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

by Byron Craft

  ***

  Several hours must have lapsed since my telephone conversation with Faren and he has not yet shown. Even if he had some difficulty finding a cab he should have been home over an hour ago.

  The valium is beginning to sap my strength. I am emotionally and physically drained. I have written everything that I dare and most of what I recall. I have left very little to conjecture and I sense that my time has run out.

  As I wrote in the beginning, I didn’t believe that the terrors that lingered outdoors would venture across my threshold until the evening mist could hide their advance. Not so much from my eyes but from any passing motorist that may be using the old road late at night. If ever the time were right, it is now. The fog has completely engulfed the house and the surrounding grounds. Every window has been visibly blocked by the white vapor and the leaded panes run heavy with the moisture of dew. It is conceivable that Faren found the road impassable and he is waiting for the weather to lift.

  In the past minute or two I am certain I heard a rustling in the bushes outside my window, followed by a brief succession of heavy footsteps. For one fleeting second I think I saw a face, the crude outline of something peering in through the parlor window. It happened so quickly that when I turned my head around it was gone, barely leaving enough time for a mental after image to register. I questioned my sanity, as I was becoming accustomed to by then, but my suspicions quickly vanished when I noticed the moist impression of a face left on the pane of glass.

  My exhaustion was so complete that I was hardly affected by it. If anything, it registered nothing more than a mild shiver.

  My time is up and I haven’t the heart to cry out anymore. They can do what they want with me. My desire for life has been outweighed by my complete and utter frustration.

  I can hear the bushes at the north end of the house moving now. I know it is not the wind.

  There is something thudding and grunting on the front porch. It’s scratching...scratching on the casing.

  The main entrance is old but the door was built strong and the latch bolt is made of heavy iron.

  What is happening to me? Everything about me, no matter how dull and common place the day to day routine is, eventually becomes my own personal horror. Everything from the bedroom wallpaper to a simple walk in the woods has taken on nightmarish proportions.

  Oh God, it speaks! It’s those words again, similar to those uttered by VonTassell in my dream. This time the voice isn’t human it’s like it was on the telephone just hours before. A deformed mouthing as of some bestial creature with only half a tongue uttered syllables of meaningless horror.

  Oh God! The door is bending inward!

  ***

  I am alive! Good God in heaven, I am safe! My arms have been bandaged from the elbows to the wrists but I am all right. I am at home, in bed, Faren is here, and so is VonTassell. I believe Jim is downstairs as well.

  VonTassell gave me something to make me sleep but the injection is slow at taking effect. I have been fighting the drowsiness ever since he saw the old alchemist’s notebook curled up on the bedside table. The moment he laid eyes on it I snatched up the yellowed pages and tucked them behind the pillow. He acted suspiciously.

  I know who Peter is...the one and only friend of my husband’s late uncle…the old alchemist’s friend and confidant and I am certain that VonTassell senses it. We stared long and hard at one another without exchanging any words. It was then that he gave me the sedative.

  “Something to make you sleep, my dear,” he said.

  I asked to see Faren but he countered with, “You must rest now.”

  I have to warn Faren, I am too weak to call out loud enough to be heard. The bedroom door is closed and they are downstairs in the kitchen.

  My strength is ebbing fast. I must fight this drug. It is a great effort for me to write.

  Faren had come, in the nick of time. I was very lucky. He probably frightened them away. When the front door was about to give way, I rose to my feet and grabbed the old knife. This time I was prepared to use it as a weapon. My fear was put temporarily in check by the sudden and unexpected anger that raged within me. I was terrified by the unknown intruder but backed into a corner; I anticipated a fight to the death.

  The old door cracked and splintered followed by a ferocious grunting upon the other side. The thing on my doorstep was only moments from entry.

  Reaching down within myself I summoned up the strength to slide our oak writing desk across the room and up against the hardwood door frame. I heavily secured the latch bolt by wedging the fire poker between it and the bolt carriage thus doubling the strength of the lock.

  The thing on the opposite side of the passage must have recognized the change in the barrier because in less than a minute it broke into a bellowing tirade. It beat furiously on the door and moments later it hurled one of the large stone urns that rested on the porch outside through the bay window. The concrete urn was a good four feet in length and must have weighed well over two hundred pounds. It burst through the locked casement like a canon shot. The triple sash panes inwardly exploded from the force spraying the room with splinters of glass. The urn impacted against the fireplace cracking the marble hearth.

  I made for the stairs in a mad frenzy. If this creature was going to come for me I had one more surprise in store for it. At the top of the stairs before the hall to the bedrooms stood another urn similar to the one that had just crashed through the window. If the thing came upstairs I would roll the urn down the staircase and crush it, whatever it may be.

  I don’t know what possessed me, I was an animal. I was just as much an animal as that thing outside. I backed slowly up the stairs. Fear pulsated in my veins. My heart was consumed by blood lust and vengeance; I had to survive at all costs. I held the knife ready to pounce on any living thing that might cross my path. My lips curled downward twisting and contorting my features to what I imagine must have been a deranged look. My hair was matted by my own perspiration and it hung over the right side of my face. I reached the landing. The large pot was within my grasp, yet nothing came. There was only silence and not a thing stirred by the open bay. From the rear of the house disrupting the calm came a loud banging. Someone or something pounded on the back door. I was sure it was a trick...a ruse to get me back down into the parlor and catch me off guard. It must have second guessed my scheme. I wasn’t going to move. Oh no, I wasn’t going to fall prey to its strategy. My pursuer was going to have to come for me. I got behind the urn and made ready to push.

  I stood fearless in the shadows. My eyes were wide and my breathing frantic. My eyes darted back and forth nervously scanning the parlor below and the darkened hallway to my left. I was suddenly overcome by the feeling that there was someone behind me but there was only a wall to my back. To the back of me was only a blank partition with a mirror at the top of the stairs. There could be nothing else. The sensation became unbearable. The skin crawled in bumps and folds on the back of my neck. Turning slowly I peered over my right shoulder. It shouldn’t have been. It was impossible. Nevertheless it was there…in the mirror. The glass didn’t reflect my image; instead it was the form of a short hideous looking dwarf. It was a creature both legless and, except for a small bit of fur around the knuckles, hairless. So close was I that I imagined its hot breath on me. The nails on its hands were long, pointed and dirty gray. Its’ complexion was a sickly pale hue and there rose to my nostrils the odor of filth and decay. It grinned at me with a mouthful of yellowed fangs.

  The elfin creature reached outside the confines of the looking glass and grabbed me about the wrist. It tried to wrestle the knife from my grasp. The sharp nails on its furry hand dug deep into my skin and burned like acid. With a twisting motion of my right hand, I slashed its boney forearm. It screamed and let go. It was a horrible cry. It was an animal noise that sounded strangely human. The ear splitting mewl echoed and reverberated deep within the recesses of the mirror; re-emerging as a chorus of a thousand wailing i
nfants.

  Instinctively, I lashed out with the dagger and repeatedly stabbed the glass. My left hand curled into a fist clubbing the mirror until it cracked and splintered and broke into hundreds of little glittering shards. Both of my hands worked furiously on the looking glass and the image it held. I shrieked and howled, bellowing like the thing that had been on my doorstep. Tears streamed down my face and blood poured down the walls. Weeping and sobbing, I yelled at the small creature behind the crystal. Over and over again I shouted, “Die! Die!”

  The walls became red. The very air I breathed turned crimson. I was wrapped in a scarlet flame. A tremendous buzzing clamored in my ears. The house rocked on its foundations. I felt giddy. Then the floor rose up to meet my face.

  ***

  I was sick, very sick. Faren held me with one arm as I emptied my insides into a wastebasket. I was perched on the edge of the settee in the parlor, my arms were bandaged, and I was an awful sight. My head throbbed and I felt like someone had tied my stomach into knots. The house looked like the Russian army had marched through while a cool March breeze blew in where the east bay used to be. Wherever Faren walked you couldn’t help from hearing the crunch of broken glass underfoot. It was throughout the room and it covered most of the furniture. The sofa was the only piece that hadn’t been showered with glass.

  When I looked to the mirror all that remained was an empty wooden frame. No signs of the silvered glass or its hideous occupant survived.

  My body shook and convulsed uncontrollably as I told Faren what happened. He dried my tears and held me in his arms. He said that he believed me. He told me he would have been home sooner, but as I guessed, the roads were difficult to travel because of the fog. He had a hard time finding a cab driver that would come the entire distance no matter how much he offered to pay.

  He held me tightly, the one thing I needed most. He cried and said that he was sorry for ever leaving me alone. We were to be with one another from now on and we would see this thing through together.

  Jim was on his way back with Vesta and Faren had sent for the Doctor. Even though I didn’t like the Doctor I welcomed the company. He also said that we were going to leave this cursed house tonight and return to New York. If the weather didn’t permit then Faren would ask the Doctor and Jim to stay the night and we would leave first thing in the morning. Safety in numbers. I was sure that help had arrived and more was on its way. I was grateful that the madness had ended, more so, I was grateful for Faren’s presence, grateful that he was aware, alert and armed with the knowledge of our peril.

  I was calmer by then, satisfied that things were becoming normal once more. Faren told me to relax while he cleaned up the glass and made us some coffee. While the coffee brewed, he swept the broken fragments into two heaps in the middle of the parlor floor. So that he wouldn’t have to leave me alone, Faren promised to board up the bay window later, after Jim and the Doctor came.

  The serpentine dagger still remained at the head of the stairs where I had dropped it. Faren picked it up and stuffed it in the belt of his trousers. He carefully examined the carved hilt as if reassuring himself of the weapon at hand. There was a faint far away look in his eyes for a moment. I recognized it from where I sat. He seemed to be looking not at me or anything else in the room. As if for a second or two he was glimpsing some other world, one entrenched far off in thought. I was about to call him out of it when he regained his composure only to stare momentarily at the broken mirror and then he proceeded to sweep the particles of glass down the steps and into the parlor along with the rest of the debris.

  In no time he had the parlor, except for the smashed bay, looking orderly again and within the next minute he was preparing sandwiches and pouring coffee in the kitchen. The overall atmosphere had changed from stark terror to peaceful, almost homey. Faren even tried to make me laugh although his attempts were as poor as his jokes. My condition bordered on total exhaustion but he did manage to get me to crack a smile or two.

  I didn’t realize how long it had been since I ate last but when he appeared with his back to the kitchen window proudly displaying a serving tray heaped with sandwiches and steaming cups of coffee, I was immediately overcome with the ravages of hunger.

  Faren smiled and bowed, I playfully applauded and within that next instant our peaceful sphere exploded. The bottom sash of the kitchen window discharged itself of its lower pane in a shower of splintering fragments. A massive pair of arms followed snatching Faren from behind and hoisting him into the air.

  The tray of food crashed to the floor, Faren squirmed helplessly in the giant grasp and I in the short time that elapsed between the utterance of a scream and its actual audibility was besieged by a collection of shadows.

  Time slowed down. My mind was deluged by concepts so numerous and wide spread that a second intervened and became a minute.

  I could see part of the thing plainly. Half of it was still shielded from the inside by the upper sash left untouched by the violent intrusion while the lower half of its body reached inward through the shattered bottom pane. It was large, at least eight feet tall and its scale-coated flesh was of the same pale hue as the spectral imp in the looking glass. Although it appeared to have a massive muscular structure, the fabric of its framework was counter developed to anything that could be considered human in form. Disproportionate body features, organs out of place and looming up from behind the titan was a colossal pair of wings.

  The face...it was the face that triggered my memory forcing what I had suppressed earlier that evening to the surface.

  Its face bore no resemblance to anything remotely human. Its eyes, pupil-less and deathly white, glared at me.

  It wasn’t so much the alien quality of the thing that made me faint. It wasn’t its abnormal outlines or profile, not even the pair of mandibles set where a jaw should have been or the encirclement of snake like cilia that surrounded the opening and hung like a beard from just below the eyes. It wasn’t seeing my husband helplessly dangling a few feet above the floor in its grasp. It was more.

  I still remained conscious until the aspect of the creature caused me to remember what had happened, hurtling me into a gulf of blackness.

  I am sure that Doctor VonTassell would write it off to stress, however in that brief interlude of a second, I saw myself from hours before as if observed from afar, running in a mad frenzy towards the woods. The one place that at the time I could not recall why I chose above all other directions to take!

  As if time had flipped back the pages of a great book, I saw myself again, but this was before I had run to the woods. I left the garage and the rotting corpse thing behind and headed at a fast pace straight for the road by way of the long dark driveway. I had taken to the road! I did select that route first as I had guessed. I remembered! I saw what stopped me from going any farther. I saw what sent me fleeing in such total terror towards the woods that I had blotted it from my memory.

  It was the monstrous titan...that thing in the sky, the creature that held Faren in its grasp. The one I had observed being spewed from the bowels of the earth by a phosphorescent geyser and probably the same thing that intruded upon our front door. It was a horrible thing with wings. It had soared down from the stars and stood across my path.

  ***

  Somehow Faren escaped from that hideous creature but I don’t know how. It must have happened after I blacked out.

  All I can do now is bide my time and wait for the drug to take its toll. I am restrained by a numbness in my legs and the distance between Faren and myself; the parlor at one end of the house and the bedroom at the other. I tried calling for him but my voice is so weak. Right now, I feel as restrained as when I was in the clutches of that tentacled thing in my dream.

  All I can do now is rest and regret the day that we ever came to this god forsaken place. I wonder if God has really forgotten this little corner of the world. If I should die here, will I find refuge in the kingdom of heaven or will I end up like one of those grot
esque things stalking the black forest at night until my flesh rots into nothingness and my bones are reduced to dust.

  Maybe God...that is the God of all things that are good, will intervene and the walking dead will have their salvation. Perhaps they are not evil at all. Perhaps these creatures emerging from graveyard settings are not based on the fear of death, rather on a fear of certain forms of life. Maybe death is not the end...maybe there are things that continue to exist in an ageless half-alive state, things that can be summoned forth again.

  Didn’t old Todesfall call up something that night? Some pages were missing from the old man’s notebook but I know that something did come up. It was the evening when the hand from that dark universe he wrote of pointed him out.

  What was it then? There is that small elusive creature of the night, had it really squeezed through? Did it have some dimensional powers beyond our realm of understanding that would enable it to pop in and out of this world like a phantom? Or was it trapped and lost in our world? After the death of the old wizard, had it locked itself in the tower and taken the key with it?

  Was Todesfall caring for it in the bedroom? The crib, oh my God, the hand prints on the pillow. Was it lonely? Did it desire to come back to the place it had considered its new home? Was Faren’s uncle sleeping with it like one who comforts a child frightened of the dark?

  I am reminded of the child in the woods that was viciously murdered by an unknown assailant. Could Faren have…oh Jesus, he did know her address. It was inside the school books and he could have been walking out there that night. The mud on his feet could be proof. But that is nonsense. No injury of the mind, no matter how severe, could force him to do anything like that. My mind wanders.

  I am so tired... I must stay awake... must concentrate...

  Different people worship and pray to different gods. I am afraid that we have stumbled upon some ancient sentinel that has slumbered for eons and is just now ready to emerge and lay waste to an unsuspecting world. Are we in store for a rebirth of horror on earth with Faren’s great uncle acting as the willing midwife? Are we destined to return to a dark age of earth’s past? In the end, will we be offered despair or hope for a new beginning, for then Cthulhu’s return has only been delayed and the ever revolving cycle of time will schedule his coming again!