

  “Morgan writes that the effects are quite rapid,” he said. “First drowsiness, then sleep, and then hopefully dreams. He’s tried it twice himself with Rice and doughty old Armitage, who laid the Dunwich Horror with him. The first time they visited in dream Gilman’s Walpurgis hyperspace; the second, the inner city at the two magnetic poles—an area topologically unique.”

  Meanwhile I’d hurriedly poured a little more wine and lukewarm coffee and we’d settled ourselves comfortably in our easy chairs before the fire, the dancing flames of which became both a little blurred and a little dazzling as the drug began to take effect.

  “Really, that was a most amazing missive from your father,” he chatted on rapidly. “Spinning a rainbow web under the Pacific, the lines those weirdly litten tunnels—truly most vivid. Would Cthulhu be the spider? No, by Gad, I’d prefer your father’s goddess Nature any day. She’s kindlier at least.”

  “Albert,” I said somewhat drowsily, thinking of personality exchanges, “could those creatures possibly be benign, or at least less malevolent than we infer?—as my father’s subterranean visionings might indicate. My winged worms, even?”

  “Most of our comrades did not find them so,” he replied judiciously, “though of course there’s our Innsmouth hero. What has he really found in Y’ha-nthlei? Wonder and glory? Who knows? Who can say he knows? Or old Akeley out in the stars—is his brain suffering the tortures of the damned in its shining metal cylinder? Or is it perpetually exalted by ever-changing true visions of infinity? And what did poor shoggoth-stampeded Danforth really think he saw beyond the two horrific mountain chains down there before he got amnesia? And is that last a blessing or a curse? Gad, he and I are suited to each other…the mind-smitten helping the nerve-shattered…fit nurses for felines….”

  “That was surely heavy news he sent you,” I observed with a little yawn, indicating the telegram about Lovecraft, which he still held tightly between finger and thumb. “You know, before that wire came, I had the craziest idea—that somehow you and he were the same person. I don’t mean Danforth but—”

  “Don’t say it!” he said sharply. Then his voice went immediately drowsy as he continued, “But the roster of the perished is longer far…poor Lake and poor, poor Gedney and all those others under their Southern Cross and Magellanic shroud…the mathematical genius Walter Gilman who lost heart most terribly…the nonagenarian street-slain Angell and lightning-frozen Blake in Providence…Edward Pickman Derby, Arkham’s plump Shelley deliquescing in his witch-wife’s corpse…Gad, this is hardly the cheerfulest topic…. You know, Georg, down in San Diego young Akeley (G.G.) showed me a hidden sea-cave bluer than Capri and on its black beach of magnetite the webbed footprint of a merman…one of the Gnorri? …and then…oh yes, of course… there’s Wilbur Whateley, who was almost nine feet tall…though he hardly counts as a Miskatonic researcher…but the whippoorwills didn’t get him either…or his big brother….”

  I was still looking at the fire, and the dancing points of light in and around it had become the stars, thick as the Pleiades and Hyades, through which old Akeley journeyed eternally, when unconsciousness closed on me too, black as the wind-stirred, infinite gulf of darkness which Robert Blake saw in the Shining Trapezohedron, black as N’kai.

  I awoke stiff and chilled. The fire at which I’d been staring was white ashes only. I felt a sharp pang of disappointment that I had not dreamed at all. Then I became aware of the low, irregular, inflected humming or buzzing that filled my ears.

  I stood up with difficulty. My companion slumbered still, but his shut-eyed, death-pale face had a hideously tormented look and he writhed slowly and agonizedly from time to time as if in the grip of foulest nightmare. The yellow telegram had fallen from his fingers and lay on the floor. As I approached him I realized that the sound filling my ears was coming from between his lips, which were unceasingly a-twitch, and as I leaned my head close to them, the horridly articulate droning became recognizable words and phrases:

  “The pulpy, tentacled head,” I heard in horror, “Cthulhu fhtagn, the wrong geometry, the polarizing miasma, the prismatic distortion, Cthulhu R’lyeh, the positive blackness, the living nothingness…”

  I could not bear to watch his dreadful agony or listen to those poisonous, twangy words an instant longer, so I seized him by the shoulders and shook him violently, though even as I did so there sprang into my mind my father’s stern injunction never to do so.

  His eyes came open wide in his white face and his mouth clamped shut as he came up with a powerful shove of his bent arms against the chair’s arms which his hands had been clutching. It was as if it were happening in slow motion, though paradoxically it also seemed to be happening quite swiftly. He gave me a last mute look of utter horror and then he turned and ran, taking fantastically long strides, out through the door, which his outstretched hand threw wide ahead of him, and disappeared into the night.

  I hobbled after him as swiftly as I could. I heard the motor catch at the starter’s second prod. I screamed, “Wait, Albert, wait!” As I neared the Tin Hind, its lights flashed on and its motor roared and I was engulfed in acrid exhaust fumes as it screeched out the drive with a spattering of gravel and down the first curve.

  I waited there then in the cold until all sight and sound of it had vanished in the night, which was already paling a little with the dawn.

  And then I realized that I was still hearin
g those malignant, gloating, evilly resonant voices.

  “Cthulhu fhtagn,” they were saying (and have been saying and are saying now and will forever), “the spider tunnels, the black infinities, the colors in pitch-darkness, the tiered towers of Yuggoth, the glittering centipedes, the winged worms….”

  Somewhere not far off I heard a low, half-articulate whirring sound.

  I went back into the house and wrote this manuscript.

  And now I shall place the last with its interleafed communications and also the two books of poetry that led to all this in the copper and German silver casket, and I shall carry that with me down into the basement, where I shall take up my father’s sledge (wondering in which body I shall survive, if at all) and literally carry out his last letter’s last injunction.

  Very early on the morning of Tuesday, March 16, 1937, the householders of Paradise Crest (then Vultures Roost) were disturbed by a clashing rumble and a sharp earth-shock which they attributed to an earthquake, and indeed very small tremors were registered at Griffith Observatory, UCLA, and USC, though on no other seismographs. Daylight revealed that the brick house locally known as Fischer’s Folly had fallen in so completely that not one brick remained joined to another. Moreover, there appeared to be fewer bricks in view than the house would have accounted for, as if half of them had been trucked away during the night, or else fallen into some great space beneath the basement. In fact, the appearance of the ruin was of a gigantic ant lion’s-pit lined by bricks instead of sand grains. The place was deemed, and actually was, dangerous, and was shortly filled in and in part cemented over, and apparently not long afterward rebuilt upon.

  The body of the owner, a quietly spoken, crippled young man named Georg Reuter Fischer, was discovered flat on its face in the edge of the rubble with hands thrown out (the metal casket by one of them) as though he had been trying to flee outdoors when caught by the collapse. His death, however, was attributed to a slightly earlier accident or insane act of self-destruction involving acid, of which his eccentric father was once known to have kept a supply. It was well that easy identification was made possible by his conspicuously twisted right foot, for when the body was turned over it was discovered that something had eaten away the entire front of his face and also those portions of his skull and jaw and the entire forebrain.