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

by Byron Craft

  I had little money and so I tried to appeal to his sense of humanity and ended making a false plea for science and mankind. I explained to the strange gentleman that my purpose in obtaining the scroll was to enlighten the world with the knowledge that could be acquired from it. The only response I received from him was a swilling of his liquor, a process that was nauseating because when he drank, his lips curved in and became a slash across his face, giving the impression that he was without lips. After the final drink, which emptied the contents of his glass, he glared straight at me and said, “Man, I want the stone.”

  I had in my possession what I considered to be nothing more than a good luck piece, a small star shaped stone which was used traditionally by my family giving the possessor imaginary protection from evil. My uncle had told me the legends of this relic which he called the Stone of Mnar. It was said to have been very old and was handed down through countless generations of my family. It was for that reason I didn’t really care to use it as a bargaining tool.

  How he knew I was in possession of the stone I never learned. It was obviously the only item of exchange that the seafarer from Innsmouth cared for, so I was finally obliged to offer it to him. To my amazement the creature knocked the stone from my grasp with a nervous jerk of his left hand. My astonishment increased when, for the brief moment our hands touched, I noticed the fine webbing of skin between each of his fingers, and the cold and clammy feel of his skin made me draw my own hand away in revulsion.

  The American merchant sailor scooped the stone up from the table with a pocket handkerchief never touching it with his bare hands. I watched this person from Innsmouth tremble holding the star shaped object between the folds of the handkerchief and stare with bulging eyes intently at the rough textured surface. Then, before I knew what was happening, he slapped down a long metal tube, and after bounding from the table and upsetting his chair, he literally ran from the bar with the stone still clutched in the handkerchief.

  My first impulse was to grab the tube and open it on the spot but common sense and the knowledge of the pirates and criminals being all around me in the closed setting overcame my eagerness and I stood and walked calmly from the dark establishment. Upon arriving back at my room, I wasted no time in uncapping both ends of the metal tube. From within I imagined the odor of sea air and dead oceans. Rolled up inside the tube was a thick yellowed piece of parchment, which would have to be removed very carefully.

  To my surprise when I turned the tube on end, about a dozen metal strips fell out and scattered across the floor. They were copper and there was writing on them. Getting down on my hands and knees, I started to fit the pieces together. It was a scroll. Not one of thick parchment or leather that I had expected, but a copper one.

  Copper scrolls were not unheard of to me. I had read about them. They did not fall within the scope of the other Dead Sea Scrolls. One in particular was a non-religious document but it had stimulated more curiosity and speculation than the other scrolls. It was found by archeologists in a cave near Jericho during the excavations of 1952 but the metal had become badly oxidized during the course of the centuries, so much so that the scroll could not be unfolded. It was, therefore, carefully divided into longitudinal strips so it could be read the same as the one I found myself the possessor of.

  This was not the famous Copper Scroll. That one was a treasure map. It listed over sixty hiding places where gold, silver, aromatics and other scrolls are said to have been deposited. Although the treasures have never been found, the precious metals were supposed to add up to almost one hundred tons. This was not a treasure map, because after a quick and careful scrutiny of the ancient copper fragments, I knew my search had ended. Even more, for this valuable document wasn’t only a vague prospect for the key to the gateway, it was the key in every sense of the word. In lieu of a better term, this copper scroll was a plan and diagram for the construction of a most incredible device. Horizontal and vertical bands of hieroglyphics boarded the metal on all four sides, and at the center, in perfect clarity was a detailed engraving of a machine.

  My enthusiasm would have been overwhelming if not for a strange feeling I was harboring at the moment. The reaction of the man, in the bar, had been very strange, indeed, and I could not help but feel that I was the pawn in a much greater turn of events than I could realize. I pondered over the loss of the Stone of Mnar that had been with me ever since childhood and could not help wondering as well which one of us got the better part of the bargain.

  ***

  As I stated before, there was a third and final excursion from my ancestral home. A trip that was the longest by far, taking me a great distance from Deutschland and lasting over two weeks.

  The machine or device was definitely the link to unlocking the doorway between our world and the other but there were words needed to call forth the forces from across the dimensional voids. Of this I was convinced, because my years of research always indicated the usage of a formula uttered in conjunction with a certain astronomical phenomena and the machine.

  The exact knowledge of these words I did not posses at the time. All my translations from the Necronomicon and other ancient writings turned up several inconsistencies. The construction of the device from the diagrams in the scroll would take a long time, perhaps years but the outcome would be useless without the proper formula.

  It was in 1955 that I decided to break from my self imposed secrecy and wrote of my problem in a long letter to the Esoteric Order of Dagon in Innsmouth, Massachusetts. The fraternal brotherhood in America and its council of the unknown nine was the only body of knowledge that might have been willing to send assistance.

  Their reply was quick and generous beyond my belief. I had written explaining the condition of my exhausted finances and was surprised to find in an envelope that had arrived along with plans to temporarily smuggle me out of the country and into America, a bank draft for five thousand Deutsche Marks.

  It unfolded that another copy of the Necronomicon existed. An English translation had been kept under lock and key at the Library of Miskatonic University in Arkham Massachusetts ever since 1928, when it first came into the possession of the college. Although it was on display at the University Library any studies or copying of the book were forbidden by the administration.

  It was proposed by the Order of Dagon that if it could be obtained the collation of the two texts could produce the answer to my problem. Their reason for their generosity was reported to me as purely academic, a small price to pay for the knowledge that may be derived from it. I did not waste time questioning my good fortune rather I took quick and decisive action.

  I left the following week, cabling ahead in code to Innsmouth of my impending arrival. I traversed the southern border of my country by rail, through the western tip of Austria, then after changing trains across northern Italy to the port of Genoa.

  As prearranged, I took passage on a freighter bound for the West Indies that I assumed must have been paid handsomely to make such a wide detour in order to set me down illegally in American waters.

  The war had been over for ten years by then. Even though I was not wanted for any war crimes, the United States of America, in those days, did not look kindly on ex-officers of the Third Reich who tried to immigrate to their country, even for short periods of time. Visas were almost impossible to obtain for someone with my background.

  The captain of the freighter was a suspicious swarthy looking Italian that never spoke to me, nor in fact, did any of his crew. Consequently, I spent most of my time below in my quarters.

  The journey took almost a week and one night, under the cover of darkness, I was lowered overboard into a small sloop within sight of the eastern seaboard of Massachusetts.

  According to plan, I had a compass and small flashlight with me and following the instructions in the letter carefully used the light sparingly so as not to be spotted. Our rendezvous was to be an old lighthouse on Ogre’s Tongue Cape, a point of land extending out from
Innsmouth into the sea. I was very fortunate there was no moon but the sky was clear and filled with stars that marked my way. Even though we had encountered much fog during our voyage, there was none that night and about fifteen minutes after being lowered into the water, I sighted the silo shaped outline of the stone building.

  An hour of rowing brought me up to the shore of the cape and the base of the lighthouse. The foundation of the old structure on one side had been exposed to the ocean through the continual eroding of land by the sea.

  I hung on to the stones steadying the small craft in the current confident that I had made the journey unseen. It was very unlikely that I would have been sighted from shore. The freighter had moved on noiselessly at quarter speed with all her lights off the moment I was safely overboard and I presented a very difficult target to spot. The sloop had been painted a dark color with all its shiny parts blacked out and I was clad in an old pair of black naval officer’s leathers I had purchased before leaving home.

  I was to wait at the base of the lighthouse for them to come. I did not know if they were to come from the bank above me or by water but I waited, searching the darkness around me for their arrival.

  While shifting my position in the sloop my left hand ran across the slippery masonry. I felt several indented marks in the stone and seconds later with both hands exploring I discovered that they traveled in a straight horizontal band across the face of several stones. It felt like lettering. Risking discovery, I lit the surface of the rocks with my flashlight. Carved into the stone, in English were the words; “Here Do Sirens Beguile Mariners.” A cold chill swept through me. I quickly unzipped my jacket and removed my Luger that I had brought. It had been my officer’s pistol during the war and I was glad at the moment that I had it with me. I cocked the breach putting a bullet into the chamber, feeling comforted that the gun was primed and easily within my grasp. I slipped it back into my jacket and was about to read the inscription for a second time when I heard the sound of oars slicing the waters.

  I spotted their light first. Two wooden boats approached. Each with three men on board; two rowing, while the others sat on the bows carefully shielding their lamps from the shore. The man ahead in the lead boat shouted in a heavy guttural accent for me to put out my light. I did as instructed and eventually followed behind them to a section of badly decayed fish docks. When on shore, one of the boats remained taking the sloop from the freighter in tow and back out into deep water where it was sunk.

  I was then escorted past a row of equally decaying buildings. The harbor was dotted with a few decrepit cabins, moored dories and scattered lobster pots. Turning to look back on the sea I could make out here and there the ruins of wharves jutting out from the shore to end in crumbling neglect, those farthest south the most decayed. And far out to sea, despite the increasing tide, I glimpsed for the first time a long black line scarcely rising above the water made visible to me then by the lights from the coast. It was a reef and as I looked I noticed that the line appeared unbroken all the way to the tip of Ogre’s Tongue. I realized that the two boats must have guided me through an invisible but navigable passage.

  The man from the lead boat’s name was Marsh and he, obviously in charge, led us again, this time on foot, to the north end of the town. The rest were dark, unkempt men of sullen visage that walked clumsily in a silent almost evasive way.

  There were few street lights but when finally passing beneath one on a corner I saw the face of the man called Marsh for the first time. My feelings were mixed with surprise and disgust at his features. He was almost bald and his skin was of a peculiar dark shade and it appeared shiny, excessively oily. I was surprised not so much by his unusual appearance but how much his features were like those of the sailor I met in Bremer Haven a couple of years before. He was from Innsmouth as well. Could they have been brothers?

  Soon cross streets and junctions began to appear; those on the right leading to the shoreward realms of unpaved squalor and decay, while those on the left showed signs of departed grandeur in the way of boarded up large square Georgian style houses, many with hipped roofs, cupolas and railed widow’s walks. So far, I had seen no people in town, besides the small group I was with. After a while though, there came signs of sparse habitation, curtained windows here and there, and an occasional battered automobile at the curb.

  At one point, I spied a group of dirty, simian-looking children playing around a weed grown doorstep. Somehow they were more disquieting than the dismal buildings, for almost every one of them had peculiarities of face and motions which I instinctively disliked and was becoming uncomfortably aware was shared also by the men from the boats. They were definitely not of Aryan stock.

  So this was Innsmouth.

  I longed for my run down schloss that in my mind seemed palatial by comparison and in a naive moment I wondered if this seaboard town was indicative of American life.

  I must have been a comical contrast to my six dark and shabby companions but the few people that we did pass did not seem to take any particular notice. Most of the men from the boats were dressed in tattered overalls and wool coats. I don’t think any of them stood more than five and a half feet tall but this was hard to tell because like the sailor I had met in Bremer Haven, the manner of their carriage was round shouldered and sloppy. While I, on the other hand walking amongst them, towering three inches above six feet, my white hair cropped just above the ears wearing black leather slacks and matching jacket should have produced stares.

  We met no one on the street after that and presently we began to pass more deserted houses in varying stages of ruin. After a while, we changed direction to a narrow side street and I saw the white belfry of a fairly well-preserved brick structure which I took for a small factory. The group stepped up their gates and we ran at a light pace across two stretches of brick sidewalks and a cobblestone pavement to a large pillared doorway. While Marsh fumbled with a ring of keys, I noticed under a dim street lamp that the structure’s once white paint was actually grey and peeling and the black and gold sign on the pediment was so faded that I could only with difficulty make out the words “Esoteric Order of Dagon”.

  I was ushered into a long dark hall and quickly down a set of cellar steps. A door closed behind me and I was relived when the darkness was finally interrupted by a bare light bulb hanging by a cord in the ceiling. My relief was short lived. The light, after being disturbed by the tug on a pull chain, swung back and forth. Under the intermittent electric glare I made out my six guides. We stood in a small storage room, a fruit cellar and Marsh who sat on a barrel of apples bid me to eat something saying that I might not have another chance for quite some time. It had been several hours since my last meal but I declined all the same for thoughts of hunger had been pushed out of my mind by the revulsion I felt for these people.

  They all looked alike with only slight variations. Perhaps they were all related or maybe they were the results of inter-marrying. Besides their thin, stooped shouldered appearance and uncommon complexions, they all shared the same afflictions and deformities. Dull expressionless faces with receding foreheads and chins, bulging blue eyes, noses flattened against the face and small ears. Two of them, although having the same coarse pored, grayish cheeks as the others, displayed thin yellow hairs that straggled and curled in irregular patches to below the chin giving the impression of diseased flesh.

  Their hands were large and heavily veined and had a very unusual grayish-blue tinge. One of the blond bearded pair had the last three fingers of his left hand joined by the webbing of skin and after a casual inventory of the others, I discovered that they all had their digits joined in the same manner some to a lesser or greater degree.

  What I found to be the most revolting about them was the shriveling of flesh on their necks. The skin puckered and sagged into loose sickening folds and creases. Marsh who appeared to be the oldest of the six had the most pronounced wrinkling and it gave the impression of deep slits in the sides of his neck.
/>   When we came out of the cold night air and into the close quarters of the small room, I immediately became aware of a fishy scent and in a matter of minutes the smell increased to the nauseating odor of dead sea life.

  I recalled the words inscribed into the stone foundation of the lighthouse and remembered tales in romantic literature from my homeland about the Lorelei. About dangerously fascinating amphibian creatures, that lured boatmen to shipwreck by their singing. Could there have been any truth to these legends? If so could some distant relatives of that antediluvian marine culture exist today, thousands of miles from the Rheine River in a decaying New England seaboard community? My research over the past years had uncovered many strange things but never anything to substantiate my wild fantasy.

  I shook loose from the strange thoughts and clung to the revulsion and hatred that I was beginning to harbor for their kind. If it were not for the task that was laid before me, the success of which depended upon my close association with these mongrels of human life, I would have exterminated them all with the gun in my coat.

  I laid my racial disgust aside for the moment and listened to the plan that unfolded from the thin lipped mouth of the man called Marsh.

  In an hour we were to journey to Arkham, a neighboring town. The Innsmouth bus that only operated by day and normally picked up and deposited its passengers at the Gilman House Hotel on State Street would make an unscheduled evening stop at the church, the cellar of which we at the time occupied.

  Except for the driver, I was to make the trip alone. I was given a map of Arkham and a floor plan of the library which showed in careful detail where the book was kept. The driver had instructions to wait for me for no more than fifteen minutes. After that I would be left on my own. If successful, we would return to Innsmouth an hour before dawn. A room had been prepared for me at the Gilman House where I was to stay until later when I would be fetched once again under the cover of darkness and smuggled out of this decaying country.