The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants
Ramsey Campbell








A collection of fantasy and horror short stories by British author J. Ramsey Campbell, who dropped the initial from his name in subsequent publications. It was released in 1964 by Arkham House in an edition of 2,009 copies and was the author's first book. The stories are part of the Cthulhu Mythos. Campbell had originally written his introduction to be included in the book The Dark Brotherhood and Other Pieces under the title "Cthulhu in Britain". However, Arkham's editor, August Derleth, decided to use it here. The contents were reprinted with some of Campbell's later Lovecraftian work in his 1985 collection Cold Print.






Ramsey Campbell

The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants











A Word From The Author


When I Was Ten Years Old I Discovered H. P. Lovecraft In The Color out of Space, and was profoundly excited and disturbed by his work, and some years later, after I had read considerably more of Lovecraft’s fiction, I turned a bent for writing which began when I was seven toward the Cthulhu Mythos. I wrote five stories in nine months; they were little more than amateurish pastiches of Lovecraft’s tales, but I had courage enough to show some of them to August Derleth, and, had he not considered them promising and encouraged me to carry on, those tales might have remained in the original draft.

Perhaps even more important, he persuaded me to agree that the Arkham country had been saturated as setting for stories in the Mythos, and that a new milieu for a series of tales might well be originated in Great Britain. He felt certain that even H. P. Lovecraft would approve of such a new setting, and of a sequence of stories taking place there. I considered the Severn Valley a likely milieu. As a Roman-occupied area, it might retain influences of the decadent Roman practises; and some years ago, in the Cotswolds, a supposed witch was executed by persons unknown. With cautious enthusiasm, I set about creating my own towns. Some research was, of course, necessary, and the various towns were not conceived as a whole; their details were added to in each story and so the towns came into being.

Among the stories thus far written, there are six towns in the area. They do not correspond to the settlements in the Arkham country, except insofar as they represent a conscious attempt to parallel Lovecraft’s Massachusetts towns; they are primarily my attempt to invent a realistic, detailed background to aid in imparting verisimilitude to my fiction.




Brichester (the Roman 'chester’—castra—with a likely prefix) is the most important of these towns. A large modern city, complete with central office buildings, cinemas, stores, and the like, it yet has its regions of alien influence. It is composed of three sections: Mercy Hill, a raised portion of the town, at the top of which stands a hospital — a one-time prison, while some miles beyond it lies a terribly haunted lake; Central Brichester, an area of offices and large stores; and Lower Brichester, where most trains arrive. In itself, it is a perfectly normal town, and most of the sorcerers living there practise their arts secretly (although there still is a regrettable cult among students at the university), illustrating how underground societies exist in every community.

Camside, on the bank of the river Cam, is a rather unimportant town between Berkeley and Severnford, once visited by a man intent on seeking out the god Byatis, but otherwise undistinguished. Severnford is part dockland, its buildings mostly shabby and dilapidated, including a cinema and several public-houses; beyond it is an island reputedly used as a meeting place for covens. At the center a group of historic buildings is preserved, among them an inn now closed because of vandalism.

The remaining towns of the Severn Valley at Brichester are rather less than normal. Clotton (a corruption of Cloth Town) is inhabited by unusually superstitious people. In 1931 it was invaded by malefic aliens. Once a fairly large settlement, Clotton is today too small to appear on most maps, and is widely supposed to be haunted, and is thus much avoided.

Temphill (Temple Hill — a reference to the town’s being built around a church reported to be other-dimensional) is the only town which is rather completely mapped. It is a small settlement with only one hotel. Most of its buildings are neglected, and its inhabitants seem more interested in old ways, in magic and the outre, than in normal, prosaic life. Temphill is built on a long main road, different portions of which are known under different names — Wood Street, South Street, etc. — ; it crosses a river, and toward the center of town rises to a hill on which is built the famous shunned church.

Finally, there is Goatswood, the town lying furthest into the Cotswolds. Surrounded by woods, this town contains a little-used railway station and a fairly modern town center; but its inhabitants are reputed to be non-human. Goatswood takes its name from the legend that the god Shub-Niggurath is either imprisoned or has at times made his home in a hill near the town.

Like most other writers who have ventured to add to Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, I also invented esoteric volumes to which references could be made. One, The Revelations of Glaaki, was written by members of a cult under the inspiration of the god they worshipped; it was subsequently published in an edition from which many of the more unconventional passages had been cut, now a very rare volume. The other, an untitled and much-banned work by Johannes Pott, was rejected violently by publishers in Jena, circulated in handwritten copies among underground groups, and has never been printed. It contains many repulsive and shocking concepts, among the mildest of which is the theory that all areas of darkness are inhabited by malformed beings.

The reader will notice that I have frequently resorted to cross- references, not only of settings, but also of events. The reader will observe also that I have not directly utilized the beings of the Lovecraft pantheon, I have but referred to them; for I wished to invent my own, or to clarify inexplicit hints left by Lovecraft and other contributors to the Mythos; I wanted, in sum, to add to the Mythos. I hope that readers of this book will find it possible to conclude that in their own modest way these stories reflect the greater wonder and horror of the masterpieces of H. P. Lovecraft.






J. Ramsey Campbell

Liverpool, England

7 January 1964







The Room in the Castle


Is it some lurking remnant of the elder world in each of us that draws us towards the beings which survive from other aeons? Surely there must be such a remnant in me, for there can be no sane or wholesome reason why I should have strayed that day to the old, legend-infected ruin on the hill, nor can any commonplace reason be deduced for my finding the secret underground room there, and still less for my opening of the door of horror which I discovered.

It was on a visit to the British Museum that I first heard of the legend which suggested a reason for the general avoidance of a hill outside Brichester. I had come to the Museum in search of certain volumes preserved there — not books of demonic lore, but extremely scarce tomes dealing with the local history of the Severn valley, as visualised in retrospect by an 18th-century clergyman. A friend who lived in the Camside region near Berkeley had asked me to look up some historical facts for his forthcoming article in the Camside Observer, which I could impart to him when I began my stay with him that weekend, since he was ill and would not be capable of a London visit for some time. I reached the Museum library with no thoughts other than that I would quickly check through the requisite volumes, note down the appropriate quotations and leave in my car for my destination straight from the Museum.

Upon entering the lofty-ceilinged room of carefully tended books, I found from the librarian that the volumes I wished to study were at that moment in use, but should soon be returned, if I cared to wait a short time. To spend this time, I was not interested in referring to any historical book, but instead asked the keeper of the volumes to allow me to glance through the Museum's copy of the almost unobtainable Necronomicon. More than an hour passed in reading it, as best I 'could. Such suggestions concerning what may lie behind the tranquil facade of normality are not easily dismissed from the mind; and I confess that as I read of the alien beings which, according to the author, lurk in dark and shunned places of the world, I found myself accepting what I read as reality. As I pressed deeper into the dark mythos which surrounds those terrors from beyond — bloated Cthulhu, indescribable Shub-Niggurath, vast batrachian Dagon — I might have been sucked into the whirlpool of absolute belief, had my engrossment not been interrupted by the librarian, bearing an armful of yellowed volumes.

I surrendered the copy of the Necronomicon to him, and so great was the lurking terror that had been aroused in me that I watched to be certain that the book of horror had been locked securely away. Then I turned to the historical volumes I had requested, and began to take notes from the passages in which my friend had expressed interest. As was inevitable, I could not help reading a large proportion of useless matter in my quest for connected material; and it was in a section I had considered useless that my eye noted in passing a reference which was in some way reminiscent of the book I had been reading. At first I thought that my concentration on alien cult-practices had metamorphosed a harmless and quaint country legend into something abnormal and disturbing; but on reading further I realised that this was indeed a rather unconventional legend.

'Yet be it not thought,' the Berkeley clergyman had written, 'that Satan does not send Trouble betimes to put Fear in those who lived by God. I have heard that Mr Norton was sorely troubl'd by Cries and horrid Roars from the Woods when he liv'd nearby, and that one Night the Drums were so loud that he could not return to his Farming for a Month from then. But, not to burden my Reader, I will recount the Tale of what a Farmer told me not two Years ago.

'One Night, when I was walking the Road outside Berkeley, Farmer Cooper came upon me out of the Field upon the left Side, much begrimed and filled with Fear at what he had seen. He spoke at first as if his Mind was unsettl'd, as does poor Tom Cooper when he is overcome by his Sickness; but I took him into the Church, and the Presence of God heal'd his Mind. He ask'd if I were willing to hear of the Blasphemous Vision which had come upon him, for he thought that indeed the Divell must have sent a Daemon to turn him from good Christian Ways.

'He swore that he had chas'd a Fox which had troubl'd his Livestock, hoping that he could end its Nuisance; but it had led him such a Dance around the Properties of Farmers King and Cook that he had lost it, and coming near the River he turn'd homeward. Upon coming to the Crossing over Cambrook Stream which he us'd to take homeward, he was dismay'd to find it smash'd in the Middle. While he was making for the Ford near Corn Lane, he saw upon a Hill a Figure of no little Strangeness. It seem'd to Glow with a Light that did not stay one Colour, but did indeed act like a veritable Kaleidoscope which the Children use in their Play. Farmer Cooper did not like it, but he drew near to the Hill and climb'd until he was nigh unto the horrid object. It was of a clear Mineral, the like of which Fanner Cooper has not seen. When I pray'd him to Tell me of its Appearance, he star'd at me strangely and said that so Evill a Monster was not to be talk'd of by Christian Men. When I press'd him that I must be arm'd against such Daemons by full Knowledge, he said that it had but one Eye like the Cyclops, and had Claws like unto a Crab. He said also that it had a Nose like the Elephants that 'tis said can be seen in Africa, and great Serpent-like Growths which hung from its Face like a Beard, in the Fashion of some Sea Monster.

'He calls upon the Redeemer to witness that Satan must have taken his Soul then, for he could not stop touching the Claw of the pestilential Image, though he said angelic Voices bade him draw back. Then a huge Shadow cross'd the Moon, and though he determin'd not to look above he saw the horrid Shape cast upon the Ground. I do not Think he blasphem'd in saying that Heaven would not protect me if I heard the Relation of the Shape of that Shadow, for he says that he felt as if God had forgotten his Welfare when he saw it. That was when he fled the Hill, swimming through the Cambrook Stream to escape; and he says that some Thing pursu'd him part of the Way, for he heard the clatter of great Claws on the Ground behind. But he repeat'd the Prayers as he is Wont to do when he fears some Evill, and the Scuttling soon fad'd away. So he had come upon me as I walk'd on the Berkeley Road.

'I told him to go home and comfort his Wife, and to pray the good Lord would help him against Evills which the Divell might Plan against him to turn him from the Proper Way. That night I pray'd that these terrible Dealings of Satan might soon quit my Parish, and that the Pit might not take the wretch'd Farmer Cooper.'

Reaching the bottom of this page, I immediately continued on the opposite leaf. But I quickly realised that something was amiss, for the next paragraph treated of something entirely different. Noting the page numbers, I discovered that the page between the two was missing, so that any further references to the alien figure on the hill were unobtainable so far as I was concerned. Since nothing could now be done to rectify this — and, after all, I had come to the Museum originally to look up quite different information — I could only return to my original research. However, a few pages on I noticed an irregularity in the edges of the pages, and on turning to that point I discovered the missing leaf. With a strange feeling of jubilation, I fitted it back into place and continued my interrupted reading.

'But this is not the end of the Tale of Farmer Cooper. Two months from then, Farmer Norton came to me sorely troubl'd, saying that the Drums in the Woods beat louder than ever before. I could not Console him further than by saying that he must keep his Doors clos'd, and watch for Signs of the Works of Satan. Then came the Wife of Cooper, saying that her Husband had on a sudden been Took ill, for he leap'd up with a Shriek most horrid to hear, and ran away towards the Woods. I did not like to send Men into the Woods when the Drums beat so fierce, but I call'd a Party of the Farmers to go through the Woods, watching for signs of the Divell, and seek Farmer Cooper. This they did, but soon came back and arous'd me, telling a very curious and horrid Tale of why they could not bring poor Cooper back, and why he was assuredly Took by the Divell.

'Where the Woods grew thickest, they began to hear Drums beating among the Trees, and approached the Sound fearfully, for they knew what the Drums had herald'd before now. When they came upon the Source, they found Fanner Cooper sitting before a huge black Drum, staring as if Mesmeriz'd and beating upon it in a most savage Way, as 'tis said the natives do in Africa. One of the Party, Fanner King, made to speak to Cooper, but look'd behind him and shew'd to the Others what he saw. They swore that behind Cooper was a great Monster, more Horrid even than the toad of Berkeley is relat'd to be, and most Blasphemous in its Shape. It must have been the Monster which serv'd to model the Figure on the Hill, for they say it was somewhat like a Spider, somewhat like a Crab, and somewhat like a Honour in Dreams. Now, seeing the Daemon among the Trees, Farmer King fled, and the Others follow'd him. They had not gone far when they heard a Shriek of great Agony in the voice of Farmer Cooper, and another Sound which was like the Roaring of some great Beast, while the Beating of the black Drum was ceas'd. A few Minutes after then, they heard a Sound of Wings, like the Flapping of a great Bat, which died away in the Distance. They managed to get to Camside Lane, and soon return'd to the Village to tell of the Fate of the wretch'd Cooper.

'Though this was two Years ago, I do not Doubt that the Daemon still lives, and must roam the Woods in wait for the Unwary. Perhaps it still comes into the Village; for all those who went seeking Fanner Cooper have dream'd of the Monster ever after, and one died not long ago, swearing that some Thing peer'd at the Window and drew his Soul from him. What it is, I do not know. I think it is a Daemon sent from Hell by Satan; but Mr Daniel Jenner, who reads many books of the History of the Region, says it must be what the Romans found behind a stone Door in a Camp which was here long before the Invasion. At any rate, Prayers against Satan seem to have little Effect on it, so that it must be some Thing far different from the Monsters which are Wont to trouble good Christian Communities. Perhaps it will die if my Flock keep away from the Woods. But I hear strange Rumours that Sir Gilbert Morley, who came to live near Severn Ford some Years ago, counts himself able to Subdue the Divell by Black Arts, and is said to hope that his Blasphemous Dealings may give him Control of the Monster of the Woods.'

This ended the references to the legendary haunter of the woods, but to me it did not seem likely that this was the only probable legend concerning it. The mention at the last of the attempts of some 18th-century warlock to subdue the being sounded like an indication of some tale of the actual outcome of Morley's experiments, and I could easily spare an hour to search for references for the further myth. Not, of course, that my reading of the Necronomicon had made me credulous about fictitious monsters; but it would be a topic of conversation for when I visited my Camside friend, and perhaps I could even visit the home of Sir Gilbert Morley, if anything remained of the building — and if, indeed, such a person had ever existed.

Determined to make a search for the legend which, I felt sure, would be recounted somewhere, I had the librarian select aU the volumes which might be of interest to me in my quest. The final selection included Wilshire's The Vale Of Berkeley, Hill's Legendry and Customs of tke Severn Valley, and Sangster's Notes on Witchcraft in Monmouthshire, Gloucestershire and the Berkeley Region. My original research forgotten, I began to peruse the books, not without a shudder at certain passages and illustrations.

The Wilshire volume I soon dispensed with. Apart from the usual stories about female apparitions and earthbound monks, the only legends which touched on the supernatural were those of the Witch of Berkeley and the Berkeley Toad. This last, though a hideous one dealing with an inhuman monstrosity which was kept in a dungeon and which fed on human corpses, did not appear to help me in my search. The Hill and Sangster volumes were more productive, however. Various passages, some occupying over one complete page, told of strange things glimpsed by unwary travellers in the Severn region. Still, I could not think that everything reputed to exist in the surrounding countryside could bear on my present quest. Then I chanced upon a passage in Sangster's work which could be nothing but a reference to the case with which I was concerned. It began by describing almost exactly the occurrences of which I had already read, and continued in the following manner:

'What this being actually was, whence it originally came, and why no legends concerning it are heard before this point, are questions which the reader will ask. There are vague answers for all. The being was supposedly Byatis, a pre-human being which was worshipped as a deity. It was released, according to the legend, by Roman soldiers, from behind a stone door in a camp of indeterminate origin, built long before the advent of the Romans in Britain. As to why there are no legends antedating that of Farmer Cooper's discovery — it is said that there were indeed legends, but in a form so unrecognizable that they were not connected with the later tales. Apparently the terrifying Berkeley Toad was the same being as the deity Byatis; indeed, though the being has only one eye, it does, when its proboscis is retracted occasionally, resemble the general shape of the toad. How it was imprisoned in the Berkeley dungeon, and how it eventually escaped, is not told in the legend. It had some hypnotic power, so that it may have hypnotised someone to open the cell door, though it is likely that this power was used only to render its victims helpless.

'After its encounter with the farmer, it had finally been called from its place in the woods by one Sir Gilbert Morley, who owned a Norman castle, long uninhabited, outside Severnford. The said Morley had been shunned for quite a time by all those living nearby. There was no specific reason why; but he was reputed to have made a pact with Satan, and people did not like the way bats seemed to cluster at the window of one particular tower room, nor the strange shapes which formed in the mist which often settled into the valley.

'At any rate, Morley had stirred the horror in the woods out of its festering sleep, and imprisoned it in a cellar room in his great mansion off the Berkeley Road, no trace of which remains nowadays. As long as it was under his power, he could tap its inherent cosmic vitality and communicate with the sendings of Cthulhu, Glaaki, Daoloth and Shub-Niggurath.

'He was supposed to lure travellers to his homestead, where he would manage to bring them near the cellar and lock them inside; when no victims were forthcoming he would send the thing out to feed. Once or twice late homecomers would be struck speechless with terror by the spectacle of Morley in flight, with a frightful winged thing flying ahead of him. Before long he was forced to remove it and imprison it in a hidden underground room at the castle; forced to do this because, according to the legend, it had grown too vast for the cellar room, growing out of all proportion to the food it ate. Here it remained in the daytime, while after dark he would open the secret door and let it free to feast. It returned before dawn, and he would also return and re-imprison it. If the door were closed, the creature would not be free to roam, by virtue of some seal on the door. One day, after Morley had closed the door on the horror inside (his closing the door was apparent, since searchers found no trace of an open door) he disappeared and did not return. The castle, now unattended, is slowly decaying, but the secret portal has apparently remained intact. According to the legend, Byatis yet lurks in the hidden room, ready to wake and be released if someone should open the hidden lock.'

This I read in the Sangster volume. Before proceeding any further, I had the librarian search for data on the being Byatis in the various books in the locked bookcase. Finally he brought forth the following, which he discovered in Prinn's De Vermis Mysteriis:

'Byatis, the serpent-bearded, the god of forgetfulness, came with the Great Old Ones from the stars, called by obeisances made to his image, which was brought by the Deep Ones to Earth. He may be called by the touching of his image by a living being. His gaze brings darkness on the mind; and it is told that those who look upon his eye will be forced to walk to his clutches. He feasts upon those who stray to him, and from those upon whom he feasts he draws a part of their vitality, and so grows vaster.'

So I read in Ludvig Prinn's volume of horrifying blasphemies, and I was not slow in shutting it and returning it to the librarian when I was sure that nothing more on Byatis could be found in the book. This was also the last reference to this terrifying enigma that I could discover in any volume I had selected, and I handed them back to the custodian. I happened to look at the clock at that moment, and saw that I had spent far more time in my researches than intended. Returning to the original volume by the Berkeley clergyman, I quickly noted down the points named by my friend which I had not already copied, and then left the Museum.

It was about noon, and I intended to drive from the Museum straight to Camside, covering as much distance as possible during daylight. Dropping my notebook in the dashboard pocket, I started the engine and moved out into the traffic. Less vehicles were driving in the direction I took than in the opposite direction, but some time passed before I found myself on the outskirts of London. After that, I drove without giving much thought to the landscape flashing past the windscreen, nor did I particularly notice the approach of darkness, until I realised, upon leaving a roadside cafe where I had drawn up for a meal, that night had fallen. The landscape following my stop at the cafe became merely a view of two discs of yellow hurrying along the road ahead or sliding across the hedge at each bend. But as I neared Berkeley I began to be haunted by thoughts of the unholy practices which had been carried out in this region in olden times. As I passed through Berkeley, I remembered the horrible stories which were told about the town — about the leprous, bloated toad-monster which had been kept in a dungeon, and about the Witch of Berkeley, off whose coffin the chains had inexplicably fallen before the corpse stepped forth. Of course, they were merely superstitious fancies, and I was not really troubled by them, even though the books I had read that afternoon had mentioned them with such credulity; but the glimpses which the headlights now gave of the surroundings, of unlit black houses and moistly peeling walls, were not reassuring.

When I finally drew into the driveway of my friend's house, he was there to guide me in with a flashlight, my headlamps having given out between Camside and Brichester. He ushered me into the house, remarking that I must have had a difficult journey towards the last along the lanes without lights, while I could only agree with him. It was quite late — later than I had intended to arrive, but the unallowed-for research at'the Museum had taken some time — and, after a light meal and a conversation over it, I went to my room to sleep off the effects of the somewhat hectic day.

The next morning I took from my car the notebook containing the information I had acquired at the Museum, and this reminded me of my intention to visit the ruin of Morley's castle. My friend, though able to move about the house, was not fit to leave it for long periods; and since he would be working on his forthcoming article that afternoon, I would have a chance to seek out the castle. After I had given him the notebook, I mentioned casually that I intended to take a stroll through the nearby countryside after dinner, and asked him whether he could suggest any localities that might interest me.

'You might drive down to Berkeley and take a walk round there,' he advised. 'Plenty of survivals from earlier times there — only I wouldn't stay too long, because of the mists. We'll probably have one tonight, and they're really bad — I certainly wouldn't want to drive in a mist like we get.'

'I had thought,' I said tentatively, 'of going along to Severnford to try and find this castle where a warlock's familiar was supposed to have been sealed up. I wonder if you know where it is? It was owned by someone named Morley — Sir Gilbert Morby, who was apparently in league with the devil, or something of the sort.'

He seemed rather shocked, and looked strangely disturbed by my mentioning the place. 'Listen, Parry,' he said, 'I think I may have heard of this Morley — there's a horrible tale which connects him with the disappearance of new-born babies around here in the 1700s — but I'd rather not say anything more about him. When you've lived down here a bit, and seen them all locking their doors on certain nights and putting signs in the earth beneath the windows because the devil's supposed to walk on those nights — and when you've heard things flying over the houses when everyone's locked in, and there's nothing there — then you won't be interested in tracking down things like that. We've got a home help who believes in such things, and she always makes the signs for our house — so I suppose that's why it always flies over. But I wouldn't go searching out places that have been polluted by witchcraft, even protected as I may be.'

'Good God, Scott,' I rebuked — laughing, but rather disturbed by the way he had changed since coming to live in the country, 'surely you don't believe that these star signs they make around here can have any effect, for good or for evil? Well, if you're so set on preserving my neck, I'll just have to ask one of the villagers — I don't suppose they'll have such a misplaced protective instinct as you seem to have.'

Scott remained unconvinced. 'You know I used to be as sceptical as you are now,' he reminded me. 'Can't you realise that it must have been something drastic that changed my outlook? For God's sake believe me — don't go looking for something to convince you!'

'I repeat,' I said, annoyed that my intended pleasant afternoon should provoke an argument, 'I'll just have to ask one of the villagers.'

'All right, all right,' Scott interrupted, irritated. "There is a castle on the outskirts of Severn ford, supposed to have belonged to Morley, where he kept some sort of monster. Apparently he left it locked away one day and never returned to let it out again — got carried off by an elemental he called up, I believe. It's still waiting, so they say, for some imbecile to come along looking for trouble and let it out again.'

Not missing the last remark's significance, I asked, 'How do I get to the castle from Severnford?'

'Oh, look, Parry, isn't that enough?' he said, frowning. 'You know the legend of the castle's true, so why go any further?'

'I know the story that the castle exists is true,' I pointed out, 'but I don't know if the underground room exists. Still, I suppose the people at Severnford would know…'

'If you have to go and sell yourself to the devil,' Scott finally said, 'the castle is on the other side of Severnford from the river, on a rise — a small hill, I suppose you'd call it — not far from Cotton Row. But look, Parry, I don't know why you're going to this place at all. You may not believe in this thing, but the villagers wouldn't go near that castle, and neither would I. That being is supposed to have some unbelievable attributes — if you just glance at its eye, you have to offer yourself to it — not that I believe all this literally, but I'm sure there's something in the castle that haunts it horribly.'

It was quite obvious that he sincerely believed all he was saying, which only strengthened my resolve to visit the castle and make a thorough search. After the end of our argument, the conversation became somewhat strained, and before dinner was served we were both reading books. As soon as I had finished dinner, I collected a flashlight from my room, and, after making other preparations for the journey, drove off in the direction of Severnford.

After a short drive along the A38 and the Berkeley Road, I found that I would have to pass through Severnford itself and double back if the car were to be parked near the castle. As I was driving through Severnford I noticed, over the church porch, a stone carving depicting an angel holding a large star-shaped object in front of a cowering toad-like gargoyle. Curious, I braked the car and walked along the moss-covered path between two blackened pillars to speak to the vicar. He was pleased to see a stranger in his church, but became wary when I told him why I had approached him.

'Could you tell me,' I asked, 'the meaning of that peculiar group of carvings over your porch — the one depicting the toad-monster and the angel?'

He seemed slightly worried by my question. 'Obviously the triumph of good over evil,' he suggested.

'But why is the angel holding a star? Surely a cross would be more appropriate.'

The vicar nodded. 'That disturbs me, too,' he confessed, 'because it seems to be a concession to the superstitions round here. They say it was originally not part of the church, but was brought here by one of the early parish priests, who never revealed where he found it. They say that the star is the same one they have to use on All Hallows' Eve, and that the angel isn't an angel at all, but a — being — from some other world. And as for the toad — they say it represents the so-called Berkeley Toad, which is still waiting to be released! I've tried to take the thing off the porch, but they won't have it — threaten not to attend church at all if I remove it! Was there ever a priest in my position?'

I left the church, feeling rather unsettled. I did not like the reference to the carving's not being part of the church, for this would surely mean that the legend was more widespread than I had thought. But, of course, the relief was part of the building, and it was only a distortion of the legend that spoke of its once being separate. I did not look back at the carven scene as the car moved away, nor at the vicar who had left the building and was staring up at the top of the porch.

Turning off Mill Lane, I cruised down Cotton Row. The castle came into view as I turned the corner and left behind me a row of untenanted cottages. It was set on the crest of the hill, three walls still standing, though the roof had long ago collapsed. A lone tower stood like a charred finger against the pale sky, and I momentarily wondered if this were the tower around whose window bats had clustered so long ago. Then the car stopped and I withdrew the key, slammed the door and began to climb the slope.

The grass was covered with droplets of water, and the horizon was very vague from the oncoming mist. The moistness of the ground made progress uphill difficult, but after a few yards a series of stone stairs led to the castle, which I ascended. The stairs were covered with greenish moss, and in scattered places I seemed to detect faint marks, so indistinct that I could not determine their shape, but only have the feeling that there was something vaguely wrong about them. What could have made them, I had no idea; for the absence of life near the castle was extremely noticeable, the only moving object being an occasional bloated bird which flapped up out of the ruins, startled by my entry into the castle.

There was surprisingly little left of the castle. Most of the floor was covered with the debris of the fallen roof, and what could be seen under the fragments of stone gave no indication of the location of any secret room. As a possibility struck me, I climbed the stairway which led into the tower and examined the surface at the bottom of the circular staircase; but the steps were mere slabs of stone. The thought of the tower suggested another idea — perhaps the legend lied when it spoke of the monster's prison as being underground? But the door of the upper tower room swung open easily enough, revealing a narrow, empty chamber. My heart gave an unpleasant lurch when, moving further in to survey the entire room, I saw, in place of a bed under the window, a coffin. With some trepidation, I moved closer and peered into the coffin — and I think I must have given a sigh of relief when I saw that the coffin, whose bottom was spread with earth, was empty. It must have been some bizarre kind of burial vault, even though it was certainly unortho-doxly situated. But I could not help remembering that clouds of bats used to collect at the window of some tower in this castle, and there seemed to be a subconscious connection which I could not quite place.

Leaving the tower room rather quickly, I descended the stairs and examined the ground on all sides of the castle. Nothing but rubble met my gaze, though once I did see an odd sign scratched on a slab of rock. Unless the door to the secret room lay under the remains of the collapsed roof, it presumably did not exist at all; and after ten minutes of dragging the fragments of stone to other positions, the only effects of which were to tear my fingernails and cover me with dust, I realised that there was no way of discovering whether the door did, in fact, lie beneath the debris. At any rate, I could return to the house and point out to Scott that no malevolent entity had dragged me off to its lair; and, as far as I was able, I had proved that there was no evidence of a hidden room at the castle.

I started back down the stone stairs which led to the road, looking out across the gently curving green fields, now fast becoming vague through the approaching mist. Suddenly I tripped and fell down one step. I put my hand on the step above me to help me rise — and almost toppled into a yawning pit. I was tottering on the brink of an open trapdoor, the step forming the door and the stone which I had kicked out of place forming the lock. A stone ladder thrust into the darkness below, leading down to the unseen floor of a room of indeterminate extent.

Drawing out my flashlight, I switched it on. The room now revealed was completely bare, except for a small black cube of some metal at the foot of the ladder. Square in shape, the room measured approximately 20' x 20', the walls being of a dull grey stone, which was covered with pits out of which grew the fronds of pallid ferns. There was absolutely no evidence of any sort of animal life in the room, nor, indeed, that an animal of any kind had ever inhabited it — except, perhaps, for a peculiar odour, like a mixture of the scents of reptiles and decay, which rose chokingly for a minute from the newly-opened aperture.

There appeared to be nothing to interest me in the entire room, barring the small black cube which lay in the centre of the floor. First ensuring that the ladder would bear my weight, I descended it and reached the cube. Kneeling beside it on the pock-marked grey floor, I examined the piece of black metal. When scratched with a penknife it revealed a strange violet lustre which suggested that it was merely covered with a black coating. Inscribed hieroglyphics had been incised upon its upper surface, one of which I recognised from the Necronomicon, where it was given as a protection against demons. Rolling it over, I saw that the underside of the cube was carved with one of those star-shaped symbols which were so prevalent in the village. This cube would make an excellent piece of evidence to show that I actually had visited the supposedly haunted castle. I picked it up, finding it surprisingly heavy — about the weight of a piece of lead the same size — and held it in my hand.

And in doing so, I released the abomination which sent me leaping up the creaking ladder and racing madly down the hill, on to Cotton Row and into my car. Fumbling at the ignition key which I had inserted upside down, I looked back to see an obscene reaching member protruding from the gulf against the fast-misting sky. Finally the key slipped into its socket, and I drove away from the nightmare I had seen with a violence that brought a scream from the gears. The landscape flashed by at a nerve-wrenching pace, each shadow in the dim headlights seeming a hurtling demon, until the car swung into the driveway at Scott's house, barely stopping before smashing into the garage doors.

The front door opened hurriedly at my violent entry. Scott hastened out of the rectangle of light from the hall lamp. By that time I was half-faint from the hideous sight in the pit and the frantic journey after it, so that he had to support me as I reeled into the hallway. Once in the living-room and fortified with a long drink of brandy, I began to recount the events of that afternoon. Before I had reached the terrors of the castle he was leaning forward with a disturbed air, and he uttered a groan of horror when I spoke of the coffin in the tower room. When I described the horrible revelation which had burst upon me in the underground room, his eyes dilated with terror.

'But that's monstrous!' he gasped. 'You mean to say — the legend spoke of Byatis growing with every victim — and it must have taken Morley at the last — but that what you say could be possible—'

'I saw it long enough before I realised what it was to take in all the details,' I told him. 'Now I can only wait until tomorrow, when I can get some explosives and destroy the thing.'

'Parry, you don't mean you're going to the castle again,' he demanded incredulously. 'My God, after all you've seen, surely you must have enough evidence without going back to that place for more!'

'You've only heard about all the horrors I saw,' I reminded him. 'I saw them so that if I don't wipe them out now they're going to haunt me with knowledge that one day that toad-creature may smash out of its prison. I'm not going back there for pleasure this time, but for a real purpose. We know it can't escape yet — but if it's left it might manage to lure victims to it again, and get back its strength. I don't have to look at its eye for what I'm going to do. I know nobody around here would go near — even the cottages nearby are empty — but suppose someone else like me hears of the legend and decides to follow it up? This time the door will be open, you know.'

The next morning I had to drive for some miles before discovering that there was nowhere I could buy explosives. I finally bought several tins of petrol and hoped that the inflammable liquid would destroy the alien monster. Calling in at Scott's house for my luggage — I was returning to London after finishing my task at the castle, for I did not want to be connected when the local police made their inquiries — I was accosted by the home help, who pressed upon me a curiously-figured star-shaped stone, which, she said, would keep off the power of Byatis while I used the petrol. Thanking her, I took my leave of Scott and went out to the car, which I turned out into the roadway. On looking back, I saw both Scott and the woman watching me anxiously from the living-room window.

The petrol cans on the back seat jangled together abominably, unnerving me as I tried to think of my best plan of action at the castle. I drove in the opposite direction on this journey, for I did not want to pass through Severnford; for one thing, I wanted to reach the castle as soon as possible and end the abnormality which scratched at my mind, and, besides, I disliked passing that carving of the toad-horror over the church porch again. The journey was shorter, and I soon was lifting the petrol cans on to the grass at the side of the road.

Lifting the cans near the gaping pit under the lifted stone slab took a great deal of labour and no little time. Placing my cigarette lighter at the edge of the stairway, I prised the caps off the petrol cans. I had taken them around the pit to the next higher step, and now I dipped a piece of plywood from Scott's garage into the petrol in one tin and placed it on the step above. Then, lighting the wood with my cigarette lighter, I hurriedly kicked the tins over the edge of the gulf and dropped the blazing wood in after them.

I think I was only just in time, for as I pushed the open cans into the pit a huge black object rose over the edge, drawing back as the petrol and wood hit it, as a snail retracts its eye organs at a touch of salt. Then came a protracted hissing sound from below, coupled with a terrible bass roaring, which rose in intensity and pitch before changing to a repulsive bubbling. I did not dare to look down into what must be seething in fluid agony at the bottom of the pit, but what rose above the trapdoor was dreadful enough. Thin greenish spirals of gas whirled out of the aperture and collected in a thick cloud about fifty feet above. Perhaps it was merely the effect of some anaesthetic quality of the gas which augmented my imagination, but the cloud seemed to congeal at one point of its ascent into a great swollen toad-like shape, which flapped away on vast bat-wings towards the west.

That was my last sight of the castle and its morbidly distorted surroundings. I did not look back as I descended the stone stairs, nor did I glance away from the road ahead until I had left the glistening of the Severn far above the horizon. Not until the London traffic was pressing around me did I think of the monster as behind me, and even now I cannot stop thinking of what I saw after I lifted the metal cube from the floor of the castle room.

As I had picked up the cube from the floor a strange stirring had begun beneath my feet. Looking down, I saw that the join of floor and wall on one side of the room was ascending the stone, and I managed to clutch a stone rung just before the floor slid away altogether, revealing itself to be a balanced door into a yet vaster room below. Climbing until I was halfway up the hanging ladder, I peered warily into the complete darkness below. No sound came from the blackness, and as yet there was no movement; not until I attempted to get a firmer grip on the ladder and, in so doing, dropped the metal block with a moist thud on something in that blackness, did anything occur.

A slithering sound began below me, mixed with a rubbery suction, and as I watched in paralytic terror a black object slid from underneath the edge of a wall and began to expand upward, slapping itself blindly against the sides of the smaller room. It resembled a gigantic snake more than anything else, but it was eyeless, and had no other facial features. And I was confused by the connections this colossal abnormality could have with Byatis. Was this the haven of some other entity from another sphere, or had Morley called up other demons from beyond forbidden gates?

Then I understood, and gave one shriek of horror-fraught realization as I plunged out of the room of malignancy. I heard the thing dash itself flabbily against its prison walls, but I knew the ghastly reason why it could not escape. I looked back once. The obscene black member was reaching frantically around the edge of the pit, searching for the prey it had sensed in its lair a moment before, and at this I laughed in lunatic glee, for I knew that the thing would search mindlessly until it found that it could reach nothing. 'It had grown too vast for the cellar room,' Sangster had written — but had not mentioned just what growth had taken place with each living sacrifice…

For the snake-like thing that had reached for me, that thing as wide as a human body and impossibly long, had been merely the face-tentacle of the abomination Byatis.




The Horror from the Bridge


I


Clotton, Gloucestershire, is not a name which can be found on any map, and of the inhabitants of the few leaning red-brick houses which remain of the uptown section of the once-prosperous town, there is not one person who can remember anything of that period of horror in the town in 1931. Those in Brichester who heard the rumours that filtered out of the terror-clutched town deliberately refrain from recounting what they learned, and they hope that the monstrous series of events will never become generally known. Nobody, in fact, knows quite why that twenty-foot-high concrete building was erected on the bank of the Ton, the tributary of the Severn which flows near what used to be the riverside section of Clotton. Nor can they tell why a band of men tore down all the buildings which lay anywhere near the river, leaving only that sparse remnant of uptown Clotton. And of the eldritch sign which was clumsily engraved in each wall of the concrete riverside building, Brichester folk do not like to think. If one asks the professors at the University, they will answer vaguely that it is an extremely ancient cabalistic symbol, but one is never told exactly what the symbol is supposed to invoke, or against what it may be intended as a protection. The whole affair, in fact, is a curious conglomeration of hints and avoidances; and perhaps it would never have been known what actually took place in Clotton in 1931, had not a typed document been found in the house of a deceased Brichester recluse. It seems that this recluse had recently been preparing the document for publication, and possibly it may be better that such a document was never published. For, in fact, the document is a description of the horror, by one of those who tore down the riverside buildings; in view of what he recounts, it is understandable that he became reclusive.

The writer, Philip Chesterton, obviously intended his document to be as scholarly a document as possible. His reclusiveness, stemming, for reasons not to be conjectured, from 1931, allowed him a great deal of time to investigate the historical aspects of the affair through his large stock of volumes on the Roman occupation of Britain and following events. Other tomes, indeed, made it possible for him to include a good deal of historical and genealogical data about the people of Clotton, though this does not give more than a composite picture of the small population of the town, and does not add any information for those seeking to learn all factors affecting what erupted at the beginning of that cataclysmic period. Admittedly, however, certain legends and quasi-historical tales about some of the people of Clotton may be taken as hints of the eventual explanation of that problematic flood of 1931, but it is undeniably difficult to assess the true worth of various peculiar tales which Chesterton seems to have believed. The intrinsic value and veracity of several pivotal descriptions in the following transcription, which is a version, in some places severely cut, of the document found in the Brichester house, must therefore be considered carefully by the reader.

In 1800, according to the manuscript, a strange visitor moved into an empty house on Riverside Alley, a little-tenanted street within sight of a bridge over the Ton. The townsfolk could learn little about him, save that his name was James Phipps, and that he had come from Camside because his unorthodox scientific researches were distasteful to the inhabitants. Of course this was when the Reverend Jenner's witch-hunts were at their height, so that these 'researches' may have been taken for witchcraft. People living near the riverside street noticed the anomalous instruments and cases which were carried into the house by two furtive-looking rustics. Phipps seemed to direct operations with singular care, and came near to fury when one of the men almost slipped while carrying something which appeared to be a statue wrapped in thick canvas. The gaunt, pallid-faced man, with his jet-black hair and long bony hands, must have affected the watchers with strange feelings.

After some days had elapsed since his arrival, Phipps began to haunt taverns near the river. It was noticed that he never drank anything, and was once overheard to remark that he was averse to alcohol. It seemed, in fact, that he came there solely to discuss affairs with the less reputable inhabitants of Clotton — in particular, to learn of the prevalent legends of the countryside. In time, of course, he heard of the legend that a demon had once lurked nearby, and showed great interest in the story. The inevitable elaborations reached his ears — the belief of one or two people that a whole race of abominations was entombed somewhere in the vicinity, and the idea that a monstrous underground city could be discovered if one found the entrance which was reputed to lie submerged under the turbulent river waters. Phipps showed unaccountable interest in the further idea that the alien monster or race had been sealed up in some manner and could be released if the prisoning talisman were removed. He apparently held much stock by these curious legends, for he rewarded his informants very highly. To one or two he even suggested that they should send their sons to him for education in the sciences, but those approached were not interested in offers of this sort.

It was in the spring of 1805 that Phipps left his home one night. At least, he must have moved in darkness, for nobody knew of his temporary removal until the silence and lightlessness of the building on Riverside Alley made them aware of it. The strange tenant, it seemed, did not deem it necessary to set any guard upon his house, beyond locking the doors and shuttering the windows; and, indeed, nobody was sufficiently curious to investigate, for the barred house near the river remained silent and untouched.

Some months later, in early November, Phipps returned to take up tenancy again. This time, however, he was not alone, for during his absence he had taken a wife — a woman with a similar corpse-like pallor, who was heard to speak little and walked with a peculiarly stiff gait. What information could be gathered about her was sparse, only revealing that her husband had met her in Temphill, a nearby town in the Cotswolds, where he had journeyed to procure some extremely rare chemicals. They had met at some unnamed gathering, and Phipps showed strange caution in speaking of this mysterious gathering.

Nothing more need be noted about the curious couple in the house bordering the river for some time after this. In late 1806 a son was born in that darkly brooding house, and some consider that this was the actual beginning of a series of events to reach so devastating a climax in 1931. The child, who was named Lionel by his science-seeking father, was born on a day in November, of lashing rain and skies ripped by lightning. The people living near Riverside Alley used to say that a throaty and muffled rumbling had seemed to come from below the ground rather than from the throbbing sky; a few would even insist querulously that the lightning, often striking near the river, had once struck, in the form of a scintillating pillar of energy, directly through the roof of the Phipps homestead, even though no marks of such a phenomenon were afterwards found. The son was, at any rate, born of strange parents, and no such superstitious accounting for his abnormal inclinations in later life need be believed.

It was in 1822, when Lionel Phipps would have been seventeen or eighteen years of age, that his rumoured instruction by his father commenced. Definitely passers-by would see faint gleams of light through the shutters which nearly always now were closed over the windows, and frequently muttered discussions or arguments between father and son were overheard. Once or twice these low-voiced conclaves took on a faintly ritualistic flavour, and those hearing the words would experience a vague sense of unease. A few passersby would become sufficiently interested to peer through a crack in the shutter, upon which they might see the younger Phipps poring over some large and ancient tome, or assisting at some unknown and vaguely sinister-looking apparatus. It seemed obvious that the boy was passing through a period of initiation or instruction in some branch of knowledge, of a definitely outre kind, if one were to judge from reports.

This period, it appears, continued well into the late months of 1823, and at its latter end a change was noted by the neighbours of the antique building on Riverside Alley. For one thing, whereas before only the woman of the household had been seen to leave the house, a series of nocturnal journeys now commenced. These were made by father and son with what seemed an extreme degree of caution, and the usual destination was thought to lie near the river. At one time the two were followed by a puzzled passerby, who returned to report that they had been engaged in some sort of survey of the ancient, moss-grown river bridge. They had even clambered down the banks to balance precariously above the swirling ebon waters, and at one time the father, examining one of the supports by the light of a lantern, let out a cry of what sounded like realization. His son seemed equally surprised when he joined the seeker, and both disappeared under the bridge. The watcher could not view the proceedings without revealing himself, and he made his way home with a turbulent mind.

Then came that particularly anomalous occurrence which may explain a seemingly inexplicable accident which befell a visitor later. The younger Phipps was seen to leave the house following the strange visit to the bridge, and those who took interest in the actions of this family soon discovered that the young man had visited the local general supplier's to purchase pickaxes and spades — for what purpose he would not tell. Those expecting to see the two secretive tenants of the river-bordering lane engaged in some form of excavation were puzzled when no such occupation was noticed.

While no excavation was visible anywhere on the surface, the peculiar evidence of some occupation of the men and the woman was soon evident. The nearby residents began to hear muffled sounds of digging and the noise of metal striking stone from somewhere adjoining the cellar of that much-discussed house in the alley. This series of sounds was not static in its location, for the sounds of excavating metal moved slowly, it seemed, in the direction of the river. These noises continued for some weeks, during which neither of the men was seen at all outside the house, and the woman only seldom. Finally, one night perhaps two months later, a party of men entered the Riverside Alley building, carrying, among other things, doors and frames and an unaccountable amount of material apparently intended for reinforcing the doors. A great noise of working came from below the ground, mostly located near the house and later near the archaic river bridge. After the cessation of the sounds, lights were seen in the room thought to be the laboratory or room where the men carried out their secretive experiments. Next came a reverberation which suggested that the party was returning to the underground region, following which there was a silence lasting some moments, and finally a sound of rushing waters somewhere below the earth. Shouts of amazement and terror were borne to the ears of those listening above, and a few minutes later a sound of something wooden crashing against stone, while an unpleasant reptilian odour rose to the shimmering stars. In an hour or so the party of men departed singly as stealthily as they had come.

Early in 1825, the escape of a criminal from the nearby prison on Mercy Hill led a party of searchers from Brichester to come to Clotton, antedating seekers after something much more hideous by over a century. Despite James Phipps' insistence that no refugee was hidden in his house, one of the group would not be satisfied by this reiteration. He went alone into the forbidding house while the others searched nearby, but when the man had still not joined the main party over an hour later they returned precipitously to Riverside Alley. They discovered him lying by the side of the road outside the house, unconscious and covered with water and slime.

Upon regaining consciousness the searcher recounted a strange tale. According to Chesterton's research, his tale ran:

'When you all left, this man Phipps waited till you were out of sight, and then he showed me in. Upstairs there's only bedrooms, and so bare that I didn't even need to go over the threshold to see that there was nobody hiding. Almost too bare — Phipps seems wealthy enough; where's all his money spent, then? Downstairs there's the usual sort of thing, except facing on the street there's some sort of laboratory. He wouldn't show me in there at first, but I insisted. The place was full of machinery and bookcases, and over in one corner there was a glass tank full of liquid, with a — well, something like a green sponge covered with bubbles — floating in it. I don't know what it was, but looking at it almost made me sick.

'I thought I'd seen all the house, and then I heard footsteps coming up from below. A woman appeared in the kitchen — Phipps' wife — and I went in to ask her where she'd been. He gave her a sort of warning look, but she'd already blurted out that she'd been down in the cellar. Phipps didn't seem to want me to go down, but finally he opened a trapdoor in the kitchen floor and we went down some steps. The cellar's quite large and bare. Tools and panes of glass, and what looked like a row of veiled statues; nowhere you could hide.

'I was just making for the stairs when I noticed a door in the wall to the left. There was a lot of carving on it, and a glass window in the top half, but it was too dark for me to see through the glass; anyway, it looked like a good hiding place. When Phipps saw where I was going he yelled out something about its being dangerous, and started down the steps. At first I didn't see how it opened, because there was no doorknob — then I noticed a brick in the wall just to the right of it which looked loose, and I pushed it in. There was a sort of grating noise, and another I couldn't place at the time, but now I think it was Phipps running back upstairs.

'The rest of what happened I don't understand. The door swung open as I expected when I pushed the brick into position — and then a flood of water poured into the cellar! I don't know what was behind that door — the water threw me backwards too quickly for me to see anything — but for one minute I thought a figure was standing in the open before it floundered into the cellar with the water. I only saw it as a shadow, but it was like something out of a nightmare — towering — neckless — deformed — ugh! It couldn't have been anything like that really, of course. Probably one of those statues I was telling you about. I didn't see it again, and I can't remember anything else till you revived me outside the house. But what sort of man is it who has doors in his house leading to underground rivers?'

No amount of pounding on the door of the-house could elicit a response, and those in the party did not particularly like to enter that building of brooding secrets. They went away intending to return later with a warrant, but somehow this intention was forgotten on their return to Brichester. Their later capture of the escaped criminal restored a kind of sanity, and the peculiar rumours of demon-haunted catacombs were almost forgotten.

II


The death of James Phipps came in 1898, on a day of howling wind, on which the hills in the distance muttered subterraneously in curious rhythms; the people of the country spoke of invisible primal mountain presences which chanted in nighted caverns, even though professors at the university in Brichester told them of the probability of underground rivers. The nightjars which now and then skimmed over the hills cried in peculiarly expectant tones, almost as if they expected to capture the soul of the dying man, as the legends told in that countryside hinted. For a long time through that May afternoon Phipps' voice could be heard, strangely distorted, from a shuttered upper-floor window; at times it seemed to address someone, while at others the voice would wail nonsensical fragments in unknown languages. It was not until after the rise of the miasma-distorted moon that an anguished groan came from the dying man, followed by a united rising of affrighted nightjars, from where they perched lengthwise in the trees and watched the house from across the river with glinting eyes. They flew as if escaping from some pursuing horror, which some believe these psychopomps to have attempted to capture. Close upon this came faintly-heard footsteps upon the stairs in the house, followed by the sound of creaking hinges and muffled splash rumoured to have been heard in the lower regions of that house.

Nothing was ever heard concerning the burial of any remains of James Phipps, although the son said he preferred to dispose of the corpse himself. The Clotton people could understand this, since the corpse of a man who had apparently lived decades over a century, and practised unknown sciences and experiments in secret, might necessarily be hidden from the eyes of the curious. It is very probably fanciful superstition which leads to scattered references to late travellers glimpsing someone very like Phipps in appearance near various hills topped by rings of monolithic stones, long after his death; but these same stone-capped hills often bore a nauseating reptilian odour which is not so easily explicable when linked with ensuing events.

Lionel Phipps and the unnamed Temphill woman were left in sole possession of the house, and evidently a rift began to open at once between them. For some days a light burned at most times behind the shutters of the laboratory, where the son was thought to be studying whatever books he now inherited. This attracted the attention of the owner of the adjoining house, Mary Allen; and as she could easily hear the conversations from next door through the thin wall when she was interested, her discoveries supplied Philip Chesterton with very useful information. Some days after Phipps' death, for instance, Mrs Allen overheard an interesting altercation. She heard only part of it, actually entering her own house just as Lionel Phipps began to shout angrily.

I need the tables for the positions of the orbits, I tell you,' he was shouting. 'He must have copied it down somewhere, but there's nothing about it here. If he left it in the laboratory, it's certainly not in there now — are you sure you haven't..?'

'I haven't seen them,' came the terrified answer. 'You know I wouldn't go near them. Maybe I was in the Temphill gathering, but this sort of thing terrifies me more than what I learned — down there… Why do you have to carry on this meddling? Whoever shut away that from outside must have known what they were doing, so why do you have to be so bent on setting it free?'

'You've taken the chart, haven't you!' threatened Lionel Phipps. 'You've taken it so I can't let them back in!'

'No, no, I haven't,' his mother protested. 'Don't jump to conclusions until you've been through the whole house, at least.'

This temporarily satisfied Phipps, who presumably went to the laboratory, for the lamp in there was lighted again a few minutes later. The search of the house proved unavailing, however, and another furious argument took place. The mother still insisted that she neither knew of the hiding-place of the notes nor did she know the actual information which he sought.

'Well,' Phipps conceded, 'perhaps you don't but anyway it makes no difference now. Before the time comes I'll go down to London and look up the British Museum copy of the Necronomicon; that's bound to have the chart. And don't try to persuade me not to go ahead with Father's work! Of course, you don't have to stay around — it might be better if you went back to your coven in Temphill. Satanism is so much healthier, isn't it?'

'You know I need—' began his listener.

'Oh, of course, I forgot,' admitted Lionel Phipps satirically. 'Well, just don't interfere in my business here — I won't stand for it.'

The expected trip to London and the British Museum came in early 1899, and Lionel Phipps found little difficulty in gaining access to that section of the library which contains the rarer books. The librarian did not like the pallid face and leanness of the visitor, but he unlocked the bookcases containing the restricted volumes readily enough. The seeker speedily realised that the monstrous work of Abdul Alhazred would be useless to him in his quest; while it did contain an astrological table, this was very incomplete and long outdated. The even older tome, the Book of Eibon, appeared to him a possible source, with its records of the knowledge of an elder civilization. The librarian discovered that Phipps was attempting to find the position of some sphere Glyu'uho in an obscure relationship with a system of orbits on a certain autumn night — Glyu'uho, translated from that terrible primal tongue, being Betelgeuse. That little-known table in the complete Book of Eibon which gives positions of suggestive far worlds was quickly found by Phipps, from which he copied down parts of the table. The keeper of the books shuddered as he peered over the visitor's shoulder and translated the names of Aldebaran and the Hyades in Phipps' notations. He disliked, too, the walk of the seeker as he left the echoing room, for it appeared that he had some slight difficulty in using his limbs. The librarian might have shivered more had he known of the forthcoming results of this visit.

The return of Phipps, late in the evening, to the house on Riverside Alley, brought the most serious, and last, quarrel between the two remaining inhabitants of the building. Towards its end both were screaming at each other, and the listening Mrs Allen found their remarks terrifying.

Phipps was yelling something which first brought Mrs Allen to listen closely. 'All right, you try and stop me,' he told his mother, 'and I'll forget to operate next time you need it. You have to keep in my good books, or else you won't last out. You wouldn't even be here on this earth if it wasn't for that meeting in Temphill. You'll tell them about my plans, will you? If the people in this town knew what they found in Temphill in 1805 just after the day they met, you might be disposed of quickly…'

She shrieked back: "The people in this town won't be able to do anything if you go on with your father's work — there'll be other tenants in Clotton. Wasn't the tunnel from the gate to the cellar enough?'

'You know I wouldn't be able to protect myself if I let them though the cellar entrance.' Phipps sounded defensive.

'So just because you're a coward, do you have to let them through the other way?' she inquired. 'Once the sign's removed there'll be no way to keep them in check — they'll just multiply until they let the Old Ones back on the earth. Is that what you want?'

'Why not?' suggested her son. 'We both worship the Old Ones; the river-creatures won't harm me. We'll exist side by side as Their priests, until They return to rule the world.'

'Side by side — you're naïve,' Phipps' mother scoffed. Still, perhaps the juxtaposition of Fomalhaut and the Hyades won't be enough; even you may get tired when you have to wait more than thirty years… I'm not staying to see what happens. I'll go back to Temphill and chance what should have come years ago — perhaps it'll be the best thing.'

At about eleven o'clock that night the front door opened, and the strange woman began to walk down the street. A vaguely terrible picture was presented to the warily watching Mary Allen, as James Phipps' widow made her way with that half-paralytic gait which seemed to be a characteristic of all the Phipps family, between the dark houses under a lich-pale moon. Nothing more was ever heard of her, though a woman was seen walking very slowly, and with some difficulty, along a road some miles away in the direction of Temphill. Daylight showed a strange horror; for a little way further on a woman's skeleton was found, as though it had fallen at the side of the road. Body-snatching seemed the most plausible explanation, and the matter was discussed little. Others to whose ears it came, however, linked it-indefinitely with references to something that 'should have come a century ago.'

After this breach Lionel Phipps began to make an increasing number of journeys to that immemorially-constructed river bridge, and was noticed to go underneath to peer into the water frequently. At night he would step into the street at various hours and examine the sky with an excessive degree of impatience. At such times he appeared to be interested in a portion of the sky where, from directions given, Fomalhaut would have risen. Towards the end of March 1899, his impatience began to ease, and a light would be seen more often in the library. He seemed to be preparing for something extremely important, and those who heard the sounds which emanated from the shuttered laboratory disliked to consider just what he might be awaiting.

Early that Autumn came the night concerning which the Brichester people begin to grow reticent. Fomalhaut now glared like the eye of some spatial lurker above the horizon, and many tales began to be whispered abroad about the increasingly frequent happenings around Gloucestershire and the Severn. The hill rumblings were louder and more coherent, and more than once people forced to take forest routes had sensed vast and invisible presences rushing past them. Monstrous shapes had been glimpsed scuttling through the trees or flapping above the stone circles on the hills, and once a woman had come fleeing into Brichester, shrieking a tale of something which had looked very like a tree but had suddenly changed shape. On a night at the peak of these bizarre occurrences, Phipps made his first experiment.

He was seen leaving the house on an evening of late October, 1899, and seemed to be carrying a long metal bar of some sort. He arrived on the river-bank near the bridge at about midnight, and immediately began to chant in ritual tones. A few minutes later the hill noises redoubled in intensity, and a peculiar sound started up close at hand, near the bridge — a monstrous bass croaking which resounded across the countryside. What appeared to be a minor earthquake followed closely on the beginning of the croaking, shaking the river-bank and causing slight turbulence in the water, though nothing more. Phipps then disappeared under the bridge, and through his continued chanting rang the sound of metal scraping on stone. Upon this sound came a subterranean commotion, with a rising chorus of voiceless croaking and a sound as if of Cyclopean bodies slithering against one another in some charnel pit, with a nauseating rise of that alien reptilian odour. But nothing came into view, even though the scrape of metal against stone continued with greater ferocity. Finally Phipps appeared above the bridge's shadow again, with an expression of resignation on his face. He made his way back to the house in the alley, as that abominable commotion died out behind him, and entered, closing the door stealthily. Almost at once the light filtered out from the shuttered laboratory where, presumably, he was again studying the inherited documents.

Seemingly, Phipps was becoming unsure whether he was using the right chant, for that was what he told the British Museum librarian, Philip Chesterton, this now being the year of 1900. Phipps preferred not to say which incantation he needed, or what he hoped to invoke by its use. He made use of the Necronomicon this time in his search, and Chesterton noted that the seeker appeared interested in those pages which dealt with the commission of beings in tampering with the elements. The reader copied down a passage and continued to another section of the volume. Chesterton, reading over the other's shoulder, noticed that he showed considerable interest in the following passage, and shuddered to think of possible reasons.

'As in the days of the seas' covering all the earth, when Cthulhu walked in power across the world and others flew in the gulfs of space, so in certain places of the earth shall be found a great race which came from Outside and lived in cities and worshipped in dark fanes in the depths. Their cities remain under the land, but rarely do They come up from Their subterranean places. They have been sealed in certain locations by the seal of the Elder Gods, but They may be released by words not known to many. What made its home in water shall be released by water, and when Glyu'uho is rightly placed, the words shall cause a flood to rise and remove at last the seal of those from Glyu'uho.'

Phipps admitted to his listener that he would have a considerable wait before anything could be done towards the release of what he knew to exist, 'But,' he continued, 'it won't be too long before those in Clotton will see shapes striding down their streets in broad daylight that would drive them insane at night! In the old days the shoggoths used to avoid those places where They peered out of the depths at unwary passers-by — what do you think will be the effect on a man who sees Their great heads break the surface — and sees what they use to view him instead of eyes?'

Then he left, possibly conjecturing that he had said too much; and Chesterton was alone, with various speculations. As time went by, he began to investigate the doings of this eldritch being on Riverside Alley; and as a horrible idea began to form concerning the woman from Temphill, he contacted an acquaintance in that town. Legends, he was told, existed of a monstrous coven in the 1800s, which convened in artificial caverns beneath the graveyards. Often vaults would be opened, and newly buried corpses might be dug forth and reanimated by certain horrendous formulae. There were even hints that these living cadavers were taken as wives or husbands by favoured members of the cult, for the children resulting from such charnel betrothals would have primal powers which properly belonged only to alien deities.

So horrified was Chesterton by what he learned and suspected that he apparently decided to do something about it. In 1901 he resigned from his post at the British Museum and moved into a house on Bold Street in Brichester, working as a librarian at Brichester University. He was bent on preventing Lionel Phipps' intentions; and those who visited Chesterton at his home in Brichester, where he lived alone among his vast collection of books, left oddly disturbed by his outré, half-incoherent ramblings. During library hours at the University he showed no signs of any such aberration as manifested itself in his free conversation, beyond a strange nervousness and preoccupation. But in his free time he tended to speak of nameless things in a frightful manner, half-describing hideous things in a way which promised cosmic revelations if the listener would only be patient.

'God help us — what alien powers has Lionel Phipps got, lying dormant in that mad brain? That woman James brought back from the Temphill meeting of which he never spoke — was she merely one of the coven, or something which they raised from the tomb by their awful rites? Lionel was overheard to say that he had to perform operations so that she would last out — maybe he meant that she would decay away if he didn't preserve her ghastly half-life… And now he's got the information he was after, there's no telling what he may do. What lurking terror is he going to release from wherever he knows it is hidden? He said there would be a considerable wait, though — if one knew the right words, one might be able to seal up whatever is lying in wait… Or perhaps Phipps himself could be destroyed — after all, a being which has been born out of such an abnormal union must be prone to arcane influences…'

As might be expected, those who heard his odd ravings did not act upon them. Such things might happen in Temphill or Goatswood, but they could not affect sane Brichester folk, where witchcraft was not, at least, practised openly.

The period of more than thirty years passed; and nothing occurred which could shake the complacency of those who dismissed Chesterton's theories with such assurance. To be sure, the staff at the University often met with terrors which they had never thought could exist, for they were sometimes called by the frantic inhabitants of various localities to quell phenomena which were rising from hiding. 1928 was a particular year of horror, with inexplicable occurrences in many places, both around the Severn and far beyond; and the professors were more inclined to credit the wild tales of beings from another plane of existence which impinged on this universe. But Chesterton was always very reticent in the presence of authority, and he mistakenly thought they would explain any unnatural situation in a supposedly scientific manner. He read astrological tables and arcane books more and more, and shivered when he noticed how closely the stars were approaching certain positions. Perhaps he was even then formulating a plan for the destruction of the legendary threat which Phipps was to release; his narrative is not specific on this point.

Terror, meanwhile, was increasing among the more credulous Clotton inhabitants. They noted the loudness of the hill noises, and were quick to remark the frequent visits of Phipps to the bridge over the sluggish river, and the way the lights flashed far into the night in his laboratory. The importance attached to a seemingly trivial find by a child on Riverside Alley was startling; for all that had been found was a hurried sketch on a scrap of paper. The frantic search for this paper made by Chesterton, when he heard of it, startled the more enlightened men who knew him; though those at Brichester University might have been less inclined to scoff, for they were familiar with things whose existence is not recognised by science.

When Chesterton managed to acquire the paper and compare it with an illustration in the Necronomicon, he found that these depicted the same species of incarnate hideousness, though in markedly different postures. The only plausible explanation for the sketch seemed to be that it had been drawn frantically by an eavesdropper outside the Phipps house, copied from some picture glimpsed through the shutters; at least, that was what Mrs Allen suggested when she gave him the paper. From comparison with the sketch, Chesterton used the other picture to form a composite portrayal of the being, though the details of both pictures were vague. The thing had eight major arm-like appendages protruding from an elliptical body, six of which were tipped with flipper-like protrusions, the other two being tentacular. Four of the web-tipped legs were located at the lower end of the body, and used for walking upright. The other two were near the head, and could be used for walking near the ground. The head joined directly to the body, it was oval and eyeless. In place of eyes, there was an abominable sponge-like circular organ about the centre of the head; over it grew something hideously like a spider's web. Below this was a mouth-like slit which extended at least halfway round the head, bordered at each side by a tentacle-like appendage with a cupped tip, obviously used for carrying food to the mouth. The whole thing was more than a simply alien and horrific monstrosity; it was surrounded by an aura of incredible, aeons-lost evil.

The finding of this only roused the fear of the Clotton people to a more hysterical pitch. And they were quick in their perception of Phipps' growing stealth in his nocturnal ventures — the way he took devious routes in his ever-increasing visits to the river. At the same time, though nobody else was aware of it, Philip Chesterton was noting the approaching conjunction of stars and clusters, said to portend terrific influences. More — he was fighting against the urge to destroy the being in the house on Riverside Alley before the hidden primal race could be released. For Chesterton had pieced together a powerful formula from various pages of Alhazred, and he felt it might both destroy the surviving Phipps and seal the subterranean entities back into their prison. But dared he chance releasing elemental forces, even to prevent such impending hideousness as he suspected? Thinking upon the horribly suggestive illustrations he had acquired, his terror of the powers with which he was to tamper receded.

So it was that on the night of September 2, 1931, two men were attempting to push back the veils which hold the lurking amorphousnesses outside our plane of existence. As nightjars cried expectantly in the hills, and increasing reports of nameless things seen by travellers terrorised the superstitious, the lights burned in the study of Philip Chesterton far into the night, while he drummed on an oddly-carved black drum which he had procured from the University and began to repeat the dreadful formula he had worked out. At the same time, Lionel Phipps was standing on the bridge over the Severn tributary, staring at Fomalhaut where it glared over the horizon and shrieking words which have not been heard on the earth for aeons.

It can only have been a startling coincidence that a party of young men, carrying rifles which they had lent to a rifle range for the day, was walking along the bank of the Ton. Even less believably, they were making for the bridge just as Phipps completed the shocking evocation. At any rate, they saw what happened as the hysterically screaming voice ceased; and they recount things of such horror that one can only be thankful for Chesterton's remote intervention. 'What made its home in water shall be released by water,' Alhazred had said, and the words of the long-dead sorcerer were proved in that chaotic scene.

A bolt of lightning seemed to crash directly on the bridge, and the shattered stonework of a support momentarily revealed a circular seal, carven with an immense star, before the waters rushed to conceal it. Then the flood began, and the watching group had time only to leap back before a torrent of water shattered the banks and thundered repeatedly and with incredible force upon the spot where the carven circle had appeared. There came a shifting sound from under the throbbing waters, and as the three men in the party watching moved backwards, a huge circular disc of stone rumbled through the liquid and smashed against the lower bank. It had been the seal over the legendary entrance to the hidden alien city.

What happened after this transcended in shocking terror everything which had gone before. Chesterton was nearing the completion of his own invocation at this point; otherwise the thing which was found dead on the riverbank could never have been destroyed by the men. It is surprising, indeed, that they could have retained enough sanity to try.

As the waters began to slow their torrential rush, the watching three saw a dark object break the uniformity of the surface. Then a titanic, shadowy thing rose from the water and rushed across the bank with a revolting sucking noise towards the town nearby. The three did not have a great deal of time, however, to concentrate upon that looming figure, for at that moment Phipps turned towards them. In the dim moonlight they saw him sneer dreadfully, and a look of fearful evil started up in his eyes. He began to move towards them, his eyes seeming to stare at each of them; and they noticed him beckoning behind him, after which there came a sound as of something huge splashing out of the river. But they could not see what was behind Phipps.

'So,' sneered that half-human being before them, 'this is the total of the strength which can be mustered by the great Elder Gods!' Apparently he misunderstood the true intentions of the terrified three men. 'What do you know of the Great Old Ones — the ones who seeped down from the stars, of whom those I have released are only servitors? You and your Celaeno Fragments and your puerile star-signs — what can you guess of the realities which those half-veiled revelations hint? You ought to be thankful, you imbeciles, that I'm going to kill you now, before the race below gets back into sway on the earth and lets Those outside back in!' And he moved towards them with the same dreadful look in his eyes.

But it was not upon Phipps that the watchers fixed their eyes in stark terror. For the moonlight, weak as it was, showed them what towered beside him, two feet taller than himself, shambling silently towards them. They saw the shining network of fibres over the one eye-organ, the waving tentacles about the gaping mouth-slash, the shocking alienness of the eight members — and then the two things were upon them.

At that minute, however, in a house in Brichester, Philip Chesterton spoke the last word of his painfully acquired formula. And as the foremost of the men turned his rifle blindly on the two abominations before him, forces must have moved into operation. It can be only this that could account for the bullets actually penetrating the alien amphibian which Phipps had released; for the thing fell backwards and croaked horribly for some seconds before it writhed and lay still. As Phipps saw this, he launched himself at the foremost of the party, who fired again. The change which took place in Lionel Phipps must indeed have been swift, for the man with the rifle, braced against the impact of the leaping figure, was struck by a skeleton, clothed with rags of flesh, which shattered upon contact.

The half hysterical three turned towards the river, where a greater miracle was taking place. Perhaps moved by Chesterton's invocation, the pieces of the shattered seal were recomposing in their original shape and location. It may only have been imagination which caused the men to think they saw a shape thrust back into the concealed entrance; it is at any rate certain that whatever lay below in its aeons-forgotten prison was now once again sealed into that sunken hideaway.

The nightjars were quietening their expectantly vibrating cries, and the turbulence of the waters had almost ceased. Not just yet could the men bring themselves to look at the monstrosity which they had shot, to ascertain that it was dead. Instead, they stared towards nearby Clotton, towards which they had seen a dim shape plunge some time before. The monster from beyond was at last loose on the world.

III


By the time that Philip Chesterton had reached the bank of the river outside Clotton, some time had elapsed, and during it several events had occurred. Chesterton, hastening to view the effects of his interference, had been delayed by the necessity of buying petrol, and also by his uncertainty where the sorcerer might be; though he knew the man would be somewhere near water, it was some time before the bobbing lights and commotion of the crowd of evacuees who had come from the nearby town attracted him to the bridge. There he found more things than he had expected.

The crowd would in any case have congregated near the bridge, no doubt, since the noise of shots and other things would have drawn them; but actually they had been forced to evacuate from Clotton. Built above the normal flood-plain of the Ton, the town had been partially inundated by the abnormally-provoked flood; the section near the river had become a morass of submerged streets and basements. Those so driven from their homes had made for the bridge — the banks of the river were actually higher land than the low-lying downtown quarter of Clotton, and the hills which lay on the other side of the town were precarious at night if one wanted to hurry for help to Brichester. At the bridge, of course, the already frenzied townsfolk met with a scene which only aggravated their hysteria; and this was not alleviated by the tales of several people. Chesterton heard clearly the wails of one woman as he came up. She was telling the bystanders:

I was just goin' up to bed w'en I 'eard these shots an' yells down be the river. I came downstairs an' peeped out o' the front door down the street, but I didn't see anythin'. Anyway, all this runnin' up an' down 'ad woken me up, so I went into the kitchen an' got a sleepin' tablet. Just as I was goin' back through the front room I 'eard this sort o'—well, I don't know; it sounded like someone runnin', but bare feet, an' sort o' wef-soundin'. Looked out o' the winder, but there wasn't anythin'. An' then somethin' went past the winder — big an' black an' shiny, like a fish. But God knows wot 'eight it was! Its 'ead was level with mine, an' the 'winder's seven foot off the ground!'

Nor was this all Chesterton heard recounted when he arrived. He had not yet seen the horribly incomplete remains of Phipps, nor that other object which lay in shadow some distance away, for the crowd was being skilfully directed away from the two monstrosities by a surprisingly sane three men — the same ones who had been partly responsible for their destruction. Now, however, the three, sensing his instinctive authoritative bearing, converged on him and began to recount their terrible experience, supplementing their account by pointing out the remains of Phipps and his dreadful companion. Even though Chesterton had formed a good idea of the appearance of the river creatures, he could not suppress a gasp of revulsion as the being was revealed. The sketch and the Necronomicon illustration had not reproduced everything; they had not shown the transparency-of the half-gelatinous flesh, revealing the mobile organs beneath the skin. Nor had they shown the globular organ above the brain, at whose use Chesterton could only guess shudderingly. And as the mouth fell open when they stirred the body, he saw that the being possessed no teeth, but six rows of powerful tentacles interlaced across the opening of the throat.

Chesterton turned away, nauseated by this concrete symbol of cosmic alienage, to move back and speak to one or two of the affrighted crowd, who had no idea of what lay nearby. He twisted around again as a choking cry of horror came behind him; and, under the fast-sinking moon, he saw one of the three men struggling with the tentacles of the river monster. It stood semi-erect on its four lower legs, and was dragging the man towards the yearning members about the mouth. The globular device in the head was pulsing and passing through shocking metamorphoses, and even in this position, Chesterton noticed that the river had momentarily washed almost to the edge of the crowd, and the water was being levitated into an orifice in the head above the globe.

The distance between the wide-gaping mouth and the victim was momently lessening, while the companions of the man were standing seemingly paralysed with terror. Chesterton snatched a rifle from the hands of one of them, aimed it, and stood temporarily uncertain. Recollecting that the being had only been put out of action by the other bullet because of his own incantation, Chesterton doubted whether another shot would harm it. Then, as he saw that pulsing sphere in the head, a conjecture formed in his mind; and he aimed the weapon at the organ, hesitating, and pulled the trigger.

There was a moist explosion, and the watchers were spattered with a noisome pulp. They saw the being sink to the ground, its legs jerking in spasmodic agony. And then came an occurrence which Chesterton would not write about, saying only that very soon almost no remains of the monstrosity existed.

And, as if they had reacted in delayed fashion to the destruction of the being, the crowd now shrieked in unity of terror. Chesterton saw before he turned that the intended victim was indeed dead, whether from pure terror or from the embrace of the tentacles — for where these had gripped, the man's flesh was exposed. Then he turned to look where the mob was staring, and as they too stared in that direction, his two companions remembered what they had seen heading for the town in those recent lunatic minutes.

The moon had sunk nearly to the horizon, and its pallid rays lit up the roofs of the Clotton houses behind which it hung. The chimneys stood up like black rooftop monoliths, and so did something else on one of the nearer roofs — something which moved. It stumbled on the insecure surface, and, raising its head to the moon, seemed to be staring defiantly at the watchers. Then it leapt down on the opposite side, and was gone.

The action was a signal to the waiting crowd. They had seen enough horrors for one night, and they fled along the riverside path which, dangerous as it was, seemed more secure than any other means of escape. Chesterton watched as the lights faded along the black river, and then a hand touched his arm.

He turned. The two remaining members of the party which had killed Phipps stood there, and one awkwardly said: 'Look, you said you wanted t' destroy them things from the river, an' there's still one left. It was them did for Frank here, an' we think it's our — duty — to get 'em for 'im. We don't know what they are, but they went an' killed Frank, so we're bloody well goin' to try an' kill them. So we thought that if you needed any help with killin' that last one…'

'Well, I told you something of what I know,' Chesterton said, 'but — well, I hope I won't offend you, but — you must understand certain things pretty thoroughly, to unite your wills with mine, and I don't know whether you'd — What sort of work do you do anyway?'

'We're at Poole's Builder's Yard in Brichester,' one told him.

Chesterton was silent for so long that they wondered what had occurred to him. When he looked at them again, there was a new expression in his eyes. 'I suppose I could teach you a little of the Yr-Nhhngr basics — it would need weeks to get you to visualise dimensional projections, but maybe that won't be necessary if I can just give you a copy of the incantation, the correct pronunciation, and give you the lenses for the reversed-angle view of matter if I can make any in time — yes, those plain glass spectacles would do if I put a filter over to progress the colours halfway… But you don't know what the devil I'm running on about. Come on — I'll drive you to my house.'

When they were driving down the A38, Chesterton broke the silence again: 'I'll be frank — it was really because you work at Poole's that I accepted your aid. Not that I wouldn't be glad of help — it's a strain to use those other parts of the brain with only your own vitality to draw on — but there's so much I have to teach you, and only tonight to do it in; there wouldn't even be tonight, but it's crazy to attack while it's dark. No, I think I can use you more in another way, though perhaps you can help with the chant. So long as I still have the reproduction of that seal in the river… and so long as you can get used to artificial reversal of matter — I always do it without artificial help, because then it doesn't seem so odd.'

And as he drew up the car in the driveway off Bold Street, he called back: 'Pray it stays near water to accustom itself to surface conditions. If it doesn't — they're parthenogenetic, all of them, and pretty soon there'll be a new race to clear off the earth. Humanity will just cease to exist.'

IV


The next day was one of sickly-glowing sunlight and impending winds. Chesterton had copied out the formula in triplicate and given a copy to each of the men, retaining one for himself. Now, in mid-morning, the librarian and one of his helpers were going through the streets of Clotton, gradually approaching the riverside section. On the bank waited the third of the party, like his friend wearing the strange glasses which Chesterton had prepared the night before; his was the crucial part of the plan. The riverbank was otherwise bare — the human corpse and the others having been disposed of.

Chesterton concentrated on his formula, awaiting the finding of what he knew lurked somewhere among the deserted red-brick houses. Strangely, he felt little fear at the knowledge that the amphibian terror lurked nearby, as though he were an instrument of greater, more elemental forces. At the conclusion of the affair, upon comparing impressions, he found that his two companions had been affected by very similar feelings; further, he discovered that all three had shared a vision — a strange mental apparition of a luminous star-shaped object, eternally rising from an abyss where living darkness crawled.

Abruptly a gigantic shape flopped out of a side street, giving forth a deafening, half-intelligent croaking at the sight of the two men. It began to retrace its journey as Chesterton's accomplice started to chant the incantation; but Chesterton was already waiting some yards down the side street, and was commencing the formula himself. It gave a gibbering ululation and fled in the direction of the river, where the two followed it, never ceasing their chant. They were slowly driving it towards the riverbank — and what waited there.

That chase must have resembled a nightmare — the slippery cobbles of the watersoaked street flashing beneath their feet, the antique buildings reeling and toppling on either side, and the flopping colossus always fleeing before them. And so the infamous building on Riverside Alley was passed, and the nightmarish procession burst out on the bank of the river.

The third member of the party had been staring fixedly at the point at which they emerged, and so saw them immediately. He let in the clutch of the lorry in whose cab he sat, and watched in the rearview mirror while the two manoeuvred the thing into the right position. Perhaps it sensed their purpose; at any rate, there was a hideous period when the being made rushes in every direction. But finally the man in the truck saw that it was in the correct position. They could not aim for the head-organ of the being, for the flesh of the head was strangely opaque, as if the opacity could be controlled at will; but a bullet in the body paralysed it, as Chesterton had deduced it would. Then the lorry-driver moved a control in the cab, and the crucial act was performed.

Upon the paralysed body of the river-creature poured a stream of fast-hardening concrete. There was a slight convulsive movement below the surface, suppressed as Chesterton recommenced the incantation. Then he snatched an iron bar which had been thoughtfully provided, and as quickly as possible carved a replica of that all-imprisoning seal below the bridge upon the semi-solid concrete surface.

Afterwards, Chesterton put forward enough money to have the building firm erect a twenty-foot tower over the spot, carved with replicas of the seal on each side — one never knew what agencies might later attempt to resurrect what they had buried. When the Clotton inhabitants began to trickle back, a chance remark by one of the two builders that more than one being could have escaped caused them to tear down the buildings in the riverside quarter, with Chesterton's approval and aid. They found nothing living, although Phipps' homestead yielded enough objects to drive one of the searchers insane and turn many of the others into hopeless drunkards. It was not so much the laboratory, for the objects in there were largely meaningless to most of the seekers — although there was a large and detailed photograph on the wall, presumably the original of that sketch Chesterton had acquired. But the cellar was much worse. The noises which came from beyond that door in the cellar wall were bad enough, and so were the things which could be seen through the reinforced-glass partition in it; some of the men were extremely disturbed by the steps beyond it, going down into pitch-black waters of terrifying depth. But the man who went mad always swore that a huge black head rose out of the ebon water just at the limit of vision, and was followed by a blackly shining tentacle which beckoned him down to unimaginable sights.

As time passed, the remaining section of Clotton was repopulated, and those who know anything about the period of terror nowadays tend to treat it as an unpleasant occurrence in the past, better not discussed.

Perhaps it ought not to be so treated. Not so long ago two men were fishing in the Ton for salmon, when they came upon something half-submerged in the water. They dragged it out, and almost immediately afterwards poured kerosene on it and set fire to it. One of them soon after became sufficiently drunk to speak of what they found; but those who heard him have never referred to what they heard.

There is more concrete evidence to support this theory. I myself was in Clotton not so long ago, and discovered a pit on a patch of waste ground on what used to be Canning Road, near the river. It must have been overlooked by the searchers, for surely they would have spoken of the roughly-cut steps, each carrying a carven five-pointed sign, which led down into abysmal darkness. God knows how far down they go; I clambered down a little way, but was stopped by a sound which echoed down there in the blackness. It must have been made by water — and I did not want to be trapped by water; but just then it seemed to resemble inhuman voices croaking far away in chorus, like frogs worshipping some swamp-buried monster.

So it is that Clotton people should be wary still near the river and the enigmatic tower, and watch for anything which may crawl out of that opening into some subterranean land of star-born abominations. Otherwise — who knows how soon the earth may return through forgotten cycles to a time when cities were built on the surface by things other than man, and horrors from beyond space walked unrestrained?




The Insects from Shaggai


I: The Place Of The Cone


Perhaps it would be better if I enjoyed myself as best as possible in the next few hours, but somehow I feel bound to write down some explanation for my friends, even if they will not believe it. After all, I am not really depressed — it is only because I must not be alive after sunset that I will slit my wrists then. Already, certainly, my reader will feel incredulity, but it is quite true that my continued existence might be a danger to the whole human race. But no more — I will tell my story from the beginning.

When drinking I tend to be boastful and intolerant, so that when I stayed in the hotel in the middle of Brichester I resolved to keep a check on myself; to stay away from the bar, if possible. But one of the residents — a middle-aged teacher who read extensively — had heard of Ronald Shea, and quite liked some of my fantasy stories. So it was that he led me into the bar, with promises that he would tell me all the Severn Valley legends which might form plots for future stories. The first few tales served to get me slightly intoxicated, and then he suddenly started on one which did not sound like the usual witch-story. By the end I was forced to admit that it was at least original.

'In the woods towards Goatswood,' my informant began, 'the trees get very thick towards the centre. Of course not too many people go down there — there are too many stories about Goatswood itself to attract outsiders — but there's a clearing in the middle of the forest. It's supposed to have been cleared by the Romans for a temple to some god of theirs, I think the Magna Mater, but I wouldn't know about that. Anyway, sometime in the 1600s what must have been a meteor fell in the clearing one night. There were quite a few peculiar happenings earlier that night — arcs of light across the sky, and the moon turned red, according to books I've seen. The fall of this meteorite was heard for miles around, but nobody went to investigate; there were attempts to get together a search-party in Brichester and Camside, but that petered out.

'Not long after, people began to go there — but not normal people. The local coven made it their meeting-place; on ritual nights they'd consummate the Black Mass there and make blood sacrifices, and before long the country people began to say that the witches didn't even worship Satan any more; they worshipped the meteorite. Of course, the local clergymen said the thing was probably sent from Hell anyway. Nobody could really say they'd seen these rites in the clearing, but a lot of them still said that something came out of the meteor in answer to the witches' prayers.

'Then someone went down to the clearing, long after Matthew Hopkins had found the coven and had them executed. It was a young man who visited the clearing in daylight on a bet. He didn't come back before dark, and the others began to get worried. He didn't return until after daylight the next morning, and by that time he was completely incoherent — ran screaming into Brichester, and they couldn't get anything out of him.'

'That's where it ends, I suppose,' I interrupted. 'Somebody sees a nameless horror and can never tell anyone what he saw.'

'You're wrong there, Mr Shea,' contradicted the teacher. 'This man gradually calmed down, though for a few days he was so quiet that they were afraid he'd been struck dumb. Finally he did calm down enough to answer questions, but a lot was left unexplained. Of course, as you say…

'Apparently he'd been ploughing through the thickest part of the forest when he heard something following him down the path. Very heavy footsteps, he said — with a sort of metallic sound about them. Well, he turned round, but there was a bend in the path that blocked his view. However, the sun was shining down the path, and it cast a shadow of something which must have been just beyond the turning. Nobody knows exactly what it was; the man only said that while it was almost as tall as a tree, it was no tree — and it was moving towards him. I suppose he would have seen it in a moment, but he didn't wait for that. He ran the other way down the path. He must have run for quite some time, I think, because he ended up in the haunted clearing. Quite the last place he'd have chosen.

'This is the part that rather interests me. The sun was near to setting, and maybe that gave an added luridness to the scene. Anyway, in this glade in the forest he saw a metal cone standing in the centre. It was made of grey mineral that didn't reflect, and was more than thirty feet high. There was a kind of circular trapdoor on one side, but on the other side were carved reliefs. Presumably he was frightened to go near it, but finally he approached it. Over at one side of the space, there was a long stone with a rectangular hollow scooped out of the top. It was surrounded by human footprints — and there was dried blood in the hollow.

'Another hiatus, I'm afraid. He never would describe those carvings on the cone, except to say that some represented the thing he had almost seen on the path, and others were of — other things. He didn't look at them long, anyway, but went round the other side to look at the trapdoor. It didn't seem to have any lock or way of opening, and he was studying it. Then a shadow fell across him. He looked up.

'It was only the sun finally setting, but it did attract his attention away from the trapdoor. When he looked back, it was hanging open. And while he watched, he heard a throbbing noise somewhere above him, in the tip of the cone. He said he thought there was a sort of dry rustling inside, getting closer. Then he saw a shape crawling out of the darkness inside the trapdoor. That's about it.'

'What do you mean — that's all there is?' I said incredulously.

'More or less, yes,' the teacher agreed. 'The man became very incoherent after that. All I can learn is that he said it told him about its life and what it wanted. The legend hints something more, actually — speaks of his being dragged off the earth into other universes, but I wouldn't know about that. He's supposed to have learned the history of these beings in the cone, and some of what's passed down in the legend is remarkably unusual. At sunrise the Daytime Guardians — that's what they're called in the story — come out, either to warn people away from the clearing or to drive them in there, I don't know which. These were that species of thing that cast the shadow he saw on the path. On the other hand, after dark the others come out of the cone. There was a lot more told him, but the whole thing's very vague.'

'Yes, it is vague, isn't it?' I agreed meaningfully. 'Too vague — horrors that are too horrible for description, eh? More likely whoever thought this up didn't have enough imagination to describe them when the time came. No, I'm sorry, I won't be able to use it — I'd have to fill in far too much if I did. The thing isn't even based on fact, obviously; it must be the invention of one of the locals. You can see the inconsistencies — if everybody was so scared of this clearing, why did this man suddenly stand up and go into it? Besides, why's the thing so explicit until it reaches any concrete horror?'

'Well, Mr Shea,' remarked my informant, 'don't criticise it to me. Tell Sam, there — he's one of the locals who knows about these things; in fact, he told me the legend.' He indicated an old rustic drinking a pint of beer at the bar, who I had noticed watching us all through the conversation. He now rose from the stool and sat at our table.

'Ah, zur,' remonstrated our new companion, 'you don't want t' sneer at stories as is tole roun' here. 'Im as you was 'earin' about laughed at wot they said t' him. 'E didn't believe in ghosts nor devils, but that was before 'e went t' the woods… An' I can't tell yer more about wot 'e got from the thing int' cone 'cos them as knew kep' quiet about it.'

"That's not the only one about the clearing in the woods,' interposed the teacher. 'This witch-cult which held their meetings there had their reasons. I've heard they got some definite benefit from their visits — some sort of ecstatic pleasure, like that one gets from taking drugs. It had something to do with what happened to the man when he went in — you know, when he seemed to enter another universe? — but beyond that, I can't tell you anything.

'There are other tales, but they're still more vague. One traveller who strayed down there one moonlit night saw what looked like a flock of birds rising out of the glade — but he got a second look, and even though these things were the size of large birds, they were something quite different. Then quite a few people have seen lights moving between the trees and heard a kind of pulsation in the distance. And once they found someone dead on a path through the woods. He was an old man, so it wasn't too surprising that he'd died of heart failure. But it was the way he looked that was peculiar. He was staring in absolute horror at something down the path. Something had crossed the path just ahead of the corpse, and whatever it was, it must have been enough to stop a man's heart. It had broken off branches more than fifteen feet from the ground in passing.'

We had all been talking so long that I did not realise how much I had drunk. It was certainly with alcoholic courage that I stood up as my two companions stared in amazement. At the door to the staircase I turned, and unthinkingly declared: 'I've got some days to spare here, and I don't intend to see you all terrified by these silly superstitions. I'm going into the woods tomorrow afternoon, and when I find this rock formation you're all so scared of, I'll chip a bit off and bring it back so it can be exhibited on the bar!'

The next morning brought cloudless skies, and up to midday I was glad that the weather could not be construed an ill omen by the innkeeper or similar persons. But around two o'clock in the afternoon mist began to settle over the district; and by two-thirty the sun had taken on the appearance of a suspended globe of heated metal. I was to leave at three o'clock, for otherwise I would not reach the clearing before dark. I could not back out of my outlined purpose without appearing foolish to those who had heard my boasting; they would certainly think that any argument that the mist would make my progress dangerous was merely an excuse. So I decided to journey a little distance into the forest, then return with the tale that I had been unable to find the clearing.

When I reached the wood after driving as fast as was safe in my sports car, the sun had become merely a lurid circular glow in the amorphously drifting mist. The moistly peeling trees stretched in vague colonnades into the distance on both sides of a rutted road. However, the teacher had directed me explicitly, and without too much hesitation I entered the forest between two dripping trees.

II: The Thing In The Mist


There was a path between the tortuous arches, though it was not well defined. Before long the oppressive atmosphere of the tunnel, distorted through the walls of mist, combined with the unfamiliar sounds which occasionally filtered into the ringing silence to produce a disturbing feeling of awed expectancy. What I expected, I could not have said; but my mind was full of hints of some impending occurrence of terrible significance. My eyes were strained by my efforts to pierce the drab wall before me.

It was not long before this persistent conviction became unbearable, and I told myself this was the time to return to the inn with my prepared excuse — before darkness. The path had had no others meeting it, so that I could easily retrace my journey, even through the mist. That was when I turned to go back down the path, and stopped in indecision.

I had almost collided, I thought, with a metallically grey tree. Small in comparison with the average in the forest, this tree was about sixteen feet high with very thick cylindrical branches. Then I noticed that the trunk divided into two cylinders near the ground, and the lower ends of these cylinders further divided into six flat circular extensions. This might merely have been a natural distortion, and such an explanation might also have accounted for the strange arrangement of the branches in a regular circle at the apex of the trunk; but I could not reach for a natural explanation when those branches nearest me suddenly extended clutchingly in my direction, and from the top of what I had taken for a trunk rose a featureless oval, leaning towards me to show an orifice gaping at the top.

The mist eddied around me as I ran blindly down the path, which slid from under my feet and twisted away at unpredictable places. I visualised that giant being clumping in pursuit through the forest, its tentacles waving in anticipation, the mouth in the top of that featureless head opening hungrily. The silence of the forest unnerved me; perhaps the monstrosity was not pursuing me, in which case there must be some yet worse fate ahead. How many of the things might inhabit the forest? Whatever they were, surely they could be no acknowledged species. How could I see if they were waiting in silent ambush? The mist would effectively camouflage them, for a pillarlike blur might merely be another tree.

Despair followed upon my terrified imaginings, and finally I fell against a grey oak and awaited whatever terror might come for me. The exhaustion resulting from my frenzied flight dulled the edge of fear, and quite soon I ceased to glare in horror at every sound among the trees. My muscles ached from that mad chase, and muscular weariness soon combined with the tiredness I suddenly felt to produce a troubled sleep. I was soon awakened by a dream that a forest such as that surrounding me had changed to an army of oval-skulled titans; but the sleep had lasted long enough to refresh me.

I did not feel thankful for the rest, however. The mist had almost lifted; and because of this I could see that the sun was near to setting. I had to leave the forest quickly; sleep had not erased the memory of what I had recently seen, and my mind might not take the strain of being alone at night near such prowling lunacies. But I quickly realised that I no longer knew the way out of this maze of terror, even though the surroundings were easily visible. If I went in the wrong direction, I would not know this until dark, when all the lurking haunters of the forest might close in on me.

However, it was even more obvious that, since no amount of concentration would show me the route, I must waste no more time in futile debate, but go in one direction, praying that it would lead me out of the nightmare into which I had plunged. A vague intuition suggested that the path to the left was my original route, and I hastily began to walk down it, attempting to silence faint premonitions. There was no recognizable landmark anywhere near the route, although once or twice I thought a distorted oak was familiarly shaped; but, considering that the inward journey had been merely a terrified flight, it was not surprising that I remembered nothing. Occasionally despair overtook me, and I was sure that the faceless colossi of the wood never would let me escape; but I shunned such ideas where possible.

Soon my hopes began to rise. Surely the trees were beginning to thin out, and vegetation to become less abundant; as though I were approaching the edge of the forest? It would not be any too soon, either — for, from the position of the sun, night could not be more than a quarter of an hour away. And was that not my car that I saw in the distance among the trees? Certainly something gleamed with a flash of dull metal just where the path seemed to end, though as yet I could not make out any details. I hurried towards the furtive gleam on the road — and reached the clearing I had taken for a road.

The thirty-foot-high metal cone which towered in the clearing reflected the light only because it was covered with moisture, for it was constructed of a dull mineral, pitted and scarred from unimaginable stresses. As yet I could not see the carven side of the cone, and that facing me was bare except for a circular protrusion, surely the trapdoor of the legend. But though those unholy carvings were not then visible, what I could see in the shunned clearing was disturbing enough. There was a roughly rectangular stone at the opposite side, the top surface of which was hollowed out and darkly stained — and the stains appeared fresher than could be healthily explained, although I did not approach to verify the dreadful idea which occurred to me. No marks of feet, nor of anything else, appeared in the muddy earth; what manner of unnatural prints I had expected I do not know, but their absence did not reassure me. I knew that some species of being lurked here in the haunted clearing — and what being made no mark in passing?

Though my fear had been great when I came upon the hidden place in the forest, my curiosity combined with a certain fatalism to impel me to examine the cone. After all, it would soon be night, long before I found my way to the edge of the wood — it was useless to flee the beings of the forest when they would be awaiting my attempted escape. In the few minutes which remained to me, I determined to see what was carved on the opposite side of the cone; and so I circled the object, noting a faint dry rustling sound which came from somewhere in the clearing.

Immediately I saw the images on the pitted grey expanse, I regretted my wish to view them. I can describe them, and the actions they were shown performing — from which I drew conclusions which were verified dreadfully soon after. But none of these descriptions can convey the sheer abnormality and alienness of those depictions, for the human mind cannot imagine the cosmically unnatural until concrete evidence has been shown undeniably to it.

There were five distinct races of entities pictured in the reliefs. A species of insect appeared most often — an insect with certain alien characteristics marking it as not of this planet. Often these beings would be manipulating peculiar cylindrical appliances, which seemed to project a thin ray disintegrating whatever lay in its path. Another instrument, a box-shaped crystal emitting a scintillating petal-shaped field, was used to subdue the counterparts of that oval-headed faceless being, which apparently were a race of enslaved workers used to perform tasks requiring strength for the relatively weak insect species.

Those were not the only creatures depicted on the surface of the cone — but what use is it to describe them at this point? It was very soon after that I saw such beings in their natural surroundings, and such an experience was infinitely worse than seeing a mere representation of nightmare. It is sufficient to say that the sculptures were so crude as to cloak the more hideous details of the subjects, for more details had been used in the reproduction of the surroundings. The two suns that ceaselessly orbited above the scenes were startlingly realistic, although for sheer alienness even this could not equal the actual scene. The sky-clawing pylons and disturbingly shapen domes of the cities frequently looming in the distance were not shown from the inside; nor was the utter horror of the interior of the cone ever portrayed.

About then I realised that it was becoming increasingly difficult to see the figures on the cone, and I started in terror as I realised the sun had set upon my engrossed contemplation. The glade had become dreadfully quiet, stressing the sound of rustling which still emanated from somewhere nearby. That dry sound seemed to come from above, and abruptly it came to me that it was the noise of something coming down inside the cone.

Abruptly it ceased, and I tensed, waiting for the thing which would appear around the curved metal at any minute. That it was something which figured in the scenes engraved on that metal I did not doubt; probably one of the omnipotent semi-insect race. But what details of it might blast my mind before the thing fell on me?

And it was at that moment that I heard a clanging sound on the opposite side — the sound of the opening of the circular trapdoor.

III: The Insects From The Cone


That dull noise of the pitted trapdoor beyond my line of vision echoed for a long time, yet when it ceased nothing had appeared around the curve of the cone. All that could be heard was the rustling of the unseen dweller, now mixed with a scrabbling which steadily approached.

At last a shape appeared, flapping above the ground on leathery wings. The thing which flew whirring towards me was followed by a train of others, wings slapping the air at incredible speed. Even though they flew so fast, I could, with the augmented perception of terror, make out many more details than I wished. Those huge lidless eyes which stared in hate at me, the jointed tendrils which seemed to twist from the head in cosmic rhythms, the ten legs, covered with black shining tentacles and folded into the pallid underbody, and the semi-circular ridged wings covered with triangular scales — all this cannot convey the soul-ripping horror of the shape which darted at me. I saw the three mouths of the thing move moistly, and then it was upon me.

I thought it had somehow managed to fly over me, even though the horribly flat face had a moment before been pressed into mine; for I had felt no impact. But when I turned to look behind me, there was no sign of the insect-creature, and the landscape was empty. The others from the cone did not attempt to attack me, but flapped away over the trees. My mind a chaos of speculation, I watched them in their flight, attempting to decide where their companion had gone.

The next moment the whole landscape seemed to ripple and melt, as if the lenses of my eyes had twisted in agonising distortion. Then I felt it — the thing which was distorting my impulses to such an extent — the thing which, in some hideous way, had become a parasite — the thing which, at the moment when it flew in my face, had entered my body and was crawling around in my brain.

Now, as I look back upon my first sensation of something worming through the corridors of my brain, with a slightly higher degree of objectivity, I can only surmise that the being cannot have been strictly material — constructed of some alien matter which allowed its atoms to exist conterminously with those of my body. But then I could think of nothing but the frightful parasite which crawled where my clawing fingers could not reach.

I can only try to speak of the other occurrences of that night with some degree of coherency, for my impressions after that became somewhat confused. It must have been that my mind was growing accustomed to the unholy object in my skull — for, unbelievable as it seems, within a short time I thought of this state as perfectly normal. The being was affecting my very thought-processes — and even as I stood before the cone, the insect-creature was pouring its memories into me. For as the landscape melted about me, I began to experience visions. I seemed to float above scenes like those of a hashish dream — in a body such as that of the horror from the cone. The worlds swam out of darkness for what seemed an eternity; I saw things of indescribable hideousness, and could not flee from the sight of them. And as the thing gained a hold over me, I began to see actual scenes from the life of the being which occupied me.

There was a place of green mists through which I flapped, over a boundless surface of pitching water. At one point the mists began to roll back, and I rose through them, the green, attenuated film billowing round me. In the distance a long, vague cylinder poked towards the invisible sky, and as I drew closer I saw that it was a stone pillar, protruding from the swaying water, grown with hard shell-like plants and with curiously shaped projections on each side at regular intervals. There seemed to be no reason for the terror which boiled up in me at the sight of that pillar, but I purposely flew around the object at a distance. As the mists began to conceal it again, I saw a huge leathery hand, with long boneless fingers, reach out of the water, followed by a many-jointed arm. I saw that arm's muscles tense, as if whatever owned the arm were preparing to pull itself out of the sea. I turned away and flew into the mist — for I did not want to see what would appear above the surface.

The scene melted into another. I crawled down a path which snaked between translucent, diamond-like rocks. The path entered a valley, at the bottom of which lay a strange black building, inexplicably luminous under the purple night sky of that far planet. The building was of no recognizable architecture, with its deliriously sloping roof and many-sided towers, and I did not know why I was approaching it so purposefully. My claws clattered over the rock-strewn surface which became a black-tiled pavement before the gaping entrance to the ebon building, and I entered. Many passages twisted before I reached that which I sought — that which was spoken of on Shaggai as so powerful — and I did not like what hung from the ceilings in shadowy corners; but at last I came upon the windowless chamber in a high black tower. I took the strangely shaped piece of metal from where it lay on a central slab and turned to leave the chamber. Then a door in the opposite wall crashed open, and I remembered the whispered legend of the guardian of this weapon of a lost race. But I knew how to use the weapon's fullest power, and through it I focused mental waves to blast apart the many-legged furry thing which scuttled from the opened door, its abominably shrunken heads waving on hairy, scrawny necks. Then I flapped from the haunted lightless tower in terror, clutching the metal weapon — for as I looked back I saw the many-headed thing, all the legs on one side of its body burned away, still dragging itself sideways after me.

Again the vision rippled and changed. I stood on a high slab of some beautifully polished plastic, surrounded by lines of the most nauseous beings imaginable. They were oval, two-legged, dwarved things, scarcely two feet high, without arms or head, but with a gaping moist grey mouth at the centre of their bodies, which were of a spongy white pulp. They were all prostrate in an attitude of worship before me on the fungus which appeared to compose the ground in a solid gelatinous sheet on their side of the slab. My side of that slab was bare rock, covered with huge squat dark-emerald buildings of the same material as the slab. These, I knew, had been constructed by a race other than the pulpy white things, and probably antedating them; the beings that worshipped my hardness could not work such material or even touch it, but lived in repulsively moist burrows in the fungus. Indeed, even as I watched, one of them moved too near to the dais upon which I stood, and in so doing ripped away a sponge-wet portion of itself, which speedily putrefied where it lay.

Yet another scene flashed before me. I skimmed over a plain covered with colossi depicting naked humanoid figures in various bestial attitudes, each statue at least a hundred feet tall; and about them all was some hideous detail which I could not quite place. I disliked the vast footprints which led between the leering figures, and still more disliked the disturbingly gnawed bones of huge animals which were strewn across the plain, for I felt that I knew the cause of these horrors, and knew the abnormality of the colossi, if only I could place it. Then came those clumping footsteps behind me, startlingly close; and as I turned and saw what came striding across that field of unholy carvings, I knew the answer to both questions. It was humanoid — almost — as it pounded through the maze of statues; but it towered above the hundred-foot figures. And the atrocious thing which I glimpsed as I fled from that shrine to cosmic accidents was the eyelessness of the living colossus and the way the hair of the scalp grew in the sockets where the eyes should have been.

As the visions began to overtake me in greater quantity, they acquired more definite connection, and it was not long before I realised what was now being put into my brain was a sort of history of the insect-race. Perhaps the most horrible part of the affair was the way I regarded the events and scenes now presented to me, not with the horror and disgust of a sane human being, but with the exact same impersonal observation of the insect-parasite. As the chronicles of the race were passed through my mind, I was, to all purposes, the insect which had become part of me. I write this now with more emotion than when I experienced the memories of the being — and that thought fills me with more terror than did the memories themselves.

So it was that I learned the history of the insect-race, and so it is that I write now what I learned. And horror can still be provoked in me by thoughts of what the insects from Shaggai may yet do on this earth.

IV: The Exodus From The Gulf


The beings had, I learned, originally come from Shaggai, a globe far beyond the reach of any earthly telescope, which orbited a double sun at the edge of the universe. Upon this planet they built their cities, full of globular domes for their habitations and pylons of that grey metal which composed the cone. The main buildings were almost all globular, entered by a doorless orifice at the top of each, through which the insects could fly — but there was one important building which was not globular, but pyramidical: the temple at the centre of each city. And the thoughts of the being grew oddly reticent on the subject of this temple, whence all the inhabitants would go to worship at ritual times; for never could I tap a memory of what was worshipped inside that grey metal pyramid. The only fact which became apparent was that, incredible as it sounds, the tenant of the temple was one living being, but was somehow the same being in each temple.

The life of the beings of the grey cities followed no definite pattern, except for certain observances. They would leave their domes as the blinding emerald light of the two suns rose above the horizon, and while a generally avoided group of priests flew to the temple, the rest went about personal business. None needed to eat — they lived by photo-synthesis of the green rays of the double star — and so they visited other planets, seeking new abnormalities which they, in their perversion, could aesthetically enjoy. At the time of birth of my informant, the race, needing to do no work, had sunk to an abysmal state of decadence. While on Shaggai they would torture slave-races from other worlds for pleasure; and when on other planets, they sought the most terribly haunted localities to view their horrors — with which pastime the early memories of the insect-being had been occupied. There was another practice of the insects which was not then fully revealed — but it was connected, it appeared, with what they practised on the witch-cult at their outpost on earth.

At any rate, the beings had set up outposts and built cities on many of the outer worlds, in case anything should ever make Shaggai uninhabitable; for they had had experience of what might crawl over the rim of the universe and conquer their world before then. So they were to some extent prepared when a catastrophe did indeed devastate their world, many aeons before their advent on earth. Even at the time when I visited their shrine, they had very little idea of what had really destroyed Shaggai; they had seen it happen from the beginning, but could only explain the cause vaguely — and, having viewed a vision of what they saw for myself, I did not wonder at their puzzlement.

It was at the dawning of one of those emerald-lit days that the object was first seen. Above the double disc on the horizon, and slowly approaching their planet, appeared a strange semi-spherical red globe. The edges were indistinct, while the centre was a sharply-defined point of crimson fire. At that time the approach of the sphere was so unnoticeable that few of the city's inhabitants remarked it; but by the third dawn the object was much nearer, so that the race's scientists began to study it. They decided, after much speculation, that it was not a star or planet, but some species of body which was composed of no recognizable substance; the — spectrum was completely unknown, and the substance must have come from a region where conditions were unlike those anywhere in this universe. Because of this vagueness of its identity they were uncertain of its probable effects on their planet — for the body was heading directly for Shaggai, and should reach it before the suns had set thrice more.

On the third day the globe was a huge red glow in the sky, blotting out the green suns and lighting everything with a crimson flame; but no heat emanated from it, and no other evidence of its existence met the insects besides the blood-red light. They were uneasy, for the menacing sphere in the heavens was very disturbing, and therefore many of them visited the triangular temple frequently for private worship. The being in my body had been one of those frequent visitors, and owed its life to being in the temple when the cataclysm struck. It had entered under the arched portal, where a portcullis-like sheet of translucent mineral would fall at any external threat, to protect the tenant inside. As the insect made to leave the temple after that act which it must practise before the tenant of the pyramid, it saw a prolonged crimson flash in the sky, speedily approaching the ground, while at the same time the protective shield crashed down in the temple entrance. The forty or so other beings which also were at worship clattered to stare through the shield at what was happening in the city outside.

As the red glow slowly faded, the buildings became again visible, as did the beings in the streets. The creatures and buildings had changed in some way during the cataclysm — for they glowed with that same crimson light, streaming from inside each. And the light became every moment brighter, changing from red — orange — blinding yellow to white, as the insect-beings writhed and clawed at themselves in helpless agony.

It was the way in which the temple was fortified that saved those inside. The radiation from the bursting globe was kept from affecting them long enough for them to use certain powers. By some obscure method of teleportation they transported the entire temple, with themselves, to the nearest planet on which they had a colony — the world of the faceless cylindrical beings, called Xiclotl by its inhabitants. As the devastated world of Shaggai faded from outside the shield, the insect-creature saw the buildings reel and the inhabitants burst asunder in momentary incandescence. And its last glimpse was of the globes of light which were now all that remained of the lords of Shaggai, as they sank to fill the ground with crimson radiation.

Upon their arrival on Xiclotl, the insects called the rest of their race from the other planetary colonies to join them. The faceless horrors of the planet were enslaved by the new ruling race, and because of their great strength and little brain-power, were driven to perform all tasks in building the new city of the insects on Xiclotl. These beings, which were subdued by one of the insects' instruments for focusing mind power to promote unpleasant nerve impulses, were naturally carnivorous and, if not enslaved in this way, might have eaten any slow-moving insect. However, it was relatively easy to force them to labour, and under their strivings the city speedily took shape.

The insects did not remain on Xiclotl for more than two hundred years, during which my informant had reached maturity. The reason for their leaving was one about which it would rather not have thought in detail, having to do with the faceless slaves and their somewhat primitive theology. They believed in a legendary plant-race which inhabited the bottom of a sheer-sided pit in the outer regions of the country in which the city lay. The religion of the planet's race demanded that periodic sacrifices be chosen from the race and throw themselves as food to the plant-gods in the pit. The insects did not object to this practice, so long as it did not remove so many beings as to draw on their labour force — at least, not until a group of insects followed one of the sacrifices to the pit. After that, however, the tale which the returning party told caused the more superstitious — including my informant — to teleport the temple again, together with a number of the race from Xiclotl as a means of labour, to a planet at the centre of the next galaxy. The insect-being which was pouring its memories into my brain had not actually seen what had occurred in the pit, so was not so explicit as usual; but what it remembered having heard was certainly disturbing. The returning party had seen the faceless creature leap from the edge of the pit and fall towards the abysmal darkness of the lower regions. Then came a splashing in that darkness, and a huge purple moist blossom rose from it, its petals opening and closing hungrily. But the greatest abnormality of the thing which splashed out of the pit was its green tentacles, tipped with many-fingered hands of unholy beauty, which it held yearningly towards the point where the sacrifices threw themselves off.

The temple was positioned next at the centre of a city on that planet in the next galaxy — an uninhabited planet, it seemed, which the insect colonists named Thuggon. They stayed here less than a year; for before they had been there ten months, they noticed a steady decrease in the number of slaves on the planet, and learned that the beings had been disappearing after dark, though none was ever seen to leave. When two insect-beings disappeared on successive nights, a party left the city next day to search; and some miles beyond the colony they discovered a huge stretch of marshy ground, at the centre of which lay a vast stone tower, from which led suggestively recent-looking footprints to a black object at the edge of the marsh. And when the black object was seen to be a neat pile, composed of the severed heads of the insects together with their bodies, and when they saw that all the flesh had been sucked out through the gaping gash where the heads should have been, the party were not slow in returning to the city and demanding the speedy removal of the temple from Thuggon.

After the quitting of Thuggon, the insects established themselves on a planet which the inhabitants knew as L'gy'hx, and which is called Uranus here on Earth. This world became the home of the insects for many centuries, for the native race of cuboid, many-legged metal beings was not openly hostile, but allowed them to build their usual outpost with the labour of the beings from Xiclotl. They built a new temple — the old one having grown dilapidated with so much travelling — and fashioned it in a conical shape, carefully constructing the multi-dimensional gate which must exist in each temple to allow the entry of that which my informant passed off as 'that from Outside.' The city flourished, and the beings native to L'gy'hx gradually came to accept the insects as a race ruling the planet jointly with themselves. The only thing for which the natives did not care was the insects' worshipping the hideous god Azathoth. They themselves were worshippers of the relatively insignificant deity Lrogg, which conferred benefits on its worshippers and demanded only annual sacrifice, in the shape of the removal of the legs of a conscious native. The cuboid beings disliked the vague tales of atrocities practised on still-living victims in the conical temple of Azathoth, and when a rebellious set of natives began to visit the insects' city to worship there the elders of L'gy'hx felt that steps should be taken to prevent such unwelcome infiltrations into their theology. But while they did not fear the weapons of the insect-race, they did not like to incur the wrath of the idiot god, and finally decided to do nothing. Some years passed, during which two major sequences of events happened. While a steady hate grew in the majority of the insects for the obscene rites of Azathoth, and a desire for the easy rituals prescribed for Lrogg's worshippers began to rise, the rebel set among the natives grew steadily more fervid in their prostrations before the new god and their hate for their natural god. At last these two feelings publicised themselves at the same time. This double revelation came when a particularly fervent group of native Azathoth-worshippers violated a temple, smashing all the statues of the two-headed bat-deity Lrogg and killing three of the priests. After acid had been poured into the brains of the offenders, the chief priests of Lrogg declared that the temple of Azathoth must be removed altogether from the planet, together with its insect-worshippers, although the insects who would conform to the planetary religion might remain if they wished. The cuboid natives who had become believers in the creed of Azathoth were all treated in the same way as the original offenders, as an example.

Only about thirty of the race from Shaggai left in the temple, but teleporting it in unison they managed to bring it down on a nearby planet — Earth. They made an imperfect materialization in the clearing near Goatswood, leaving the best part of the temple underground, and only thirty feet protruding above the surface. In the top of the cone the insects lived, while in the central portion the beings from Xiclotl were stabled; in the lower forty-foot portion was kept that which they worshipped in the temple. During daylight the insects worshipped the tenant of the secret portion of the fane, but after dark they went forth to carry on an insidious campaign to hypnotise selected subjects and lure them to the clearing.

From these hypnotised subjects was formed that decadent witch-cult which grew up around the temple in the clearing. The members of the coven did not merely visit the clearing to worship and sacrifice persons on the altar there; they went there to experience the obscene pleasure of allowing the insects to inject their memories into their brains, which they enjoyed in the same way a drug addict gains pleasure from his induced delirium. And at that moment, God help me, I was experiencing the same sensations — and doing nothing to shake them off.

As the witch-cult grew, the insects began to form a plan. Whereas at the beginning they merely lured humans to their haven in order to explore the perversions of their subconscious for pleasure, they gradually came to the conclusion that, if they handled their victims the right way, they would become the new rulers of the planet. First they could overpower the inhabitants of the nearby countryside and then, as they themselves propagated, the whole of the planet. The humans might either be destroyed utterly or retained as a subsidiary labour force, while the newly-revealed insect race would build cities and temples, and finally, perhaps, the huge multi-dimensional gate which alone will let Azathoth into this universe in his original form.

Thus the final purpose of the cult was shaped. It thus came as a great blow when the local coven was persecuted for witchcraft and all members executed. Worse still, the word got round that the clearing was connected in an unholy manner with this witchcraft, so that those who lived anywhere near it quickly moved to more wholesome surroundings. The insects would have been able to teleport, had it not been for some constituent of the atmosphere which prevented this; the same unallowed-for obstacle made it impossible for the beings to fly any great distance. They therefore declined, using the beings from Xiclotl — which, because of their guarding the clearing in daylight while the insects worshipped, they called the equivalent in their language of the 'Daytime Guardians'—to drive unwary wanderers in the woods into the glade. The few they managed to lure to the cone they attempted to use as the foundation of the new cult which they tentatively planned, but without success. That young man of whose visit to the clearing the legend told had been the first in many years, and had been such an unwilling subject that attempts to force him into submission led only to his complete insanity. After his visit, the only person actually to be taken over by one of the insect-parasites had been myself.

And so the history of the insects from Shaggai had been brought into the present. For the minute I wondered what memories the being in my cranium would now let flow into my brain, but almost immediately afterwards I knew what I was next to see. The insect had decided to make the supreme revelation — it was going to unveil one of its hidden memories of a visit to the lower regions of the temple.

Immediately the creature was in the tip of the cone, lying on a grey metal slab in its quarters. It was awakening at that moment, sensing the rise of the sun outside, and it then extended its legs and clattered off the slab, over to the sliding door. It inserted its leg tip into one of the pits in the door and slid it back, turning to look back at the bare semi-circular chamber and the flashing light over the slab, set where it would hyponotize the slab's occupant to immediate sleep.

The insect joined the ritual procession of its fellows which were preparing to descend into the lower regions. Those at the head carried long pointed rods of that inevitable grey metal, while the rest held portions of the corpse of a native of Xiclotl. The rods, it seemed, were to drive the secret tenant of the temple back when it became too desirous of sacrifice; the only victim to be offered it would be the dismembered faceless being, a member of the labour force which had grown too weak to be of further use.

Adjusting their weapons, the leaders of the procession moved off down the spiral down-slanting passage. The creature, staring fixedly ahead as prescribed, followed them, carrying a group of severed tentacles as offering. They passed down the grey corridor, not noting the daily-seen bas-reliefs on the walls, representing the denizens of caves and ruins on far worlds. Nor did they turn in passing the cells of the Xiclotl labour force, even when the beings in them crashed themselves against the doors and extended their tentacles in helpless fury upon sensing the portions of their fellow slave. They did not turn when they clattered through the souvenir room, where they kept the preserved eyeless corpse of one specimen from each race subject to them. The first halt in their ritual march was at the carven door of the inner sanctum of the temple, over which certain representations leered down, at which every member of the procession folded its wing-case and prostrated itself for a moment. Then the foremost insect-creature extended its jointed antenna and gripped a projection on the surface of the door — hesitating a ritual instant, while its three mouths spoke three alien words in unison — and then slid the door open.

The first object which came into view beyond the sliding panel was a squat twenty-foot statue, a hideously detailed figure which resembled nothing remotely humanoid — and the information was immediately injected into my brain that this object represented the god Azathoth — Azathoth as he had been before his exile Outside. But the eyes of my informant speedily swung away from the alien colossus to the vast door behind it — a door bordered with miniature representations of insect-beings, all indicating something beyond that door. And the leaders picked up their pointed weapons and approached the final door, followed by the forward-staring procession.

One of the leaders now raised his rod in a curious gesture, while the others prostrated themselves in a semicircle before the bordered door, writhing their antennae in concerted and vaguely disturbing rhythms. Then, as the prostrate crescent rose again, the other leader put forth his tendrils and clasped a projection on the door. Unhesitatingly he drew the portal open.

V: Beyond The Final Door


I was alone in the glade, lying in the dew-wet grass before the cone. There was no sign of any living being in the clearing besides myself, not even of the being which, I felt certain, had just withdrawn from my brain. The whole glade was exactly as it had been when I entered it, except for one important difference — that the sun had not yet risen. For this meant that the inhabitants of the cone would still be absent from it, searching for victims; and it meant that I could enter the untenanted temple and open that bordered door, on whose opening the insect's memory had ended.

If I had been able to think without external hindrance, I would immediately have realised that the memory had ended at that point simply as a subtle method of luring me to the underground sanctum. It is less likely that I would have realised that I was being directed to do this by the being which still inhabited my brain. But I still clung to the possibility that I had been dreaming. There was only one way to find out; I must enter the cone and see what lay behind that final door. So I made for the circular entrance in the grey wall of the cone.

Beyond the foot-long passage inside the trapdoor, a diagonally slanting metal corridor led upward and downward. Upward, I guessed, lay the semicircular quarters of the insect-beings, where I had no wish to go; downward lay the temple proper. I started downward, doing my best to avoid looking at the abnormal bas-reliefs which covered the walls.

The passage was less strongly lit than it had seemed in the being's memory, so that at first I did not notice the point where the bas-reliefs ended and a line of doors, containing heavy grilles, began. Not until a grey metal tentacle whipped through a grille to quiver within an inch of my face did I realise that here was the passage of the Xiclotl labour force cells. I cowered back, trembling, to edge along the opposite wall, jerking at the frequent infuriated crashings of the faceless beings against their cell doors, and yearning for the end of the journey. I finally passed the last locked portal and continued on down the spiralling ramp.

The memory of the injected recollections of the insect-creature was already dimming, so that I could hardly explain the premonition I felt a little further on. I gasped in shock when I rounded a curve and saw an eyeless figure standing with bony arms reaching — all the more hideous because, although the corpse was otherwise human, there were three arms held out. The unwavering posture which the thing held gave me the courage to approach it, as I suddenly remembered the vision of the room where the insects kept preserved specimens of their subjects. What sphere had spawned this object I did not think; nor did I linger to stare at the corpse, but passed by quickly between the others. I attempted not to look aside at what I hurried by, but my eyes persisted in straying to things — a frog-flipper attached to a tendrilled arm in one place, an insanely situated mouth in another — so that I was very relieved to quit that room.

When I came to the temple door and saw that it stood open, I hesitated expectantly. Glancing only once at the metal heads which leered, all joined to one body, over the open portal, I entered. I stopped short, for the memory of that huge image of Azathoth had grown dim. I did not look long at it; I would only have seen worse details with every glimpse, and the first view was bad enough. I will not describe everything about it; but basically it consisted of a bivalvular shell supported on many pairs of flexible legs. From the half-open shell rose several jointed cylinders, tipped with polypous appendages; and in the darkness inside the shell I thought I saw a horrible bestial, mouthless face, with deep-sunk eyes and covered with glistening black hair.

I almost turned and fled from the temple, thinking of the door that lay beyond the statue, and speculating over what the idiot god might now resemble. But I had come this far unharmed, and, noticing the sharpened rods propped against the base of the idol, I did not think that whatever lay beyond the bordered door could harm me. And so, conquering my revulsion at what leered frozenly above, I took up one of the weapons and made for that door. As I reached for the protrusion on the sliding grey panel I hesitated, for I heard a curious sound inside the hidden room — like the washing of the sea against black piles. It ceased immediately, but for some minutes I could not bring myself to draw the door open. In what form would Azathoth manifest itself? Might there not be some reason why the being was only worshipped during daylight? But all the while my hand was moving towards the projection, almost as though another will besides my own were directing it; so that when it dragged the sanctum door open, I battled to stop its progress. But by then the door was completely open, and I was standing staring at what lay beyond.

A long passage of the omnipresent grey metal stretched away for ten feet or so, and at its end stood, on first glance, a blank wall. Yet not quite blank — for a little way up there was a triangular metal door with a bar held across it in brackets. The passage was deserted, but from beyond the triangular door came a sound which I had remarked before — a liquid rolling.

I had to know the secret of the temple, and so stealthily approached the door and lifted the bar, which grated slightly. I did not open the door, but backed down the passage and stood at the other end. The wave-sound was rising now, as if something at the other side was approaching. Then the triangular portal began to rattle in its frame, and slowly it moved outward on its hinges.

And as I saw that metal triangle shifting with pressure from the other side, a wave of terror engulfed me. I did not want to see what lay on the other side of the door, and I turned and slammed the outer door without giving myself time to think. Even as I did so, a grating sound reverberated down the pasage and the triangular door crashed open. Through the crack as I slammed the door I saw something ooze into the corridor — a pale grey shape, expanding and crinkling, which glistened and shook gelatinously as still-moving particles dropped free; but it was only a glimpse, and after that it is only in nightmares that I imagine I see the complete shape of Azathoth.

I fled from the pyramid then. It was just daylight, and over the trees black shapes were flapping home. I plunged through the corridors of trees, and at one point one of the beings from Xiclotl started out into my path. What was worse, it drew back at my approach.

Though some of my possessions were left in my room there, I never returned to the inn at Brichester, and no doubt they still speak of me there as having died horribly. I thought that in this way I could make sure the insects could not harm me — but the first night after the experience in the clearing, I felt again that crawling in my brain. Since then I have frequently caught myself seeking persons gullible enough to be lured to the clearing, but always I have been able to fight off such impulses. I do not know how long I can continue to fight — and so I am going to use the one method to end this unholy preying on my mind.

The sun has sunk below the horizon now, leaving only a lurid glow which shines on the razor lying on the table before me. Perhaps it is only imagination which makes me seem to feel a restless, blinding stirring in my brain — at any rate, I must hesitate no longer. It may be that the insects will eventually overpower the world; but I will have done all that is possible for me to do to prevent the release of that whose shape I once glimpsed, and which still awaits impatiently the opening of the multidimensional gate.




The Render of the Veils


At midnight the last bus to Brichester had gone, and it was raining heavily. Kevin Gillson bitterly considered standing under the marquee of the nearby cinema until morning, but the high wind was driving the rain under it so that it provided no shelter. He turned the collar of his raincoat up as water began to ooze down his neck, and slowly walked up the hill away from the bus stop.

The streets were virtually deserted; a few cars which passed did not respond to his signals. Very few of the houses he passed were even lit; it depressed him to walk along the wet-black pavement which reflected wavering images of street lamps back at him. He met only one other person — a silent figure leaning in the shadow of a doorway. Only the red glow from a cigarette persuaded Gillson that anyone was there at all.

At the corner of Gaunt and Ferrey Streets he saw a vehicle approaching him. Half-dazzled by the reflection of the headlights, he made out that it was a taxi, travelling the streets for a final passenger of the night. He waved the bedraggled Camside Observer he was still clutching, and the taxi drew to a stop beside him.

'Are you still taking passengers?' he yelled through the partition.

'I was goin' home,' called back the driver. 'Still — if you've got some way to go — I wouldn't want you walkin' the streets on a night like this. Where to?'

Gillson ordered 'Brichester,' and made to get in. At that moment, however, he heard a voice calling something nearby; and turning, he saw a figure running through the rain towards the taxi. From the cigarette between his fingers and the direction from which he had come, Gillson guessed that this was the man he had noticed in the doorway.

'Wait — please wait!' the man was shouting. He clattered up to the taxi, splashing Gillson in the process. 'Would you mind if I shared your taxi? If you're in a hurry, it doesn't matter — but if I take you out of your way, I'll pay the difference. I don't know how I'll get home otherwise, though I don't live far from here.'

'Where do you live?' Gillson asked cautiously. 'I'm not in any hurry, but—'

'On Tudor Drive,' the man replied eagerly.

'Oh, that's on the way to Brichester, isn't it?' said Gillson, relieved. 'Sure, get in — we'll both catch pneumonia if we stand here much longer.'

Once in the taxi, Gillson directed the driver and sat back. He did not feel like talking, and decided to read a book, hoping the other would take a hint. He took out the copy of Witchcraft Today he had bought on a bookstall that morning and flipped the pages a little.

He was just beginning a chapter when a voice broke in on him. 'Do you believe in that stuff?'

'This, you mean?' Gillson suggested resignedly, tapping the cover of the book. 'In a way, yes — I suppose these people believed that dancing naked and spitting on crucifixes would benefit them. Rather childish, though — they were all psychopathic, of course.'

'Fit to be consigned to a lurid book like that, I'd say,' agreed the other.

There was silence for a few minutes, and Gillson contemplated returning to the book. He opened it again and read the suitably garish blurb inside the cover, then put it down irritably as a trickle of water ran down his sleeve on to the page. He wiped this, then felt beside him for the book.

'But do you know what was behind all these witch-cults?'

'How do you mean?' Gillson inquired, leaving his book where it was.

'Do you know about the real cults?' continued the voice. 'Not the medieval servants of Satan — the ones who worship gods that exist?'

'It depends what you mean by "gods that exist",' replied Gillson.

The man did not appear to notice this remark. 'They formed these cults because they were searching for something. Perhaps you have read some of their books — you won't find them on the stalls like you did that one, but they are preserved in a few museums.'

'Well, I was once down in London, and I took a look at what they had in the British Museum.'

'The Necronomicon, I suppose.' He seemed almost amused. 'And what did you think of it?'

'I found it rather disturbing,' Gillson confessed, 'but not as horrifying as I'd been led to expect. But then I couldn't understand all of it.'

'Personally, I thought it was ludicrous,' the other told him, 'so vague… But of course if it had described what's only hinted at in there, no museum would touch it. I suppose it's best that only we few know… Forgive me, you must think me queer. Come to think of it, you don't even know who I am. I'm Henry Fisher, and I suppose you could call me an occultist.'

'No, please go on,' said Gillson. 'What you were saying there interested me.'

'What, about people searching for things? Why, are you searching for something?'

'Not really, though I have had a sort of persistent conviction since I was young. Nothing to bother about, really — just a kind of idea that nothing is really as we see it: if there were some way of seeing things without using your eyes, everything would look quite different. Weird, isn't it?'

When no answer came, he turned. There was a strange expression in Henry Fisher's eyes; a look of surprised triumph. Noticing Gillson's puzzlement, he seemed to control himself, and remarked:

'It's queer you should say that. I've had the same idea for a long time, and quite often I've been on the brink of finding a way to prove it. You see, there is a way to see as you would without using your eyes, even though you're actually using them — but not only can it be dangerous, it needs two people. It might be interesting for us to try… But here's where I get out.'

They had drawn up before a block of flats. Behind dripping trees a concrete path stretched to where yellow-and-black-painted windows mounted upward. 'Mine's on the ground floor,' Fisher remarked as he got out and paid the driver.

Gillson rolled the window down. 'Wait a minute,' he said. 'Did you mean it — what you said about seeing things as they really are?'

'Are you interested?' Fisher bent down and peered into the taxi. 'Remember I told you it might be dangerous.'

'I don't mind,' replied Gillson, opening the door and getting out. He waved the driver to leave, and it was not until they were standing and watching the tail-lights dwindle that he remembered he had left his book on the seat.

Although the trees still dripped, it had stopped raining. The two men walked up the concrete path, and the wind eddied around them, seeming to blow down from the frosty stars. Kevin Gillson was glad when they closed the glass doors behind them and entered a flowery-papered hall. Stairs led upward to other flats, but Fisher turned to a door to the left with glass panels.

Gillson had not really expected anything specific, but what he saw beyond that glass-panelled door amazed him. It was a normal living-room, with contemporary furnishings, modernistic wallpaper, an electric fire; but some of the objects in it were not at all normal. Reproductions of paintings by Bosch, Clark Ashton Smith and Dalí set the abnormal mood, which was augmented by the esoteric books occupying a case in one corner. But these could at least be found elsewhere; some of the other things he had never seen before. He could make nothing of the egg-shaped object which lay on the table in the centre of the room and emitted a strange, intermittent whistling. Nor did he recognise the outlines of something which stood on a pedestal in a corner, draped with a canvas.

'Perhaps I should have warned you,' Fisher broke in. 'I suppose it's not quite what you'd expect from the outside. Anyway, sit down, and I'll get you some coffee while I explain a little. And let's have the tape-recorder on — I want it running later so it can record our experiment.'

He went into the kitchen, and Gillson heard pans rattling. Over the clanking Fisher called:

'I was a rather peculiar kid, you know — very sensitive but oddly strong-stomached. After I saw a gargoyle once in church I used to dream it was chasing me, but one time when a dog was run over outside our home the neighbours all remarked how avidly I was staring at it. My parents once called in a doctor, and he said I was "very morbid, and should be kept away from anything likely to affect me." As if they could!

'Well, it was at grammar school that I got this idea — in the Physics class, actually. We were studying the structure of the eye one day, and I got to thinking about it. The more I looked at this diagram of retinas and humours and lenses, the more I was convinced that what we see through such a complicated system must be distorted in some way. It's all very well saying that what forms on the retina is simply an image, no more distorted than it would be through a telescope. That's too glib for me. I almost stood up and told the teacher what I thought, but I knew I'd be laughed down.

'I didn't think much more about it till I got to the University. Then I got talking to one of the students one day — Taylor, his name was — and before I knew it I'd joined a witch-cult. Not your naked decadents, but one that really knew how to tap elemental powers. I could tell you a lot about what we did, but some of the things would take too long to explain. Tonight I want to try the experiment, but perhaps afterwards I'll tell you about the things I know. Things like what the unused part of the brain can be used for, and what's buried in a graveyard not far from here…

'Anyway, some time after I joined, the cult was exposed, and everybody was expelled. Luckily I wasn't at the meeting that was spied on, so I stayed on. Even better, though, some of them decided to give sorcery up entirely; and I persuaded one of them to give me all his books. Among them was the Revelations of Glaaki, and that was where I read of the process I want to try tonight. I read of this.'

Fisher had entered the living-room, carrying a tray on which were two cups and a pot of coffee. Now he crossed the room to where the object stood veiled on a pedestal, and as Gillson leaned forward, pulled the canvas off.

Kevin Gillson could only stare. The object was not shapeless, but so complex that the eye could recognise no describable shape. There were hemispheres and shining metal, coupled by long plastic rods. The rods were of a flat grey colour, so that he could not make out which were nearer; they merged into a flat mass from which protruded individual cylinders. As he looked at it, he had a curious feeling that eyes gleamed from between the rods; but wherever he glanced at the construction, he saw only the spaces between them. The strangest part was that he felt this was an image of something living—something from a dimension where such an example of abnormal geometry could live. As he turned to speak to Fisher, he saw out of the corner of his eye that the thing had expanded and occupied almost the whole side of the room — but when he swung back, the image, of course, was the same size. At least, he was sure it was — but Gillson could not even be sure how high it had originally been.

'So you're getting illusions of size?' Fisher had noticed his puzzlement. 'That's because it's only the three-dimensional extension of the actual thing — of course in its own dimension it looks nothing like that.'

'But what is it?' asked Gillson impatiently.

'That,' said Fisher, 'is an image of Daoloth — the Render of the Veils.'

He went over to the table where he had placed the tray. Pouring the coffee, he passed a cup to Gillson, who then remarked:

'You'll have to explain that in a minute, but first I thought of something while you were in there. I'd have mentioned it before, only I didn't feel like arguing between rooms. It's all very well saying that what we see is distorted — say this table really isn't rectangular and flat at all. But when I touch it I feel a flat rectangular surface — how do you explain that?'

'Simple tactile hallucination,' explained Fisher. 'That's why I say this might be dangerous. You see, you don't really feel a flat rectangular surface there at all — but because you see it the way you do, your mind deludes you into thinking you feel the counterpart of your vision. Only sometimes I think — why would the mind set up such a system of delusion? Could it be that if we were to see ourselves as we really are, it might be too much for us?'

'Look, you want to see the undistorted thing,' Gillson said, 'and so do I. Don't try and put me against it now, for God's sake, just when you've got me interested. You called that Daoloth — what's it mean?'

'Well, I'll have to go off at what may seem a tangent,' apologised Fisher. 'You've been looking at that yellow egg-shaped thing there, off and on, ever since you came in — you've read of them in the Necronomicon. Remember those references to the crystallisers of Dream? That's one of them — the device that projects you when asleep into other dimensions. It takes a bit of getting used to, but for some years I've been able to enter nearly every dimension as high as the twenty-fifth. If only I could convey to you the sensations of that last plane, where it is the space which exists and matter can have no existence! Don't ask me where I got the crystalliser, by the way — until I can be sure its guardian will not follow, I must never speak of it. But never mind that.

'After I read in the Revelations of Glaaki about the way to prove this idea of mine, I determined to see for myself what I would be invoking. It was mostly trial and error; but finally, one night, I found myself materialising in a place I'd never been before. There were walls and columns so high I couldn't even see where they ended, and in the middle of the floor was a great fissure running from wall to wall, jagged as if from an earthquake. As I watched, the outlines of the crack seemed to dim and blur, and something rose up out of it. I told you that image looks very different in its own dimension — well, I saw the living counterpart, and you'll understand if I don't try to describe it. It stood there swaying for a moment and then began to expand. It would have engulfed me in a few minutes, but I didn't wait for that. I ran off between the columns.

'I didn't get far before a group of men stepped out in front of me. They were dressed in metallic robes and hoods, and carried small images of what I'd seen, so that I knew they were its priests. The foremost asked me why I had come into their world, and I explained that I hoped to call on Daoloth's aid in seeing beyond the veils. They glanced at each other, and then one of them passed me the image he was carrying. "You'll need this," he told me. "It serves as a link, and you won't come across any on your world." Then the whole scene vanished, and I found myself lying in bed — but I was holding that image you see there.'

'But you haven't really told me—' began Gillson.

'I'm coming to that now. You know now where I got that image. However, you're wondering what it has to do with tonight's experiment, and what Daoloth is anyway?

'Daoloth is a god — an alien god. He was worshipped in Atlantis, where he was the god of the astrologers. I presume it was there that his mode of worship on Earth was set up: he must never be seen, for the eye tries to follow the convolutions of his shape, and that causes insanity. That's why there must be no light when he is invoked — when we call on him later tonight, we'll have to switch out all the lights. Even that there is a deliberately inaccurate replica of him; it has to be.

'As for why we're invoking Daoloth, on Yuggoth and Tond he's known as the Render of the Veils, and that title has a lot of meaning. There his priests cannot only see the past and future — they can see how objects extend into the last dimension. That's why if we invoke him and hold him by the Pentacle of Planes, we can get his aid in cutting out the distortion. And that's about all the explanation I can give you now. It's almost 2:30 already and we must be ready by 2:45; that's when the openings will align… Of course, if you don't feel like going ahead, please tell me now. But I don't want to get everything into place for nothing.'

'I'll stay,' Gillson told him, but he glanced at the image of Daoloth a little uneasily.

'All right. Give me a hand here, will you?'

Fisher opened a cupboard door next to the bookcase. Gillson saw several large crates, set in neat order and marked with painted symbols. He held one up as Fisher slid another from beneath it. As he closed the door, Gillson heard the other lifting the lid; and when he turned, Fisher was already laying the contents out on the floor. An assortment of plastic surfaces came to light, which were assembled into a distorted semi-solid pentagram; and it was followed by two black candles formed into vaguely obscene shapes, a metal rod carrying an icon, and a skull. That skull disturbed Gillson; holes had been bored in its cranium to hold the candles, but even so he could tell from its shape and lack of mouth that it had not been human.

Fisher now began to arrange the objects. First he pushed chairs and tables against the walls, then shoved the pentagram into the centre of the floor. As he placed the skull, now carrying the candles, inside the pentagram, and lit the candles, Gillson asked behind him:

'I thought you said we mustn't have any light — what about those, then?'

'Don't worry — they won't illuminate anything,' Fisher explained. 'When Daoloth comes, he'll draw the light from them — it makes the alignment of the openings easier.'

As he turned to switch the lights out, he remarked over his shoulder: 'He'll appear in the pentacle, and his solid three-dimensional materialization will remain in there all the time. However, he'll put forth two-dimensional extensions into the room, and you may feel these — so don't be afraid. You see, he'll take a little blood from both of us.' His hand moved closer to the switch.

'What? You never said anything—'

'It's all right,' Fisher assured him. 'He takes blood from any that call him; it seems to be his way of testing their intentions. But it won't be much. He'll take more from me, because I'm the priest — you're only here so I can draw on your vitality to open the path through for him. Certainly it won't hurt.' And without waiting for further protests, he switched off the lights.

There was a little light from the neon sign of the garage outside the window, but hardly any filtered through the curtains. The black candles were very dim, too, and Gillson could make out nothing beyond the pentagram, from his position by the bookcase. He was startled when his host slammed the icon-bearing rod on the floor and began to shout hysterically. 'Uthgos plam'f Daoloth asgu'i — come, o Thou who sweepest the veils of sight aside, and showest the realities beyond.' There was much more, but Gillson did not notice it specially. He was watching the luminous mist which appeared to arch from both him and Fisher, and enter the misshapen cranium of the skull in the pentacle. By the end of the incantation there was a definite aura around the two men and the skull. He watched it in fascination; and then Fisher ceased speaking.

For a minute nothing happened. Then the arcs of mist vanished, and there was only the light of the candles; but they glowed brighter now, and a misty aura surrounded them. As Gillson looked at them, the twin flames began to dim, and suddenly winked out. For a moment a black flame seemed to replace each — a sort of negative fire — and as quickly it was gone. At the same moment Gillson knew that he and Fisher were not alone in the room.

He heard a dry rustling from the pentacle, and sensed a shape moving there. At once he was surrounded. Dry, impossibly light things touched his face, and something slid between his lips. No spot on his body was touched for long enough for him to snatch at what felt at him; so quickly did they pass that he remembered rather than sensed the touching feelers. But when the rustling returned to the centre of the room, there was a salt taste in his mouth — and he knew that the feeler entering his mouth had tapped his blood.

Above the rustling, Fisher called: 'Now Thou hast tasted of our blood, Thou knowest our intentions. The Pentagram of Planes shall hold Thee until Thou shalt do what we desire — to rend the veil of belief and show us the realities of unveiled existence. Wilt Thou show it, and thus release Thyself?'

The rustling increased. Gillson wished the ritual would end; his eyes were becoming accustomed to the glow from the garage sign, and even now he could almost see a faint writhing in the darkness within the figure.

Suddenly there was a violent outburst of discordant metal scraping, and the entire building shook. The sound whirred into silence, and Gillson knew that the pentacle's tenant had gone. The room was still dark; the candlelight had not returned, and his sight could not yet penetrate the blackness.

Fisher said from his position by the door: 'Well, he's gone — and that figure is constructed so he couldn't go back without doing what I asked. So when I turn on the light you'll see everything as it really is. Now if you feel your way, you'll find a pair of eyepatches on top of the bookcase. Put them on and you won't be able to see anything — that's if you don't want to go through with it. Then I can turn the light on and see all I want to see, and then use the icon to nullify the effect. Would you rather do it that way?'

'I've come all this way with you,' Gillson reminded him, 'and it wasn't to get scared at the last moment.'

'Do you want to see now? You know once you've seen, the tactile delusions won't ever operate again — are you sure you can live with it?'

'For God's sake, yes!' Gillson's answer was barely audible.

'All right. I'm turning on the lights—now!'

When the police arrived at the flats on Tudor Street, where they had been summoned by a hysterical tenant, they found a scene which horrified the least squeamish among them. The tenant, returning from a late party, had only seen Kevin Gillson's corpse lying on the carpet, stabbed to death. The police were not sickened by this, however, but by what they found on the lawn under the broken front window; for Henry Fisher had died there, with his throat torn out by glass slivers from the pane.

It all seemed very extraordinary, and the tape-recorder did not help. All that it definitely told them was that some kind of black magic ritual had been practised that night, and they guessed that Gillson had been killed with the pointed end of the icon rod. The rest of the tape was full of esoteric references, and towards the end it becomes totally incoherent. The section after the click of the light-switch on the recording is what puzzles listeners most; as yet nobody has found any sane reason for Fisher's murder of his guest.

When curious detectives play the tape, Fisher's voice always comes: 'There — hell, I can't see after all that darkness. Now, what…

'My God, where am I? And where are you? Gillson, where are you — where are you? No, keep away — Gillson, for Christ's sake move your arm. I can see something moving in all this — but God, that mustn't be you… Why can't I hear you — but this is enough to strike anyone dumb… Now come towards me — my God, that thing is you — expanding — contracting — the primal jelly, forming and changing — and the colour… Get away! Don't come any closer — are you mad? If you dare to touch me, I'll let you have the point of this icon — it may feel wet and spongy and look — horrible — but it'll do for you! No, don't touch me — I can't bear to feel that—'

Then comes a scream and a thud. An outburst of insane screaming is cut short by the smashing glass, and a terrible choking sound soon fades to nothing.

It is amazing that two men should have seemingly deluded themselves into thinking they had changed physically; but such is the case, for the two corpses were quite unchanged except for their mutilations. Nothing in the case cannot be explained by the insanity of the two men. At least, there is one anomaly; but the chief of the Camside police is certain that it is only a fault in the tape which causes the recorder to emit, at certain points, a loud dry rustling sound.




The Inhabitant of the Lake


After my friend Thomas Cartwright had moved into the Severn valley for suitable surroundings in which to work on his macabre artwork, our only communication was through correspondence. He usually wrote only to inform me of the trivial happenings which occur in a part of the countryside ten miles from the nearest inhabited dwelling, or to tell me how his latest painting was progressing. It was, then, somewhat of a departure from the habitual when he wrote to tell me of certain events — seemingly trivial but admittedly puzzling — which culminated in a series of unexpected revelations.

Cartwright had been interested in the lore of the terrible ever since his youth, and when he began to study art his work immediately exhibited an extremely startling morbid technique. Before long, specimens were shown to dealers, who commended his paintings highly, but doubted that they would appeal to the normal collector, because of their great morbidity. However, Cartwright's work has since been recognised, and many aficionados now seek originals of his powerful studies of the alien, which depict distorted colossi striding across mist-enshrouded jungles or peering round the dripping stones of some druidic circle. When he did begin to achieve recognition, Cartwright decided to settle somewhere which would have a more fitting atmosphere than the clanging London streets, and accordingly set out on a search through the Severn area for likely sites. When I could, I accompanied him; and it was on one of the journeys when we were together that an estate agent at Brichester told him of a lonely row of six houses near a lake some miles to the north of the town, which he might be interested in, since it was supposed to be haunted.

We found the lake easily enough from his directions, and for some minutes we stood gazing at the scene. The ebon depths of the stagnant water were surrounded by forest, which marched down a number of surrounding hills and stood like an army of prehistoric survivals at the edge. On the south side of the lake was a row of black-walled houses, each three storeys high. They stood on a grey cobbled street which began and ended at the extremities of the row, the other edge disappearing into the pitchy depths. A road of sorts circled the lake, branching from that patch of street and joining the road to Brichester at the other side of the lake. Large ferns protruded from the water, while grass grew luxuriantly among the trees and at the edge of the lake. Although it was midday, little light reached the surface of the water or touched the house-fronts, and the whole place brooded in a twilight more depressing because of the recollection of sunlight beyond.

'Looks like the place was stricken with a plague,' Cartwright observed as we set out across the beaded stones of the segment of road. This comparison had occurred to me also, and I wondered if my companion's morbid trait might be affecting me. Certainly the desertion of this forest-guarded hollow did not evoke peaceful images, and I could almost visualise the nearby woods as a primeval jungle where vast horrors stalked and killed. But while I was sympathetic with Cartwright's feelings, I did not feel pleasure at the thought of working there — as he probably did — rather dreading the idea of living in such an uninhabited region, though I could not have said why I found those blank house-fronts so disquieting.

'Might as well start at this end of the row,' I suggested, pointing to the left. 'Makes no difference as far as I can see, anyway — how are you going to decide which one to take? Lucky numbers or what? If you take any, of course.'

We had reached the first building on the left, and as we stood at the window I could only stare and repeat 'If any.' There were gaping holes in the bare floorboards in that room, and the stone fireplace was cracked and cobwebbed. Only the opposite wall seemed to be papered, and the yellowed paper had peeled off in great strips. The two wooden steps which led up to the front door with its askew knocker shifted alarmingly as I put my foot on the lower, and I stepped back in disgust.

Cartwright had been trying to clear some of the dust from the window-pane, but now he left the window and approached me, grimacing. 'I told him I was an artist,' he said, 'but that estate agent must think that means I live in the woods or something! My God, how long is it since anyone lived in one of these?'

'Perhaps the others may be better?' I guessed hopefully.

'Look, you can see from here they're all as bad,' complained Cartwright.

His complaint was quite true. The houses were very similar, surprisingly because they seemed to have been added to at various periods, as if they were always treated alike; all had unsightly stone roofs, there were signs that they might once have been half-timbered, they had a kind of bay window facing on to the street, and to the door of each led the creaking wooden steps. Although, now I came to stand back, and look up the row, the third from the left did not look as uninviting as the others. The wooden steps had been replaced by three concrete stairs, and I thought I saw a doorbell in place of the tarnished knocker. The windows were not so grimy, either, even though the walls were still grey and moist. From where I stood the lake's dim reflection prevented me from seeing into the house.

I pointed it out to Cartwright. 'That one doesn't look so bad.'

'I don't see much difference,' he grumbled, but moved boredly towards it.

'Well, the estate agent gave you one key to what he said was the only locked house — that must be the one.'

The house was indeed locked, and the key fitted — opening the door easily, which surprised us because of the rustiness of the other locks. On the other hand, the door did not look unpainted or dirty close up; it was merely the artificial twilight which made everything grey. Still, we were not expecting the clean wallpaper in the hallway, and still less the lampshades and stair carpet. The light went on as Cartwright touched the switch inside the door, destroying the dimness, and as I looked up the stairs I thought something peculiar was visible through the open bedroom door at the top.

'Look at this lot!' he was saying from where he peered into the first room off the hall. 'Carpet, table, chairs — what the hell's happened? What could have made anyone leave all this here — or is it included in the price or what?'

'It did say "furnished" in the estate agent's window,' I told him.

'Even so—' We were in the kitchen now, where a stove stood next to a kitchen cabinet. From there we went upstairs and found, as I had thought, a bed still standing, though bare of blankets, in the bedroom and the landing. The whole house, notwithstanding the outside, was almost as one would expect a Brichester house to be if the occupants had just gone out.

'Of course I'll take it,' Cartwright said as we descended. "The interior's very nice, and the surroundings are exactly what I need for inspiration. But I do intend to get to the bottom of why all this furniture's included first.'

Cartwright had not risked skidding into the lake by driving over the slippery cobbles; the car was parked at the end of the Brichester road where it reached the lakeside street. He turned it and we drove leisurely back to town. Although usually I like to be in the country away from civilization, I was rather glad when we reached the area of telegraph-poles and left behind those roads between sheer rock surfaces or above forested hillsides. Somehow all this had an aura of desolation which was not relieved until we began to descend the hill above Brichester, and I welcomed the sight of red-brick houses and steeples which surround the central white University building.

The estate agent's was among the cluster of similar buildings at the western end of Bold Street. As we entered, I noticed again that the postcard advertising the houses by the lake was almost hidden in the upper corner of the window. I had meant to point this out to Cartwright, but that could wait until later.

'Oh, yes,' the estate agent said, looking up from a pile of brochures on the counter. 'You two gentlemen went to view the lakeside property… Well — does it interest you?' His look made it obvious what answer was expected, and Cartwright's 'Yes — where do I sign?' visibly startled him. In fact, he seemed to suspect a joke.

'£500 is the price on the repaired one, I think,' Cartwright continued. 'If you'd like to fix things up, I'll move in as soon as you give the word. I can't say it looks haunted to me, even if that does explain the price — still, so much the better for inspiration if it is, eh, Alan?'

He turned back as the man behind the counter spoke. 'I'll put the deal through for you, and drop you a line when it's done.'

'Thanks. Oh, just one thing—' a look of resignation crossed the other's face '—who left all the furniture?'

'The other tenants. They moved out about three weeks ago and left it all.'

'Well, three weeks is a bit long,' conceded Cartwright, 'but mightn't they still come back for it?'

'I had a letter about a week after they left,' explained the estate agent — they left during the night, you know — and he said they wouldn't come back even in daylight for the stuff they'd left! They were very well off, anyway — don't really know why they wanted to take a house like that in the first place—'

'Did he say why they went off in such a hurry?' I interrupted.

'Oh, some rigmarole that didn't make sense,' said the agent uncomfortably. 'They had a kid, you know, and there was a lot about how he kept waking them up in the night screaming about something "coming up out of the lake" and "looking in at the window." Well, I suppose that was all a bit harassing, even if he was only dreaming, but that wasn't what scared him off. Apparently the wife found the writer of this letter out about eleven o'clock one night a fortnight after they came — that's as long as they stayed — staring into the water. He didn't see her, and nearly fainted when she touched his arm. Then he just loaded everything there was room for into the car, and drove off without letting her know even why they were going.

'He didn't tell her at all, and didn't really tell me. All he said in the letter was that he saw something at the bottom of the lake, looking at him and trying to come up… Told me to try to get the lake filled in and the houses pulled down, but of course my job's to sell the place, not destroy it.'

'Then you're not doing it very well,' I remarked.

'But you said you'd rather have a haunted house,' protested the agent, looking hurt as if someone had tricked him.

'Of course I did,' Cartwright reassured him. 'Kearney here's just a bit touchy, that's all. If you let me know when everything's ready, I'll be happy to move in.'

Cartwright was not returning to London, and as I wanted to get back that day, he offered to run me across town to Lower Brichester Station. As we passed between the stores and approached the railway, I was deep in thought — thoughts of my friend's living alone in that twilit clearing ten miles outside Brichester. When we drew up in the taxi-rank, I could not leave him without yelling above the echoes of the station:

'Sure you don't want to look round a bit more before you come to live here? I don't much like the look of that place so far away from everything — might prey on your mind after a few weeks.'

'Good God above, Alan,' he remonstrated, 'you were the one who insisted on looking at all the houses when I wanted to leave. Well, I've got it now — and as for preying on my mind, that sort of place is just what I need for inspiration.' He seemed offended, for he slammed the door and drove away without farewell. I could only enter the station and try to forget that shrine of desolation in the mindless echoes of the terminus.

For some weeks afterwards I did not see Cartwright at all, and my job at the Inland Revenue was so exacting that I could not spare the time to call at his home. At the end of the third week, however, things slackened at my office, and I drove up from Hoddesdon, where I live, to see if he had yet left. I was only just in time, for two cars were parked outside his house on Elizabeth Street; in one was Cartwright and a number of his paintings while behind it his friend Joseph Bulger was bringing out easels, paints and some furniture. They were ready to move off as I arrived, but Cartwright stopped to talk for a few minutes.

'I've got rid of most of the furniture at this end,' he told me. 'Might as well use what that family left, but there were one or two things I wanted to keep. Well, it's a pity you can't call round at weekends any more — anyway, maybe you could come down at Christmas or sometime like that, and I'll write you when I get settled in.

Again I heard nothing from him for a few weeks. When I met Bulger on the street he told me that Cartwright had shown every sign of enjoyment when left in the lakeside house, and had announced his intention of beginning to paint that night, if possible. He did not expect to hear from Cartwright for some time, as once he began work on a picture he would let nothing distract him.

It was about a month later that he first wrote. His letter contained nothing extraordinary, yet as I look back on it I can see in almost everything intimations of things to come.

Thomas Cartwright,

Lakeside Terrace,

c/o Bold St Post Office,

Brichester, Glos.

3 October 1960

Dear Alan:

(Notice the address — the postman doesn't come anywhere near here, and I've got to go up to Bold Street every week and collect on a poste restante basis.)

Well, I've settled in here. It's very comfortable, except it's a bit inconvenient having the toilet on the third floor; I may have that altered one day — the place has been altered so much that more won't make any difference. My studio's upstairs, too, but I sleep downstairs as usual. I decided to move the table out to the back room, and between us we managed to get the bed into the front room, facing on to the lake.

After Joe left I went for a walk round. Took a glance into the other houses — you've no idea how inviting mine looks with all the lights on in the middle of those deserted shacks! I can't imagine anyone coming to live in them again. One of these days I really must go in and see what I can find — perhaps the rats which everyone took for 'ghosts.'

But about this business of haunting, something just struck me. Was what that family said they saw the first hint of the supernatural round here — because if it was, why are the other houses so dilapidated? It's all very well saying that they're so far away from everything, but they've been altered right and left, as you saw. Certainly at one time they were frequently inhabited, so why did people stop coming? Must tackle the estate agent about this.

When I'd finished peering round the houses, I felt like a walk. I found what looked like a path through the woods behind the house, so I followed it. I won't try that again in a hurry! — there was practically no light in there, the trees just went on into the distance as far as I could see, and if I'd gone much farther in I'd certainly have been lost. You could picture it — stumbling on and on into the dark, nothing to see except trees, closing in on every side… And to think those people brought a kid here!

Just finished my new painting. It shows these houses, with the lake in the foreground, and the bloated body of a drowned man at the edge of the water—Relentless Plague, I think. I hope they like it.

Yours, Thomas

P.S. Been having nightmares lately. Can never remember what they're about, but I always wake up sweating.

I wrote back an inconsequential reply. I deplored the macabre nature of his latest work — as I had always done — although, as I said, 'no doubt it will be appreciated for its technique.' I offered to buy anything he might be unable to get in Brichester, and made a few uninspired observations on life in Hoddesdon. Also, I think, I remarked: 'So you're having nightmares? Remember that the business with the last owners began with their boy having dreams.'

Cartwright replied:

10 October 1960

You don't know how lucky you are, having a post-box almost on your doorstep! My nearest one's nearly four miles away, and I get out there only on my way to Brichester, on Mondays and Saturdays — which means I have to write letters on Monday morning (as I'm doing now) or Sunday, and collect the replies on Saturday up at Bold Street.

Anyway, that's not what I wanted to write to you about. I've gone and left some sketches in a cupboard in the studio of the Elizabeth Street house, and I was wondering if you could drop round there and perhaps drive up with them. If you can't, maybe you could call on Joe Bulger and get him to bring them up here. I'm sorry to be such a hell of a nuisance, but I can't do one of my paintings without them.

Yours, Thomas

My job was again very demanding, and I replied that I could not possibly leave town for some weeks. I could not very well refuse to contact Bulger, and on Wednesday evening on my way home from work I detoured to his house. Luckily, he had not left for his weekly cinema jaunt, and he invited me in, offering me a drink. I would have stayed longer, but my job was consuming even spare time, so I said:

'This isn't really a social call. I'm afraid I'm passing you a job which was detailed to me. You see, Cartwright wanted me to collect some drawings from his London studio in a cupboard, but my job's getting in the way — you know what it can be like. So if you could do it for me, and take a train down there with them..?'

Bulger looked a little reluctant, but he only said: 'All right — I'll try and save your face. I hope he doesn't want them in a desperate hurry — I'll be able to get them to him within the week.'

I got up to leave. At the door I remarked: 'Better you than me. You may have a bit of trouble in Elizabeth Street, because someone new's already moved in there.'

'You didn't tell me that before,' he protested. 'No, it's all right, I'll still go — even though I don't much like the idea of going to that lake.'

'How do you mean?' I asked. 'Something you don't like down there?'

Bulger shrugged. 'Nothing I could put my finger on, but I certainly wouldn't like to live down there alone. There's something about those trees growing so close, and that black water — as if there were things watching, and waiting… but you must think me crazy. There is one point, though — why were those houses built so far from everywhere? By that lake, too — I mean, it's hardly the first place you'd think of if you were going to build a row of houses. Who'd be likely to live there?'

As I drove back to Hoddesdon I thought about this. Nobody except someone seeking morbid inspiration, such as Cartwright, would live in such a place — and surely such people were not numerous. I planned to mention this to him in my next letter; perhaps he would discover something thus of why the houses had become untenanted. But as it happened, I was forestalled, as I discovered from his letter of the following Sunday.

16 October 1960

Well, Joe's come and gone. He couldn't get into my studio at first — the new people thought he made it all up so he could get in and steal the silver! Anyway, the Walkers next door knew him, so he finally got my sketches.

He was wondering why these houses were built in the first place. I don't know either — it never struck me before, but now I come to think about it I must find out sometime. Maybe I'll ask that estate agent about it next time I'm up Bold Street way. This may tell me why the places got so dilapidated, too. I get the idea that a band of murderers (or highwaymen, perhaps) could have operated from here, living off the passers-by; sort of L'Auberge Rouge stuff.

Joe left this afternoon… Sorry for the break, but actually I just broke off writing because I thought I heard a noise outside. Of course it must have been a mistake. Nobody could possibly be out there at this time (11 p.m.) — Joe left about seven hours back — but I could have sworn that somebody was yelling in the distance a few minutes ago; there was a sort of high-pitched throbbing, too, like an engine of some sort. I even thought that there was something white — well, a few white objects — moving on the other side of the lake; but of course it's too dark to see anything so far off. Certainly a lot of splashing began in the water about the same time, and it's only just dying down as I write this.

I'd still like you to come down for a few days. Christmas is getting near — maybe..?

Yours, Thomas

I was rather disturbed that he should imagine sounds in such a lonely area, and said as much. Although I, like Bulger, did not relish the idea of going to that half-lit woodland lake, I thought it might be best for me to visit Cartwright when I could, if only so he could talk to me and forget his pocket of desolation. There was less work for me now at the Inland Revenue, but it would be some weeks before I could visit him. Perhaps Bulger's call had lessened his introspection a little, though from his latest imaginings it did not seem so. I told him of my proposed stay with him when I wrote that Thursday.

His reply which I received on the 25th I believe to be the first real hint of what Cartwright unwittingly brought on himself.

24 October 1960

Haven't had time to get down to Bold Street yet, but I want to find out about these houses all the more now.

However, that's not really why I wanted to write to you. Remember I kept on about these nightmares which I could never remember? Well, last night I had a series of long dreams, which I remembered on waking. They were certainly terrifying — no wonder I kept waking up sweating, and no wonder that kid kept screaming in the night if he had the same dreams! But what am I saying — that's hardly likely, is it?

Last night I went to bed around midnight. I left the window open, and I noticed a lot of — splashing and disturbance on the surface of the lake. Funny, that — there was hardly any wind after 6 o'clock. Still I think all that noise may have caused my dreams.

My dream began in the hall. I was going out the front door — seemed to remember saying goodbye to someone, who I don't know, and seeing the door close. I went down the steps and across the pavement round the lake. Why I can't imagine, I passed the car and began to walk up the Bnchester road. I wanted to get into Brichester, but not in any hurry. I had a peculiar feeling that someone should have driven me there… Come to think, that's the way Joe must have felt last week! He had to walk to Brichester, because I was right out of petrol and the nearest garage is a few miles down the road.

A few yards out of the glade I noticed a footpath leading off among the trees to the left of the road. That's the direct way to Brichester — at least, it would be if it kept on in its original direction — for the motor road curves a good deal. While I wasn't in a hurry, I didn't see why I should walk further than necessary, so I turned off the road on to the path. I felt a bit uneasy, heaven knows why — I wouldn't normally. The trees were very close and not much light got through, so that might have contributed to the feeling. It was very quiet, too, and when I kicked loose stones out of the way the sound startled me.

I suppose it must have been about fifty yards in that I realised the path wouldn't take me back to Brichester at all if it kept on the way it was tending. In fact, it was curving back to the lake — or at least following the lake shore, I'd guess with about twenty yards of forested ground between the path and the open shore. I went a few yards further to make sure; it was definitely curving round the lake. I turned to go back — and glimpsed a blue glow a little ahead. I didn't know what to make of it, and didn't particularly like the idea of going closer; but I'd time to spare, so I conquered this irrational fear (which normally I'd never feel) and went forward.

The path widened a little, and at the centre of the wider space stood an oblong piece of stone. It was about seven feet long, two wide and three high, and it was cut out of some phosphorescent stone which gave out the blue light. On top were inscribed some words too worn away to be legible, and at the foot of the writing the name 'Thos. Lee' was roughly chipped. I wasn't sure whether it was a solid piece of stone or not — a groove ran round the sides about two inches from the top which might have denoted a lid. I didn't know what it was, but immediately I got the idea that there were others along the path. Determined to see if this were true, I walked away up the path — but with my determination was mixed an odd unaccustomed fear of what I was doing.

Twenty yards on or so I thought I heard a sound behind me — first a hollow sliding, then what sounded like measured footsteps following me. I looked back with a shiver, but the bend in the path blocked my view. The footsteps weren't coming very fast; I began to hurry, for oddly I didn't want to see who was making them.

Seventy or eighty yards, and I came into a second space. As I noticed the glowing stone in the centre a blind terror rose up in me, but I continued to stare at it. There came a muffling shifting sound — and then, as I watched, the lid of that stone box began to slide off, and a hand came scrabbling out to lever it up! What was worse, it was the hand of a corpse — bloodless and skeletal, and with impossibly long, cracked nails… I turned to run, but the trees were so thick-growing that it would have been impossible to flee through them quickly enough. I began to stumble back up the path, and heard those horribly deliberate footfalls close at hand. When a yellow-nailed hand appeared round a tree, gripping the trunk, I screamed hopelessly and awoke.

For a minute I considered getting up and making some coffee. Dreams don't usually affect me, but this one was terribly realistic. However, before I could attempt to hold my eyes open, I fell asleep again.

Straight into another nightmare. I was just coming on to the lake shore from among the trees — but not voluntarily; I was being led. I looked once at the hands gripping my arms, and afterwards stared straight ahead. Yet this wasn't reassuring, either. There was a litle moonlight coming from behind me, and it cast shadows on the ground where I glanced. That intensified my resolution not to look to the side. There were more figures behind me than my captors, but those two were bad enough — abominably thin and tall; and the one on the right had only one hand, but I don't mean the other arm ended at the wrist.

They shoved me forward to where I could look down into the lake. The ferns and water were unusually mobile tonight, but I didn't realise what was making them move until an eye rose above the surface and stared moistly at me. Two others followed it — and, worst of all, none of them was in a face. When the body heaved up behind them I shut my eyes and shrieked for help — to whom I don't know; I had a weird idea that someone was in the house here and could help me. Then I felt a tearing pain in my chest, neutralised by a numbness which spread through my whole body. And I regarded the object I had seen rising from the lake with no horror whatever. And that moment I woke again.

Almost like an echo from my dream, there was still a loud splashing from the lake outside. My nerves must have been on edge, for I could have sworn that there was a faint sound just under the window. I jumped out of bed and shoved the window further open, so I could look out. There was nothing moving in sight — but for a moment I thought I heard something scuttling away along the line of houses. There might even have been a door closing quietly, but I can't be sure of that. Certainly the moonlight was wavering on the lake's surface, as if something had just sunk.

It's all rather queer now I look on it in broad daylight, but just then everything seemed to have an added significance — I almost expected the monstrous shape of my dream to rise from the water and squat before me in the street. I suppose you rather wonder whether I'm going to describe what I saw. You can't imagine how difficult that would be — maybe I'll make it the subject of my next painting. I only got one glimpse, though, even if it was so terribly detailed. It'll be best if I don't lose what inspiration there is by describing it now, anyway.

Yours, Thomas

I would not give him the satisfaction of knowing he had interested me; I did not refer to his vision of the haunter of the lake. Instead, I advised him to contact the estate agent and find out the original purpose of the lakeside property. 'Maybe,' I suggested, 'you'll learn of some hideous deed which has left a residue.' I did not add that I hoped he would discover something utterly prosaic, which would destroy the place's unfortunate hold over him and get him away from its morbid atmosphere. I did not expect him to find out anything extraordinary, and so was startled by his reply.

30 October 1960

Last Friday I made a special journey down to Bold Street, and found out quite a bit about my lakeside street. The agent wasn't particularly pleased to see me, and seemed surprised when I told him I hadn't come for my money back. He still was wary of saying much, though — went on a bit about the houses being built 'on the orders of a private group.' It didn't seem as though I'd get much out of him, and then I happened to mention that I was having dreams like the earlier tenants. Before he could think, he blurted out: 'That's going to make some people a bit happier, then.'

'What do you mean by that?' I asked, sensing a mystery.

Well, he hedged a bit, and finally explained: 'It's to do with the "haunting" of your lake. There's a story among the country people — and it extends to them in the suburbs around Mercy Hill, which is nearest your place — that something lives in the lake, and "sends out nightmares" to lure people to it. Even though the nightmares are terrifying, they're said to have a hypnotic effect. Since the place became untenanted, people — children particularly — in the Mercy Hill area have been dreaming, and one or two have been admitted to the Hill hospital. No wonder they have nightmares around there — it used to be the site of a gallows, you know, and the hospital was a prison; only some joker called it "Mercy Hill," and the name stuck. They say the dreams are the work of what's in the lake—it's hungry, and casting its net further out. Of course it's all superstition — God knows what they think it is. Anyway, if you're dreaming, they'd say it won't need to trouble them any more.'

'Well, that's one thing cleared up,' I said, trying to follow up my advantage. 'Now, why were the houses really built? What was this "private group" you're so secretive about?'

'It'll sound crazy to you, no doubt,' he apologised. 'The houses were built around 1790, and renovated or added to several times. They were put up on the instructions of this group of about six or seven people. These people all disappeared around 1860 or 1870, apparently leaving for another town or something — anyway, nobody around here heard of them again. In 1880 or so, since there'd been no word from them, the houses were let again. For many reasons, people never stayed long — you know, the distance from town; and the scenery too, even if that was what got you there. I've heard from earlier workers here that the place even seemed to affect some people's minds. I was only here when the last tenant came in. You heard about the family that was here last, but this was something I didn't tell you. Now look — you said when you first came that you were after ghosts. You sure you want to hear about this?'

'Of course I do — this is what I asked for,' I assured him. How did I know it mightn't inspire a new painting? (Which reminds me, I'm working on a painting from my dream; to be called The Thing In The Lake.)

'Really, it wasn't too much,' he warned me. 'He came in here at nine o'clock — that's when we open, and he told me he'd been waiting outside in the car half the night. Wouldn't tell me why he was pulling out — just threw the keys on the counter and told me to get the house sold again. While I was fixing some things up, though, he was muttering a lot. I couldn't catch it all, but what I did get was pretty peculiar. Lot of stuff about "the spines" and "you lose your will and become part of it" — and he went on a lot about "the city among the weeds." Somebody "had to keep the boxes in the daytime," because of "the green decay." He kept mentioning someone called—Glarky, or something like that — and also he said something about Thomas Lee I didn't catch.'

That name Thomas Lee sounded a bit familiar to me, and I said so. I still don't know where I got it from, though.

'Lee? Why, of course,' he immediately said. 'He was the leader of that group of people who had the houses built — the man who did all the negotiating… And that's really about all the facts I can give you.'

'Facts, yes,' I agreed. 'But what else can you tell me? I suppose the people round here must have their own stories about the place?'

'I could tell you to go and find out for yourself,' he said — I suppose he was entitled to get a bit tired of me, seeing I wasn't buying anything. However, he went on: 'Still, it's lucky for you Friday is such a slack day… Well, they say that the lake was caused by the fall of a meteor. Centuries ago the meteor was wandering through space, and on it there was a city. The beings of the city all died with the passage through space, but something in that city still lived — something that guided the meteor to some sort of landing from its home deep under the surface. God knows what the city would've had to be built of to withstand the descent, if it were true!

'Well, the meteor crater filled with water over the centuries. Some people, they say, had ways of knowing there was something alive in the lake, but they didn't know where it had fallen. One of these was Lee, but he used things nobody else dared to touch to find its whereabouts. He brought these other people down to the lake when he got to know what was in there. They all came from Goatswood — and you know what the superstitious say comes out of the hill behind that town for them to worship… As far as I can make out, Lee and his friends are supposed to have met with more than they expected at the lake. They became servants of what they awoke, and, people say, they're there yet.'

That's all I could get out of him. I came back to the house, and I can tell you I viewed it a bit differently from when I left! I bet you didn't expect me to find that out about it, eh? Certainly it's made me more interested in my surroundings — perhaps it'll inspire me.

Yours, Thomas

I confess that I did not write a long reply; I suppose because my plan to break the lake's hold over him had gone awry. It is regrettable that I was so abrupt, for the letter which reached me on the 8th was his last.

6 November 1960

…Have you seen Joe around lately? I haven't heard from him since he left here about three weeks ago, and I'm wondering what's happened to him — he used to write as regularly as you. Still, maybe he's too busy.

But that's unimportant, really. So much has been happening down here, and I don't understand all of it yet. Some of it, maybe, doesn't matter at all, but I'm sure now that this place is a focal point of something unexpected.

Working till about 3 a.m. on the 31st, I finished my new painting. I think it's my best yet — never before have I got such a feeling of alienness into my work. I went to bed around 3:30 and didn't wake up till 5 in the afternoon, when it was dark. Something woke me up; a sound from outside the window. Loud noises of any kind are rare around here, and this wasn't like anything I'd ever heard before. A high-pitched throbbing noise — quickening in vibration and rising in pitch till it hit a discord, when it would drop to its original pitch and begin the cycle again. I couldn't see anything, but I got a peculiar idea that it was coming from in the lake. There was an odd rippling on the surface, too, where it reflected the light from the window.

Well, on the 1st I did what I kept saying I'd do (and this is where the interesting part begins) — namely, explore the other houses along the street. I went out about three and decided to try the one directly on the left. Did you realise that the front door must have been ajar when we first came? — oh, no, you didn't get that far along the line. It was, and once I'd managed to get over those rickety steps it was easy to get into the hall. Dust everywhere, wallpaper hanging off in strips, and as far as I could see there was no electric light fitting. I went into the front room — the one looking on to the lake — but could see nothing. The floorboards were bare, cobwebs festooned the fireplace, there was no furniture — the room was almost unlit with the grimy windows. Nothing to see at all.

The next room on the left was almost as bad. I don't know what it was used for — it was so bare nobody could have known. But as I turned to leave, I noticed something protruding from between the floorboards, and, going over, I found it was the page of a book; it looked as if it had been torn out and trodden into the niche. It was dirty and crumpled, and hardly seemed worth looking at, but I picked it up anyway. It was covered with handwriting, beginning in the middle of one sentence and ending in the middle of another. I was going to drop it, but a phrase caught my eye. When I looked closer I realised that this was indeed interesting. I took it back to my house where I could see better, and finally got it smoothed out and clean enough for reading. I might as well copy it out for you — see what you make of it.

sundown and the rise of that from below. They can't come out in the daytime — the Green Decay would appear on them, and that'd be rather unpleasant — but I couldn't walk far enough for them not to catch me. They can call on the tomb-herd under Temphill and get them to turn the road back to the lake. I wish I hadn't got mixed up with this. A normal person coming here might be able to escape the dream-pull, but since I dabbled in the forbidden practices at Brichester University I don't think it's any use trying to resist. At the time I was so proud that I'd solved that allusion by Alhazred to 'the maze of the seven thousand crystal frames' and 'the faces that peer from the fifth-dimensional gulf.' None of the other cult-members who understood my explanation could get past the three thousand three hundred and thirty-third frame, where the dead mouths gape and gulp. I think it was because I passed that point that the dream-pull has so strong a hold on me. But if this is being read it means that there must be new tenants. Please believe me when I say that you are in horrible danger. You must leave now, and get the lake filled in before it gets strong enough to leave this place. By the time you read this I shall be — not dead, but might as well be. I shall be one of the servants of it, and if you look closely enough you might find me in my place among the trees. I wouldn't advise it, though; although they'd get the Green Decay in broad daylight they can come out in the daytime into the almost-darkness between the trees. You'll no doubt want proof; well, in the cellar

That's where it ended. As you can imagine, I wanted nothing better than to go down to that cellar — I presumed it must mean the cellar of the house I'd been exploring. But I felt particularly hungry, and by the time I'd prepared a meal and eaten it, it was pretty dark. I didn't have a flashlight, and it'd have been useless to go into a cellar after dark to look for anything. So I had to wait until the next day.

That night I had a strange dream. It must have been a dream, but it was very realistic. In it I was lying in bed in my room, as though I'd just woken up. Voices were speaking under the window — strange voices, hoarse and sibilant and somehow forced, as if the speakers found it painful to talk. One said: 'Perhaps in the cellar. They will not be needed until the pull is stronger, anyway.' Slowly the answer came, 'His memory is dimming, but the second new one must remedy that.' It might have been the first voice or another which replied, 'Daylight is too near, but tomorrow night we must go down.' Then I heard deliberate, heavy footsteps receding. In the dream I could not force myself to look and see who had been under the window; and, in a few minutes, the dream ended in uneasy sleep.

The next morning, the second, I visited the house again. The door to the cellar's in the kitchen, like my house, There wasn't much light down there, but some did come in from the garden outside. When I got used to it, I saw a flight of stone steps going down into a large cellar. I saw what I wanted immediately — there wasn't really anything else to see. A small bookcase of the type open at the top and front, full of dusty yellowed books, and with its sides joined by a piece of cord which served as a handle for easier carrying. I picked up the bookcase and went back upstairs. There was one other thing which I thought odd: an archway at the other end of the cellar, beyond which was a steep flight of stairs — but these stairs led down as far as I could see.

When I got back to my house I dusted the books off and examined the spines. They were, I found, different volumes of the same book, eleven of them in all; the book was called The Revelations of Glaaki. I opened Book 1, and found it was an old type of loose-leaf notebook, the pages covered with an archaic handwriting. I began to read — and by the time I looked up from the fifth book it was already dark.

I can't even begin to tell you what I learned. When you come down at Christmas maybe you can read some of it — well, if you start it, you'll be so fascinated you'll have to finish it. I'd better give you briefly the history of the book, and the fantastic my thos of which it tells.

This Revelations of Glaaki has been reprinted elsewhere according to notes, or perhaps I'd better say pirated. This, however, is the only complete edition; the man who managed to copy it down and 'escaped' to get it printed didn't dare to copy it all down for publication. This original handwritten version is completely fragmentary; it's written by the different members of a cult, and where one member leaves off another begins, perhaps on a totally different subject. The cult grew up around 1800, and the members almost certainly were those who ordered the houses built. About 1865 the pirated edition was published, but because it referred frequently to other underground societies they had to be careful where the book was circulated. Most of the copies of the very limited edition found their way into the hands of members of these cults, and nowadays there are very few complete runs of all the nine volumes (as against eleven in the uncut edition) extant.

The cult worships something which lives in the lake, as the agent told me. There's no description of the being; it was made out of some 'living, iridescent metal,' as far as I can make out, but there are no actual pictures. Occasionally footnotes occur, such as 'cf. picture: Thos. Lee pinxit,' but if there ever was a picture it must have been torn out. There are numerous references to 'the sentient spines,' and the writers go into great detail about this. It's to do with the initiation of a novice into the cult of Glaaki, and explains, in its own superstitious way, the legends of the 'witch's mark.'

You've heard of the witch's mark — the place on the body of a witch that wouldn't bleed when cut? Matthew Hopkins and his kind were always trying to find the mark, but not always successfully. Of course they often got hold of innocent people who'd never heard of Glaaki, and then they had to resort to other means to prove they were witches. But those in the cult certainly were supposed to have the real witches' marks. It was the long, thin spines which are supposed to cover the body of their god Glaaki. In the initiation ceremony the novice was held (sometimes willing, sometimes not) on the lake shore while Glaaki rose from the depths. It would drive one of its spines into the chest of the victim, and when a fluid had been injected into the body the spine detached itself from the body of Glaaki. If the victim had been able to snap the spine before the fluid entered his body he would at least have died a human being, but of course his captors didn't allow that. As it was, a network spread right through the body from the point of the spine, which then fell away where it entered the body, leaving an area which would never bleed if something were jabbed into it. Through the emission of impulses, perhaps magnetic, from the brain of Glaaki, the man was kept alive while he was controlled almost completely by the being. He acquired all its memories; he became also a part of it, although he was capable of performing minor individual actions, such as writing the Revelations, when Glaaki was not emitting specific impulses. After about sixty years of this half-life this 'Green Decay' would set in if the body was exposed to too-intense light.

There's some confusion about the actual advent of Glaaki on this planet. The cult believes that it didn't reach the earth until the meteor hit and formed the lake. On the other hand, the book does mention 'heretics' who insist that the spines can be found buried in certain hybrid Egyptian mummies, and say that Glaaki came before — through 'the reversed angles of Tagh-Clatur' which the priests of Sebek and Karnak knew. There are suggestions that the zombies of Haiti are the products of a horrible extract from early cult-members who got caught in sunlight, too.

As for what was learned by the initiate — well, there are references to the '48 Aklo unveilings' and a suggestion that 'the 49th shall come when Glaaki takes each to him.' Glaaki seems to have crossed the universe from some outer sphere, stopping on worlds such as Yuggoth, Shaggai and even Tond. On this planet it occasionally draws new members to the cult by the 'dream-pull,' which I've heard about before. These days, however, the lake is so far away from everything that the use of the 'dream-pull' takes time, and without the vitality it's said to draw from the initiation it gets too weak to project the dreams to any great distance. The cultists can't come out in the daylight, so the only thing left is for people to come spontaneously and live in the houses. Like me!

That isn't all that's in the book, by any means; the cult believed a lot of other things, but some of them are so incredible and unconventional that they'd just sound ridiculous if I wrote them down. Somehow they don't seem so idiotic in that simple style of the Revelations, perhaps because they're written by an absolute believer. You must read some of them this Christmas. If you could imagine what they suggest causes volcanic eruptions! And their footnote to atomic theory; what the scientist will see who invents a microscope which gives a really detailed view of an atom! There are other things, too — the race 'of which Vulthoom is merely a child'—the source of vampires — and the pale, dead things which walk black cities on the dark side of the moon…

But there's no use my going on like this. You'll see all this in a few weeks, and until then my hints won't mean much to you. I promised you a quotation, so I'll copy down a passage at random:

Many are the horrors of Tond, the sphere which revolves about the green sun of Yifne and the dead star of Baalblo. Few come near to humanity, for even the ruling race of yarkdao have retractable ears in humanoid bodies. Their gods are many, and none dares interrupt the priests of Chig in their ritual, which lasts, three years and a quarter, or one puslt. Great cities of blue metal and black stone are built on Tond, and some yarkdao speak of a city of crystal in which things walk unlike anything living. Few men of our planet can see Tond, but those who know the secret of the crystallisers of Dreams may walk its surface unharmed, if the crystalliser's hungry guardian does not scent them.

Actually that isn't the best quotation to take — others are much less vague, but mightn't have so much impact if you read them out of context. Now you really must come down at Christmas, if only to read the book.

Yours, Thomas

I did not reply to his letter until the 12th. I had intended to reply sooner, if only to take his mind off this latest focus of his morbidity, but this had been a particularly crowded week at the Inland Revenue. Now, at about ten o'clock, I sat down to write to him. I meant to point out that before he had thought all this mere superstition, and that he had only discovered proof of the superstitious beliefs of a few people.

I was just putting down the date when the telephone rang. I was not expecting anyone to call, and momentarily thought it must be a wrong number. When it had rung three times, I wearily stood up to answer it.

'Alan? Thank God!' said a hysterical voice at the other end. 'Drop everything and come in your car — and for God's sake make it quick!'

'Who is that — who's speaking?' I asked, for I was not sure if I recognised the voice.

'Thomas — Thomas Cartwright!' screamed the voice impatiently. 'Listen, there's positively no time for explanation. You must come down here now in your car, at once — or it'll be dark and I'll never get out. I'm in a phone box on the road some miles from the lake, and I'll stay in here till you get here. You can't miss it — just take the lake road from Brichester; it's not as far, that's all.'

'But why have I got to come?' I persisted, exasperated.

'Because they've wrecked my car engine.' He was becoming very nervous; I could tell from the noticeable shaking of his voice. 'I've found out a lot more since I wrote, and they know I know it all. They don't even bother to hide, now.'

'I don't know what the hell you're talking about, but why can't you call a taxi instead of bringing me all this way?'

'I can't call a taxi because I don't know the number!' shrieked Cartwright. 'And why can't I look it up? Because last night they must have been here before me—they've taken the directory. I'd walk to Brichester — I don't think their influence extends any further — but if they don't call on the tomb-herd under Temphill to turn space back, the tree-creatures a couple of miles up the road might take their real shapes, and it needs the union of two wills to overcome them. Now, for God's sake, will you get your car down here, or do you want Glaaki to rise from the lake again? Perhaps this will give it the strength to broadcast further.' And immediately there came a click as the receiver was replaced.

For some moments I stood by the telephone table. I could not telephone the police, for it would be useless to send them to Cartwright only to find circumstances which would make them think him mad. Certainly his ravings about them were not to be taken seriously. On the other hand, if the lake were having such a pronounced effect on his mind, I should surely drive down to Brichester at once. And so I did.

I had only been to the lake once, and on reaching Brichester I had completely forgotten the route. None of the passers-by could help me; in fact, by their expressions I was almost sure that some of them could help me, but for some reason would not. Finally I asked a policeman to direct me to Bold Street, where the estate agent could tell me the way to the lake.

He looked up as I entered, but did not seem to recognise me. 'Can I help you?' he asked.

'About Lakeside Terrace—' I began.

'Lakeside Terrace? No, not one of ours, sir.'

'Yes, it is one of yours,' I insisted. 'You sold it to a friend of mine a few weeks back — a Mr Cartwright — it's supposed to be haunted. Look, you must remember; I've got to see him as soon as possible.' Some of Cartwright's nervous impatience had affected me, and the estate agent's continued puzzled expression caused me to think he could not help me.

'Will you be at the lake after dark, then?'

His pointless-seeming question infuriated me, particularly as I had no definite answer. 'I don't know yet. Yes, maybe. Damn it, do you know the way to the lake or don't you? I can't waste any more time. It's — what, 3:20 already, and I ought to be there by now.'

As I drove out of Bold Street, I was still surprised by his sudden decision to direct me. I was relieved to drive away from the small building, for I had been strangely worried by the unaccustomed slowness of his speech and the rigidity of his limbs; still more by the way he would finger a spot on his chest and wince. I still could not imagine why should he ask whether I was to be at the lake after dark.

I reached the top of Mercy Hill a few minutes later. As the car slowed at the bend which takes one past the grey hospital building, I had a view both ahead and behind; and I very nearly turned back. The red-brick houses looked far more inviting than the steep hillsides, between which plunged roads bordered by leafless trees. I remembered what the people of Mercy Hill said inhabited the lake. But I had come to rid Cartwright of his superstitious morbidity, and could not do this while I was myself superstitious.

When I rounded the curve which brought me in sight of the telephone box, the door swung open and Cart-wright ran into the road. He reached the car as I began to slow and, running alongside, he yelled through the open window: 'Open the door on this side! Keep driving — I can jump in at this speed.'

I did not intend him to be injured, and stopped the car. 'Now will you stop acting like someone in a movie and explain?'

'All right, I'm in,' he assured me. 'Now let's get down to the lake.'

'To the lake?' I repeated, surprised. 'The way you were going on, I thought… Oh, all right, if you're in such a hurry.'

As I was starting the engine, I heard him muttering beside me. Some of it escaped me, but I caught: '—tried to phone the police, but I couldn't get through — wires must have been down. Must have been an accident, though. Couldn't have been their work—they could never get that far in the sunlight. The Green Decay — it's in the Revelations… Could they?'

I ignored this, not turning to look at him. 'Listen, Thomas, I'd like some explanation. I thought you wanted to get away from the lake before nightfall? What's happened up there that's scared you off so suddenly?'

He left my second question for a moment. 'I certainly must get away before nightfall, but I want to bring the Revelations with me. If I leave the house empty tonight and come back tomorrow they'll get in and take it. We can get down there before 4 o'clock and grab the bookcase. We'll be well towards Brichester before dark. The tree-creatures up the road may get more active after dark, but there's a ritual which I can repeat to subdue them if I can draw on your consciousness. Once we're in Brichester, we ought to be beyond their influence.'

'But you weren't like this before. You may have believed in all this, but you weren't frightened of it. What's happening to change your feelings?'

He fumbled a little, then: 'One of them might have been a dream, but the other… As for the thing I might have dreamed, it happened about one o'clock this morning. I was only half-asleep — I kept dreaming of strange things: that black city among the weeds down there, with a shape under a crystal trapdoor, and further back to Yuggoth and Tond — and that kept me awake. At the time I'm speaking of I kept half-opening my eyes; I got the feeling that someone was watching me, but I could never see anyone. Then I started noticing something pale which seemed to float at the edge of my vision. I realised it was near the window. I turned quickly and saw a face staring in at me.

'It was the face of a corpse; what was worse, it was the face of Joe Bulger.'

We had reached the last stretch of road towards the lake before he continued. 'He didn't look at me; his eyes were fixed on something at the other side of the room. All that was over there was that bookcase containing the eleven volumes of the Revelations of Glaaki. I jumped up and ran over to the window, but he began to move away with that horrible deliberate tread. I'd seen enough, though. His shirt had been torn open, and on his chest was a livid red mark, with a network of lines radiating from it. Then he moved off between the trees.'

I stopped the car at the beginning of the lakeside pavement. As I approached the house, he was still muttering behind me: 'They'd taken him to Glaaki — that must have been all the splashing that night. But that was at eleven o'clock and Joe left about four. My God, what were they doing to him in the other seven hours?'

I stood back to let him open the front door; he had even found a padlock somewhere and augmented the lock's strength with it. As we entered the front room I noticed the canvas-covered painting in one corner. I began to lift the canvas off, but Cartwright stopped me. 'Not yet — that's part of the other. I want to show you something else when you see that.'

He went over to the bookcase which stood on the floor opposite the window, and took out the last book. 'When — Joe — had gone, I finally had a look at these books. I had a good idea of what he'd been looking at, but I wanted to make sure. Somehow I knocked the lot down. No damage, luckily, except to the eleventh book; but that one had fallen so that the cover had been torn off. As I was trying to fit it together again, I noticed the back cover was bulging outward a lot. When I looked closer, this is what I found.'

He passed me the volume he had selected. Opening the cover, I saw that the back had been slit open; a sort of pocket existed, and inside it I found a folded sheet of canvas and a piece of cardboard.

'Don't look at those for the moment,' ordered Cart-wright. 'Remember I painted The Thing In The Lake from my nightmare? This is it. Now, go ahead and compare it with those two.'

By the time I had unfolded the canvas, he had uncovered the painting. The piece of canvas was also a painting, while the card was a photograph. The background of each was different; Cartwright's depicted the lake as surrounded by a black pavement in the middle of a desolate plain, the painting I held — inscribed 'Thos. Lee pinxit'—possessed a background of half-fluid demons and many-legged horrors, while the photograph simply showed the lake as it was now. But the focus of each was the same totally alien figure, and the one that disturbed me most was the photograph.

The centre of each picture was, it was obvious, the being known as Glaaki. From an oval body protruded countless thin, pointed spines of multicoloured metal; at the more rounded end of the oval a circular, thick-lipped mouth formed the centre of a spongy face, from which rose three yellow eyes on thin stalks. Around the underside of the body were many white pyramids, presumably used for locomotion. The diameter of the body must have been about ten feet at its least width.

Not only the coincidence of the pictures, but also the total abnormality of the creature, disturbed me. However, I tried to sound unconvinced as I remarked, 'Look, you said yourself that the other business was only a dream. As for the rest — what does it amount to, anyway? A few nightmares and the documents of a superstitious cult whose beliefs happen to coincide with your dreams. The photograph's very realistic, of course, but these days you can do almost anything with special photography.'

'You still think it's my imagination?' he inquired. 'Of course you don't explain why anyone would go to the trouble of faking a photograph like that and then leave it here. Besides, remember I did that painting from my dream before I saw those. It's Glaaki sending his image from the lake.'

I was still searching for an answer when Cartwright looked at his watch. 'Good God, it's after four o'clock! We'd better get going if we want to leave before dark. You go and start the car while I get the bookcases. I don't think they'll touch my pictures, except the latest one, and I'll bring that one with me. Tomorrow, maybe, we can come back from Brichester and get them.'

As I climbed into the driving seat I saw Cartwright struggling across the pavement with the bookcase-handle over one arm and the picture held in front of him. He slid into the back seat as I turned the ignition key.

There was no sound from the engine.

Cartwright ran and threw up the bonnet. Then he turned to stare at me, his face pale. 'Now will you bloody well believe!' he screamed. 'I suppose it's my imagination that wrecked your engine!'

I got out to look at the mass of torn wires. He did not notice whether I was listening as he continued:

'They've been at it — but how? It's not dark yet out here, and they can't come by daylight — but they must have done it—' This seemed to worry him more than the engine's actually been wrecked. Then he slumped against the car. 'My God, of course — Joe only just joined them, and the Green Decay doesn't affect them for sixty years or so. He can come out in the light — he can follow me — he is part of Glaaki now, so he won't spare me—'

'What do we do now?' I interrupted. 'According to you it's insane to start walking so close to nightfall, so—'

'Yes,' he agreed. 'We must barricade ourselves in. The upper floors aren't so important, but every window and door on the ground floor must be blocked. If you think I'm crazy, humour me for your own sake.'

Once inside, we managed to block the front-room window by upturning the bed. The back-room window was fortified with a wardrobe. When we had moved this into the room from the front, Cartwright left me to position it while he went out the back door. 'There's a hatchet lying around out here,' he explained. 'Best to have it in here — it may be useful as a weapon, and otherwise they'll get hold of it.' He brought it in and stood it by the hall table.

He helped me to barricade the back door, which opened out of the kitchen; but when we had shoved the kitchen cabinet against it, he told me to take a rest. 'Go ahead, make some coffee,' he suggested. 'As for me — there's a few minutes of daylight left, and I want to take a look in the lake to see what's down there. I'll take the hatchet in case… Joe comes. Anyway, they can't move very fast — their limbs soon become half-rigid.' I began to ask what protection I would have, but he had already gone.

He was so long away that I was beginning to worry, when I heard him knocking at the back door. I called, 'You've a short memory — go round the front,' but when no answering footsteps came I began to pull the cabinet out of position. At that moment a shout came from behind me: 'What are you doing?'

I had the kettle ready to throw when I turned and saw Cartwright. As calmly as I could, I said: 'Somebody is knocking at the back door.'

'It's them,' he yelled, and smashed the cabinet back into place. 'Quick — maybe it's only Joe, but it may be dark enough for the others to come out. Got to block the front door, anyway — what the hell is there?' The hall was bare of all furniture except a small table. 'Have to get the wardrobe out of my bedroom.'

As we entered a number of noises began. Far off came a sliding sound from several directions. A muffled discordant throbbing was also audible, water was splashing nearby, and round the side of the house someone was slowly approaching. I ran to the crevice between window and upturned bed and looked out. It was already quite dark, but I could see the water rippling alarmingly at the shore near the window.

'Help me, for God's sake!' called Cartwright.

As I turned from the window I glimpsed something moving outside. Perhaps I only imagined that glistening shape which heaved out of the water, with long stalks twisting above it; but certainly that throbbing was much nearer, and a creaking, slithering object was moving across the pavement.

I rushed over and helped shove the wardrobe towards the door. 'There's something living out there!' I gasped.

Cartwright looked half-relieved, half-disgusted. 'It's the thing from the picture,' he said breathlessly. 'I saw it before, when I went outside. You've got to look into the lake at a certain angle, otherwise you can't see anything. Down on the bottom, among the weeds — stagnant water, everything dead, except… There's a city down there, all black spiralling steeples and walls at obtuse angles with the streets. Dead things lying on the streets — they died with the journey through space — they're horrible, hard, shiny, all red and covered with bunches of trumpet-shaped things… And right at the centre of the city is a transparent trapdoor. Glaaki's under there, pulsing and staring up — I saw the eye-stalks move towards me—' His voice trailed off.

I followed his gaze. He was looking at the front door; and, as I watched, the door bulged inward from pressure from outside. The hinge-screws were visibly tearing free of the door frame. That alien throbbing cry sounded somehow triumphant.

'Quick, upstairs!' Cartwright shouted. 'Can't get the wardrobe there now — upstairs, I'll follow you.'

I was nearest the stairs, and jumped for them. Halfway up I heard a rending crash behind me, and turning I saw with horror that Cartwright was not behind me. He was standing by the hall table, clutching the hatchet.

Through the front door came the dead servants of Glaaki, skeletal arms outstretched to grab him. And behind them a shape towered, pulsing and shaking with deafening vibration. The dead ones were only a few feet from Cartwright when he ran — straight into their midst. Their arms swung slowly in ineffectual attempts to stop him. He reached the front door, but at that moment one of them stepped in front of him. Cartwright did not stop; he swung the hatchet-blade up between its legs until it cut free.

Now he was beyond the slowly turning corpses, and he plunged towards the pulsing shape of Glaaki. A spine stiffened towards him. As he ran on to the point of the spine Cartwright brought the hatchet down and severed it from the body. The throbbing became a discordant shrieking, and the oval body thrashed in agony back into the lake. The dead creatures made purposeless movements for a while, then shuffled away towards the trees. Cartwright, meanwhile, had fallen on the pavement and did not move. I could stand no more; I rushed into the first upstairs room and locked the door.

The next morning, when I was sure it was daylight, I left the house. Outside I picked up Cartwright's body and left it in the front seat of the car. I did not look back at what lay near the front door; the walking corpse he had destroyed. It had been exposed to daylight. I managed not to vomit until I reached the car. Some time passed before I was able to begin walking to Brichester.

The police did not believe all I told them. The bookcase had gone from the back of the car, and nothing could be seen among the trees — or in the lake, though this was too deep to be dragged. The estate agent on Bold Street could tell them nothing of a 'haunting' of the lake. There was the painting in the car — a painting which has since been pronounced Cartwright's most powerful — but it was only the product of an artist's imagination. Of course, there was that metal spine embedded in his chest, but that could have been an ingeniously contrived murder weapon.

When I had the Brichester University professors examine the spine, however, the results were very different. The case was hushed up in the newspapers, and while the professors have not yet got a permit to fill the lake in, they agree with me that something very strange happened that night in the hollow. For the spine, with its central orifice running through it, was formed not only of a metal completely unknown on this planet; that metal had recently been composed of living cells.




The Plain of Sound


Verily do we know little of the other universes beyond the gate which YOG-SOTHOTH guards. Of those which come through the gate and make their habitation in this world none can tell; although Ibn Schacabao tells of the beings which crawl from the Gulf of S'glhuo that they may be known by their sound. In that Gulf the very worlds are of sound, and matter is known but as an odor; and the notes of our pipes in this world may create beauty or bring forth abominations in S'glhuo. For the barrier between haply grows thin, and when sourceless sounds occur we may justly look to the denizens of S'glhuo. They can do little harm to those of Earth, and fear only that shape which a certain sound may form in their universe.

    

Abdul Alhazred: Necronomicon





* * *


When Frank Nuttall, Tony Roles, and I reached the Inn at Severnford, we found that it was closed. It was summer of 1958, and as we had nothing particular to do at Brichester University that day we had decided to go out walking. I had suggested a trip to Goatswood — the legends there interested me — but Tony had heard things which made him dislike that town. Then Frank had told us about an advertisement in the Brichester Weekly News about a year back which had referred to an inn at the centre of Severnford as "one of the oldest in England." We could walk there in the morning and quench the thirst caused by the journey; afterward we could take the bus back to Brichester if we did not feel like walking.

Tony was not enthusiastic. "Why go all that way to get drunk," he inquired, "even if it is so old? Besides, that ad in the paper's old too — by now the place has probably fallen down?" However, Frank and I wanted to try it, and finally we overruled his protests.

We would have done better to agree with him, for we found the inn's doors and windows boarded up and a nearby sign saying: "Temporarily closed to the public." The only course was to visit the modern public house up the street. We looked round the town a little; this did not occupy us long, for Severnford has few places of interest, most of it being dockland. Before two o'clock we were searching for a bus-stop; when it eluded us, we entered a newsagent's for directions.

"Bus t' Brichester? No, only in the mornin's," the proprietor told us. "Up from the University, are you?"

"Then how do we get back?" Tony asked.

"Walk, I s'pose," suggested the newsagent. "Why'd you come up anyway — oh, t'look at the Inn? No, you won't get in there now — so many o' them bloody teenagers've been breakin' the winders an' such that Council says it'll only open t' people with special permission. Good job, too — though I'm not sayin' as it's kids like you as does it. Still, you'll be wantin' t' get back t' Brichester, an' I know the shortest way."

He began to give us complicated directions, which he repeated in detail. When we still looked uncertain he waited while Frank got out notebook and pencil and took down the route. At the end of this I was not yet sure which way to go, but, as I remarked: "If we get lost, we can always ask."

"Oh, no," protested our informant. "You won't go wrong if you follow that."

"Right, thanks," Frank said. "And I suppose there will be passers-by to ask if we do go wrong?"

"I wouldn't." The newsagent turned to rearrange papers in the rack. "You might ask the wrong people."

Hearing no more from him, we went out into the street and turned right toward Brichester. Once one leaves behind the central area of Severnford where a group of archaic buildings is preserved, and comes to the surrounding red-brick houses, there is little to interest the sight-seer. Much of Severnford is dockland, and even the country beyond is not noticeably pleasant to the forced hiker. Besides, some of the roads are noticeably rough, though that may have been because we took the wrong turning — for, an hour out of Severnford, we realised we were lost.

"Turn left at the signpost about a mile out, it says here," said Frank. "But we've come more than a mile already — where's the signpost?"

"So what do we do — go back and ask?" Tony suggested.

"Too far for that. Look," Frank asked me, "have you got that compass you're always carrying, Les? Brichester is almost southeast of Severnford. If we keep on in that direction, we won't go far wrong."

The road we had been following ran east-west. Now, when we turned off into open country, we could rely only on my compass, and we soon found that we needed it. Once, when ascending a slope, we had to detour round a thickly overgrown forest, where we would certainly have become further lost. After that we crossed monotonous fields, never seeing a building or another human being. Two and a half hours out of Severnford, we reached an area of grassy hillocks, and from there descended into and clambered out of miniature valleys. About half-a-mile into this region, Tony signalled us to keep quiet.

"All I can hear is the stream," said Frank. "Am I supposed to hear something important? You hear anything, Les?"

The rushing stream we had just crossed effectively drowned most distant sounds, but I thought I heard a nearby mechanical whirring. It rose and fell like the sound of a moving vehicle, but with the loudly splashing water I could distinguish no details.

"I'm not sure," I answered. "There's something that could be a tractor, I think—"

"That's what I thought," agreed Tony. "It's ahead somewhere — maybe the driver can direct us. If, of course, he's not one of that newsagent's wrong people!"

The mechanical throbbing loudened as we crossed two hills and came onto a strip of level ground fronting a long, low ridge. I was the first to reach the ridge, climb it and stand atop it. As my head rose above the ridge, I threw myself back.

On the other side lay a roughly square plain, surrounded by four ridges. The plain was about four hundred yards square, and at the opposite side was a one-story building. Apart from this the plain was totally bare, and that was what startled me most. For from that bare stretch of land rose a deafening flood of sound. Here was the source of that mechanical whirring; it throbbed overpoweringly upward, incessantly fluctuating through three notes. Behind it were other sounds; a faint bass humming which hovered on the edge of audibility, and others — whistling and high-pitched twangs which sometimes were inaudible and sometimes as loud as the whirring.

By now Tony and Frank were beside me, staring down.

"Surely it can't be coming from that hut?" Frank said. "It's no tractor, that's certain, and a hut that size could never contain anything that'd make that row."

"I thought it was coming from underground somewhere," suggested Tony. "Mining operations, maybe."

"Whatever it is, there's that hut," I said. "We can ask the way there."

Tony looked down doubtfully. "I don't know — it might well be dangerous. You know driving over subsidence can be dangerous, and how do we know they're not working on something like that here?"

"There'd be signs if they were," I reassured him. "No, come on — there may be nowhere else we can ask, and there's no use keeping on in the wrong direction."

We descended the ridge and walked perhaps twenty yards across the plain.

It was like walking into a tidal wave. The sound was suddenly all around us; the more overpowering because though it beat on us from all sides, we could not fight back — like being engulfed in jelly. I could not have stood it for long — I put my hands over my ears and yelled "Run!" And I staggered across the plain, the sound which I could not shut out booming at me, until I reached the building on the other side.

It was a brown stone house, not a hut as we had thought. It had an arched doorway in the wall facing us, bordered by two low windows without curtains. From what we could see the room on the left was the living-room, that on the right a bedroom, but grime on the windows prevented us from seeing more, except that the rooms were unoccupied. We did not think to look in any windows at the back. The door had no bell or knocker, but Frank pounded on a panel.

There was no answer and he knocked harder. On the second knock the door swung open, revealing that it opened into the living-room. Frank looked in and called: "Anybody at home?" Still nobody answered, and he turned back to us.

"Do you think we'd better go in?" he asked. "Maybe we could wait for the owner, or there might be something in the house that'd direct us."

Tony pushed past me to look. "Hey, what — Frank, do you notice anything here? Something tells me that whoever the owner is, he isn't house-proud."

We could see what he meant. There were wooden chairs, a table, bookcases, a ragged carpet — and all thick with dust. We hesitated a minute, waiting for someone to make a decision; then Frank entered. He stopped inside the door and pointed. Looking over his shoulder we could see there were no footprints anywhere in the dust.

We looked round for some explanation. While Frank closed the door and cut off the throbbing from outside, Tony — our bibliophile — crossed to the bookcases and looked at the spines. I noticed a newspaper on the table and idly picked it up.

"The owner must be a bit peculiar… La Strega, by Pico della Mirandola," Tony read, " — Discovery of Witches — The Red Dragon—hey, Revelations of Glaaki; isn't that the book the University can't get for their restricted section? Here's a diary, big one, too, but I hadn't better touch that."

When I turned to the front page of the newspaper, I saw it was the Camside Observer. As I looked closer, I saw something which made me call the others. "Look at this — December 8, 1930! You're right about this man being peculiar — what sort of person keeps a newspaper for twenty-eight years?"

"I'm going to look in the bedroom," Frank declared. He knocked on the door off the living-room, and, when we came up beside him, opened it. The room was almost bare: a wardrobe, a hanging wall-mirror, and a bed, were the only furnishings. The bed, as we had expected, was empty; but the mark of a sleeping body was clearly defined, though filled with dust. We moved closer, noting the absence of footprints on the floor; and bending over the bed, I thought I saw something besides dust in the hollows left by the sleeper — something like ground glass, sparkling greenly.

"What's happened?" Tony asked in a rather frightened tone.

"Oh, probably nothing out of the ordinary," said Frank. "Maybe there's another entrance round the back — maybe he can't stand all the noise, whatever it is, and has a bedroom on the other side. Look, there's a door in that wall; that may be it."

I went across and opened it, but only a very primitive lavatory lay beyond.

"Wait a minute, I think there was a door next to the bookcase," recollected Tony. He returned to the living-room and opened the door he had noticed. As we followed him, he exclaimed: "My God—now what?"

The fourth room was longer than any of the others, but it was the contents that had drawn Tony's exclamation. Nearest us on the bare floor was something like a television screen, about two feet across, with a blue-glass light bulb behind it, strangely distorted and with thick wires attached. Next to it another pair of wires led from a megaphone-shaped receiver. In between the opposite wall and these instruments lay a strange arrangement of crystals, induction coils, and tubes, from which wires hung at each end for possible attachment to the other appliances. The far corner of the ceiling had recently collapsed, allowing rain to drip onto a sounding-board carrying a dozen strings, a large lever and a motor connected by cogs to a plectrum-covered cylinder. Out of curiosity I crossed and plucked a string; but such a discord trembled through the board that I quickly muffled it.

"Something very funny is going on here," Frank said. "There's no other room, so where can he sleep? And the dust, and the newspaper — and now these things — I've never seen anything like them?"

"Why don't we look at his diary?" suggested Tony. "It doesn't look like he'll be back, and I for one want to know what's happened here."

So we went back into the living-room and Tony took down the heavy volume. He opened it to its last entry: December 8,1930. "If we all try and read it, it'll take three times as long," he said. "You two sit down and I'll try and read you the relevant bits." He was silent for a few minutes, then:

"Professor Arnold Hird, ex-Brichester University: never heard of him — must've been before our time.

"Ah here we are—

" 'January 3, 1930: Today moved into new house (if it can be called a house!). Noises are queer — suppose it's only because there's so much superstition about them that nobody's investigated before. Intend to make full study — meteorological conditions, &c: feel that winds blowing over ridges may vibrate and cause sounds. Tomorrow to look round, take measurements, find out if anything will interrupt sounds. Peculiar that sound seems to be deafening in certain radius, relatively faint beyond — no gradual fading.'

" 'January 4: Sleep uneasy last night — unaccustomed dreams. City on great mountain — angled streets, spiraling pillars and cones. Strange inhabitants; taller than human, scaly skin, boneless fingers, yet somehow not repulsive. Were aware of me, in fact seemed to await my arrival, but each time one approached me I awoke. Repeated several times.

" 'Progress negative. Screens on top of ridges did not interrupt sound; undiminished though little wind. Measurements — northwest ridge 423 yards?' Well, there's a lot more like that."

"Make sure you don't miss anything important," Frank said as Tony turned pages.

" 'January 6: Dreams again. Same city, figures as though waiting. Leader approached. Seemed to be communicating with me telepathically: I caught the thought—Do not be afraid; we are the sounds. Whole scene faded.

" 'No progress whatever. Unable to concentrate on findings; dreams distracting.'

" 'January 7: Insane perhaps, but am off to British Museum tomorrow. In last night's dream was told: Check Necronomicon — formula for aiding us to reach you. Page reference given. Expect and hope this will be false alarm — dreams taking altogether too much out of me. But what if something on that page? Am not interested in that field — impossible to know in normal way?'

" 'January 9: Back from London. Mao rite — on page I looked up — exactly as described in dream! Don't know what it will do, but will perform it tonight to find out. Strange no dreams while away — some influence existing only here?'

" 'January 10: Didn't wake till late afternoon. Dreams began as soon as sleep after rite. Don't know what to think. Alternatives both disturbing: either brain receiving transmission, or subconsciously inventing everything — but wd. sane mind act thus?

" 'If true that transmission external, learned following:

" 'Sounds in this area are equivalents of matter in another dimension. Said dimension overlaps ours at this point and certain others. City and inhabitants in dream do not appear as in own sphere, but as wd. appear if consisting of matter. Different sounds here correspond to various objects in other dimension; whirring equals pillars & cones, bass throbbing is ground, other varying sounds are people of city & other moving objects. Matter on our side they sense as odors.

" 'The inhabitants can transmit whole concepts mentally. Leader asked me to try not to make sounds in radius of point of connection. Carried over to their dimension. My footsteps — huge crystals appeared on streets of city. My breathing — something living which they refused to show me. Had to be killed at once.

" 'Inhabitants interested in communication with our dimension. Not dream — transmission — frequent use of Mao rite dangerous. Translator to be built on this side — enables sound to be translated into visual terms on screen, as in dream, but little else. When they build counterpart link will be effected — complete passage between dimensions. Unfortunately, their translator completely different from ours and not yet successful. Leader told me: Look in The Revelations of Glaaki for the plans. Also gave me page reference & said where to get copy.

" 'Must get copy. If no plan, all coincidence & can return to normal research. If plan, can build machine, claim discovery of other dimension!' "

"I've been thinking," I interrupted. "Arnold Hird — there was something — wasn't he asked to leave the university because he attacked someone when they disagreed with him? Said he'd return and astonish everybody some day, but was never heard of again."

"I don't know," said Tony. "Anyway, he continues: " 'January 12: Got Revelations of Glaaki. Had to take drastic measures to obtain it, too. Plan here — book 9, pp. 2057-9. Will take some time to build, but worth it. To think that besides me, only superstitious know of this — but will soon be able to prove it!'

"Hmmm — well, there don't seem to be any very interesting entries after that, just 'not much progress today' or 'screen arrangement completed' or here 'down to Severnford today — had to order strings at music shop. Don't like idea of using it, but must keep it handy in case.'"

"So that's it," Frank said, standing up. "The man was a lunatic, and we've been sitting here listening to his ravings. No wonder he was kicked out of the University."

"I don't think so," I disagreed. "It seems far too complex—"

"Wait a minute, here's another entry," called Tony. '—December 7.'" Frank gave him a protesting look, but sat down again. " 'December 7: Got through. Image faint, but contact sufficient — beings aware. Showed me unfinished translator on their side — may take some time before completion. Few more days to perfect image, then will publicise.'

" 'December 8: Must be sure about weapon I have constructed. Revelations give reason for use, but way of death is horrible. If unnecessary, definitely will destroy. Tonight will find out — will call Alain.' "

"Well, Frank?" I asked as Tony replaced the diary and began to search the shelves. "Crazy, maybe — but there are those sounds — and he called something that night where his diary ends — and there's that peculiar stuff all over the bed—"

"But how will we know either way?" Tony asked, removing a book.

"Set up all that paraphernalia, obviously, and see what comes through on the screen."

"I don't know," Tony said. "I want to look in the Revelations of Glaaki—that's what I've got here — but as for trying it ourselves, I think that's going a bit far. You'll notice how careful he was about it, and something happened to him."

"Come on, let's look at the book," interrupted Frank. "That can't do any harm."

Tony finally opened it and placed it on the table. On the page we examined diagrams, and learned that "the screen is attached to the central portion and viewed, while the receiver is directed toward the sounds before attachment." No power was necessary, for "the very sounds in their passing manipulate the instrument." The diagrams were crude but intelligible, and both Frank and I were ready to experiment. But Tony pointed to a passage at the end of the section:

"The intentions of the inhabitants of S'glhuo are uncertain. Those who use the translator would be wise to keep by them the stringed sounding-board, the only earthly weapon to touch S'glhuo. For when they build the translator to complete the connexion, who knows what they may bring through with them? They are adept in concealing their intentions in dream-communication, and the sounding-board should be used at the first hostile action."

"You see?" Tony said triumphantly. "These things are unfriendly — the book says so."

"Oh, no, it doesn't," contradicted Frank, "and anyway it's a load of balls — living sounds, hah! But just suppose it was true — if we got through, we could claim the discovery — after all, the book says you're safe with this 'weapon.' And there's no rush back to the University."

Arguments ensued, but finally we opened the doors and dragged the instruments outside. I returned for the sounding-board, noticing how rusted it was, and Tony brought the volume of the Revelations. We stood at the edge of the area of sound and placed the receiver about midway. The screen was connected to the central section, and at last we clipped the wire from the screen to the rest.

For a minute nothing happened. The screen stayed blank; the coils and wire did not respond. Tony looked at the sounding-board. The vibrations had taken on a somehow expectant quality, as if aware of our experiment. And then the blue light bulb flickered, and an image slowly formed on the screen.

It was a landscape of dream. In the background, great glaciers and crystal mountains sparkled, while at their peaks enormous stone buildings stretched up into the mist. There were translucent shapes flitting about those buildings. But the foreground was most noticeable — the slanting streets and twisted pillar-supported cones which formed a city on one of the icy mountains. We could see no life in the city brooding in a sourceless blue light; only a great machine of tubes and crystals which stood before us on the street.

When a figure rose into the screen, we recoiled. I felt a chill of terror, for this was one of the city's inhabitants — and it was not human. It was too thin and tall, with huge pupil-less eyes, and a skin covered with tiny rippling scales. The fingers were boneless, and I felt a surge of revulsion as the white eyes stared unaware in my direction. But I somehow felt that this was an intelligent being, and not definitely hostile.

The being took out of its metallic robe a thin rod, which it held vertically and stroked several times. Whatever the principle, this must have been a summons, for in a few minutes a crowd had formed about the instrument in the street. What followed may only have been their method of communication, but I found it horrible; they stood in a circle and their fingers stretched fully two feet to interlace in the centre. They dispersed after a short time and spread out, a small group remaining by the machine.

"Look at that thing in the street," said Tony. "Do you suppose—"

"Not now," Frank, who was watching in fascination, interrupted. "I don't know if it'd be better to switch off now and get someone down from the University — no hell, let's watch a bit longer. To think that we're watching another world!"

The group around the machine were turning it, and at that moment a set of three tubes came into view, pointing straight at us. One of the beings went to a switchboard and clutched a lever with long twining fingers. Tony began to speak, but simultaneously I realised what he was thinking.

"Frank," I shouted, "that's their translator! They're going to make the connexion!"

"Do you think I'd better switch off, then?"

"But suppose that's not enough?" yelled Tony. "Do you want them to come through without knowing what they'll do? You read the book — for God's sake use the weapon before it's too late!"

His hysteria affected us all. Frank ran to the sounding-board and grabbed the lever. I watched the being on the machine, and saw that it was nearly ready to complete the connexion.

"Why aren't you doing anything?" Tony screamed at Frank.

He called back: "The lever won't move! Must be rust in the works — quick, Les, see if you can get them unstuck."

I ran over and began to scrape at the gears with a knife. Accidentally the blade slipped and twanged across the strings.

"There's something forming, I can't quite see," Tony said—

Frank was straining so hard at the lever that I was afraid it would snap — then it jerked free, the gears moved, the plectrum cylinder spun and an atrocious sound came from the strings. It was a scraping, whining discord which clawed at our ears; it blotted out those other sounds, and I could not have stood it for long.

Then Tony screamed. We whirled to see him kick in the screen and stamp ferociously on the wires, still shrieking. Frank shouted at him — and as he turned we saw the slackness of his mouth and the saliva drooling down his chin.

We finally locked him in the back room of the house while we found our way back to Brichester. We told the doctors only that he had become separated from us, and that by the time we found him everything was as they saw it. When they removed Tony from the house, Frank took the opportunity to tear a few pages out of The Revelations of Glaaki. Perhaps because of this, the team of Brichester professors and others studying conditions there are making little progress. Frank and I will never go there again; the events of that afternoon have left too deep a mark.

Of course, they affected Tony far more. He is completely insane, and the doctors foresee no recovery. At his worst he is totally incoherent, and attacks anyone who cannot satisfactorily explain every sound he hears. He gives no indication in his coherent periods of what drove him mad. He imagines he saw something more on that screen, but never describes what he saw.

Occasionally he refers to the object he thinks he saw. Over the years he has mentioned details which would suggest something incredibly alien, but of course it must have been something else which unbalanced him. He speaks of "the snailhorns," "the blue crystalline lenses," "the mobility of the faces," "the living flame and water," "the bell-shaped appendages," and "the common head of many bodies."

But these periods of comparative coherency do not last long. Usually they end when a look of horror spreads over his face, he stiffens and screams something which he has not yet explained:

"I saw what it took from its victims! I saw what it took from its victims!"




The Return of the Witch


Few outsiders passed through the Mercy Hill area of Brichester at the end of the first World War, for it was notorious for crime, and routes through it led nowhere important. Those who entered that area of narrow streets and tall red-brick houses with their hostilely peering tenants might vaguely notice that the streets toward the hilltop, around the hospital, were less crowded and dirty; but that was all. Hardly any remarked the desertion of Victoria Road as a thoroughfare, and the furtiveness of the tenants in the buildings there; but, of course, they were outsiders. Nobody living on Mercy Hill would have gone down Victoria Road so nonchalantly. For everyone in the area knew that Gladys Shorrock, who lived at no. 7 in that road, was a witch.

She had come to no. 7 in the late 1910’s with her son Robert, and soon after they had settled in the dull red-brick house everybody knew what she was. Nobody noticed the lesser details at first, until later when they assumed a new importance; they overlooked the way the shutters went up at the first-floor window of no. 7 overlooking the street during the first week, and did not come down. They even tried not to notice when bushes grew in the garden of no. 7 to a height of three feet from seed inside a month, and did not heed the insistence of Mrs. Hancock next door that "it rains on’t garden at them Shorrocks, though there ain’t no wet ground anywhere else!”

It was Robert Shorrock who made the mistake. Later people said that his mother must have realized he had to work, to avert suspicion which would have arisen if they had lived without external earnings. Robert was not intelligent, and did not know enough to conceal his dabblings in witchcraft. He went to work on rebuilding a street at the foot of the Hill, and would have made a competent worker, had not the owner of a nearby house complained that her black cat had disappeared — for Robert Shorrock finally confessed that he had walled it up in imitation of an ancient street-christening ceremony. They did not demolish the wall after what he hinted of the consequences, but quickly took his job from him.

After that, many tales grew up around the tenants of no. 7, many of them probably exaggerated; but the Shorrocks’ neighbors now consisted only of scoffers at sorcery, people surely unlikely to invent wild stories. Everyone saw something amiss around the red-brick building, and all scraped the signs under their windows which had hitherto been necessary only on a few nights of the year. In 1924 Robert died, and the undertaker who came from Camside to attend to the funeral suddenly left his profession and took to drink. An expectant terror took hold of Mercy Hill.

1925 saw the climax. That year people said many things: what flapped from the roof of no. 7 were not birds; that the vines which climbed that wall swayed back and forth on windless nights; and once someone saw Gladys Shorrock leave the house, mutter something, and the gate open and close itself behind her. Toward the end of October the tales became hysterical, especially that of one man who had boldly followed her toward Severnford and fled a gigantic glowing figure which strode after him through the forest. The inhabitants of Mercy Hill felt sure that she was preparing for something, and waited trembling for the outcome.

It came when, on October 31, Gladys Shorrock died. It must have been that day, for the people opposite saw her sit down facing the window, her lips moving, and stare out, with occasional glances upward — where was the room with the shuttered window. Next morning they saw she was in the same position, and on November 2 a passer-by noticed her glazed eyes and called a doctor. She had been dead two days, but the doctor, a Brichester man, did not ask why he had not been informed sooner. He merely diagnosed heart failure — for, after all, she exhibited all the symptoms — and arranged a quick funeral.

On November 4 two men entered the Shorrock house. Braver than the rest, they had determined to see what lay inside; but they soon left hurriedly, Nothing in the front room horrified them; most of the titles in the bookcase were foreign, and the searchers did not know enough to fear the queerly shaped, highly polished objects in glass cases round the room. On the stairs something scurried into the shadows; but one said it was only a mouse, although the other had seen characteristics of something less pleasant. But they could not stand the locked door at the top of the stairs, the door which they could not bring themselves to break down, because it led into the shuttered room.

Before long terror had risen around the house again. Late home- comers would go out of their way to avoid passing down Victoria Road, and many would take another route even in the daytime. The terror centered around that shuttered window above the street, and nearly everybody passed on the other side of the road, looking away from no. 7. Those who dared to go near said that while the witch might be dead, something lived in that house; for if one listened outside the window, one could hear a hollow murmuring from behind the shutters.

So no. 7 fell into disuse. No Brichester person would take it, and the Mercy Hill area did not appeal to outsiders. Few people entered the house, even thirty years later; and its history was gradually forgotten, except that it should still be avoided.

Until, on February 1, I960, Norman Owen came to Brichester.

Owen was a novelist who had grown bored with life in Lancashire’s Southport, and sought a change. The Severn area had appealed to him, and after reading an advertisement in the Brichester Weekly News he had bought no. 7 Victoria Road outright. Unfortunately, the Southport train came in at Lower Brichester, rather than the Mercy Hill station; and bystanders seemed to be as uncertain as he how to reach his destination.

"Victoria Road, please,” he ordered one taxi-driver.

"Sorry, can’t say as I’ve heard of it,” said the driver. " — Mercy ’ill? No road called that up there as I know of.”

"Excuse me — did you say you were looking for Victoria Road?” Owen turned and saw a middle-aged man in a tweed suit, with his hand on a car door.

"Yes — I’ve bought a house there, actually, but this man doesn’t seem to know where it is.”

"Well, I’m going up Mercy Hill,” the other told him, "and I could drop you off if you want a lift.” As Owen got into the car, the driver muttered: "But there’s no empty house on Victoria Road, except—”

They drove out of the station, and Owen saw the many converging streets rising to meet at the grey hospital. He turned as the man beside him remarked:

"I’d better introduce myself — I’m Stanley Nash, a doctor at the hospital. Would I be right in thinking that you’ve bought no. 7?”

"Well, I’m Norman Owen — an author, I have to admit — and you’re right about the address. But how did you guess — do you live next door or something?”

"No,” said Nash, "I live in Gladstone Place at the bottom of the Hill. It’s just that this house you’ve bought has something of a reputation — rather infamous round here. You see, not so long ago it belonged to a witch.”

"Really! Well, I ought to write something good here!”

"I wouldn’t joke about it,” reproved the doctor. "There’s often something of truth in these stories, you know.”

"I thought you were a doctor,” Owen said.

"I think you ought to take notice of what they say about your house,” Nash told him. "It’s seldom that these stories are entirely imaginary — and there’s a widespread fear of a shuttered room overlooking the street, which I’d advise you to remember. It’s never been opened since Gladys Shorrock’s death — she was the witch — and why would anyone lock and shutter a room as soon as they bought a house?”

"That’s simple; either she was mad, or if she was cleverer than you think, perhaps she wanted to be thought a witch — nobody would bother her, after all… Oh, is this it?”

Owen found the building which he saw vaguely repellent. The dull red-brick walls, the dark vines, the thinly-painted window- frames and door, all depressed him. On the other hand, he had bought it cheaply, and it might be better inside. But although the rooms were clean and well lighted, as soon as he entered the house a shadow of depression fell across him. The rows of books and Victorian furniture must have caused it; certainly it was nothing to do with lingering influences.

"How is it there’s no dust?” Owen inquired.

"I think the estate agents get someone from the. more enlightened part of town to clean up,” said Nash. "I come in here now and then myself — well, my brother works at the agents’ and gives me the key. The books interest me, so I’ll be tactless and ask if I could drop around occasionally…

They had reached the first-floor landing. "Call round whenever you like — I don’t know anybody here yet. And this is the famous sealed room, I suppose.”

Owen stared at the brown-painted door at the top of the stairs for so long that Dr Nash said:

"Well, I’m off now. Are you getting a telephone? — yes, you’ll be able to keep in touch with your friends that way. I’ll ring you up in a few days, then.”

Owen did not notice the doctor descending the stairs. He was searching among his keys for one to fit the door, but the agents had not sent it. Some half-sensed intolerance made him kick at the lock until the door swung inward. He stepped forward and peered in; but no light entered between the shutters, and most of the room was in darkness. He felt for the light switch and turned it.

Dr Nash was opening his car door when he heard a sound. A shadow whirred over him and into the house. He saw nothing, but got the impression of an oval winged shape, with something nevertheless human about it. He slammed the door and ran up the stairs. Owen was leaning against the door-frame of the shuttered room, apparently supporting himself, but straightened when the doctor called out.

"What — I must have gone dizzy for a moment,” Owen said. "Everything went black, and I seemed to be falling.”

"I told you not to open that door.”

"I bought this house,” Owen reminded him, "and I’m not starting off with a room I can’t enter. Anyway, it’s done now — but what do you make of this?”

Dr Nash looked in. The room was still in darkness, although the switch was turned. He pulled out his cigarette lighter and entered cautiously. Light flickered on bare walls and floor, and then picked out what hung from the ceiling. It resembled a neon tube formed into a pentagram, and so surrounded by mirrors that no light escaped into the room — almost as though it radiated darkness. He had seen something like it in one of the books downstairs, but did not remember its purpose. But he saw that it was arranged so anyone entering the room would activate it by the light switch, and knew some force had just been set in motion.

"Well, what is it?” Owen asked behind him.

"I’m not sure,” said the doctor, "but I’ve a feeling you may have started something.” He looked Owen over carefully and decided that he was unharmed. "You look all right, but don’t hesitate to call me if you feel ill. Of course, you can’t phone from here — but never mind, I’ll be going down that way, and maybe I can hurry them up getting the phone put in. Here’s my card with the number.”

After Dr Nash had left, Owen closed the door on the landing and went out for a meal. Returning after dark, he was again depressed by the sight of the house, black against the almost-moonless sky. He found himself looking at the shuttered window; no sound came from it, but he had an odd conviction that the room was inhabited. There was little to do in the house; he could have read one of the earlier tenant’s books, but preferred to sleep after his journey.

He did not usually dream, but tonight was different. He dreamed of wanderings through space to dead cities on other planets, of lakes bordered by twisted trees which moved and creaked in no wind, and finally of a strange curved rim beyond which he passed into utter darkness — a darkness in which he sensed nothing living. Less clear dreams occurred, too, and he often felt a clutching terror at glimpses of the shuttered room amid bizarre landscapes, and of rotting things which scrabbled out of graves at an echoing, sourceless call.

He was glad to rise the next morning. After breakfast he tried to work on his new novel, but found it too laborious. About eleven o’clock he was interrupted by a party of workmen come to put in the telephone, and welcomed the company. They seemed a little uneasy, and he avoided referring to the house. They left around three o’clock, and Owen telephoned the doctor to thank him. During their conversation Owen mentioned that he would have liked to leave the house more, but did not like walking.

"Well, borrow my car,” suggested Dr. Nash. "I can always get one at the hospital when I need it — I only use my own at weekends. If you wait I’ll drop round about six o’clock with it.”

At 6:15 the doctor arrived. They left the car on the street, for no. 7 had no garage.

"No, I’m quite all right,” Owen answered the doctor’s question. "What do you expect to be wrong with me anyway?”

Soon after, Owen remarked that he wanted to get to bed. Dr Nash was puzzled by the other’s desire for sleep, but saw nothing ominous in it. Owen waited until the doctor had been gone a few minutes, and hurried upstairs to his bedroom. He did not fight this urge, but wondered at it, for he was not tired.

He fell asleep immediately, and began to dream. Something was stirring under the ground, was calling him imperatively, and in his dream he rose, dressed, and went downstairs to the car. Before leaving he took a spade from the back garden and placed it on the back seat. Then he drove off toward that voiceless call.

He drove downward along half-lit streets, past occasional figures walking the pavements, past other cars whose drivers glanced uninterestedly at him, and reached a street at the bottom of the Hill whose one side was bordered by a railing. He rolled the window down and looked out, saw the street was deserted, got the spade and climbed out. Pushing the spade through the railings, he clambered over and jumped down into the graveyard.

In the dream he did not question that he knew where to go. He picked his way among the leaning stones and crosses to a grave near the far end of the cemetery, overgrown with weeds and grass. He tore the vegetation off, shuddering at the small things which scuttled over his hand, and began to dig.

Some hours passed before the spade struck a solid object. He dropped into the hole the rope he had brought and tied it to the handles of the coffin, then climbed out and strained at the rope. The coffin came quite easily, almost as if it were being lifted from below, and thudded on the edge of the grave. Somehow he dragged it to the railing and got it over, then followed it. He heaved it onto the car’s back seat and drove it back to the house on Victoria Road. Few people were on the streets now, and they did not notice the back seat’s charnel contents.

Victoria Road was completely deserted, and the houses were lightless. He opened the front door, returned to drag the casket into the house, and dropped it in the living-room. He got a hammer from the kitchen and began to prise the nails out of the lid, until it was free. He lifted it and looked in.

An atrocious stench rose from the box. In the dream Owen felt no horror at the grey thing which stared up at him, but when a strange hypnosis rose from his mind, nausea started to bubble. Then he heard a movement in the coffin, and a rotting hand appeared over the edge. He screamed when the corpse rose and turned its head stiffly to look at him with yellow eyes. The peeling lips shifted, and a faint painful croaking moved the throat.

For a moment it held this position. Then the lower jaw dropped from the face with a sickening tearing of flesh, the head twisted at a greater angle and ripped from the neck to thud into the coffin. The headless object tottered for a moment, then it, too, collapsed into a black tangle already beginning to liquefy. The hypnosis was suddenly on Owen again, and he merely picked up the lid and began to nail it into place.

It did not take so long to fill in the grave, and he soon drove back to no. 7 and returned to his bedroom. At this point the dream ended, and he fell into a dreamless sleep.

The next morning Owen awoke, sleepily swung his legs over the side, and stared at them in bewilderment. He turned toward a full-length mirror — and saw that he was fully dressed, down to his shoes, which were caked with earth. He knew that he had undressed the night before, but refused to accept the explanation his mind offered. Instinctively he went down to examine the car, stopping when he saw the vaguely rectangular six-foot depression on the back seat.

There was only one thing to do, and so Owen drove along the route of last night’s dream. He tried not to think that no dream could so point routes in an area he had never frequented, but could not avoid noticing that the graveyard was where he had dreamed it. He entered through the gateway and approached along the tombstone alleys. He found the stone easily enough; and though an inscription was roughly chipped" —Gladys Shorrock — died 1924: God grant she stay dead”—no weeds grew on the grave, and the earth had been freshly dug.

Some hours later, Dr Nash arrived at no. 7 in answer to Owen’s telephone call, and listened to his story.

"I don’t quite know what you’ve done,” the doctor told him. "If I could look through these books… No, you read a paper or something. This isn’t the sort of thing you should read in your— condition.”

After a search of one nine-volume book, Dr Nash looked up. "I think I’ve got it,” he said. "But you won’t find it very pleasant — nor, perhaps, very credible.”

"Well, get it over with,” suggested Owen.

"It’s like this, then: since you entered that locked room, the— soul, spirit, life-force, whatever you like—of the witch has been co-existing in your body.”

"What?” exclaimed Owen, not quite incredulous. "But that can’t be! I–I don’t feel any different!”

"It’s the only thing that explains both these 'dreams’ and that pentacle. I think this influence is relatively dormant in the daytime, but at night it’s more potent, and seems to be using you actively. Now it must be finding you a bad host — after all, your decisions oppose it — and now it’s looking for another body. Gladys Shorrock wants to return — she tried to resurrect her own body first, but it was too far gone—”

"But how in hell can it be true? Nobody could know how to do this!”

"Gladys Shorrock was a witch, remember,” remarked Dr Nash. "She knew of a lot of things we can’t even imagine. I’ve been through these books of hers, you know, and read of some of the places she visited. She went to the lake in the woods some miles from here, and watched — from a distance — what happens at Goats-wood… There were other places, too — like the island of the white stone beyond Severnford which nobody visits; and she knew the secret of the evil clergyman at Severnford — that’s where she got the knowledge to make this — return.”

"And if this were true, what would this life-force do now?” "Well, it can’t use its own body, and doesn’t seem to find you very accommodating, so obviously it’ll have to find another body.” "But then what can we — what should we do?”

"I had thought of smashing that pentagram, but I don’t think that’s a very good idea. The Revelations—that book I had there— doesn’t say what would happen, and it might harm you, as any great shock would. But it’ll probably send you out again, so I’d better take my car back — I don’t think there’s anywhere nearby that could harbor a body.”

"Oh, no, you don’t,” contradicted Owen. "I want to be able to get away from here quickly if I have to. Unless, of course, you stay with me — but you can’t do that every night.”

"I’m afraid I can’t even do it tonight,” said the doctor. "I have to go to Camside tonight — nobody else can go, and I certainly won’t get back before nine o’clock. Tell you what, though — as soon as I get back I’ll phone, and if you don’t answer I’ll come round at once. Hell, look at the time — I’ve got to go now. See you later, perhaps, and until then I’d advise you to drink as much black coffee as you can hold.”

Owen stood at the window, watching Dr Nash turn the corner, and repressing an urge to call him back. Suddenly the street lamps awoke, and he realized how near was the night.

He entered the kitchen and brewed a cup of black coffee. He returned to the living-room, sat down and reached for the cup on a nearby table. His hand slipped, the cup smashed on the floor, but he was all at once too weary to pick it up, and could only fall back in the chair, his eyes closing.

Soon he rose, started the car and drove away up the Hill. He reached a large building which he guessed was the hospital, and turned right. After that the road led him deeper into the country, through tree-colonnades and between green-white hills under a pallid half-moon. Then, instinctively, he pulled up the car between a dark wood and a hill. Taking a torch from the glove compartment, he began to climb the hill.

He reached a crudely rectangular entrance about halfway up, the interior in darkness. He glanced without revulsion at the gargoyle horror carved over the doorway, switched on the torch and started along the passage. He went along that passage for some time, noticing that the passage did not turn in its slight descent, but merely dwindled beyond his sight; and that the roughly chiseled marks on the walls pointed upward, as if carved from below.

Eventually he reached an alcove in the wall, and saw that in it lay a tightly fastened circular chest. He moved the chest, and innumerable long-legged spiders scurried out of a nest behind it, running over his hands into the darkness beyond. The chest was not three feet in diameter, but heavier than it appeared; yet he lifted it easily and soon carried it along the passage, down the hill and onto the back seat of the car, then driving back to Victoria Road.

Under the pale moon, he lifted the wooden chest and hurried with it into the living-room. He began to turn the strangely-hinged lever on the lid in a way that was somehow obvious to him; but the exertion he had undergone had taken its toll, and he let it snap back into place, exhausted.

At that moment the telephone rang, and he awoke.

So it was a dream! Then his eyes cleared, and he found himself standing in the living room near the telephone — close to a circular wooden chest.

For the moment he could only lunge for the telephone which had suddenly become his one hold on sanity, though something briefly tried to restrain him, and grab up the receiver.

"Owen? So you’re all right, after all!” said the doctor’s relieved voice.

"No, I’m not,” Owen forced out. "It happened again — brought something back — in the room now—” Unable to say more, he dropped the receiver into place.

He suddenly felt an urge toward the circular chest; to lift the lid and see what lay inside. Already one hand was twitching in its direction. Viciously he drove his fist into the edge of the table, causing such pain that the impulse subsided.

His concentration arranged itself around the throbbing hand, but was interrupted by an impatient battering at the front door. Owen staggered into the hall and with his uninjured hand let Dr Nash in.

(Look at the bastard! He tells you you’re possessed, but you know what he really means, don’t you? That you’re schizophrenic… Push him out, quick! Don’t let him come poking round your mind!)

"Quick — upstairs, for God’s sake!” Owen screamed. "Smash that pentacle, no matter what happens!”

Dr Nash hesitated a moment, staring at him, then peered closer. What he saw Owen never discovered, but the doctor pushed him away and clattered upstairs. There came a sound of glass breaking, and something seemed to pass from Owen; a shadow which fluttered against the ceiling faded away murmuring. He felt very weak, and all urge to open the chest had disappeared.

The doctor hurried anxiously into the hall. “Where is the — the thing you brought back?”

Owen led him into the livingroom, and they stood over it. "What do we do with it?”

"Burn it, I suppose,” replied Dr Nash. "And I don’t think we’d better open it, even though I don’t know what’s in it.”

"I do,” said Owen, shuddering, and began to drag it into the hall. "There was something carved over — where I found it. not quite a spider, not quite a snake, and it had a face that. Come on, for God’s sake let’s get it out.”

They carried the chest into the back garden and lit the petrol they poured over it, standing ready with pokers for anything that might struggle out. But only a long white member fell out as the lid warped, and then the contents began to bubble; but they watched until nothing remained except ashes which wheeled away on the night wind. Then they drove to Gladstone Place and fought sleep until the night had passed.

Owen left Victoria Road the next day, and now writes in a room looking out on Southport beach. He has not forgotten, however; and particularly when the sea is lashing blackly in the night he remembers a crudely-chipped gravestone, and echoes: "God grant she stay dead.”




The Mine on Yuggoth


Edward Taylor was twenty-four years old when he first became interested in the metal mined on Yuggoth.

He had led a strange life up to that point. He was born, normally enough, of Protestant parents in Brichester Central Hospital in 1899. From an early age he preferred to sit reading in his room rather than play with the neighborhood children, but such a preference is not remarkable. Most of the books he read were normal, too, though he tended to concentrate on the more unusual sections; after reading the Bible, for instance, he startled his father by asking: "How did the witch of Endor call the spirit?” Besides, as his mother remarked, surely no normal eight-year-old would read Dracula and The Beetle with such avidity as Edward.

In 1918 Taylor left school and enrolled at Brichester University. Here the stranger section of his life began; his tutors soon discovered that his academic studies frequently gave way to less orthodox practices. He led a witch-cult, centering round a stone slab in the woods off the Severnford road. The members of the cult included such people as the artist, Nevil Craughan, and the occultist, Henry Fisher; all members being subsequently exposed and expelled. Some of them gave up sorcery, but Taylor only became more interested. His parents were dead, his inheritance made work unnecessary, and he could spend all the time he wished in research.

But although he had enough normal possessions, Taylor was still not satisfied. He had borrowed the Revelations Of Glaaki from another cultist, and had visited the British Museum twice to copy passages from the Necronomicon. His library included the horrible untitled Johannes Henricus Pott book which the Jena publishers rejected, and this was the book which gave him his final interest. That repulsive immortality formula which Pott wrote was more than half true, and when Taylor compared certain of the necessary ingredients with references by Alhazred, he put together a hitherto unconnected series of hints.

On Tond, Yuggoth, and occasionally on Earth, immortality has been attained by an obscure process. The brain of the immortal is transplanted from body to body at thirty-five-year intervals; this otherwise impossible operation being carried out using a tok’l container, in which the naked brain is placed between bodies. Tok’l is a metal mined extensively on Yuggoth, but neither exists nor can be created on Earth.

"The lizard-crustaceans arrive on Earth through their towers,” Alhazred tells us; not in their towers, Taylor noted, but through them, using the method of turning space in on itself which has been lost to men since Joiry. It was dangerous, but Taylor only had to find an outpost of the Yuggoth-spawn and pass through the barrier in the transport tower there. The danger did not lie in the journey to Yuggoth; the barrier must change the organs of bodies passing through it, or else the lizard-crustaceans could never live in their outposts on Earth, where they mine those metals not to be had on their planet. But Taylor disliked the miners; he had once seen an engraving in the Revelations Of Glaaki and been repelled by it. It was unlike anything he had seen before; the body was not really that of a lizard, nor did its head too closely resemble that of a lobster, but those were the only comparisons he could make.

For some time Taylor could not have gone among the Yuggoth- spawn, even if he had found one of their outposts. But a page reference in the Revelations led him to the following in the Necronomicon:

"As Azathoth rules now as he did in his bivalvular shape, his name subdues all, from the incubi which haunt Tond to the servants of Y’golonac. Few can resist the power of the name Azathoth, and even the haunters of the blackest night of Yuggoth cannot battle the power of N-, his other name.”

So Taylor’s interest in travel to Yuggoth was renewed. The lizard-crustaceans were no longer dangerous, but occasionally Taylor felt twinges of unease when he thought of certain hints in the Revelations. There were occasional references to a pit which lay near one of the cities — a pit whose contents few lizard-crustaceans cared to view, and which was avoided during certain periods of the year by all. No description of what lay in the pit was included, but Taylor came across the words: "at those times of the year the lizard-crustaceans are glad of the lightlessness of Yuggoth.” But the hints were so vague that he usually ignored them.

Unfortunately, the "other name” of Azathoth was not given in the Necronomicon, and by the time he needed to know it, the exposure of the cult had placed the Revelations Of Glaaki beyond his reach. In 1924 he began a search for some person with the complete edition. By chance he met Michael Hinds, one of the former cultists, who did not have a copy but suggested a visit to a farmhouse off the Goats wood road.

"That’s Daniel Norton’s place,” Hinds told him. "He’s got the complete edition, and a lot more items of interest. He’s not very bright, though — he remembers all the Tagh-Clatur angles, but he’s content to live the way he does and worship rather than use his knowledge to better himself. I don’t like him particularly. He’s too stupid to harm you, of course, but all that knowledge going to waste annoys me.”

Thus it was that Taylor called on Daniel Norton. The man lived with his two sons in an old farmhouse, where they managed to exist off a small herd of sheep and a few poultry. Norton was halfdeaf and, as Hinds had mentioned, not too intelligent, so that Taylor irritated himself by speaking slowly and loudly. The other had begun to look disquieted during Taylor’s speech, and remained uneasy as he answered:

"Listen, young zur, ’teant as if I haven’t bin mixed up in terrible doin’s. I had a friend once as would go down to the Devil’s Steps, an’ he swore as he’d zoon have them Yuggoth ones about him, ministerin’ at every word he zpoke. He thought he had words as would overcome them on the Steps. But one day they found him in’t woods, and ’twas so horrible that them who carried him warn’t the same ever agin. His chest an’ throat wuz bust open, an’ his face wuz all blue. Those as knew, they do zay those up the Steps grabbed him an’ flew off with ’im into space, where ’is lungs bust.

"Wait a minute, zur. ’Tis dangerous up them Devil’s Steps. But there’s zumthin’ out in’t woods by the Zevernford Road that could give you wot you want, maybe, and it don’t hate men zo much as them from Yuggoth. You’ve maybe bin to it—’tis under a slab o’ rock, an’ the Voola ritual brings it — but did you think of askin’ for what you need? ’Tis easier t’ hold — you don’t even need Alhazred fer the right words, an’ it might get to them from Yuggoth fer you.”

"You say they have an outpost on the Devil’s Steps?” Taylor persisted.

"No, zur,” the farmer replied, "that’s all I’ll zay till you’ve bin an’ tried me advice.”

Taylor left, dissatisfied, and some nights later visited the titan slab in the woods west of the Severnford Road. But the ritual needed more than one participant; he heard something vast stirring below his feet, but nothing more.

The next day he drove again to the farmhouse off the Goatswood road. Norton did not conceal his displeasure on opening the door, but allowed the visitor to enter. Taylor’s shadow flickered across the seated farmer as he spoke. "You didn’t think I’d leave you alone when it didn’t awaken, did you?”

"What’d be the use if I come with you to it? If one don’t raise it, nor will two. An’ anyway, maybe you like t’ mess about wit’ them from Yuggoth, but I don’t. They zay they carry you off to Yuggoth an’ give you t’ what they’re afraid of. I don’t want to come near sumthin’ that might go t’ them. In fact, I want t’ give it all up fer good.”

"Something which they’re afraid of?” repeated Taylor, not remembering.

"It’s in the Revelations of Glaaki,” explained the other. "You saw mine—”

"Yes, that’s a point,” Taylor interrupted. "If you’re really going to give up witchcraft, you won’t be needing that book. My God, I’d forgotten all about it! Give me that and maybe I won’t ever bother you again!”

"You can have it an’ welcome,” said Norton. "But you mean that? You’ll keep away an’ let me stop playin’ round with things from Outside?”

"Yes, yes,” Taylor assured him, took the pile of dusty volumes which the farmer toppled into his arms, and struggled with them to the car. He drove home and there discovered that the book contained what he sought. It contained other relevant passages also, and he reread one which ran:

"Beyond the Zone of the Thirteen Faveolate Colossi lies Yuggoth, where dwell the denizens of many extraterrestrial realms. Yuggoth’s black streets have known the tread of malformed paws and the touch of misshapen appendages, and unviseagable shapes creep among its lightless towers. But few of the creatures of the rim-world are as feared as that survival from Yuggoth’s youth which remains in a pit beyond one of the cities. This survival few have seen, but the legend of the crustaceans tells of a city of green pyramids which hangs over a ledge far down in the dark. It is said that no mind can stand the sight of what occurs on that ledge at certain seasons.”

(But nothing can battle the power of the other name of Azathoth.)

So Taylor ignored this; and two days later he drove with climbing tools to the rock formation beyond Brichester. It stretched fully two hundred feet up in a series of steps to a plateau; from some way off the illusion of a giant staircase was complete, and legend had it that Satan came from the sky to walk the earth by way of those steps. But when Taylor parked in the road of which they formed one side, he saw how rough they were and how easy ascent would be. He left the car, stood staring up for a moment, and began to chip footholds.

The climb was tedious and precarious. Sometimes he slipped and hung for a minute over nothing. Once, a hundred feet up, he glanced down at the car, and for the rest of the climb tried to forget the speck of metal far below. Finally he hooked his hand over the edge, pulled himself up and over. Then he looked up.

In the center of the plateau stood three stone towers, joined by narrow catwalks of black metal between the roofs. They were surrounded by fungus — an alien species, a grey stem covered with twining leaves. It could not have been completely vegetable, either, for as Taylor stood up, the stems leaned in his direction and the leaves uncurled toward him.

He began to pick his way through the avenues of fungus, shrinking away when the clammy leaves stroked him, and at last hurrying into the cleared space around the central steeple. The tower was about thirty feet high, windowless and with a strangely angled doorway opening on stairs leading into blackness. However, Taylor had brought a torch, and shone it up the stairs as he entered. He did not like the way the darkness seemed to move beyond the torchlight, and would have preferred an occasional window, if only to remind him that he had not already reached Yuggoth. But the thought of the tok'l-bought immortality drove him on.

He had been ascending for some time when he noticed the hieroglyphics on the walls — all apparently indicating something around the bend in the passage. He turned the bend, and saw that the steps ended some feet above — not at a wall or solid barrier, but the torch-beam would not penetrate beyond. This must be where the lizard-crustaceans connected Earth with Yuggoth; and the other side was Yuggoth itself.

He threw himself at the barrier, plunged through, cried out and fell. It was as if his body had been torn into atoms and recombined; only a memory remained of something he had no conviction of undergoing. He lay for a few minutes before he was able to stand up and look about.

He was on a tower roof above a city. He directed the torch-beam downward, and realized that there was no way down the smooth wall; but, remembering the catwalks, he guessed that the building at the end of each row would afford some means of descent. This seemed the only way the crustaceans could descend, for the Revelations engravings had shown no method of flight. He was unnerved by the abyss below the catwalk, but could not relieve it by his torch.

There were five narrow metal walks to be traversed. Taylor did not notice their odd shape until he was out on the first. It was slightly convex in section, and at intervals there protruded outward corrugated sections at an angle. He found it very difficult to change from equilibrium on the convex portions to balance on the angled stretches, and often slid to one side, but he reached the end finally, rounded the gaping blackness in the center of the roof and set out on the next walk. He had got the knack by now, and slipped less.

One thing disquieted him; the total silence of the nighted city. The clang of his footsteps broke the silence like pebbles dropped into some subterranean sea. Not even distant noises were audible, yet it seemed impossible that such a densely-populated world should be so silent. Even if, improbably, all the citizens were on Earth, surely some sound should occasionally drift from the distance. It was almost as if the inhabitants had fled some nightmare invasion of the city.

As he reached the center of the fifth catwalk, a raucous croaking rang out behind him. He tottered and slammed down on the metal, clawed and scrabbled to the last roof and looked back.

The noise came from a speaker vibrating atop a grey metal pylon. It seemed purposeless, unless it were a warning, or an announcement of his own arrival. He ignored it as a warning, not wishing to return to Earth after coming so far; and even if they realized his presence, they would flee before the name of Azathoth. He walked to the roof’s edge and peered for a way down.

It consisted of an unprotected stairway which led around the outer wall of the tower, spiraling steeply to the street. He started down as the shrieking speaker quietened, and realized that the steps were set at a definitely obtuse angle to the wall, so that only their pitted surface prevented him from plunging to the street below. Ten feet down a piece of stone slid away under his foot, and had he not clutched the step above he would have toppled into the darkness. He made the remainder of the streetward journey more slowly, his heart pounding.

So he finally came to that pavement of octahedral, concave black stones. He shone the slightly-dimmed torch beam down the thoroughfare. Ebon steeples stretched away on both sides into night, and on Taylor’s left was a right-angle intersection. The buildings were all set in the centers of individual ten-yard squares, through which cut paths of a blackly translucent mineral, and in which grew accurately-positioned lines of that half-animal fungi which he had seen on the plateau. As he left the tower his torch illuminated a fork in the road, at the intersection of which stood a squat black building shaped like a frustum, and he decided to take the left branch of this fork.

The metal which he sought was so brittle that it was not used for construction in the city. To gather specimens he would have to visit the actual mines, which were habitually set close to the crustaceans’ settlements. But he was unsure of the city’s layout. Nothing could be seen from the roofs, for his torch-beam did not reach far, nor did he know how far the settled area extended. Not even the Revelations Of Glaaki gave maps of the cities on Yuggoth, so that his only plan was to follow some street at random. However, it was usual for such cities to be encircled by mines at quarter- mile intervals, so that once he reached the city’s edge he would be fairly near a mine. These mines mainly produced the black stone used for building, but a certain percentage of the ore was extracted from the stone and refined in factories around the mine-pits.

Five hundred yards along the left fork he noticed a change in the surroundings. While the towers still occupied one side of the street, the right side’s steeples now gave way to an open space, extending along the street for fully two hundred yards and inward fifty yards, which was filled with oddly-shaped objects of semi- resilient deep-blue plastic. Despite their curious shape, he could see they were intended as seats; but he could not understand the discshaped attachments which rose on metal rods on each side of each seat. He had never read of such a place, and guessed that it might be the crustaceans’ equivalent of a cinema. He saw that the space was littered with thin hexagonal sheets of blue metal covered with raised varicolored symbols, which he took for documents. It looked as if the space had recently been hurriedly vacated. This, coupled with that warning siren, might have hinted something to him; but he only began to continue down the street.

The open space, however, interested him. The discs might be some form of receiver, in which case the transmission might give him an idea of the direction of the mines. Perhaps the crustaceans were able to transmit mental images, for some of the legends about their outposts on Earth spoke of their using long-range hypnosis. If the discs worked on a variant of this principle, the power ought not to harm him, for since passing through the barrier he should have the metabolism of a crustacean. At any rate, he had three batteries left for his torch, and could afford to waste a little time, for he could protect himself with the feared name if any of the citizens came upon him.

He sank into the plastic of one of the deep-blue seats. He leaned back in it, placing the torch on the ground beside one of the batteries which had fallen out of a pocket. He sat up a little in the chair, and his head came between the metal discs. A deafening whine came from these, and before he could move a bright orange spark flashed from one disc to the other, passing through his brain.

Taylor leaped up, and the orange ray faded. A metallic odor came from his left pocket, where he had placed the other two batteries. He slid in his hand, and withdrew it covered with a dull- grey fluid which was plainly all that remained of the batteries. The torch and one battery, which had not been in contact with his body, still stood nearby, and the bulb was still lit. But in spite of what the ray had done to the batteries, he was untouched; and he wanted very much to return to the chair, so that he turned off the torch to conserve the battery and sat back on the plastic. For that ray had the property of forming images in the mind; and in that moment between the discs Taylor had seen fleetingly a strange vision of a metal-grilled gateway, rusted and standing alone in the middle of a desert, lit by a setting green moon. What it had been he did not know, but it had an air of distinct and unknowable purpose.

The ray began to pass even before he came between the discs, and an image formed, only to fade and be replaced by another. A series of unconnected visions paraded and blurred the surrounding darkness. A snakelike being flew across a coppery sky, its head and tail hanging limply down from its midsection, where a single bat- wing rotated. Great cobwebbed objects rolled from noisome caverns in the center of a phosphorescent morass, their mouths opening wetly as they hastened toward where a figure screamed and struggled in the mud. A range of mountains, their peaks ice-covered, reached almost to the sky; and as he watched, a whole line of peaks exploded upward and a leprously white, faceless head rose into view.

Rather disturbed, Taylor thought defensively, "What a waste of time!” and began to stand up.

Immediately on the word "waste,” a new picture formed. A close-up of one of the crustaceans appeared, and what it was doing was nauseatingly obvious, even with its unaccustomed shape. What was unusual was that it was performing this act in the garden of one of the towers, by a specimen of the ever-present fungus. When the crustacean had finished, it stood up and moved away, while Taylor received a close view of what it had left behind. As he watched in horrified fascination, the leaves of the nearby fungus bent and covered the offal; and when it rose from this position, the ground was bare at that spot. He now saw the purpose 0f the lines of fungi.

More important, however, he realized that he had just discovered the method of referring to the knowledge stored in this library. He must think of some key word — that was how "waste” had evoked such an unfortunate vision. Now, swallowing his nausea, Taylor thought: "mines connected with this city.”

The vista which now appeared to him was an aerial view of the city. It was totally lightless, but in some way he sensed the outlines of the buildings. Then the point of view descended until he was looking down from directly above the library; and it gave him an odd vertigo to see, in the seat from which he was viewing, a figure seated. Whatever was transmitting the images began to move along the street bordering the library, traversed a straight toad directly to a widening of the road, and showed him the mitie-pit a few yards further on.

The transmitter, however, now seemed to be working independent of his will. Now it tracked back six hundred yards or so up the road, to a junction with a wider street at the right. Taylor realized that something important was to follow. It moved up the branching street, and he saw that the buildings ended a few yards further on; from there a rougher path stretched to the edge of a pit, much larger than the first. The transmitter moved forward, stopping at the edge of the buildings. He willed it to go closer, but it remained in that position. When he persisted, a loud noise made him start; it was only part of the transmission — not like a voice, it resembled glass surfaces vibrating together, but forming definite patterns. Perhaps it was a voice, but its message was meaningless — what did xada-hgla soron signify? Whatever it meant, the phrase was repeated seven times, then the image disappeared.

BafHed, he rose. He had been unable to glean any further information from the discs. The larger pit was further, but it would contain more mineral; and the buildings did not crowd so close to it, hence the danger of interruption was less likely. He decided to head for it.

When he reached the junction, he hesitated briefly, then remembering the squat black towers which had encircled the nearer mine, he turned off to the right. His shoes clanked on the black pavement and crunched on the rocks of the continuing path. The beam of the torch trembled on the crumbling rim, and then he stood on the edge of the pit. He looked down.

At first he saw nothing. Dust-motes rising from below tinted the beam a translucent green, but it showed nothing except a wavering disc of black rock on the opposite wall. The disc grew and dimmed as it descended, but dim as it was it finally outlined the ledge outcropping from the rock, and what stood upon it.

There is nothing horrible about a group of tall deserted pyramids, even when those pyramids are constructed of a pale green material which glitters and seems to move in the half-light. Something else caused Taylor to stare in fascination; the way the emerald cones were drinking in the light from his torch, while the bulb dimmed visibly. He peered downward, awaiting something which he felt must come.

The torch-bulb flickered and went out, leaving him in total darkness.

In the blackness he unscrewed the end of the torch and let the dead battery clatter far down the rock surface. Drawing the last battery from his pocket, he fumbled blindly with the pieces of metal, squinting into the darkness, and saw the torch in his hands. It was faintly limned by the glow from beneath, growing clearer as he watched. He could see the distant side of the pit now, and, noting the grating metallic sound which had begun below him, he looked down into the green light.

Something was climbing toward him up the rock face; something which slithered up from the rock ledge, glowing greenly. It was vast and covered with green surfaces which ground together, but it had a shape — and that was what made Taylor flee from the miles-deep pit, clattering down the ebon pavements, not switching on the torch until he collided with a black spire beyond the widening radius of the green light, not stopping until he reached the frustum-shaped building he remembered and the tower near it. He threw himself up the outer steps recklessly, crawled on all fours and swung from the catwalks, and reached the last roof.

He glanced across the tower roofs once, then heaved open the trapdoor and plunged down the unlit steps, through the searing barrier across the passage and clattered down into the blinding daylight, half-fell down the Devil’s Steps and reached the car. Somewhere what he had glimpsed at the last was still moving — that green-radiating shape which heaved and pulsed above the steeples, toppling them and putting forth glowing arms to engulf fleeing dwarved forms…

* * *


When passers-by telephoned the Brichester police after hearing unusual sounds from a house on South Abbey Avenue, few of the documents in that house had not been destroyed by Taylor. The police called in the Mercy Hill doctors, who could only take him to the hospital. He became violent when they refused to explore the Devil’s Steps, but when they tried to reassure him with promises of exploration he protested so demonstratively that he was removed to the Camside Home for the Mentally Disturbed. There he could only lie repeating feverishly:

"You fools, why don’t you stop them going up the Steps? They’ll be dragged into space — lungs burst — blue faces… And suppose It didn’t destroy the city entirely — suppose It was intelligent? If It knew about the towers into other parts of space, It might find its way through onto the Steps—It’s coming down the stairs through the barrier now—It’ll push through the forest and into the town. Outside the window! It’s rising above the houses!”

Edward Taylor’s case yet stirs controversy among doctors, and is a subject for exaggerated speculation in Sunday newspaper features. Of course the writers of the latter do not know all the facts; if they did their tone would certainly be different, but the doctors felt it unwise to reveal all that had happened to Taylor.

That is why the X-ray photographs taken of Taylor’s body are carefully restricted to a hospital file. At first glance they would seem normal, and the layman might not notice any abnormality even upon close examination. It takes a doctor to see that the lungs, although they function perfectly, do not resemble in any respect the lungs of a human being.




The Will of Stanley Brooke


As a close acquaintance of Stanley Brooke's rather than a friend, Ernest Bond probably noticed his oddities the more readily.

These oddities became apparent soon after Brooke learned that he was dying of cancer. First he sent out to the libraries for medical books and journals, in an obvious attempt to find some cure the doctors had overlooked. Then, when he found no solace in orthodox medicine, he began to search volumes of faith-healing, and Bond realised how desperate he was becoming. It was not until the final phase that Bond began to worry; but he was disturbed by Brooke's quest through ancient grimoires for some answer. He watched Brooke slide gradually into depression, and knew of nothing he could do to help.

He was all the more surprised, therefore, when he arrived at Brooke's house one afternoon in response to a call, and found the owner sitting up in bed smiling.

Brooke placed a bookmark in the yellowed volume he had been reading, and put it down beside him. 'Sit down, Bond, sit down,' he grinned. 'I'm afraid I didn't ask you round just for your company — there's some business we have to discuss, but I told you that on the 'phone.'

'Yes — well, what can I do for you?'

'I want to dictate a will,' Brooke told him.

Bond wondered if the man's condition had brought on amnesia. 'But you've already made one.'

He had indeed made a will, and at his death five people would receive an appreciable legacy. His three sisters and his brother would come into a few thousand pounds each — while Emily, one of the sisters, and his niece Pamela, who had insisted on being his housekeeper for some years, would also come into possession of the large house. Strangely, Brooke was notoriously mean, and remarked that the vultures could pick up what they liked once he was dead, but he could not afford to be generous while alive.

'I know I've already made one,' he said impatiently. 'My mind hasn't gone yet, you know. I want to make a new one. The people next door are going to act as witnesses — they're probably downstairs now. It's completely different from the old one — you see, I've found out something—'

He reached for the book beside him, hesitated, and left it where it was.

'But first you must promise not to tell anyone any of the terms of the will until after I'm dead… All right? Good. Now let's get the witnesses up here.'

As Brooke dictated, the lawyer realised why he had been made to promise. The terms of the will shocked him exceedingly; and for some time he debated whether he should keep that promise — whether he should not at least hint the amendments to Brooke's sister Emily. But she would be bound to have it out with Brooke; and, besides revealing Bond's indiscretion, this was surely not the kind of barrage to which a dying man should be subjected. So the lawyer continued to debate.

The decision was taken out of his hands when, on August 6, 1962, Brooke died.

He was buried four days later in St Mark's churchyard, Brichester, and on the afternoon of that day Bond described the general terms of the will to the expectant relatives.

'Impossible,' said Terence Brooke, the dead man's brother. 'I flatly refuse to believe it.'

'I'm afraid it's true all the same,' the lawyer insisted. 'I can't give you the details until the beneficiary arrives, but I can tell you that under the terms of the new will none of you will benefit—'

'The worm!' Emily said. 'After all I did for him, and what my daughter did too—'

Pamela James, her daughter, was obviously upset by the whole business. 'I wish you wouldn't use that horrible word, mother,' she protested. 'After all, this man's going to get Uncle's money, and there's nothing we can do—'

'Oh, shut up, girl!' snapped Emily. 'I don't know about the rest of you, but I'll be here when Mr Bond reads the will — maybe when this man sees how we were all expecting something, he'll give us all some money. I think that's the least he can do.'

'And how are you going to recognise this fellow,' Terence Brooke inquired, 'when nobody's ever seen him before?'

'That's the queerest thing about all this,' Bond replied. 'This man — William Collier, he calls himself — is the exact double of the late Mr Brooke. If that isn't enough, he'll be carrying a letter proving his identity written by Mr Brooke, in an unfranked envelope with his name on it also in Brooke's script.'

'When are you expecting him to arrive?' Joyce, another of the sisters, put in.

'That's odd, too,' said Bond. 'I asked him that — because, as you know, I can't open the will until Collier arrives — and he just said "he'll be here about a week after the burial." What that means I don't know.'

On August 17 the lawyer was invited round to the house on King Edward's Way, into which, in spite of protests, Emily and Pamela James had moved. He arrived just before five o'clock, and joined them at tea. Not long after, Terence, Joyce and Barbara, the third sister, arrived.

Quite soon the real reason for this gathering became apparent.

'Mr Bond,' asked Emily, 'do you think it would be ethical for you to point out to this man how distressed we all are by this new will? We don't want all his legacy — it wouldn't be right to interfere with Stanley's wishes like that — but maybe if the six of us got equal shares—'

'Oh, please, mother!' Pamela cried. 'Must you be such a vulture?'

'I must say I agree with the girl,' Terence said. 'We didn't know we were coming to this, you know.'

'Will you all please be quiet!' Emily shouted, striking the table. 'Mr Bond, what have you got to say?'

The lawyer was saved from the quarrel he would have caused by a knock at the door.

'Don't get up — I'll go,' he said quickly, and opened the door for William Collier.

Bond recognised him at once, yet for a moment it had been as if the dead had returned. Every detail was reminiscent of the dead man except one, and that only added to the unpleasant illusion; for the man's skin was almost white, and abnormally translucent.

'I'm William Collier,' he introduced himself. 'I heard Stanley Brooke was dead, and came as soon as I could.'

'Yes — won't you come in?' Bond invited. 'Have you had a long journey? Perhaps you'd like something to eat — we're just having tea.'

"Thank you, but first—' Collier hesitated. 'Well, I have had a long journey, and I'd like to, ah—'

'Yes, of course,' said the lawyer. 'It's the door right at the top of the stairs. But here, let me take your coat.'

As he hung up the coat, Terence Brooke appeared in the dining-room doorway. They watched the figure to the top of the stairs.

'I like the way you make him feel at home!' Brooke remarked. 'So that's the new tenant, is it? My God, it's going to be like dining with a corpse!'

'The resemblance certainly is striking,' Bond began, but was interrupted by the arrival of Emily.

'You two can go back inside,' she told them. 'I want to meet him when he comes down, and then introduce everybody.'

As he sat down again at the table the lawyer heard footsteps on the stairs, then an inaudible conversation outside the door. Soon Emily ushered in Collier, and introduced those present, adding: 'We all expect to get something under the will,' at which Collier's face briefly took on an odd expression.

A rather uncomfortable silence ensued. Barbara, who was notoriously fond of macabre humour, took advantage of an offer from Emily of cold meat to remark:

'No, thanks, I don't care for meat very much. I always think that if you eat pieces of animal, you'll get to look like them.'

'How do you make that out?' Pamela prompted.

'Well, you know… if you eat too much pork you'll get like a pig, and I suppose you'll get pretty fishy if you eat nothing but fish… In fact, if you concentrate on one food, I think pretty soon you'll look exactly like it.'

There was a thud. Everybody looked up.

'It's all right,' Collier said with a curious expression, 'I just dropped my spoon, that's all. If I could have another one—'

'I always like vegetables,' Bond interrupted quickly, 'so what does that make me?'

'Well, Mr Bond,' said Barbara, 'nobody could call you exactly vital…'

'Here's a spoon, Mr Collier,' Emily said. 'Have all the rest of you finished? — What, don't want any more either, Mr Collier? In that case, we may as well all go into the lounge.'

The lawyer was the last to leave the dining-room, and he found Terence waiting for him in the hall.

'You know, I think there's something wrong about that fellow,' Brooke confided. 'I have a feeling he may be an imposter.'

'But what about his appearance? And the letter, if he has it.'

'As for the letter—' Brooke lowered his voice. 'Suppose if when we went upstairs, he got it from somewhere Stanley had hidden it?'

'Hardly. Besides,' Bond pointed out, 'surely that proves his claim must be genuine, or he wouldn't have known where to find the letter.'

They entered the lounge. Bond decided to get the night's business over at once.

'Mr Collier,' he asked, 'do you have any proof of your identity?'

'Why, yes. I believe this is what you want.' And the lawyer took from the pale fat hand an envelope which, he found, contained the appropriate document.

'Yes, this seems right enough,' he admitted. 'Well, then, I'd better get the reading over with.'

Collier showed no emotion when Bond reached the relevant passage:

'To my closest friend, William Collier: the property at 19 King Edward's Way, the furnishings thereof, and any others of my possessions remaining after payment of death duties, &c.'

'But — is that all?' Emily asked, seemingly incredulous.

'Yes,' replied Bond rather coldly, 'I'm afraid it is.'

'You were his closest friend?' Emily said to Collier. 'Surely you're shocked that he was so mean — I realise it's natural to see your friends are provided for, but we were his family, and we did quite a bit for him too…'

'Oh, please don't try to be subtle,' Collier advised her. 'I know what you're after, and I can tell you now that I wouldn't dream of splashing my money about.'

'Why, you worm—' began Emily. Collier recoiled and collided with the sideboard, overturning a vase.

'My God,' Bond said tonelessly.

'What's wrong, Mr Bond?' asked Pamela.

'It doesn't matter now — nothing… I don't think you need me here any more tonight — I'd better be off… But could I just speak to you a minute, Mr Collier? Alone?'

Collier followed him into the hall, and the lawyer remarked:

'I'm afraid they don't feel very friendly towards you at the moment. I'm driving into the town centre, so if you'd like a lift somewhere to let them simmer down… Yes?' He called into the lounge: 'Mr Collier's leaving with me — he'll be back in a couple of hours.'

They drove away into the night. Collier dozed in the back seat but woke when the car began to slow down.

'But surely we're not in Brichester now! Haven't you come the wrong way?'

'Oh, no,' Bond said, stopping the car at the edge of a quarry. 'I assure you this is the right way.'

Two weeks later, Terence Brooke arrived at the lawyer's house in Almshouse Gardens, and found the owner at work in the greenhouse.

'Why, hello,' Bond greeted him. 'Any word about Collier yet?'

'No, none,' said Brooke. 'Nobody seems to know what to do about it.'

'Well, as I told the police at the time,' Bond went on, 'I took him to my office and told him how generally hated he'd be if he did you all out of your legacies, and he left, and that was the last I saw of him.'

'Somehow,' Brooke mused, 'I have the feeling he won't be back… But anyway, I didn't really come here about that-what-?'

'Bloody worms,' said Bond, driving his spade down again and again while something pale writhed. 'I can't stand the things… Oh, sorry. Go on.'

'I was going to say that my car's broken down just at the end of the road,' continued Brooke, looking away from the still descending spade, 'and I was wondering if you had a spanner I could borrow.'

'Well, I've got a heavy one in the back of the car,' began the lawyer, '…oh — oh, no, I'm afraid I lost it some time ago.'

'Never mind,' Brooke said, 'I'll have it towed to the nearest garage. But you ought to get yourself a new spanner, you know.'

'Oh, it doesn't really matter,' Bond assured him, wrenching his spade at last out of the ground. 'I never use it except in an emergency.'




The Moon-Lens


Sitting in his office in Mercy Hill hospital, Dr James Linwood read the headline again:

PROMINENT BRICHESTER SURGEON TO ADVOCATE EUTHANASIA AT CONVENTION

…Prominent, eh? And on the front page too! But it was the Brichester Weekly News, of course, and anything local had automatic preference.

He glanced at his watch and saw that it showed five past midnight. Out of habit, he changed his desk calendar from April 2 to April 3, 1961. He leaned back in his desk and considered: should he go home to bed or stay to work on his convention speech? He decided on the latter, and switched on the tape-recorder.

At that moment there came a tap on the door — someone else working late, no doubt. He called out 'Good night,' but the shadow on the frosted glass panel did not move. Dr Linwood stood up and opened the door.

A man he had never seen before was standing outside. The doctor felt somehow instinctively repelled; whether by the man's dirty, ridiculously baggy trousers and long raincoat, or by a faint reptilian odour which he caught, he could not say. The other did not speak — and the silence began to unnerve Dr Linwood.

'Visiting time's over, I'm afraid,' he finally said.

'I'm not a visitor,' said the other in an abnormally deep and slow voice.

'Well, if you're a patient, you want the other side of the building.'

'No, I don't,' contradicted the visitor. 'I want to see you, Dr Linwood — you are the Dr Linwood? The one who's in favour of mercy killing?'

'That's correct,' confirmed the doctor, 'but at this time of night—'

'I want you to kill me,' the other said.

The doctor regarded him carefully, and decided he was not joking. 'I'm sorry — I advocate it, I don't carry it out — not yet, anyway. And I must say that you don't look like a euthanasia case.'

'But surely — if you thought somebody really needed it, you might… do it privately so nobody would know? I'd do it myself, but the thought of pain… I thought maybe an overdose of chloroform—'

'I'm sorry,' repeated the doctor more coldly, 'it's impossible at the moment, and anyway I do not intend it to make suicide legal.'

'But I need it,' insisted the man. 'I have a condition which makes living completely unbearable.'

'Maybe if I examined you—' suggested Dr Linwood.

The visitor shrank away from the doctor's hand. 'You mustn't see — it'd be too much… But perhaps I could convince you. If I can just tell you what's happened to me—'

'I don't really have the time—' protested the doctor, but the other had already pushed into the office and sat down before the desk. Well, perhaps he could use this in his speech to stress his aversion to legalised suicide. He sat down and motioned for the man to begin.

'My name is Roy Leakey,' began the other…

On April 1, 1961, Roy Leakey had set out for Exham. He had already visited all of Brichester's antiquarian bookshops; and, hearing that many fruitful second-hand shops existed in Exham, he decided to explore the town. Few people went there, and there was no direct railway line between the two towns, and no bus route whatever. He disliked train journeys, especially when changing trains was necessary, but here this seemed unavoidable. At the station he learned that only one train left for Exham that day, at 11:30; he would have to change at Goatswood at approximately 12:10 and wait perhaps twenty minutes for the connection.

The train left Lower Brichester station five minutes late and rushed to keep to schedule. Leakey jolted uncomfortably in his seat, staring uninterestedly out of the window. He found nothing interesting in the redbrick houses which rocked by below, advertisements painted in crude white letters on their railway-facing walls, nor even the gentle Cotswold hills which surrounded the line once it escaped the dismal cuttings. Soon the grass on the hills gave way to trees; close bare trunks which huddled closer until the entire landscape was wooded. He saw no houses among the trees, and sensed no life in the woods. Once he thought for a second that he saw a strange grey cone far off in the forest; then it was gone, but the sight filled him with an odd disquiet.

This far the line had been almost straight, except for the slight curves round the hills. Then, about half-an-hour out of Brichester, the train slowed to take a more pronounced bend in the track. Leakey's carriage reached the bend. The left-hand side, where he was sitting, was on the inside of the curve; and as he looked out, for the first time he saw Goatswood.

The impression he got from that first glimpse was of furtiveness. The close-set dull-red roofs, the narrow streets, the encircling forests — all seemed somehow furtive. Then his carriage passed the bend, and the train plunged down again through the bleak woods.

Five minutes later, Leakey watched the last carriage dwindle up the line, then looked about the platform.

Nobody else had alighted at Goatswood, and he could see why. The platform consisted of bare slippery boards, the waiting-room windows were dirty and inscribed with obscenities, the hard wooden seats were unpainted; the whole place seemed dead. Out of habit Leakey approached the stationmaster's office to ask when the connecting train would arrive. The man who appeared repelled him at once; he wore a grotesquely voluminous uniform, and his face was revoltingly goat-like — resembling some medieval woodcut of a satyr, Leakey thought.

'Train won't be along fer quarter of an 'our yet,' said the stationmaster, and went back into his office.

Leakey sat on an unpainted seat and stared over the wooden railing at the street a few yards below. Occasionally a passer-by would glance up, but most merely strolled past without seeing him. It struck Leakey that they were preoccupied; with what he could not know, but everybody who went by had an expectant air.

He grew tired of watching after a few minutes, and looked away over the roofs — to where something towered at the centre of town, between the station and a large hill, bare of trees, which rose behind the town. Leakey could not make it out, for the sunlight reflected dazzlingly from it; but it was shaped rather like a flagpole, with a round object atop it.

Still watching, he was vaguely aware of the stationmaster answering his office telephone, listening and then coming towards him.

"Fraid there won't be a train t'Exham t'day,' the man said behind him. 'Tree's fell an' blocked the line.'

Disappointed, Leakey did not look forward to a sojourn in Goatswood. 'What time's the next one back to Brichester, then?'

'Oh, there's only one t'day, an' that went about 'alf an 'our ago.'

Leakey did not recall passing a train on the opposite line, but at that moment he could only think of being stranded. 'But then — what am I going to do?'

'Only one thing y' can do — Stay at an 'otel in town fer the night.'

To give himself time to think, Leakey left the station and went for a meal at the Station Cafe opposite. The meal — sausage, egg and chips, all over-raw — was barely palatable, but he would not have enjoyed a better meal. The faces of the other customers were too grotesque, and he felt under the bulky suits and long dresses might lie the most revolting deformities. More, for the first time he was served by a waiter wearing gloves — and by what he could make out of the hands under them Leakey thought they were deservingly worn.

At the cash desk, he asked for directions to a hotel where he could spend the night.

'We've only one good hotel in town,' the cashier replied. 'That's in Central Place. No, you wouldn't know where that is; well, it's a square with an island in the middle, and a p — Anyway, you go along Blakedon Street—'

Leakey followed the cashier's directions and approached the town centre. He saw offices, department stores, public houses, cinemas, parked cars, all the attributes of any town centre; but he felt something unusual here — perhaps merely a strengthening of that expectancy he had remarked at the station.

Eventually he reached a large square, read the street sign and saw the neon Central Hotel at the other side. But his attention was immediately drawn to the metal pylon, fifty feet high, which rose from the centre of the square. At the top he saw a large convex lens surrounded by an arrangement of mirrors, and all hinged on a pivot attached to the ground by taut ropes.

Leakey stared at the object for so long that he caught someone watching him. He turned to the watcher and remarked: 'I'm curious because I'm from out of town — do you happen to know what that thing is?'

But the other merely peered at him wordlessly until Leakey glanced away in embarrassment; then hurried away. Baffled, Leakey made for the nearby hotel.

Once inside he felt relieved. The reception desk, the large foyer, the wide red-carpeted staircase, all seemed welcoming. He crossed to the reception desk and rang the bell.

'A room for the night?' repeated the middle-aged man who answered it. 'Yes, we do have one or two — I'm afraid they look out on the square, so you may be a bit troubled by noise. Twenty-seven and six bed and breakfast, is that all right?'

'Yes, that's fine,' Leakey replied, signing the book. He followed the manager upstairs.

On the landing, he asked: 'What's that thing in the square outside?'

'What? — oh, that? Just a local relic. You'll probably find out about it tonight.'

He opened a door marked no.7 and ushered Leakey into a thick-carpeted room furnished with a bed, dressing-table, bedside table with a framed photograph in the middle, and two wardrobes. Leakey entered and turned to ask the meaning of his remark, but the manager was already heading for the stairs. Shrugging, he went to the window and watched the crowd below. Strange, he thought — he had brought no luggage, yet the manager had not asked him to pay in advance.

He heard a train whistle, and idly looked towards the pillar of smoke. Then he threw up the window as he realised — the train had just left the station, and was speeding towards Brichesterl

He ran for the door, but in his hurry knocked the table to the floor, and he delayed to right it. His foot crunched on glass. It was the framed photograph, the glass smashed but the picture intact. He picked it up, turned it upright, and recoiled.

The thing in the picture was standing in a doorway. He could not believe it was alive — that pillar of white flesh supported on many-jointed bony legs tipped with great circular pads could never move about, let alone think. It had no arms, merely three spines which dug into the ground. But the head was worst — formed of thick coils of white jelly, covered with grey watery eyes, and at the centre was a huge toothed beak. And the thing that most troubled Leakey was none of these details, but only the idea that he had recently seen the doorway; not open as in the picture, but closed.

He threw open the bedroom door and thudded downstairs. The manager was standing by the reception desk, talking to a younger man behind it.

"There's a picture in my room! Did you put it there?' Leakey demanded.

'Why, no,' answered the manager. 'What sort of picture is this? I'd better have a look.'

He examined the photograph. 'This is peculiar, I must admit, but I didn't put it there. I wonder what it's supposed to be… Well, if it's getting on your nerves, I'll take it away.'

'No — no, don't do that,' Leakey told him. 'I'd like to examine it a bit more closely.'

When the manager had left, Leakey crossed again to the window. Looking out, he had the odd feeling that the crowd below were not passing through the square; more milling about to give that impression, but really awaiting something — and watching covertly. He noticed suddenly that all of them avoided the road opposite his window; a road which he saw was unusually wide and bordered by obviously disused buildings. Raising his gaze, Leakey discovered that the road connected the square to the large bare hill behind the town. There was a trail of faint marks on that road, but he could not make out any shape.

He looked towards the hill again, and saw the railway stretching into the distance. Then he remembered, and turned angrily to leave for the station.

At that moment the door slammed and a key turned in the lock.

Leakey threw his weight against the door, but he could hear at the same time something heavy being shoved against it from the outside. Nobody answered his irate shouts, and he ran for the window. Looking down he saw the wall below was smooth, devoid of handholds, and escape upward was just as difficult. He drew back at the thought of jumping to the street, and wondered frantically how he could escape. What lunatic had imprisoned him, and why? But the people of Goatswood were surely not all lunatics — perhaps he could attract the attention of someone in the street.

'Do you know how Goatswood got its name?' said a voice behind him.

Leakey whirled. Nobody was in the room with him.

'Did you ever hear of the Goat of Mendes?' continued the voice slowly, he realised, from beyond the door. 'Do you know what used to appear at the witches' sabbaths? Do you know about the Land of the Goat in the Pyrenees, or the Great God Pan? What about the Protean God? And the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young?'

Leakey battered the door again, then hurried back to the window. He yelled to the people below, and one looked up. Even at that distance Leakey saw his expressionless face — and the surreptitious movement of his hand. When a crowd began to form directly below the window and stare at him expressionlessly, Leakey threw himself back trembling and glancing wildly round the room.

'The goat's been there all through the ages, you know,' went on the voice. "The black goat which appeared in the circle of the sects in Spain — the Meadow of the Goat where the Basque magicians used to meet — and always the devil appears as a hybrid animal… Why do you think the priests of Jupiter offered a white goat on the Ides? — but you wouldn't know of the cosmic complements… And you've no idea of the basis of the Haitian goat-girl ritual, or what horror lies behind the myth of the Golden Fleece…'

'What's all this you're saying?' screamed Leakey. 'Let me out, will you!' but when no answer came he subsided and collapsed on the bed.

'Oh, you won't understand it all yet — not yet… All I'm trying to tell you is that he is here, very near at this moment — he has been here since before the human race… Maybe he has always been here, or maybe he came from out there, but the Others — those from Glyu'uho — imprisoned him within the star-signs, and only on nights of the moon can his body come out inside their boundary. But he goes forth if you call through the reversed angles, though then he's only partly corporeal — that's what'd appear at the sabbaths.

'They wouldn't tell all that happened at the Black Mass, of course. He came, but not in his real shape — that'd be too much even for the worshippers — but he retained certain portions of his real form. I suppose you've heard how they used to kiss his arse? Well, that wasn't just to be dirty — he's not built like a goat, and from there he puts things forth to draw off blood. But you'll know more about that tonight.

'You may get a bit of a shock tonight when you see us naked, though. We've gone down below his place, to a region I won't describe to you, and to live longer we've had to… to change. You've probably heard about it in a different way, though — the young of the Black Goat? Gof'nn hupadgh Shub-Niggurath? But the dryads and fauns and satyrs are a lot different from the classical descriptions, so don't think you're prepared—'

As suddenly as it had begun, the voice ceased. Leakey stared out of the window; the sun had almost set. He glared at the door, the window, the walls, but could see no avenue of escape. The crowd still waited below; an unintelligible muttering drifted up. Suddenly he felt very tired, and sank back on the bed.

When he awoke, the moon had risen.

It shone whitely on the street below as he craned out the window. The crowd below were passive no longer; they were standing in a stiff semi-circle around that central pylon, staring towards the hill opposite. He raised the window-frame more, and it rattled — but nobody looked up. He could hear a chorused murmur from below, a chant whose words were inaudible, and he began to realise just how serious his position was. Were they all insane? Was he trapped after dark in a town of lunatics? Clutched by sudden terror, he pushed the wardrobe against the door, and reinforced it with the bed.

What had the man who had imprisoned him said—'you'll know more about that tonight'? Surely the whole town couldn't be caught up by this mad belief. A god that came into the town on moonlit nights — and that wasn't all. If he was right, there was a cult of Satanists in this town — and they were supposed to make a sacrifice to Satan on ritual nights. A human sacrifice — was that what they wanted him for?

At a shout from below, Leakey rushed to the window and looked down. A figure in black robes was standing by the pylon with his back to Leakey. He was adjusting the ropes tied to the pivot, and as he did so the lens and mirrors shifted, and a concentrated beam of moonlight moved up the road towards the hill. This must be the lunatic who had imprisoned him — but who..?

Then the figure turned. The man was wearing a robe covered with phallic designs, and round his neck hung a necklace of small pink cylinders — whose identity Leakey sickly suspected — but he was still recognizable as the manager of the Central Hotel.

'He is coming! She is coming!' he shouted in that slow, thick voice. 'Make the way easy!'

Then, to Leakey's horror, the crowd began to chant: 'Astarte — Ashtaroth — Magna Mater… Ia! Shub-Niggurath! Gorgo, Mormo, thousand-faced moon, look favourably on our sacrifices… Ram with a Thousand Ewes, fill us with thy seed that more may come to worship at thy shrine… Gof'n hupadgh Shub Niggurath…'

The disc of concentrated moonlight was now steadily creeping up the hill as the robed priest manipulated the ropes. Suddenly it wavered and stopped, the priest gave an inarticulate cry, and the crowd fell silent. In that silence Leakey heard a faint restless stirring, as of something distant — and vast.

Then the hill burst open.

That was how it seemed to Leakey. Almost at once he realised that a door had opened in it; a door which occupied the whole side of the hill. The little moonlight that shone beyond the gaping hole revealed the beginning of an immense passage. Back in the darkness, something pale and enormous shifted and glistened with reflected light.

Suddenly Leakey turned and ran for the door. He did not want to see what would come forth from that passage. He wanted to escape from this room and into the street, even if the crowd killed him. He struggled to move the bed, but it would not shift. He had only just managed to heave it into position — escape that way was impossible.

At that moment the crowd in the square cried out hysterically. Slowly, reluctantly, Leakey turned to look out of the window.

Something was standing in the doorway of the hill. It was the thing in the photograph; but that photograph had been too small to show all the details, and it had not been alive or moving. The head was worst of all, for those great yellow eyes peered in different directions, and all the coils were twisting and jerking, sometimes transparent so that he could see into the head.

The thing moved out of the doorway, and the three spines moved with a grotesque rowing motion to heave the body forward. The beak opened, and from it a voice issued — sibilant and high-pitched, it spoke to its worshippers who now swayed back and forth in the square to the chant. They were becoming frenzied — here and there one would feverishly strip, but Leakey turned nauseated from these sights.

Suddenly his numb composure broke, and he screamed and battered the door, tore at the immovable bed, and looked vainly around for some weapon. Outside he heard the priest yelling incomprehensibly, and a whistling voice answering him.

The priest yelled: 'Ia! Shub-Niggurath! The Goat accepts our sacrifice!'

Leakey knew instinctively what he meant. He risked a glance out of the window — and stared straight into those yellow eyes, far above the rooftops, watching him avidly. It stood swaying at the other side of the square, and was even now moving towards the hotel…

He looked down. The worshippers had approached the being, and directly below was an empty strip of ground. With terrified desperation, Leakey climbed over the sill, hung by his fingers for a moment, and let himself fall.

The creature must have been capable of great speed. Leakey heard a slithering sound; then fell straight on to the squirming coils of the thing's head.

He struggled desperately, but the gelatinous coils dragged him down, and he was enveloped. He was held inside transparent walls which pulsed and gripped him firmly, but not tightly enough to injure him. His hands slipped off the jelly when he clawed at the walls, and when he kicked out the gelatin only gave and returned to position. He could move his head, and straining to look upward he realised that he was imprisoned in a pocket of air, which he did not doubt was intentional. So he was not to die yet — but then what worse thing was to happen to him?

The landscape he glimpsed dimly through the transparent coils was jolting now; the colossus was moving forward, towards the hill. It reached the enormous doorway and passed within. Leakey heard a dull crash of stone, then he was jolted on through half-darkness.

The passage seemed to plunge downward for miles, but at last the creature swayed to a standstill. Leakey sank towards the ground, the prisoning coils oozed away, and hands grabbed him. He was pushed forward towards an immense archway. He glanced round frantically, but had time only to glimpse a gigantic cavern, hexagonal in shape, with droplets of moisture streaming down the walls and gleaming on carvings which stared from the shadows. And the pallid colossus was still swaying after him. Then he was hustled under the archway.

After that he stumbled down an interminable staircase, twilit from some source he could not see. The stairway did not turn from its downward path, but the twilight was too dim to show him the bottom.

'The Romans built this, you know,' said a voice at his ear in a horribly conversational tone. 'They built the lens, too, when they came here and recognised their Magna Mater… But these stairs lead much further down, perhaps to the place he came from originally—'

Leakey had an inkling what sort of place they were approaching when the light began to strengthen and they continued to walk downward though no steps were visible. Terrifying sounds rose from below — bass trumpetings and hollow ululations — but a flickering mist hid the region from above.

Then they were standing on solid ground — at least, it felt like solid ground, but to Leakey it appeared as if they were standing on empty air. The region was no longer hidden, and what he could see was not reassuring. Distances were variable, and he was never sure whether an object was large and far off, or small and close at hand. The more recognizable living bodies were dissociated alarmingly without any noticeable injury, while some others were composed of parts of varying familiarity, together with portions that did not seem to belong at all. A few feet away he noticed an isolated path of glistening metal leading to a distant flight of upward-heading stairs.

'This is where we come to gain immortality,' whispered the priest, 'and now you will become like us—'

They moved back, still encircling him. Above him he heard the monstrosity ululate, and the coils began to descend towards him.

Abruptly Leakey smashed his fist into the priest's throat and leapt for the metal path.

The unnatural properties of the place, for once, aided him. Almost at once he was standing at the foot of the steps, while behind him the pursuers were struggling dissociatedly amid a mass of strangely angled walls which had suddenly appeared. He clattered up the stairs into half-darkness, listening for sounds behind him. A few hundred stairs up, he stumbled over a line of star-shaped bas-reliefs.

A little further up, he heard something huge and ponderous squelching up the stairs after him.

He ran faster, though he was gasping for breath, and his hands were cut from falls. He looked back and whimpered in horror, for a shape was swaying dimly upward not six hundred feet below. He tried to take three steps at a time, slipped — and began to tumble back down the staircase.

He grabbed at the slick stone and managed to check his fall about fifty stairs down. There was no sound from below, but when he turned his head to look, a baffled whistling broke out. The being was swaying back and forth two hundred feet below, as if fighting an invisible opponent. It was, Leakey saw, at the line of bas-reliefs; and he abruptly remembered something the priest had said — about 'star-signs'…

He fled upward again, stopping only five hundred yards up when there was no sign of pursuit. He struggled upward for what seemed — and may have been — hours, and finally reached a high-arched passage which ended, he could see, in the open. He ran down it and emerged in daylight.

Then he looked down at his body.

'And what did you see?' Dr Linwood prompted.

'I'd become like them, you see,' Leakey told him. 'Not altogether, but it was already taking effect — I think I can still die, though. In fact, immortality is the worst thing that could happen to me this way…'

'Well,' the doctor said, 'let me take a look.'

'Are you out of your mind? The only reason I didn't go mad was because my mind must have changed as well!'

'Listen,' Dr Linwood said, 'I've seen a great many horrible things in my time, things that would turn your stomach. I once saw a cyclist whose head had been run over by a lorry and burst open… I'm not easily revolted, and if you don't let me examine you I certainly won't believe your story — you'll admit it's not very credible — and I won't be able to do anything for you.'

Leakey was silent for a long time.

'All right,' he replied at last. 'But first—' And he switched the tape-recorder off.

At 3:17 on April 3, 1961, everybody in Mercy Hill Hospital was startled by a hysterical screaming from the office block. The cries were so shocking that even the patients on the other side of the building were awoken, and all those who heard it were troubled by nightmares long after. Such was the terror in those cries that practically all the nurses ran to find the cause, leaving the wards almost unattended.

When they broke into Dr Linwood's office, he was lying on the floor with his hands over his eyes. He was alone, and there were no signs that he had been attacked. Under sedation he stopped screaming, but said nothing that revealed the cause of his insanity. He seemed to be obsessed with something that had happened in his office, but what he imagined he had seen is not clear. All he could say was that something about the patient he had examined — who, from the tape of the interview, was dangerously obsessed, and has not been caught yet — was 'horribly changed,' and seemed to be connected with the 'Great God Pan,' 'a rebirth in the vagina of Shub-Niggurath,' 'a fluctuation of form,' and something which was 'half a dryad.' The popular opinion is that Dr Linwood had been unbalanced by the strain of his work, together with the stress of preparing his speech for the coming convention, and had been affected by a species of contagious hallucination.

If the testimony of Dr Whitaker, the house surgeon, is to be believed, this hallucination may have had some basis in fact. He had been on his way to consult Dr Linwood over a medical matter when the screams broke out, and thus reached the office before anyone else. As he entered the corridor he saw someone opening the exit door — someone who must have been the patient whom Dr Linwood examined. Dr Whitaker did not see the man's face, but he particularly noticed the hand as the patient opened the door.

'It was black, shiny black,' he told the others, 'covered with lines — shaped like a bird's claw made out of wood. In fact, it didn't look like a human hand at all.'