V
The next morning I was up early. I was short of writing materials and had decided to catch the lone morning bus into Radcar. I left before Sir Amery was awake and during the journey I thought back on the events of the previous day and decided to do a little research while I was in the town. In Radcar I had a bite to eat and then I called at the offices of the Radcar Recorder where a Mr. McKinnen, a sub-editor, was particularly helpful. He spent some time on the office telephones making extensive enquiries on my behalf. Eventually I was told that for the better part of a year there had been no tremors of any importance in England, a point I would obviously have argued had not further information been forthcoming. I learned that there had been some minor shocks and that these had occurred at places as far as Goole, a few miles away (that one within the last twenty-four hours) and at Tenterden near Dover. There had also been a very minor tremor at Ramsey in Huntingdonshire. I thanked Mr. McKinnen profusely for his help and would have left then—but, as an afterthought, he asked me if I would be interested in checking through the paper’s international files. I gratefully accepted and was left on my own to study a great pile of interesting translations. Of course, most of it was useless to me but it did not take me long to sort out what I was after. At first I had difficulty believing the evidence of my own eyes. I read that in August there had been ’quakes in Aisne of such severity that one or two houses had collapsed and a number of people had been injured. These shocks had been likened to those of a few weeks earlier at Agen in that they seemed to be caused more by some settling of the ground than by an actual tremor. In early July there had also been shocks in Calahorra, Chinchon and Ronda in Spain. The trail went as straight as the flight of an arrow and lay across—or rather under—the Straits of Gibralter to Xauen in Spanish Morocco, where an entire street of houses had collapses. Farther yet, to… But I had had enough. I dared look no more; I did not wish to know—not even remotely—the whereabouts of dead G’harne…
Oh! I had seen more than sufficient to make me forget about my original errand. My book could wait, for now there were more important things to do. My next port of call was the town library where I took down Nicheljohn’s World Atlas and turned to that page with a large, folding map of the British Isles. My geography and knowledge of England’s counties are passable and I had noticed what I considered to be an oddity in the seemingly unconnected places where England had suffered those minor ’quakes. I was not mistaken. Using a second book as a straight edge I lined up Goole in Yorkshire and Tenterden on the south coast and saw, with a tingle of monstrous forboding, that the line passed very close to, if not directly through, Ramsey in Huntingdonshire. With dread curiosity I followed the line north and, through suddenly fevered eyes, saw that it passed within only a mile or so of the cottage on the moors! I turned more pages with unfeeling, rubbery fingers until I found the leaf showing France. For a moment I paused—then I fumblingly found Spain and finally Africa. For a long while I just sat there in numbed silence, occasionally turning the pages, automatically checking names and locations… My thoughts were in a terrible turmoil when I eventually left the library and I could feel upon my spine the chill, hopping feet of some abysmal dread from the beginning of time. My previously wholesome nervous system had already started to crumble…
During the journey back across the moors in the evening bus, the drone of the engine lulled me into a kind of half-sleep in which I heard again something Sir Amery had mentioned—something he had murmured aloud while sleeping and presumably dreaming. He had said:
“They don’t like water… England’s safe… Have to go too deep…” The memory of those words shocked me back to wakefulness and filled me with a further icy chill which got into the very marrow of my bones. Nor were these feelings of horrid foreboding misleading, for awaiting me at the cottage was that which went far to completing the destruction of my entire nervous system…
As the bus came round the final wooded bend which hid the cottage from sight I saw it! The place had collapsed. I simply could not take it in! Even knowing all I knew—with all my slowly accumulating evidence—it was too much for my tortured mind to comprehend; I left the bus and waited until it had threaded its way through the parked police cars before crossing the road. The fence to the cottage had been knocked down to allow an ambulance to park in the queerly tilted garden. Spotlights had been set up, for it was almost dark, and a team of rescuers were toiling frantically at the incredible ruins. As I stood there, aghast, I was approached by a police officer and having stumblingly identified myself was told the following story.
A passing motorist had actually seen the collapse and the tremors attendant to it had been felt in nearby Marske. The motorist had realised there was little he could do on his own and had speeded into Marske to report the thing. Allegedly the house had gone down like a pack of cards. The police and an ambulance had been on the scene within minutes and rescue operations had begun immediately. Up to now it appeared that my uncle had been out when the collapse occurred for as of yet there had been no trace of him. There had been a strange, poisonous odour about the place but this had vanished soon after the work had started. The rescuers had cleared the floors of all the rooms except the study and during the time it took the officer to bring me up to date even more debris was being frantically hauled away.
Suddenly there was a lull in the excited babble of voices. I saw that the gang of rescue workers were standing looking down at something. My heart gave a wild leap and I scrambled over the debris to see what they had found.
There, where the floor of the study had been, was that which I had feared and more than half expected. It was simply a hole. A gaping hole in the floor—but from the angles at which the floorboards lay, and the manner in which they were scattered about, it looked as though the ground, rather than sinking, had been pushed up from below.
VI
Nothing has since been seen or heard of Sir Amery Wendy-Smith and though he is listed as being missing I know in fact that he is dead. He is gone to worlds of ancient wonder and my only prayer is that his soul wanders on our side of the threshold. For in our ignorance we did Sir Amery a great injustice—I and all the others who thought he was out of his mind. All his queer ways—I understand them all now, but the understanding has come hard and will cost me dear. No, he was not mad. He did the things he did out of self-preservation and though his precautions came to nothing in the end, it was fear of a nameless evil and not madness which prompted them.
But the worst is still to come. I myself have yet to face a similar end. I know it, for no matter what I do the tremors haunt me. Or is it only in my mind? No! There is little wrong with my mind. My nerves are gone but my mind is intact. I know too much! They have visited me in dreams, as I believe they must have visited my uncle, and what they have read in my mind has warned them of their danger. They dare not allow me to investigate, for it is such meddling which may one day fully reveal them to men—before they are ready… God! Why has that ancient fool Wilmarth at Miskatonic not answered my telegrams? There must be a way out! Even now they dig—those dwellers in darkness…
But no! This is no good. I must get a grip of myself and finish this narrative. I have not had time to try to tell the authorities the truth but even if I had I know what the result would have been. “There’s something wrong with all the Wendy-Smith blood” they would say. But this manuscript will tell the story for me and will also stand as a warning to others. Perhaps when it is seen how my—passing—so closely parallels that of Sir Amery, people will be curious; with this manuscript to guide them perhaps men will seek out and destroy Earth’s elder madness before it destroys them…
A few days after the collapse of the cottage on the moors, I settled here in this house on the outskirts of Marske to be close at hand if—though I could see little hope of it—my uncle should turn up again. But now some dread power keeps me here. I cannot flee… At first their power was not so strong, but now…I am no longer able even to leave this desk
and I know the end must be coming fast. I am rooted to this chair as if grown here and it is as much as I can do to type! But I must…I must… And the ground movements are much stronger now. That hellish, damnable, mocking stylus—leaping so crazily over the paper…
I had been here only two days when the police delivered to me a dirty, soil-stained envelope. It had been found in the ruins of the cottage—near the lip of that curious hole—and was addressed to me. It contained those notes I have already copied and a letter from Sir Amery which, if its awful ending is anything to go on, he must have still been writing when the horror came for him. When I consider, it is not surprising that the envelope survived the collapse. They would not have known what it was, and so would have had no interest in it. Nothing in the cottage was purposely damaged—nothing inanimate, that is—and so far as I have been able to discover the only missing items are those terrible spheres, or what remained of them… But I must hurry. I cannot escape and all the time the tremors are increasing in strength and frequency… No! I will not have time. No time to write all I wanted to say… The shocks are too heavy… To o hea vy… Int erfer in g with m y t yping…I will finis h this i n th e only way rem ain ing to me and staple S ir Amer y’s lette r to this man usc ript…now…
Dear Paul,
In the event of this letter ever getting to you, there are certain things I must ask you to do for the safety and sanity of the world. It is absolutely necessary that these things be explored and dealt with—though how that may be done I am at a loss to say. It was my intention, for the sake of my own sanity, to forget what happened at G’harne. I was wrong to try to hide it. At this very moment there are men digging in strange, forbidden places and who knows what they may unearth? Certainly all these horrors must be tracked down and rooted out—but not by bumbling amateurs. It must be done by men who are ready for the ultimate in hideous, cosmic horror. Men with weapons. Perhaps flame-throwers would do the trick… Certainly a scientific knowledge of war would be a necessity… Devices could be made to track the enemy…I mean specialized seismological instruments… If I had the time I would prepare a dossier, detailed and explicit, but it appears that this letter will have to suffice as a guide to tomorrow’s horror hunters. You see, I now know for sure that they are after me! And there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s too late! At first even I, just like so many others, believed myself to be just a little bit mad. I refused to admit to myself that what I had seen happen had ever happened at all! To admit that was to admit lunacy! But it’s real all right… It did happen—and will again!
Heaven only knows what’s been wrong with my seismograph but the damn thing’s let me down in the worst possible way! Oh, they would have got me eventually, but I might at least have had time to prepare a proper warning… I ask you to think, Paul… Think of what has happened at the cottage… I can write of it as though it had already happened; because I know it must! It will! It is Shudde-M’ell, come for his spheres… Paul, look at the manner of my death, for if you are reading this then I am either dead or disappeared—which means the same thing. Read the enclosed notes carefully, I beg you. I haven’t the time to be more explicit but these old notes of mine should be of some help… If you are only half so enquiring as I believe you to be, you will surely soon come to recognize a fantastic horror which, I repeat, the whole world must be made to believe in… The ground is really shaking now but, knowing it is the end, I am steady in my horror… Not that I expect my present calm state of mind to last… I think that by the time they actually come for me my mind will have snapped completely. I can imagine it now…The floor splintering, erupting, to admit them. Why! Even thinking of it my senses recoil at the terror of the thought… There will be a hideous smell, a slime, a chanting and gigantic writhing and… And then…
Unable to escape, I await the thing… I am trapped by the same hypnotic power that claimed the others at G’harne. What monstrous memories! How I awoke to see my friends and companions sucked dry of their life’s blood by wormy, vampirish things from the cesspools of time! Gods of alien dimensions… I was hypnotized then by this same terrible force, unable to move to the aid of my friends or even to save myself! Miraculously, with the passing of the moon behind some wisps of cloud, the hypnotic effect was broken. Then, screaming and sobbing, temporarily out of my mind, I fled; hearing behind me the vile and slobbering sucking sounds and the droning, demoniac chanting of Shudde-M’ell and his hordes.
Not knowing that I did it, in my mindlessness I carried with me those hell-spheres… Last night I dreamed of them. And in my dreams I saw again the inscriptions on that stone box. Moreover, I could read them! All the fears and ambitions of those hellish things were there to be read as clearly as the headlines in a daily newspaper! “Gods” they may or may not be but one thing is sure; the greatest setback to their plans for conquest of the Earth is their terribly long and complicated reproductory cycle! Only a handful of young are born every thousand years; but, considering how long they have been here, the time must be drawing ever nearer when their numbers will be sufficient! Naturally, this tedious build up of their numbers makes them loath to lose even a single member of their hideous spawn. And that is why they have tunnelled these many thousands of miles, even under deep oceans, to retrieve the spheres! I had wondered why they could be following me—and now I know. I also know how. Can you not guess how they know where I am, Paul, or why they are coming? Those spheres are like a beacon to them; a siren voice calling. And just as any other parent—though more out of awful ambition, I fear, than any type of emotion we could understand—they are merely answering the call of their young!
But they are too late! A few minutes ago, just before I began this letter, the things hatched… Who would have guessed that they were eggs—or that the container they were in was an incubator? I can’t blame myself for not knowing it. I even tried to have the spheres X-rayed once, damn them, but they reflected the rays! And the shells were so thick! Yet at the time of hatching they just splintered into tiny fragments. The creatures inside were no bigger than walnuts… Taking into account the size of an adult they must have a fantastic growth rate. Not that those two will ever grow! I shrivelled them with a cigar… And you should have heard the mental screams from those beneath!
If only I could have known earlier, definitely, that it was not madness, there might have been a way to escape this horror… But no use now… My notes—look into them, Paul, and do what I should have done. Complete a detailed dossier and present it to the authorities. Wilmarth may help and perhaps Spencer of Quebec University… Haven’t much time now… Cracks in ceiling…
That last shock…ceiling coming away in chunks…coming up. Heaven help me, they’re coming up…I can feel them groping inside my mind as they come—
Sir,
Reference this manuscript found in the ruins of number 17 Anwick Street, Marske, Yorkshire, following the earth tremors of September this year and believed to be a “fantasy” which the writer, Paul Wendy-Smith, had completed for publication. It is more than possible that the so-called disappearances of both Sir Amery Wendy-Smith and his nephew, the writer, were nothing more than promotion stunts for this story… It is well known that Sir Amery is/was interested in seismography and perhaps some prior intimation of the two ’quakes supplied the inspiration for his nephew’s tale.
Investigations continuing…
Sgt J. Williams.
Yorks. County Constabulary.
2nd October 1933.
The House of Cthulhu
This one was written in November 1971. It was supposed to appear in a magazine called Pulp (just that?) which to my knowledge promptly disappeared—an all-too-regular occurrence! But then Kirby McCauley sold it to a brand-new magazine, Stuart Schiff’s Whispers. In fact it was the very first story in the very first issue in July 1973; following which it took off. This tale has now seen more reprints and translations than anything else I’ve ever written: in DAW’s Year’s Best Horror; in the first Orbit Book of Horr
or; in Doubleday’s Whispers anthology; in Jove’s paperback Whispers; in Josh Pacter’s Top Fantasy, and so forth; until, in 1984, W. Paul Ganley used it in (and as the title of) my Weirdbook Press Volume, The House of Cthulhu And Other Tales of the Primal Land, in both hardcover and paperback editions. Not to be outdone, in 1991 Headline in the UK published the book in paperback, and most recently (2005) TOR Books in the USA have done a lovely little hardback, with fabulous jacket art by my good friend Bob Eggleton. All in all, a very long (and very satisfying) road for this short Mythos story.
Where Weirdly angled ramparts loom,
Gaunt sentinels whose shadows gloom
Upon an undead hell-beast’s tomb—
And gods and mortals fears to tread.
Where gateways to forbidden spheres
And times are closed, but monstrous fears
Await the passing of strange years—
When that will wake which is not dead…
“Arlyeh”—A fragment from Teh Atht’s Legends of the Olden Runes. As translated by Thelred Gustau from the Theem’hdra manuscripts.
Now it happened aforetime that Zar-thule the Conqueror, who is called Reaver of Reavers, Seeker of Treasures and Sacker of Cities, swam out of the East with his dragonships; aye, even beneath the snapping sails of his dragonships. The wind was but lately turned favorable, and now the weary rowers nodded over their shipped oars while sleepy steersmen held the course. And there Zar-thule descried him in the sea the island Arlyeh, whereon loomed tall towers builded of black stone whose tortuous twinings were of angles unknown and utterly beyond the ken of men; and this island was redly lit by the sun sinking down over its awesome black crags and burning behind the aeries and spires carved therefrom by other than human hands.