The Book of Cthulhu

by Neil Gaiman

  When he heard the old German speak these words in his heavy accent, Anderson had to stifle the gasp of recognition which welled within him. This was nothing less than a variation of that paradoxical couplet with which his brother had once terminated his fiendish “sacrifice to Cthulhu!”

  As for the other set of symbols from the tablets, frustration was soon to follow. Certainly the figures were duplicated in the centuried book, appearing in what Anderson at first took to be a code of some sort, but they had not been reproduced in German. Moller-while having not the slightest inkling of Anderson’s purpose with this smelly, evil old book—finally suggested to him that perhaps the letters were not in code at all, that they might simply be the symbols of an obscure foreign language. Anderson had to agree that Moller could well be right; in the yellowed left-hand margin of the relevant page, directly opposite the frustrating cryptogram, his brother had long ago written: “Yes, but what of the pronunciation?”

  Hamilton had done more than this: he had obligingly dated his patently self-addressed query, and the surviving Tharpe brother saw that the jotting had been made prior to the fatal second period of travel in foreign lands. Who could say what Hamilton might or might not have discovered upon that journey? Without a doubt he had been in strange places. And he had seen and done strange things to bring back with him that hellish cancer growth sprouting in his brain.

  Finally Anderson decided that this jumbled gathering of harsh and unpronounceable letters—be it a scientific process or, more fancifully, a magical evocation—must indeed be the formula with which a clever man might call forth the green light in his dead brother’s “Temple of Cthulhu.” He thanked old Hans and sent him away, then sat in his caravan poring over the ancient book, puzzling and frowning long into the evening; until, as darkness fell, his eyes lit with dawning inspiration…

  And so over the period of the next few days the freak-house suffered its transition into the Tomb of the Great Old Ones. During the same week Anderson visited a printer in the local town and had new admission tickets printed. These tickets, as well as bearing the new name of the show and revised price of admission, now carried upon the reverse the following cryptic instruction:

  Any adult person desiring to speak with the proprietor of the Tomb of the Great Old Ones on matters of genuine occult phenomena or similar manifestations, or on subjects relating to the Great Old Ones, R’lyeh, or the Cthulhu Cycle of Myth, is welcome to request a private meeting.

  Anderson Tharpe: Prop.

  The other members of the fairground fraternity were not aware of this offer of Anderson’s—nor of his authority, real or assumed, in such subjects to be able to make such an offer—until after the funfair moved into its next location, and by that time they too had discovered his advance advertising in the local press. Of course, Bella Hodgson had always looked after advance publicity in the past, but she could hardly be offended by Anderson’s personal efforts toward this end. Any good publicity he devised and paid for himself could only go towards attracting better crowds to the benefit of the funfair in general.

  And within a very short time Anderson’s plan started to bear fruit, when at last his desire for a higher percentage of rather more erudite persons among his show’s clientele began to be realized. His sole purpose, of course, had been to attract just such persons in the hope that perhaps one of them might provide the baffling pronunciation he required, an acoustical translation of the key to call up the terrible green glow.

  Such authorities must surely exist; his own brother had become one in a comparatively short time, and others had spent whole lifetimes in the concentrated study of these secrets of elder lore. Surely, sooner or later, he would find a man to provide the answer, and then the secrets of the perfect murder weapon would be his. When this happened, then Anderson would test his weapon on the poor unfortunate who handed him the key, and in this way he would be sure that the secret was his alone. From then on… oh, there were many possibilities…

  Through early and mid-April Anderson received a number of inquisitive callers at his caravan: some of them cranks, but at least a handful of genuinely interested and knowledgeable types. Always he pumped them for what they knew of the elder mysteries in connection with the Cthulhu Cycle, especially their knowledge in ancient tongues and obscure languages, and twice over he was frustrated just when he thought himself on the right track. On one occasion, after seeing the tablets and idol, an impressed visitor presented him with a copy of Walmsley’s Notes on Deciphering Codes, Cryptograms, and Ancient Inscriptions; but to no avail, the work itself was too deep for him.

  Then, towards the end of April, in response to Anderson’s continuous probing, a visitor to his establishment grudgingly gave him the address of a so-called “occult investigator”, one Titus Crow, who just might be interested in his problem. Before he left the fairground this same gentleman, the weird artist Chandler Davies, strongly advised Tharpe that the whole thing were best forgotten, that no good could ever come of dabbling in such matters—be it serious study or merely idle curiosity—and with that warning he had taken his leave.

  Ignoring the artist’s positive dread of his line of research, that same afternoon Anderson wrote to Titus Crow at his London address, enclosing with his letter a copy of the symbols and a request for information concerning them; possibly a translation or, even better, a workable pronunciation. Impatiently then, he watched the post for an answer, and early in May was disappointed to receive a brief note from Crow advising him, as had Davies, to give up his interest in these matters and let such dangerous subjects alone. There was no explanation, no invitation regarding further correspondence; Crow had not even bothered to return the cryptic paragraph so painstakingly copied from the Necronomicon.

  That night, as if to substantiate the double warning, Anderson once more dreamed of sunken R’lyeh, and again he kneeled before slumbering Cthulhu’s throne to hear the alien voice echoing awesomely in his mind. The horror on the throne seemed more mobile in its sleep than ever before, and the voice in the dream was more insistent, more menacing:

  “You have been warned, AND YET YOU MEDDLE! While the Great Rising draws ever closer and Cthulhu’s shadow looms, still you choose to search out His secrets for your own use! This night there will be a sign; ignore it at your peril, lest Cthulhu bestir Himself up to visit you personally in dreams, as He has aforetime visited others!”

  The following morning Anderson rose haggard and pale to learn of yet more trouble with the fairground’s dogs, duplicating in detail that Candlemas frenzy of three months earlier. The coincidence was such as to cause him more than a moment’s concern, and especially after reading the morning’s newspapers.

  What was it that the voice in his dream had said of “a sign?”—a warning which he should only ignore at his peril? Well, there had been a sign, many of them, for the night had been filled with a veritable plethora of weird and inexplicable occurrences—strange stirrings among the more dangerous inmates of lunatic asylums all over the country, macabre suicides by previously normal people—a magma of madness climaxed, so far as Anderson Tharpe was concerned, by second-page headlines in two of the national newspapers to the effect that Chandler Davies had been “put away” in Woodholme Sanatorium. The columns went on to tell how Davies had painted a monstrous G’harne Landscape, which his outraged and terrified mistress had at once set fire to, thus bringing about in him an insane rage from which he had not recovered. More: a few days later came the news via the same papers that Davies was dead!

  If Anderson Tharpe had been in any way a sensitive person, and his evil ambition less of an obsession—had his perceptions not been dulled by a lifetime of living close to the anomalies of the erstwhile freak-house—then perhaps he might have recognized the presence of a horror such as few men have ever known. Unlike his brother, however, Anderson was coarse-grained and not especially imaginative. All the portents and evidences, the hints and symptoms, and accumulating warnings were cast aside within a few short days
of his nightmare and its accompanying manifestations, when yet again he turned to his studies in the hope that soon the secret of the green light would be his.

  From then on the months passed slowly, while the crowds at the Tomb of the Great Old Ones became smaller still despite all Anderson’s efforts to the contrary. His frustration grew in direct proportion to his dwindling assets, and while his continued advance advertising and the invitation on the reverse of his admission tickets still drew the occasional crank occultist or curious devotee of the macabre to his caravan, not one of them was able to further his knowledge of the Cthulhu Cycle or satisfy his growing obsession with regard to that enigmatic and cryptical “key” from the handwritten Necronomicon.

  Twice as the seasons waxed and waned he approached old Hans about further translations from the ancient book, even offering to pay for the old German’s services in this respect, but Hans simply was not interested. He was too old to become a Dolmetscher, he said, and his eyes were giving him trouble; he already had enough money for his simple needs, and anyway, he did not like the look of the book. What the old man did not say was that he had seen things in those yellowed pages, on that one occasion when already he had looked into the rotting volume, which simply did not bear translation! And so again Anderson’s plans met with frustration.

  In mid-October the now thoroughly disgruntled and morose proprietor of the Tomb of the Great Old Ones looked to a different approach. Patently, no matter how hard he personally studied Hamilton’s books, he was not himself qualified to puzzle out and piece together the required information. There were those, however, who had spent a lifetime in such studies, and if he could not attract such as these to the fairground—why, then he must simply send the problem to them. True, he had tried this before, with Titus Crow; but now, as opposed to cultists, occultists, and the like, he would approach only recognized authorities. He spent the following day or two tracking down the address of Professor Gordon Walmsley of Goole, a world-renowned expert in the science of ciphers, whose book, Notes on Deciphering Codes, Cryptograms, and Ancient Inscriptions, had now been in his possession for almost seven months. That book was still far too deep and complicated for Anderson’s fathoming, but the author of such a work should certainly find little difficulty with the piece from the Necronomicon.

  He quickly composed a letter to the professor, and as October grew into its third week he posted it off. He was not to know it, but at that time Walmsley was engaged in the services of the Buenos Aires Museum of Antiquities, busily translating the hieroglyphs on certain freshly discovered ruins in the mountains of the Aconcaguan Range near San Juan. Anderson’s letter did eventually reach him, posted on from Walmsley’s Yorkshire address, but the professor was so interested in his own work that he gave it only a cursory glance. Later he found that he had misplaced it, and thus, fortunately, the scrap of paper with its deadly invocation passed into obscurity and became lost forever.

  Anderson meanwhile impatiently waited for a reply, and along with the folk of the fairground prepared for the Halloween opening at Bathley, a town on the northeast border. It was then, on the night of the twenty-seventh of the month, that he received his third and final warning. The day had been chill and damp, with a bitter wind blowing off the North Sea, bringing a dankly salt taste and smell that conjured up horrible memories for the surviving Tharpe brother.

  On the morning of the twenty-eighth, rising up gratefully from a sweat-soaked bed and a nightmare the like of which he had never known before and fervently prayed never to know again, Anderson Tharpe blamed the horrors of the night on yesterday’s sea wind with its salty smells of ocean; but even explained away like this the dream had been a monstrous thing.

  Again he had visited sunken R’lyeh—but this time there had been a vivid reality to the nightmare lacking in previous dreams. He had known the terrible, bone-crushing pressures of that drowned realm, had felt the frozen chill of its black waters. He had tried to scream as the pressure forced his eyes from their sockets, and then the sea had rushed into his mouth, tearing his throat and lungs and stomach as it filled him in one smashing column as solid as steel. And though the horror had lasted only a second, still he had known that there in the ponderous depths his disintegration had taken place before the throne of the Lord of R’lyeh, the Great Old One who seeped down from the stars at the dawn of time. He had been a sacrifice to Cthulhu…

  ∇

  That had been four days ago, but still Tharpe shuddered when he thought of it. He put it out of his mind now as he ushered the crowd out of the tent and turned to face the sole remaining member of that departing audience. Tharpe’s oratory had been automatic; during its delivery he had allowed his mind to run free in its exploration of all chat had passed since his brother’s hideous death, but now he came back to earth. Hiram Henley stared back at him in what he took to be scornful disappointment. The ex-professor spoke:

  “‘The Tomb of the Great Old Ones’, indeed! Sir, you’re a charlatan!” he said. “I could find more fearsome things in Grimm’s Fairy Tales, more items of genuine antiquarian interest in my aunt’s attic. I had hoped your—show—might prove interesting. It seems I was mistaken.” His eyes glinted sarcastically behind his tiny spectacles.

  For a moment Tharpe’s heart beat a little faster, then he steadied himself. Perhaps this time…? Certainly the little man was worth a try. “You do me an injustice, sir—you wound me!” He waxed theatrical, an ability with which he was fluent through his years of showmanship. “Do you really believe that I would openly display the archaeological treasures for which this establishment was named?—I should put them out for the common herd to ogle, when not one in ten thousand could even recognize them, let alone appreciate them? Wait!”

  He ducked through the canvas doorflap into the enclosed area containing Hamilton’s relics, returning a few seconds later with a bronze miniature the size of his hand and wrist. The thing looked vaguely like an elongated, eyeless squid. It also looked—despite the absence of anything even remotely mundane in its appearance—utterly evil! Anderson handed the object reverently to the ex-professor, saying: “What do you make of that?” Having chosen the thing at random from the anomalies in his dead brother’s collection, he hoped it really was of “genuine antiquarian interest.”

  His choice had been a wise one. Henley peered at the miniature, and slowly his expression changed. He examined the thing minutely, then said, “It is the burrower beneath, Shudde-M’ell, or one of his brood. A very good likeness, and ancient beyond words. Made of bronze, yet quite obviously it predates the Bronze Age!” His voice was suddenly soft. “Where did you get it?”

  “You are interested, then?” Tharpe smiled, incapable of either admitting or denying the statements of the other.

  “Of course I’m interested.” Henley eagerly nodded, a bit too eagerly, Tharpe thought. “I… I did indeed do you a great injustice. This thing is very interesting! Do you have… more?”

  “All in good time.” Tharpe held up his hands, holding himself in check, waiting until the time was ripe to frame his own all-important question. “First, who are you? You understand that my—possessions—are not for idle scrutiny, that—”

  “Yes, yes, I understand,” the little man cut him off. “My name is Hiram Henley. I am—at least I was—Professor of Archaeology and Ethnology at Meldham University. I have recently given up my position there in order to carry out private research. I came here out of curiosity, I admit; a friend gave me one of your tickets with its peculiar invitation. I wasn’t really expecting much, but—”

  “But now you’ve seen something that you would never have believed possible in a place like this. Is that it?”

  “Indeed it is. And you? Who are you?”

  “Tharpe is my name, Anderson Tharpe, proprietor of this”—he waved his hand deprecatingly—“establishment.”

  “Very well, Mr. Tharpe,” Henley said. “It’s my own good fortune to meet a man whose intelligence in my own chosen field patently mu
st match my own—whose possessions include items such as this.” He held up the heavy bronze piece and peered at it again for a moment. “Now, will you show me—the rest?”

  “A glimpse, only a glimpse,” Tharpe told him, aware now that Henley was hooked. “Then perhaps we can trade?”

  “I have nothing with which to trade. In what way do you mean?”

  “Nothing to trade? Perhaps not,” Tharpe answered, holding the canvas door open so that his visitor might step into the enclosed space beyond, “but then again… how are you on ancient tongues and languages?”

  “Languages were always my—” The ex-professor started to answer, stepping into the private place. Then he paused, his eyes widening as he gazed about at the contents of the place. “Were always my—” Again he paused, reaching out his hands before him and moving forward, touching the ugly idol unbelievingly, moving quickly to the carved tablets, staring as if hypnotized at the smaller figurines and totems. Finally he turned a flushed face to Tharpe. His look was hard to define; partly awed, partly-accusing?

  “I didn’t steal them, I assure you,” Tharpe quickly said.

  “No, of course not,” Henley answered, “but… you have the treasures of the aeons here!”

  Now the tall showman could hold himself no longer. “Languages,” he pressed. “You say you have an understanding of tongues? Can you translate from the ancient to the modern?”

  “Yes, most things, providing—”

  “How would you like to own all you see here?” Tharpe cut him off again.

  Henley reached out suddenly palsied hands to take Tharpe by the forearms. “You’re… joking?”

  “No.” Tharpe shook his head, lying convincingly. “I’m not joking. There is something of the utmost importance to my own line of—research. I need a translation of a fragment of ancient writing. Rather, I need the original pronunciation. If you can solve this one problem for me, all this can be yours. You can be… part of it.”