Suddenly, the corner was dimly illumined by an eerie, dappled light from the open panel; and Joe, his arm still groping beyond that door, gave a yell of utter terror and tried to pull back. The ticking was now insanely aberrant, and the wild sweeps of the four hands about the dial were completely confused and orderless. Joe had braced himself against the frame of the opening, fighting some unseen menace within the strangely lit compartment, trying desperately to withdraw his arm. Against all his efforts his left shoulder abruptly jammed forward, into the swirling light, and at the same moment he stuck the barrel of his gun into the opening and fired six shots in rapid succession.
By this time Pasty had an arm round Joe’s waist, one foot braced against the base of the clock, putting all his strength into an attempt to haul his companion away from whatever threatened in the swirling light of the now fearsome opening. He was fighting a losing battle. Joe was speechless with terror, all his energies concentrated on escape from the clock; great veins stuck out from his neck and his eyes seemed likely at any moment to pop from his head. He gave one bubbling scream as his head and neck jerked suddenly forward into the maw of the mechanical horror…and then his body went limp.
Pasty, still wildly struggling with Joe’s lower body, gave a last titanic heave at that now motionless torso and actually managed to retrieve for a moment Joe’s head from the weirdly lit door.
Simultaneously Pasty and Titus Crow saw something—something that turned Pasty’s muscles to water, causing him to relax his struggle so that Joe’s entire body bar the legs vanished with a horrible hisss into the clock—something that caused Crow to throw up his hands before his eyes in the utmost horror!
In the brief second or so that Pasty’s efforts had partly freed the sagging form of his companion in crime, the fruits of Joe’s impulsiveness had made themselves hideously apparent. The cloth of his jacket near the left shoulder and that same area of the shirt immediately beneath had been removed, seemingly dissolved or burnt away by some unknown agent; and in place of the flesh which should by all rights have been laid bare by this mysterious vanishment, there had been a great blistered, bubbling blotch of crimson and brown—and the neck and head had been in the same sickening state!
Surprisingly, Pasty recovered first from the shock. He made one last desperate, fatal, grab at Joe’s disappearing legs—and the fingers of his right hand crossed the threshold of the opening into the throbbing light beyond. Being in a crouching position and considerably thinner than his now completely vanished friend; Pasty did not stand a chance. Simultaneous with Crow’s cry of horror and warning combined, he gave a sobbing shriek and seemed simply to dive headlong into the leering entrance.
Had there been an observer what happened next might have seemed something of an anticlimax. Titus Crow, as if in response to some agony beyond enduring, clapped his hands to his head and fell writhing to the floor. There he stayed, legs threshing wildly for some three seconds, before his body relaxed as the terror of his experience drove his mind to seek refuge in oblivion.
Shortly thereafter, of its own accord, the panel in the clock swung smoothly back into place and clicked shut; the four hands steadied to their previous, not quite so deranged motions, and the ticking of the hidden mechanism slowed and altered its rhythm from the monstrous to the merely abnormal…
• • •
Titus Crow’s first reaction on waking was to believe himself the victim of a particularly horrible nightmare; but then he felt the carpet against his cheek and, opening his eyes, saw the scattered books littering the floor. Shakily he made himself a large jug of coffee and poured himself a huge brandy, then sat, alternately sipping at both until there was none of either left. And when both the jug and the glass were empty he started all over again.
It goes without saying that Crow went nowhere near de Marigny’s clock! For the moment, at least, his thirst for knowledge in that direction was slaked.
As far as possible he also kept from thinking back on the horrors of the previous night; particularly he wished to forget the hellish, psychic impressions received as Pasty went into the clock. For it appeared that de Marigny, Phillips and Walmsley had been right! The clock was, in fact, a space-time machine of sorts. Crow did not know exactly what had caused the hideous shock to his highly developed psychic sense; but in fact, even as he had felt that shock and clapped his hands to his head, somewhere out in the worlds of Aldebaran, at a junction of forces neither spatial, temporal, nor of any intermediate dimension recognised by man except in the wildest theories, the Lake of Hali sent up a few streamers of froth and fell quickly back into silence.
And Titus Crow was left with only the memory of the feel of unknown acids burning, of the wash of strange tides outside nature, and of the rushing and tearing of great beasts designed in a fashion beyond man’s wildest conjecturing…
Mylakhrion the Immortal
In 1977 I was the DI at the RMP HQ. As stated elsewhere, time was short. I’d even had to give up hang-gliding—something I had done for kicks all over the Scottish hills from my base in Edinburgh—and I’d sold my “kites” to other Military Policemen who were equally crazy! A sad state of affairs; I missed the rush of adrenalin, but at least I had managed to purchase myself some spare time in which to write. “Mylakhrion the Immortal” was one of a handful of stories written in that spare time. It’s another tale set in the Primal Land; for by then (and ever since the not unreasonable success of The House of Cthulhu) I had decided to write an entire bookful of them. Not a bad idea, because, as elsewhere stated, in 1984 Paul Ganley would publish that very book in both paper and hardcover, with the obvious title, The House of Cthulhu.
There was a time when I, Teh Atht, marvelling at certain thaumaturgical devices handed down to me from the days of my wizard ancestor, Mylakhrion of Tharamoon (dead these eleven hundred years), thought to question him with regard to the nature of his demise; with that, and with the reason for it. For Mylakhrion had been, according to all manner of myths and legends, the greatest wizard in all Theem’hdra, and it concerned me that he had not been immortal. Like many another wizard before me I, too, had long sought immortality, but if the great Mylakhrion himself had been merely mortal…surely my own chance for self-perpetuity must be slim indeed.
Thus I went up once more into the Mount of the Ancients, even to the very summit, and there smoked the Zha-weed and repeated rare words by use of which I might seek Mylakhrion in dreams. And lo!—he came to me. Hidden in a grey mist so that only the conical outline of his sorcerer’s cap and the slow billowing of his dimly rune-inscribed gown were visible, he came, and in his doomful voice demanded to know why I had called him up from the land of shades, disturbing his centuried sleep.
“Faceless one, ancestor mine, o mighty and most omniscient sorcerer,” I answered, mindful of Mylakhrion’s magnitude. “I call you up that you may answer for me a question of ultimate importance. A question, aye, and a riddle.”
“There is but one question of ultimate importance to men,” gloomed Mylakhrion, “and its nature is such that they usually do not think to ask it until they draw close to the end of their days. For in their youth men cannot foresee the end, and in their middle span they dwell too much upon their lost youth; ah, but in their final days, when there is no future, then they give mind to this great question. And by then it is usually too late: For the question is one of life and death, and the answer is this: yes, Teh Atht, by great and sorcerous endeavour, a man might truly make himself immortal…
“As to your riddle, that is easy. The answer is that I am indeed immortal! Even as the great Ones, as the mighty furnace stars, as Time itself, am I immortal. For ever and ever. Here you have called me up to answer your questions and riddles, knowing full well that I am eleven hundred years dead. But do I not take on the aspect of life? Do my lips not speak? And is this not immortality? Dead I am, but I say to you that I can never truly die.”
Then Mylakhrion spread his arms wide, saying; “All is answered. Farewell…”A
nd his outline, already misted and dim, began to recede deeper still into Zha-weed distances, departing from me. Then, greatly daring, I called out:
“Wait, Mylakhrion my ancestor, for our business is not yet done.”
Slowly he came back, reluctantly, until his silhouette was firm once more; but still, as always, his visage was hidden by the swirling mists and only his dark figure and the gold-glowing runes woven into his robes were visible. Silently he waited, as silently as the tomb of the universe at the end of time, until I spoke yet again:
“This immortality of yours is not the sort I seek, Mylakhrion, which I believe you know well enow. Fleshless, bodiless, except for that shape given you by my incantations and the smoke of the Zha-weed, voiceless other than when called up from the land of shades to answer my questions…what is that for immortality? No, ancestor mine, I desire much more from the future than that. I want my body and all of its sensations. I want volition and sensibility, and all normal lusts and passions. In short, I want to be eternal, remaining as I am now but incorruptible, indestructable! That is immortality!”
“There is no such future for you, Teh Atht!” he immediately gloomed, voice deeply sunken and ominous. “You expect too much. Even I, Mylakhrion of Tharamoon, could not—achieve—” And here he faltered and fell silent.
I perceived then a seeming agitation in the mist-wreathed phantom; he appeared to tremble, however slightly, and I sensed his eagerness to be gone. Thus I pressed him:
“Oh? And how much did you achieve, Mylakhrion? Is there more I should know? What were your experiments and how much did you discover in your great search for immortality? I believe you are hiding something from me, o mighty one, and if I must I’ll smoke the Zha-weed again—aye, and yet again—leaving you no rest or peace until you have answered me as I would be answered!”
Hearing me speak thus, Mylakhrion’s figure stiffened and swelled momentarily massive, but then his shoulders drooped and he nodded slowly, saying, “Have I come to this? That the most meagre talents have power to command me? A sad day indeed for Mylakhrion of Tharamoon, when his own descendant uses him so sorely. What is it you wish to know, Teh Atht of Klühn?”
“While you were unable to achieve immortality in your lifetime, ancestor mine,” I answered, “mayhap nathless you can assist me in the discovery of the secret in mine. Describe to me the magicks you used and discarded in your search, the runes you unravelled and put aside, the potions imbibed and unctions applied to no avail, and these I shall take note of that no further time be wasted with them. Then advise me of the paths which you might have explored had time and circumstances permitted. For I will be immortal, and no power shall stay me from it.”
“Ah, youth, it is folly,” quoth he, “but if you so command—”
“I do so command.”
“Then hear me out and I will tell all, and perhaps you will understand when I tell you that you cannot have immortality…not of the sort you so fervently desire.”
And so Mylakhrion told me of his search for immortality. He described for me the great journeys he undertook—leaving Tharamoon, his island-mountain aerie, in the care of watchdog familiars—to visit and confer with other sorcerers and wizards; even journeys across the entire length and breadth of Theem’hdra. Alone he went out into the deserts and plains, the hills and icy wastes in pursuit of this most elusive of mysteries. He visited and talked with Black Yoppaloth of Yhemnis, with the ghost of Shildakor in lava-buried Bhur-esh, with Ardatha Ell, a traveller in space and time who lived for a while in the Great Circle Mountains and studied the featureless, vastly cubical houses of the long-gone Ancients, and with Mellatiquel Thom, a cousin-wizard fled to Yaht-Haal when certain magicks turned against him.
And always during these great wanderings he collected runes and cantrips, spells and philtres, powders, and potions and other devices necessary to his thaumaturgical experiments. But never a one to set his feet on the road to immortality. Aye, and using vile necromancy he called up the dead from their ashes, even the dead, for his purposes. And this is something I, Teh Atht, have never done, deeming it too loathsome and danger-fraught a deed. For to talk to a dream-phantom is one matter, but to hold intercourse with long-rotted liches…that is a vile, vile thing.
But for all his industry Mylakhrion found only frustration. He conversed with demons and lamias, hunted the legendary phoenix in burning deserts, near-poisoned himself with strange drugs and nameless potions and worried his throat raw with the chanting of oddly cacophonic invocations. And only then did he think to ask himself this question:
If a man desired immortality, what better way than to ask the secret of one already immortal? Aye, and there was just such a one…
Then, when Mylakhrion spoke the name of Cthulhu—the tentacled Great One who seeped down from the stars with his spawn in aeons past to build his cities in the steaming fens of a young and inchoate Earth—I shuddered and made a certain sign over my heart. For while I had not yet had to do with this Cthulhu, his legend was awful and I had heard much of him. And I marvelled that Mylakhrion had dared seek out this Great One, even Mylakhrion, for above all other evils Cthulhu was legended to tower like a menhir above mere gravestones.
And having marvelled I listened most attentively to all that my ancestor had to say of Cthulhu and the other Great Ones, for since their nature was in the main obscure, and being myself a sorcerer with a sorcerer’s appetite for mysteries, I was most desirous of learning more of them.
“Aye, Teh Atht,” Mylakhrion continued, “Cthulhu and his brethren: they must surely know the answer, for they are—”
“Immortal?”
For answer he shrugged, then said: “Their genesis lies in unthinkable abysses of the past, their end nowhere in sight. Like the cockroach they were here before men, and they will supersede man. Why, they were oozing like vile ichor between the stars before the sun spewed out her molten children, of which this world is one; and they will live on when Sol is the merest cinder. Do not attempt to measure their life-spans in terms of human life, nor even geologically. Measure them rather in the births and deaths of planets, which to them are like the tickings of vast clocks. Immortal? As near immortal as matters not. From them I could either beg, borrow or steal the secret—but how to go about approaching them?”
I waited for the ghost of my dead ancestor to proceed, and when he did not immediately do so cried out: “Say on then, forebear mine! Say on and be done with beguiling me!”
He sighed for reply and answered very low: “As you command…
“At length I sought me out a man rumoured to be well versed in the ways of the Great Ones; a hermit, dwelling in the peaks of the Eastern Range, whose visions and dreams were such as were best dreamed far removed from his fellow men. For he was wont to run amuck in the passion of his nightmares, and was reckoned by many to have bathed in the blood of numerous innocents, ‘to the greater glory of Loathly Lord Cthulhu!’
“I sought him out and questioned him in his high cave, and he showed me the herbs I must eat and whispered the words I must howl from the peaks into the storm. And he told me when I must do these things, that I might then sleep and meet with Cthulhu in my dreams. Thus he instructed me…
“But as night drew nigh in this lonely place my host became drowsy and fell into a fitful sleep. Aye, and his ravings soon became such, and his strugglings so wild, that I stayed not but ventured back out into the steep slopes and thus made away from him. Descending those perilous crags only by the silver light of the Moon, I spied the madman above me, asleep yet rushing to and fro, howling like a dog and slashing with a great knife in the darkness of the shadows. And I was glad I had not stayed!
“Thus I returned to Tharmoon, taking a winding route and gathering of the herbs whereof the hermit had spoken, until upon my arrival I had with me all the elements required for the invocation, while locked in my mind I carried the Words of Power. And lo!—I called up a great storm and went out onto the balcony of my highest tower; and there I howled
into the wind the Words, and I ate of the herbs mixed so and so, and a swoon came upon me so that I fell as though dead into a sleep deeper by far than the arms of Shoosh, Goddess of the Still Slumbers. Ah, but deep though this sleep was, it was by no means still!
“No, that sleep was—unquiet! I saw the sepulchre of Cthulhu in the Isle of Arlyeh, and I passed through the massive and oddly-angled walls of that alien stronghold into the presence of the Great One Himself!”
Here the outlines of my ancestor’s ghost became strangely agitated, as if its owner trembled uncontrollably, and even the voice of Mylakhrion wavered and lost much of its doomful portent. I waited for a moment before crying: “Yes, go on—what did the awful Lord of Arlyeh tell you?”
“…Many things, Teh Atht. He told me the secrets of space and time; the legends of lost universes out beyond the limits of man’s imagination; he outlined the hideous truths behind the N’tang Tapestries, the lore of dimensions other than the familiar three. And at last he told me the secret of immortality!
“But the latter he would not reveal until I had made a pact with him. And this pact was that I would be his priest ever and ever, even until his coming. And believing that I might later break free of any strictures Cthulhu could place upon me, I agreed to the pact and swore upon it. In this my fate was sealed, my doom ordained, for no man may escape the curse of Cthulhu once its seal is upon him…
“And lo, when I wakened, I did all as I had been instructed to attain the promised immortality; and on the third night Cthulhu visited me in dreams, for he knew me now and how to find me, and commanded me as his servant and priest to set about certain tasks. Ah, but these were tasks which would assist the Great One and his prisoned brethren in breaking free of the chains placed upon them in aeons past by the wondrous Gods of Eld, and what use to be immortal forever more in the unholy service of Cthulhu?