The Cry of Cthulhu: Formerly: The Alchemist's Notebook

by Byron Craft

  I wondered if the Todesfall’s had for some reason fallen into disfavor with the people of Valsbach and that possibly some of the family members in hopes of disassociating themselves changed their last name to “Kirch,” obviously symbolic to a religious reverence. Then quite possibly the name could have been Americanized when that branch of the family migrated to the United States. It seemed plausible, because either name did not meet with approval. The disapproval by the residents of Valsbach was painfully clear and because of it my visits into town became short and infrequent.

  In two more days we had the old schloss habitable, overcoming many obstacles that give me a feeling of pride when I reflect back on how well we handled them.

  So, by the time Faren embarked on the first day of his new assignment our household was well in order.

  Faren’s daily leaving again marked a change in my life. I was the one staying home now. New York was a million miles away and I missed the companionship of Emma. I had grown accustomed to the hustle and bustle of city life and I didn’t know if I could get used to a straight diet of isolation and housework. It was scary but the change became far more dramatic and frightening than I imagined it would be. Faren had left me in the old house alone before, but it was only for an hour or two when he ran to Valsbach for supplies.

  The only occasion we had been separated longer, since we came to the countryside, was an evening shortly after we had noticed the disappearance of the Todesfall’s manuscript. Faren drove into Stuttgart to meet with Dr. VonTassell, a round trip that should have lasted nearly two and a half hours, but he was gone for more than five. When he returned he announced that he had made arrangements for VonTassell to make regular visits to our home. We had a whopping fight. I was furious that he would make arrangements like that without consulting me first. Faren argued that a local physician would be safer for me than to risk a long drive to the Stuttgart Hospital months from now. I told him I didn’t like the Doctor but he dismissed it as being childish. He said that Dr. VonTassell’s practice brought him into Valsbach three days a week and that he was the only medical man in the region.

  I made sure we made up quickly though. Because what I didn’t tell Faren was that it made me uneasy to be left alone for that long in the old house, more so than a visit from Dr. VonTassell.

  When the renovations kept me busy I didn’t have time for much of anything else. Then, however, things were a little different. Besides my usual housework, there wasn’t much to do and at times I felt that my imagination ran wild.

  After the bulk of the work was behind us, spring finally arrived. I considered growing vegetables to occupy my time. I remembered the caretaker, Rudolph Hausman, on that remarkable first day mention with a weird chuckle that a garden of Faren’s uncle existed somewhere to the rear of the house towards the field out back.

  I told Faren of it that morning as I walked him out to the car. He was overly cautious of me doing any kind of physical work to the point of not wanting me walking around on my own. I brushed it off in good humor and accused him of being a mother hen. I was only into my fifth month and just beginning to show. My cheeks were rosy and my energy level was high, and besides, I wasn’t about to let him interfere with my pastime. After all, Faren’s job would keep him away until after sunset every weekday leaving me a period to while away the plotting of the garden and to leaf through seed catalogs. And, if I grew tired of that, there was always letter writing to Emma, which I did a lot of, or studying the books on woodcarvings. The art of the local carvings had still, with increasing degree, captured my curiosity to the point of preoccupying most of my evenings until Faren’s return.

  So that morning I kissed Faren goodbye and after waiting until his car was a good distance down the road, and out of sight, I headed straight for the vacant parcel of land in search of Heinrich Todesfall’s garden.

  It was while turning towards the rear of the property that I detected a slight movement from above in one of the tower windows and for an instant I imagined the faintest suggestion of a shape behind the lace curtains. My first impulse was to go up there and examine the tower and its interior for myself but ruled it out when I remembered that the door was still bolted fast from the inside and there was no key. I decided to make Faren dismantle the door that evening and thus end the mystery of the locked room. I am not given to fright easily and the unknown would just have to remain that way until later. I had better things to do.

  Our backyard is separated from an enormous field by tall grass and a tangle of shrubbery. The undergrowth is deep and goes back several hundred yards until it blends with the tall oaks and pines of the Black Forest. I felt uneasy when I first noticed a definite line of separation in the color and make-up between the appearance of the backyard and that of the field beyond. The grass, besides being tall, was whitish-green and strangely brittle. So brittle, in fact, that underfoot it would become crushed into a fine white powder. I tried to find a clearing that could have been used as a garden or a trail into the woods, but on this occasion could not stand the sight of those morbidly large boles, or those vast serpent roots that grew in abundance and twisted malevolently before they sank back into the earth. Several yards in, I was up to my waist in the tall grass and I began to feel weak and nauseated.

  I was mad at myself. I have had these attacks before, of course, but my timing was lousy. I had been looking forward to this exploration all week, just waiting until Faren was out of the way only to be held back by morning sickness.

  It’s difficult for me to recall what followed. I was overcome by a dizzy spell and must have staggered back to the house and fell asleep on the sofa in the parlor because later that is where I woke after an unsettling dream.

  The dream was unusual. I usually do not have fantasies or nightmares. I seemed to be in a maze of shrubbery with no way out. The earth shifted and moved under my feet making it difficult to stand. The ground violently erupted, hurtling huge chunks of earth in all directions. From beneath the soil a large black surging horror came. It was neither liquid nor solid; a frightful mass floundered momentarily then poured straight up from below spewing an array of long tentacles. The earth tilted and I lost my footing, tumbling backwards. The tentacles lashed out with lightning speed grabbing me about the legs and dragged me through burr patches and shrubbery towards the blackness. Two of the appendages hauled me by the ankles while a third came upon me dripping wet with a dark inky substance running the tip of its appendage along my leg and quickly up my skirt. Its cold slimy flesh explored my undergarments and fondled me. I tried to scream several times but no sound came out of my mouth. No matter how hard I tried, my cries always fell mute. An invisible blanket of silence muffled any sounds from coming out.

  It was dragging me closer to itself. I couldn’t have been more than fifteen feet away from the thing. It was more than a creature, more like a being; a being that acts and grows and shapes itself by other laws than those of our nature.

  The entire scene changed abruptly. Out of nowhere appearing to float on a thin layer of mist was the stocky, silver-gray Dr. VonTassell.

  He was waving his arms awkwardly over his head and at the same time throwing handfuls of a grey powder into the air. The old Doctor began to call out words, words to difficult to understand. I mean to say they were words but not like any I had ever heard before, it was foreign. The words or sounds became a guttural sing-song.

  “YGNAIIH.....YGNAIIH.....THFLTHKH’NGHA.....YOG SOTHOTH,” rang his cries.

  I recall the slimy arms retracting from my body and the ground beginning to close in. I remember trying to stand with little success and a hand from out of the nothingness grabbed me.

  I awoke with a start to see Faren standing over me with his hand on my shoulder. I was laying full length upon the sofa in the parlor. Only momentarily befuddled I regained my senses recognizing reality from fantasy.

  I felt like a child. I had slept the entire day away with the breakfast dishes still in the sink. Faren understood though and c
halked my dilemma up to morning sickness and “the queer little things that women do when they’re pregnant.” Then he proceeded to clean up the kitchen and cook dinner on my behalf.

  I was still a little dizzy when I sat up but regained my composure in a matter of moments. I wasn’t about to let him do all the work. I had to prove that I wasn’t physically handicapped. Determined to give him a hand, I started to rise but halted briefly when I noticed something strange. The hem of my skirt was badly soiled, my nylon stockings were run and my ankles were covered with burrs. What immediately caught my eye above all the rest and struck out blaring like a painted sign in six foot high letters was the small thin markings that started above my feet and went up past my thighs. The markings were of the appearance and consistency of black ink.

  ***

  A nice hot bath, a glass of wine and a short while later I was feeling my old self again. After dinner and with a little coaxing on my part, Faren obtained some tools from the cellar and we proceeded to dismantle the door that barred our entrance to the ancient tower. A good fifteen minutes passed before we had the door down and off its hinges. A cast iron circular stairway was first revealed to us. Very similar in design to the iron steps I have seen inside the old lighthouses that line the eastern seaboard from Maine to Massachusetts. With one exception. This staircase was of a hazardous construction. As if some one hurriedly threw it together for a crude but simple access to the floor above. It was poorly formed with many of the steps installed in a crooked manner and the absence of any kind of railing to hold on to made the climb upward precarious. For obvious safety reasons it wasn’t at all surprising that the tower door had been locked shut.

  The metal staircase spiraled up to only one floor which was located at the upper-most level of the steeple. We climbed the stairs one at a time fearing that it might not withstand our combined weight. Eventually we gained access to the room that had been cloaked in mystery every since our arrival.

  You can imagine our disappointment when we discovered the room to be empty. The interior, except for some cheap lace curtains on the windows, was void of any furnishings or wall hangings. Although from the outside the cupola structure was cylindrical in shape the inside oddly enough was comprised of five plastered walls. Pentagonal in configuration with small wood framed windows set in each wall about three feet above floor level.

  It was apparent that the small five sided chamber hadn’t been occupied in a long time, perhaps years, because of the heavily dust laden walls and floors. The air in the room was stifling caused by the tightly closed windows.

  At the east end of the room was a window seat and above it the casement overlooking the rear of our property. A glimpse through the dusty pane of glass afforded us a view of the entire horizon. The evening sky and all its constellations I mused would be a splendid sight from up there. I made a mental note to come up there some starlit night and enjoy the scene. It was still light out and the entire landscape to the rear of the house was below my feet and I could easily survey the area in detail from the height, first regarding the driveway, the summer house, then recognizing the color separation in the greenery, and finally to my delight a clearing. It was a small clearing, but definitely a patch that somehow had been cleared within the center of the abundant vegetation. Could this be the garden?

  Faren wasn’t pleased with my find, although he still complained that I was taking on too much, he did agree to let me have my own way providing, “I take it easy.”

  Just as we were about to leave the tower room I noticed something so peculiar that for an instant my blood ran cold. The top of the window seat like everything else enclosed within the five walls should have been covered with dust, but it was not. The varnished wood lid, except in one corner, had been wiped clean. The clean finish was in no way as startling as the dust laden corner. The corner of the seat exhibited a small impression so clearly on its surface that it makes me shudder even now when I think about it.

  The marking would be considered familiar or commonplace under any normal situation, but under the prevailing circumstances; a room that had been sealed for months, perhaps years, with no other visible exit, it took on a meaning that was both curious and appalling. I thought my eyes had deceived me, because there before us tracked into the years of dust was a small doll-sized imprint of a human hand and just below the latched casement deposited upon the sill was the missing key.

  The key was indeed the one we had looked for and it fit the dismantled lock to the tower. How it came to be inside that lofty chamber I am not sure and whether it was the only one, and not a copy, that had been accidentally left behind, I still can’t say. I do know that the events of that afternoon and the coming nightfall left me chilled far beyond anything the night air could produce.

  Faren and I spent a good deal of time studying the print until the coming darkness rendered it invisible. We speculated as to its cause for quite a while. Although Faren thought that it could have been made by a raccoon or an opossum, I found it difficult to form any opinion at all.

  I am not a light sleeper and normally have little trouble falling to sleep, but that evening I was caught up in thought over the baby-like hand print, the key and the speculation as to their origin. I probably would have laid there until dawn or until mental fatigue would have eventually taken its toll if it hadn’t been for a mild earth tremor that shook the bed slightly. At first I attributed it to thunder in the hills but unlike most thunder that’s preceded by lightning there was none. No electrical flash lit up the night and the sky from our south bedroom window was black as coal.

  Faren still rested undisturbed. I got up and crossed to the veranda which faced out over the field and summer house. The evening sky provided no light whatsoever. My eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom. Gradually I could make out parts of the field in great detail. The earth appeared to glow with a faint green iridescence coming from the north end of the turf. A fog rolling in gradually obscuring the landscape and the angle of view from the bedroom terrace was insufficient for me to discover the source of the light.

  Being, I know now, foolhardy, and moving quietly on my tip toes so as not to upset Faren, I decided to climb the tower steps for a better look.

  The green luminescence filled the five sided chamber and cast an eerie veil across the walls leaving all the corners dark. From the rear casement I could perceive the moonless and starless heavens. Far below I beheld the mysterious aurora radiating past the outer most edge of the tall grassland; its beams scintillating against the leaves and branches of the great oaks until

  they were swallowed up and digested by the vastness of the Black Forest.

  As if in answer to the phosphorescence a thick mist came out of the forest flowing between and around the mighty tree trunks pouring over the field and mingling in a glimmering splendor with the green light. The clearing I had spotted earlier that day was completely covered in an emerald haze. I thought I detected a brief movement in that direction but my attention was averted when I felt a cold breeze on the back of my neck.

  For an instant I became paralyzed with fear recalling the stuffiness of the afternoon air caused by the tightly closed windows. I overcame the paralysis and slowly turned to face the open casement. The sun-faded lace curtains stirred in the night air. The bottom sash was ajar. In the corresponding moment I detected the odor of decaying flesh. It was so vile that I became dizzy at the smell. To the right of the open window and peering directly up at me from out of a darkened corner, no more than two feet above floor level were a pair of glaring red eyes.

  ***

  The events of that evening seemed like a bad dream in the cold light of day. I had fled the tower that night in panic, leaping several steps at a time, eventually losing my balance and sliding down the last few treads on my backside.

  It took all the strength I could muster to lift the tower access door and put it back on its hinge plates and slip the pins back into place. The lock had been dismantled when the door was removed, but the lat
ch was still operable and I secured it with a chair wedged tightly under the knob.

  I scared the hell out of Faren with the racket I made. He came stumbling down the hall half awake wielding a flashlight like a club. After mumbling that a creature had gotten into the tower somehow, he lifted the door back off its hinges and marched up the iron steps.

  The rest is anti-climatic. There was nothing up there. The small room was empty. The only evidence to support my red eyed phantom was the open window.

  I put any notions of talking about it with Faren out of my head the next morning. I felt a little foolish to tell the truth, believing that I had over reacted to something that wasn’t as unusual as it had seemed under the circumstances. After all, my little creature of the night might have been a small animal like Faren had suggested, and the window may well have been unlatched all the time leaving it easy for a raccoon to open. I felt much braver before noon. In spite of it, I still didn’t feel bold enough to inspect the tower again and decided to put it off for another day.

  I had gotten Faren off to work without a hitch and after the breakfast dishes were done I headed straight for the field. This time I knew the location of the clearing and walked in that direction. I hesitated briefly just short of the area where the tall grass begins. The north end of the field where I saw the strange glowing light the night before presented a view on a higher plain or level than on my last trip into the tall weeds. I could have been mistaken but the ground looked slightly higher, more elevated in that area than it had been. It formed a low hill that spread out for about a hundred yards disturbing the shrubbery. Narrow cracks in the earth fanned out from its center. The rise was puzzling but it was the clearing that I sought in the southern and opposite direction.

  It was very windy that day as I walked towards the open field. The constant draft of air from ahead practically roared through the trees. I was well on my way when I sensed a gradual change in the quality of sound. The noise of my footsteps remained constant, as did the muffled roar of the wind beyond but now there was something else, something that filled the intervals between the wind and my footfalls. It was the sound of movement, not from where I stood, but from within the tall grass.