“Hmm! How much rope do you need?”
Enough to hang you! Tarra thought, but out loud he said: “Oh, about ten man-lengths.”
“What?” Dyzm spluttered. “You’re surely mad, Hrossak! Am I then to give you a length twice as long as the distance between us? Now surely you plan to make a grapnel!”
“Of what?” Tarra sighed. “Crumbling bones for hook, or soft gold, perhaps? Now who’s wasting time? Even if it were possible, how could I climb with you up there to cut me or rope or both with your sharp knife. ’Twas you pointed that out in the first place, remember? And anyway, I have your promise to let down the ladder—or had you forgotten that, too?”
“Now, now, lad—don’t go jumping to hasty conclusions.” Tarra could hear him shuffling about a little; a thin trickle of dust drifted down from above; finally:
“Very well, assume I give you the length of rope you say you need. What then?”
“First I fetch the idol. Then you lower what rope you have left, and I tie mine to it. Ah!—and to be certain it won’t break, we use a double length. You then haul up idol in bucket. And if you’re worried about me swarming up the rope, well, you still have your knife, right? Then—you toss down rope ladder for me. And the last quickly, for already I’ve had enough of this place!”
Dyzm considered it again, said: “Done!”
A moment later and the rope began coiling in the bottom of the bucket, and as it coiled so Tarra gazed avidly at the heavy handle of that container, which he knew he could bend into a perfect hook for hurling! Finally Dyzm cut the rope, let its end fall.
“There!” he called down. “Ten man-lengths.”
Tarra loosened the rope from the bucket handle, coiled it in loops over one shoulder. He must now play out the game to its full. Obviously he could neither make nor use grapple with Dyzm still up there, and so must first ensure his departure.
“Incidentally,” he said, in manner casual, “those booby-traps I mentioned. It wasn’t one such which killed your last two partners.”
“Eh?” from above, in voice startled. “How do you mean? Did you find them?”
“Aye, what’s left of them. Obviously the work of your unknown ‘guardians’, Hadj. But these caves are extensive, possibly reaching out for many miles under the desert. The guardians—whatever they are—must be elsewhere. If they were here…then were we both dead in a trice!”
“Then were you dead in a trice, you mean,” the other corrected.
But Tarra only shook his head. “Both of us,” he insisted. “I found one of your lads on a high, narrow ledge near-inaccessible. He was all broken in parts and the flesh slurped off him. The other, in like condition, lay in narrow niche no more than a crack in the wall—but the horrors had found him there, for sure. And would the funnel of this well stop them? I doubt it.”
The other was silent.
Tarra started away, keeping his head down and grinning grimly to himself; but Dyzm at once called him to a halt. “Hrossak—do you have any idea of the true nature of these guardians?”
“Who can say?” Tarra was mysterious. “Perhaps they slither, or flop. Likely, they fly! One thing for sure: they suck flesh from bones easy as leeches draw blood!” And off he went.
Now this was the Hrossak’s plan: that he wait a while, then cause a loud commotion of screaming and such, and shrieking, “The guardians! The guardians!” And gurgling most horribly until Hadj Dyzm must surely believe him dead. All of which to be performed, of course, right out of sight of him above. Then utter silence (in which Tarra hoped to detect sounds of fox’s frenzied flight), and back to break handle from bucket, form grapnel, attach double length of rope, and so escape. Then to track villain down and break his scrawny neck!
That had been his first plan…
But now, considering it again, Tarra had second thoughts. Since he must wait down here for at least a little while, why not turn the interval to his own advantage? For even now, if things went wrong—if, for instance, the real guardians came on the scene—he might still have to rely on Hadj Dyzm to get him out of here quickly. His chance of the latter happening, especially now, after putting the fears up the fox, were slim, he knew; but any port in a storm. Better slim chance than no chance at all. And so it were best if he appeared to be following Hadj’s instructions right up to the very end. Anyway, the thought of stealing one of the idols was somehow appealing.
With these thoughts on his mind, he rapidly retraced his steps to the cave of the golden krakens where they waited on their pedestals before the tomb of the lizard-king, and—
By light of flaring torch the Hrossak gaped at the transformation taken place in the idols. For they did not wait atop their pedestals—not exactly. And now, truth slowly dawning, Tarra began to discern the real nature of the curse attaching to these subterranean tombs. Doubtless the alien monarchs of this long-extinct race had been great wizards, whose spells and maledictions had reached down through dim and terrible centuries. But in the end even the most powerful spells lose their potency, including this one. What must in its primordial origin have been a swift metamorphosis indeed was now turned to a tortuously slow thing—but a deadly thing for all that, as witness the pair of charred cadavers.
With creep impossibly slow—so slow the eye could scarce note it—the kraken idols were moving. And doubtless the process was gradually speeding up even as the spell persisted. For they had commenced to slither down the length of their pedestals, sucker arms clinging to the tops as they imperceptibly lowered themselves. Their eyes were half-open now, and gemstone orbs gleamed blackly and evilly beneath lids of beaten gold. Moreover, the acid ooze which their bodies seemed to exude had thickened visibly, smoking a little where it contacted the onyx of the pedestals.
Tarra’s first thought was of flight, but where to flee? Go back and tell Hadj Dyzm and the fiend would doubtless leave him here till krakens were fully transformed. And would there be sufficient time remaining to make and use grapnel? Doubtful…
Doom descended on the Hrossak’s shoulders like an icy cloak; he felt weighed down by it. Was this to be the end, then? Must he, too, succumb to kraken kiss, be turned to bag of scorched and tarry bones?
Aye, possibly—but not alone!
Filled now with dreams of red revenge, which strengthened him, Tarra ran forward and fastened a double loop of rope about the belly of the kraken on the left, yanking until its tentacle tips slipped free from rim of pedestal. And back through shadow-flickered caves he dragged the morbid, scarcely mobile thing, while acrid smoke curled up from rope, where an as yet sluggish acid ate into it. But the rope held and at last sweaty Hrossak emerged beneath the spot where Hadj Dyzm waited.
“Have you got it?” the fox eagerly, breathlessly called down.
“Aye,” panted Tarra, “at the end of my rope. Now send down your end and prepare to wind away.” And he rolled the bucket out of sight as if in preparation.
Down came Hadj’s rope without delay, and Tarra knotting it to the middle of his length, and Hadj taking up the slack. Then the Hrossak hauled kraken into view, and fox’s gasp from above. “Beautiful!” he croaked, for he saw only the gold and not the monstrous mutation, the constantly accelerating mobility of the thing.
The rope where it coiled kraken’s belly was near burned through now, so Tarra made fresh loops under reaching tentacles and back of wings. Once he inadvertently touched the golden flesh of the monster—and had to bite his lip to keep from shouting his agony, as the skin of his knuckles blackened and cracked!
But at last, “Haul away!” he cried; and chortling greatly the fox took the strain and commenced turning the handle of his gear. And such was his greed that the bucket was now forgotten. But Tarra had not forgotten it.
And so, as the mass of transmuting gold-flesh slowly ascended in short jerks, turning like a plumb bob on its line, Hrossak stepped into shadow and tore the handle from the bucket, quickly bending it into a hook. Stepping back, he thrust hook through loop of rope before it was drawn up too high, a
nd standing beneath the suspended idol cried: “Now let down the ladder, Hadj Dyzm, as agreed, lest I impede your progress with my own weight. For it’s a fact you can’t lift idol and me both!”
“One thing at a time,” the other answered. “First the idol.”
“Damn you, Hadj!” cried Tarra, hanging something of his weight on the hook to let the other see he was in earnest—only to have the hook straighten out at once and slip from the loop, leaving Tarra to fall to his knees. And by the time he was back on his feet, rope and idol and all had been dragged up well beyond his reach, and Hadj’s chuckle echoing horribly on high—for a little while.
Then, while Hrossak stood clenching and unclenching his fists and scowling, came Hadj’s voice in something of a query: “Hrossak—what’s this nasty reek I smell?” (and idol slowly turning on its line, disappearing up the flue).
“The reek of my sweat,” answered Tarra, “mingled with smoke of torch’s dying—aye, and in all likelihood my dying, too!” He stepped out of harm’s way as droplets hissed down from above, smoking where they struck the floor. And now the idol almost as high as the rim, and droplets of acid slime falling faster in a hissing rain.
Tarra kept well back, listening to fox’s grunting as he worked the gear—his grunting, then his squawk of surprise, and at last his shriek of sheerest horror!
In his mind’s eye Tarra could picture it all in great detail:
The gear turning, winding up the rope, a ratchet holding it while Hadj Dyzm rested his muscles before making the next turn. And the kraken coming into view, a thing of massy, gleamy gold. Another turn, and eyes no longer glazed glaring into Hadj’s—and tentacles no longer leaden reaching—and acid no longer dilute squirting and hissing!
Then—
Still screaming to burst his heart—fat bundle of rags entwined in golden nightmare of living, lethal tentacles—Hadj and kraken and all came plummeting down the shaft. Even the rope ladder, though that fell only part way, hanging there tantalizingly beyond Hrossak’s reach.
And Hadj’s body broken but not yet dead, flopping on the floor in terrible grip, his flesh melting and steaming away, as Tarra bent the bucket’s handle back into a hook and snatched up a length of good rope. And horror of horrors, now the other kraken slithering into view from out the dark, reaching to aid its evil twin!
Now the Hrossak cast for dear life, cast his hook up to where the lower rungs of the ladder dangled. Missed!—and another cast.
Hideous, hissing tentacles reaching for his ankles; vile vapour boiling up from no longer screaming fox; the entire chamber filled with loathsome reek and the hook catching at last, dragging ladder with it to slime-puddled floor.
Then Tarra was aloft, and later he would not remember his hands on rungs at all. Only the blind panic and shrieking terror that seemed to hurl him up and out of the hole and up the spiral steps and down the long tunnel of carven stalactites to the waterfall and so out into the night. And no pause even to negotiate the ledge behind the fall, but a mighty dive which took him through that curtain of falling water, out and down under the stars to strike the lake with hardly a splash; and then the exhausting swim back to shore against the whirlpool’s pull, to where a fire’s embers smouldered and guttered still.
After that—
Morning found a rich, rich man following the foothills east with his camels. And never a backward glance from Tarra Khash…
Aunt Hester
This one was written in December, 1971 and saw first publication in The Satyr’s Head (1975), an anthology edited by Dave Sutton, published in the UK by Corgi Books. Since when it has seen several reprints, most recently in Great Ghost Stories—a Carroll and Graf anthology, 2004—edited by R. Chetwynd Hayes and Stephen Jones. At the time of its writing I was an Operational Platoon Commander, in what was then West Germany. On publication, however, I had become the RMP Unit Quartermaster at our Scotland HQ in Edinburgh Castle. “Aunt Hester” is, of course, a Cthulhu Mythos story, in its way similar to Lovecraft’s “The Thing on the Doorstep”. But while HPL’s Mythos backdrop is clearly evident, his actual style of writing is nowhere to be found.
I suppose my Aunt Hester Lang might best be described as the “black sheep” of the family. Certainly no one ever spoke to her, or of her—none of the elders of the family, that is—and if my own little friendship with my aunt had been known I am sure that would have been stamped on too; but of course that friendship was many years ago.
I remember it well: how I used to sneak round to Aunt Hester’s house in hoary Castle-Ilden, not far from Harden on the coast, after school when my folks thought I was at Scouts, and Aunt Hester would make me cups of cocoa and we would talk about newts (“efts”, she called them), frogs, conkers and other things—things of interest to small boys—until the local Scouts’ meeting was due to end, and then I would hurry home.
We (father, mother and myself) left Harden when I was just twelve years old, moving down to London where the Old Man had got himself a good job. I was twenty years old before I got to see my aunt again. In the intervening years I had not sent her so much as a postcard (I’ve never been much of a letter-writer) and I knew that during the same period of time my parents had neither written nor heard from her; but still that did not stop my mother warning me before I set out for Harden not to “drop in” on Aunt Hester Lang.
No doubt about it, they were frightened of her, my parents—well, if not frightened, certainly they were apprehensive.
Now to me a warning has always been something of a challenge. I had arranged to stay with a friend for a week, a school pal from the good old days, but long before the northbound train stopped at Harden my mind was made up to spend at least a fraction of my time at my aunt’s place. Why shouldn’t I? Hadn’t we always got on famously? Whatever it was she had done to my parents in the past, I could see no good reason why I should shun her.
She would be getting on in years a bit now. How old, I wondered? Older than my mother, her sister, by a couple of years—the same age (obviously) as her twin brother, George, in Australia—but of course I was also ignorant of his age. In the end, making what calculations I could, I worked it out that Aunt Hester and her distant brother must have seen at least one hundred and eight summers between them. Yes, my aunt must be about fifty-four years old. It was about time someone took an interest in her.
It was a bright Friday night, the first after my arrival in Harden, when the ideal opportunity presented itself for visiting Aunt Hester. My school friend, Albert, had a date—one he did not really want to put off—and though he had tried his best during the day it had early been apparent that his luck was out regards finding, on short notice, a second girl for me. It had been left too late. But in any case, I’m not much on blind dates—and most dates are “blind” unless you really know the girl—and I go even less on doubles; the truth of the matter was that I had wanted the night for my own purposes. And so, when the time came for Albert to set out to meet his girl, I walked off in the opposite direction, across the autumn fences and fields to ancient Castle-Ilden.
I arrived at the little old village at about eight, just as dusk was making its hesitant decision whether or not to allow night’s onset, and went straight to Aunt Hester’s thatch-roofed bungalow. The place stood (just as I remembered it) at the Blackhill end of cobbled Main Street, in a neat garden framed by cherry trees with the fruit heavy in their branches. As I approached the gate the door opened and out of the house wandered the oddest quartet of strangers I could ever have wished to see.
There was a humped-up, frenetically mobile and babbling old chap, ninety if he was a day; a frumpish fat woman with many quivering chins; a skeletally thin, incredibly tall, ridiculously wrapped-up man in scarf, pencil-slim overcoat, and fur gloves; and finally, a perfectly delicate old lady with a walking-stick and ear-trumpet. They were shepherded by my Aunt Hester, no different it seemed than when I had last seen her, to the gate and out into the street. There followed a piped and grunted hubbub of thanks
and general genialities before the four were gone—in the direction of the leaning village pub—leaving my aunt at the gate finally to spot me where I stood in the shadow of one of her cherry trees. She knew me almost at once, despite the interval of nearly a decade.
“Peter?”
“Hello, Aunt Hester.”
“Why, Peter Norton! My favourite young man—and tall as a tree! Come in, come in!”
“It’s bad of me to drop in on you like this,” I answered, taking the arm she offered, “all unannounced and after so long away, but I—”
“No excuses required,” she waved an airy hand before us and smiled up at me, laughter lines showing at the corners of her eyes and in her unpretty face. “And you came at just the right time—my group has just left me all alone.”
“Your ‘group’?”
“My séance group! I’ve had it for a long time now, many a year. Didn’t you know I was a bit on the psychic side? No, I suppose not; your parents wouldn’t have told you about that, now would they? That’s what started it all originally—the trouble in the family, I mean.” We went on into the house.
“Now I had meant to ask you about that,” I told her. “You mean my parents don’t like you messing about with spiritualism? I can see that they wouldn’t, of course—not at all the Old Man’s cup of tea—but still, I don’t really see what it could have to do with them.”
“Not, your parents, Love,” (she had always called me “Love”), “mine—and yours later; but especially George, your uncle in Australia. And not just spiritualism, though that has since become part of it. Did you know that my brother left home and settled in Australia because of me?” A distant look came into her eyes. “No, of course you didn’t, and I don’t suppose anyone else would ever have become aware of my power if George hadn’t walked me through a window…”
“Eh?” I said, believing my hearing to be out of order. “Power? Walked you through a window?”
“Yes,” she answered, nodding her head, “he walked me through a window! Listen, I’ll tell you the story from the beginning.”