Historical Lovecraft: Tales of Horror Through Time

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  My Mistress laughed fearlessly and showed those terrible eyes, while saying, “My Lady, Inanna, loves me as she loved you long ago, when you were taken from a basket and placed as the Cup-bearer to the King of Kish. She helped you usurp that dreamer, Ur-Zababa, and now helps you in this empire that you create for Akkad. But she helps me, also. She’s given me a pet. With this pet, I’ll strike such a fear into the traitors’ hearts that they will cower like defenseless babes and dare not rise against me.”

  “Do this, then,” Sargon said, with a ferocious look. “Show this beast tonight. But if, by tomorrow morning,” he warned, “the forces of our enemies are still encamped, I’ll flay them alive and then you’ll come with me to the far north, where already great hosts of my armies march.”

  He left immediately. We were left speechless at what we’d heard pass between them.

  A mist-enshrouded evening came.

  That night, as the High Priestess sang her songs in the Inner Sanctum, Ishme and I went to one of the higher places of the storied temple. It was especially dark that night and the strong fog, which was heavier in some places and sparser in others, made visibility a jest. Yet, still, we tried to see what we could across the teeming land. From our vantage point, we could barely make out, dim in the foggy distance, the vast, sprawling campfires of the enemy. Ishme, who at eight years old, barely reached my waist, held my hand with a full and nervous anticipation.

  Suddenly, a slow wind began to pick up, gnawingly cold, and in its rising crescendo, through the darkness and the fog, we felt the rudiments of something huge awakening high above. Ishme pointed deliriously up. We heard a loud scream and saw, vaguely, a black presence, broad-winged above us, in the night sky. The wind blew terribly and the scream grew louder, and a rising panic began to overpower my senses. Ishme hugged my legs in fright. Now totally terrified, I grabbed the boy in my arms and rushed quickly into the safe womb of the temple. From inside, I could hear the frenetic shrieks grow dimmer, as it flew away, and then, after a small interval of silence, began the desperately mad screams of the encamped men.

  In the clear morning, Ishme and I returned to the spot where we’d stood that night and noticed the enemy was gone. Ishme pulled at my tunic, and pointed excitedly at the spot and yelled. I could tell the boy was proud.

  Later that day, I went into the city to gather news. What I learned I gathered from several citizens in beer halls, who were intimate with some of Sargon’s spies. These spies, it was rumoured, later went mad and the king put them to death.

  I learned that once the creature, with thunder-loud shrieks, had appeared over the enemy, they hastily sought to arm themselves for war. In this confusion, overtaken by this nightmare wraith, the men saw from the bedeviled skies spores of luminous matter fall. These spores, wherever they fell, grew astronomically fast into frenzied monstrosities of chaotic life. All that was heard was a babel of screams, from beasts and dying men, and then, as if for the climax of some grand cacophony of sounds, the Seeder from the Stars itself dipped into the pith of those unfortunate men, wildly tearing and ravening with abandon.

  Sargon left that very day to continue his conquests in the far north. When he left, I could tell he was deathly afraid and in great awe of his daughter.

  Lazily, the years unwound afterwards. Ishme continued to improve in favour and it was certain one day he would leave to become a well-respected Ensis of the empire. I trembled to think of this, for after all, was he not ours?

  During this time, I began to be plagued with inexplicable dreams of an archaic Nile, that long, meandering river being the place from which I’d originally come. In my dreams, I was no longer Smenkhkare, but another, who couriered secret messages and who fought alongside King Scorpion to subdue the red, sceptered crown of Lower Egypt. I lived and relived this troubled man’s life, yet if he ever existed, it would have been centuries before my time.

  I also began to notice a gradual change come over Ishme’s behaviour. He became detached, less welcome in his affections. At first, I thought this was because he was becoming a man. In time, however, this episode passed.

  When the day arrived for him to leave the temple and continue as an administrative assistant, he told me to follow him to the Holiest Room of Nanna. Already, the stub of manhood was thick on his face. I remember him looking at me and saying, “I’ll never leave to be a governor of this empire. I’ll never serve it in that capacity.”

  His refusal was incomprehensible to me. I knew the old ghost that troubled him before was now resurfacing. I decided to confront him. I said, “Ishme, Sargon didn’t mean to hurt you when he killed your parents and caused your people to suffer, when he razed your old city of Kazalla to the ground. It was done as policy. He wanted to unify and they refused. It is the way of this world. Did not his daughter, with Sargon’s blessing, take you in? And see, today, you leave to be a great man in his empire. You cannot hate him, or more especially, she who is like your mother?”

  Ishme looked at me with the eyes of a son; they softened. But suddenly, another thought struck him and they hardened to stone. He said, “It isn’t so simple. It isn’t so simple, Smenkhkare.”

  I tried to reason with him, “If there is something else bothering you, Ishme, tell me. I will help.”

  “I can’t!” he yelled at me. “You love her too much!”

  “It is so,” I answered. “I am loyal to Akkad and always will be.”

  “If you love me, come with me behind the curtains of Nanna. Let us see what lies behind them.”

  The boy was now extremely agitated and spoke madness. I refused to entertain his wish.

  He said, “What lies behind the curtains, Smenkhkare? Haven’t you ever wondered? Let me pass!”

  Then he made a great effort to pass the curtains. I grasped him and would not let him go. As we fought, he yelled angrily, “She and her father – they are murderers and usurpers! She is a sorceress, a witch, and a devil! Can’t you see, Smenkhkare? She is a devil!”

  Hearing his insinuations, I grew furious and threw him hard to the floor. It’s then that I said what I now most regret in life. It would be the last lie I ever told the boy. It was then that I angrily told him that I would never speak to him again.

  He rushed from the room.

  We desperately searched for Ishme, first throughout the temple, and then throughout the entire city and empire. He didn’t want to be found. We could only hope our beloved boy was safe.

  My own and Enheduanna’s thoughts never strayed far from memories of Ishme. In time, we heard from a potter in Nippur that he’d gone to the Zagros Mountains, many years before. We shuddered when he told us. Tales of distant travelers, and traders in lapis lazuli and other treasures, spoke of the far-off Zagros Mountains and of a mist-enshrouded kingdom on ghastly peaks, over-seen by what was only whispered of as ‘the Monstrosity on the Throne’: a king of evil learning, who worshiped Gods of strange names. The tales were vague, however, and never an exact route was divulged in these rumours. We prayed Ishme had not found it.

  As for me, my unwanted dreams continued and became more baffling and bizarre. I dreamt I was a man leading a group of ragged humans out of Africa; a fisherman in a village on a frosty continent; a king in Serannian; a pauper in Girsu; the coiled serpent that talked with dimly-remembered Gilgamesh; a lute musician in the glorious palace of Olathoë, in doom-laden Lomar.

  One day, the Princess came to me, with the libation baskets and wearing her Crown of En-Ship, from under which I noticed long strands of grey hair falling, almost obscured by the rich black, around a face still young and pretty. She looked at me sadly and said, “Why do you never age, Smenkhkare? Were you, too, chosen for your role, as I was, by the Gods? A duty you cannot shirk?”

  I didn’t know what she meant. I was only Smenkhkare and when I died, I would be nothing.

  She smiled and continued, after a pause, “We are all offspring of it, Smenkhkare. Some of us are more closely linked to it.” She then looked at me with a look of new
recognition, which made me shiver. “It came from the emptiness of space and brought its secrets with it, a terrible and distant God, unlike the fickle and stern Gods of Earth. Earth’s Gods, who have forgotten the touch of cold stars and love high mountains, seas and virgin forests, who dance on misty mountaintops, they forbid us to come to them and yet, at times, will come and kiss us tenderly in our sleep. It is gone now, the Seeder from the Stars. I haven’t seen it in many years and my Lady, Inanna, who wears the Laws of Civilization tied around her waist, does not acknowledge or speak of it, anymore.”

  She finished and left to continue her work.

  With the passage of time, Sargon died, a mortal death, and passed into legend. The Kingship of Sargon then devolved to his heirs: first, Rimush then Manishtushu and then the so-called God-King, Naram-Sin.

  During the reign of Naram-Sin, the nephew of Enheduanna, shattering revolts broke out throughout the whole of the civilized lands of Sumer and Akkad. Shortly before this, I’d been warned in hushed tones by my Mistress that the Gods of Sumer and Akkad were in strife and preparing for battle. I was terrified and shook in awe of this coming apocalypse.

  It began when Lugal-Anne, vassal King of Ur, turned against us. Having no respect for the semi-divine being my Mistress now was, he cast her Crown of En-Ship off, bid her commit suicide, and then smashed the holy and adored things of the temple. On a day when fire began falling from the sky, we fled with the temple household and our meager possessions, and wept on the hills, tearing our hair and scratching our eyes in grief.

  During a blinding storm, on the road to Uruk, I experienced my first vision of Earth’s Gods. I saw mysterious Lady Tiamat, towering in the clouds, engendering disorder and flames and coaxing Lotan, the vile serpentine dragon of many heads from the sea, to hinder our escape with hell-winds, upthrown by his foul, membranous wings.

  Weather-beaten, tired and near collapse, we managed to make our escape to Uruk and find exile in the temple of An.

  Soon, messengers arrived and said a great army was marching from the Zagros Mountains. Where the army stepped, they informed us, the mes, the very Laws that governed in order our cosmos, dissolved. Darkness heaved and took on distorting, palpable form. Once it crossed the Tigres River, Lugal-Anne was seen to join them.

  My Mistress, hearing this, was worried.

  She’d put up curtains in the Sacred Room of An and, upon hearing the news, she immediately rushed behind them, to pray for the mes, that our order might not completely break.

  I remember dimly the elaborate words she spoke, but my weak, scribal hands will still attempt to transcribe, albeit poorly, the magnificence I heard. She prayed, “Lady Inanna, hear me, you whose shield is the moon and whose star is Venus. You, whose least simple command cannonades like a streak of gold across the fervent atmosphere. I kneel before you, to pray for the mes of this sphere and their continuance, for the harmony, alignment and form they bring. Without them, what will become of the strong, well-built cities? Cities of architectural symmetry and splendour, great altitudinous towers and sylvan gardens, founded under Order and the Laws of Civilization, by the black-haired people so many years ago. People of art and music, workers in words, in metals and gold. These are your people, who built mighty ships and when the ships sailed out, they returned with cargo, laden from remote, mystical lands, for your greater pleasure. Do not let the good people perish, or does my Lady now favour strife over love, darkness over light, unworked rock, chaos, lawlessness, enmity, and discordant sounds? Is this what you want, my Lady? Shall I also break what you brought with your ordering presence?”

  She sang all night and, emerging in the morning, she stood before me disheveled and tired-eyed. Moving towards me, she slowly said, “Smenkhkare, it’s Ishme who is coming.”

  Chaos reigned at that time.

  The King of the Four Quarters of the Earth, Naram-Sin, couldn’t protect us, since he was embroiled in deadly battle with Iphur-Kisi of Kish.

  The King of Uruk, Amar-Girida, went to Enheduanna, to supplicate her to sing her beautiful hymns to the Gods, to help Uruk and fight Lugal-Anne and the dread King from the Mountains, Ishme, whom all men called the ‘Creature’. He begged her to summon the Seeder, as she’d once done.

  “It’s impossible,” she said.

  From a high place, I saw the advance of Lugal-Anne and Ishme’s army. In their march, tremours hit the earth, buildings shook and the sky became dark, bilious and smoky. The army came in spastic motion, coiling and pulsing out of existence. I recall hearing an old priest, holding a bronze sword, yell at the sight, “Now, at the end of all things, let none seek to stop me, as I break free from the Lords of Creation!” Then, running into the temple, he killed himself. Many followed his example. Prescient with defeat and fear, King Amar-Girida let their armies enter the city.

  “You are weak and you bring this on us,” the King said. “I will now fight alongside Ur and Kish.”

  The city was spared, but we weren’t. Lugal-Anne wouldn’t stop until he’d destroyed the En-Priestess and her nephew.

  Once the black armies entered, soldiers loyal to my Mistress fought to protect the Temple of An, which was also our fortress. Against the combined might of Ur, Uruk, and the shadow kingdom, however, they were no match. The enemy advanced easily.

  Screams of dying men assailed our ears, from all corners, amplified a thousand-fold throughout the enclosed corridors. I carried on me a sword to protect my Mistress. When I entered the Room of An, she looked at me strangely. “It is back, Smenkhkare,” she said. “The Seeder is back.” And then she walked behind the curtains.

  As this happened, a soldier hurriedly broke into the room. He implored us to flee. He said the Creature was coming. Realizing his pleadings were useless, he resolved to stay with us to the bitter end.

  We stood a few paces from the entrance. Unholy noises of dying men continued to sound the depths of our despair. I stared at the opening, into the dark hallway. Seconds passed, agonizingly slow. Confused war-cries bellowed and I felt every fibre, nerve, and tissue in my body ache. The blackness of the open entrance took on the illusion of a solid tableau, the more I looked at it, and then, out of the blackness, a darker outline began to emerge.

  As I saw a cyclopean shape grab the soldier, I was blinded by the man’s viscera and blood, meat and limbs, which sprayed the room. My hand grasped the hilt of my sword tightly, as if to break it, but before I could make a mad, desperate swing, I was on the floor, weaponless. The air itself heaved and swayed to and fro like a beast in the room. The soldier was a grotesquery of pieces and I a hopeless wretch, lying before the towering arc of Ishme.

  He stood a monumental shape, hooded and in a long cloak of black, a cloak which seemed to embody more negation, an absence of all light, rather than colour. It twined and slithered around the contours of his body and from its bottom, where legs should have been, instead swirled and twisted outwards massively pink, tentacular limbs, coiling and writhing purposely like heavy pythons. Under the darkness of his hood, I discerned – oh, but how can I explain to you the sadness and horrified wonder I experienced when I saw those large, grey, abnormal lips and engorged, abscessed tongue, or the small, blinkless, couchant, yellow eyes? Hands, swollen and cracked like crevices of grey stone, or the foulness of his smell, which was as if worms were inside, gnawing on his innards?

  Carrying a ponderous sword, he proceeded to walk, or glide, fluidly, towards the curtains, his awkward and distended robe flowing and his tentacles leading and searching. As he did this, the hulking shape said, in a voice hoarse and deep, yet, in a manner of articulation recognizably like Ishme’s, “Do not try to stop me, Smenkhkare. I know who and what you are, even if you don’t.”

  When he was near the curtains, Enheduanna stepped out and stood defiantly in front of him. “Do not do this thing,” she warned.

  Like a wounded animal, Ishme gave a sudden, long-winded moan then, lowering his face, he eased it towards hers. He passed it in her view, so she could scrutinize it.
Upset, I saw her contract and then compose herself. Staring at her, he asked, “Am I hideous to you? Is your work hideous to you?”

  Perplexed and saddened, she answered, “What do you mean, Ishme?”

  He gave another bellow and yelled angrily, “It’s because of what you put in me! You should have let me die, rather than live and suffer this shame!” Then, looking at me, he said, “When I ran away, Smenkhkare, hidden in Nippur, I began to change. A hideous thing, I remained hidden. Ashamed, scorned of men, I fled to the Zagros Mountains and there met a man, who explained to me secret lore passed down from ancient times. He divined that my transformation, because I possessed a part of it, was caused by the Seeder. I killed the man and began my kingdom on the mountains.”

  He then turned towards my Mistress. “What lies behind the curtains? If my first cure came from there, then whatever is there can cure me again; isn’t it so? I must see the beast. Then I’ll be a man, again.”

  He pushed my Mistress and she struggled to hold him back, saying, “No, Ishme, it can’t be trusted!”

  Breaking free of her grasp, he entered the room and, in distress, she followed him.

  All this while, I’d tried to help, but I couldn’t. I was paralyzed. I trembled with fear for them both. I exerted and worked myself into a frenzy to move, but it was as if my body were a foreign entity and I an unbodied mite trapped within. I lay on the floor and, after they passed behind the curtains, I willed myself even more desperately to move but to no avail.

  “Do not go there, Ishme!” I heard her yell.

  He thundered, “Get away from me, sorceress! Move! It’s your fault all that’s happened to me!”

  “No, Ishme – do not say that! How could I have known?”

  Fumbling noises I heard, a loud bang, and then a body fall. After which, Ishme hollered triumphantly, “There you are! What manner of thing are you? I only want to be human! Speak to me! I’ll make you with my sword!”