It made no difference that this was that shaft especially pointed out to me by the dream-lizard as being forbidden above all others; indeed, I believe that his warning was in the main the special attraction!
But it was different, this great burrow, with none of the dryness of the calcium labyrinth, nor yet damp like the slippery declivity to the rushing pool of frogs; no, the atmosphere here seemed rather more, well, livable; or was it simply that I myself was becoming more conditioned to ‘living’ underground?
There were no side-tunnels leading off from this shaft, and when I gave closer examination to the walls I was led to the conclusion that time and nature were by no means wholly responsible for their mechanical regularity. There was no stalagmitic dripstone for one thing—and for another there were marks which could only have been the results of an extensive mining operation.
I had gone perhaps one half-mile along the tunnel, keeping to the main shaft and leaving alone the hundreds of smaller side-burrows, when I came to the steps. There were seven of them, cut into the solid rock (a sort of darkish basalt as opposed to limestone), leading me up to a level of the passage on a slightly higher elevation. That higher passage was of basalt, too, having a slow but definite rise to its floor which made me unconsciously quicken my pace. It seemed the closer I got to the surface world, the nearer I came to the waking world, and the faster I wanted to go. Hah!—as if there could exist the slightest hope of my discovering a way out of my sprawling mind-prison …
It was only when I thought I heard something, a noise from somewhere ahead, that I slowed my pace. I stood still then to listen for a recurrence; and there was a sound, receding now but recognizable none the less.
It was one of those “songs of praise”, as heard often before, echoing back to me from some distant region. I kept still, so that I might catch the last of those ephemeral notes; but too late, for the song had already died. Yet in its stead I seemed to hear an odd whispering, a muted, infinitesimal echo, as it were, of what had gone before—and strangely, again I was reminded of the voices of many young choir-boys, singing in unison in some great cathedral.
At first I told myself there could be little doubt that this muted harmony was only the fading echo of the greater sound; but as I wandered steadily on along the basalt passage, so the whispering seemed to grow louder (rather than dying out, as I had thought it might), until soon it was a distinctly audible, ululant hum in the air; an effect which might with some difficulty have been attained in more orthodox settings by playing in harmonic phases the lower notes of a guitar in the confines of an echo-chamber. And yet, paradoxically, I could not truly say that I ‘heard’ anything. It was more as if some psychologically deep-rooted tuning-fork had been struck in my inner self, to reverberate simultaneously in both my conscious and subconscious beings.
That hackneyed term ‘telepathy’ sprang to mind, to be as quickly put away. I was well aware that my mind was in no fit state to rationalize with any accuracy whatever on any occurrence; regardless which of my five stumbling senses—or any combination of them or addition to them—seemed to perceive that occurrence. Far less could I afford to believe in things which I knew were fantasies—things I had considered fantasies long before I ever saw the figurine in the museum at Radcar. That was the category in which at that time I placed telepathy.
I might well have gone on thinking along these lines had not my thoughts been interrupted by my abrupt emergence from the basalt passage into a large chamber.
The cavern must have been at least one hundred yards across, making it second only in sheer size to that tremendous vault wherein stood greystone Lh—yib; and its borders would surely have lain undefined were it not for the great domed ceiling—like that other ceiling in the cave of white grass—being liberally dotted with great patches of the same species of luminous lichen.
Stretching up and away that weirdly lighted roof receded, casting down from its curving surface a slowly shifting ‘fire—light’ which illuminated in pale orange and yellow shades the cavern’s centrepiece … a huge, square, sunken area with steps leading down to a great bowl—shaped delve at least thirty yards across—and that depression was filled with what looked like a monstrous mass of greyish jelly, quivering with an inward life of its own …
At first I was of two minds; should I leave the place without more ado, or should I go on down the steps to examine the curious … matter … in the great bowl? Then I forced myself to recall that none of my experiences here could genuinely be said to be happening at all, that this was simply another sequence in an unending dream or prolonged hallucination, and with this in mind I decided to carry on.
And all the while those noises in my ears (or at least in the ears of my mind) went on, growing in volume, I thought, and tinged now with currents of—fear? Yes, fear! I could definitely sense a discord, an element of apprehension, creeping into what had been a perfect if alien harmony …
I reached the bottom of the steps to peer unenlightened at the greyish, quivering pile of spherical jelly—things in the huge stone basin. The stuff looked for all the world like a mass of outsize frogspawn, with each single egg the size of a football, and—
Frogspawn!
Ye Gods—frogspawn! But what kind of frogs might eggs the like of these produce? Conquering my natural revulsion I stooped and lifted one of the heavy things in my hands, feeling of its sticky texture and discerning through its semi—opaqueness a vague outline suggestive of anything but a tadpole. Why!—the unborn creature within that nauseous plasma was shaped more like a foetus than anything else!
I had at first automatically connected the spawn with those nightmare frogs at the pool of the cataract; but now, with that egg warm in my hands and with the weird songs chaotically resounding in a sudden passion of fear in my head, I had second thoughts. No, whatever these beings were they could in no wise be progeny to those batrachian beasts in that lower tunnel, nor to anything like them. What then?
There had for some time been rising in the air a savage, ululant howling, going unnoticed almost as I pondered the odd nature of the glistening spheroids. Now, as the sound (or rather the experience) increased in volume so as to be an almost physical force, I was driven by it backwards up the steps to crouch fearfully above that awesome spawning place. There I suddenly realized that the hideous reverberations issued from some source separate completely from those other, softer sensations conveying fear. Simultaneous with this realization came that flash in my mind illuminating the whole experience in a light which was at least logical, given that any sort of logic could be said to be permissible in my situation.
It was simply this: I had suddenly seen the unhatched eggs in the bowl-shaped depression as containing sentient creatures—beings that somehow knew of my intrusion and feared it—and if such a wild theory could possibly be correct … then what of the parent creatures? Did they, too, know of my presence in this spawning place, and did they also have this ability to project their emotions? In abrupt terror I knew that they did, that they were even now voicing their protest in those savage howls of demoniacal rage which had rapidly grown so as to shake my whole being!
And worse than even this terrifying knowledge, what happened next was more than sufficient to send me in a hag-ridden rush away from the place of the eggs to plunge in mind-jellying horror back down the basalt tunnel—to float in a slow-motion nightmare down the seven steps—to pant in an agony of fear, fear of retribution, from the forbidden tunnel to the gallery and from there to my own cave. And in that cave I huddled in a dark corner, sending my fireflies away from me in the vain hope that without their telltale presence I might remain hidden when They came to seek me out.
For come they must; I was sure of it. As sure as the murderer who hears the sound of the hounds on his trail; as sure as the prisoner whimpering in his cell with the shadow of the gallows falling on him through the bars. After all, was I not just such a murderer … was I not even more a prisoner?
For as the truth had d
awned on me atop those basalt steps I had shuddered in an involuntary convulsion—and in so doing I had dropped that living egg, watching it burst, splatter and run in liquid katabolism to the bottom step—and as the egg had burst asunder so there came from out the hideous ether the baying, blood-lusting cry of outraged parenthood—the nightmare promise that those singers of strange songs, the Thuun’ha, would be avenged …
XVII: Taken by the Thuun’ha
Dream-Phase Eleven
[The Masters Case: From the Recordings of Dr Eugene T. Thappon]
It was less than half an hour before they came for me, given that for once my time-sense was in good order, but in that short time I had almost frightened myself to death. Sitting there shivering in my dark corner, I had gone quickly over all that had occurred since my fatal discovery of the statuette at Radcar Museum, and my thoughts had led me to some terrible conclusions.
The truth was that I was finding it more and more difficult to believe that everything down there ‘below ground’ was illusory. Points in favour of prolonged hallucination were legion, yes, but likewise points against! It was one thing to have the occasional mental lapse following a bad car accident—but quite another to ‘dream’ this entire subterranean sequence.
Yet what other explanation could there be? Psychologically everything could be explained away, but the damnable thing was that I did not feel in any way, well, mental! I felt normal—completely normal—or as normal as I should feel in my extraordinary surroundings. There were none of the—usual?—phenomena of orthodox hallucination. But could I trust my feelings, or for that matter any single one of my senses? Does any paranoiac feel like a paranoiac? And there again, by its very definition, “hallucination” was by no means inadmissible.
Let’s see now—hallucination—yes, if I remembered correctly: “An apparent perception devoid of any externally correspondent object: any sensation or combination of sensations—visual, tactile or auditory—caused by mental derangement, fever or intoxication …”
Well, that certainly fitted me, to a ‘T’ in fact! Certainly I was feverish—definitely I had been and presumably still was mentally deranged, and increasingly so. But in spite of all this I did not feel to be, well, deranged …
… Not until I saw the Thuun’ha, at any rate—and then I knew I was mad, and so there was no sense in worrying about anything any longer. I had seen them before, in an earlier sequence of this hellish dream—that first night in the cave of the stream—but at that time my condition had not been quite so fully developed. Now it was!
Oh, my disordered imagination had had plenty to work on in the development of the Thuun'ha, and it had spared no detail in matching them exactly to that description as translated from the Brick Cylinders of Kadatheron. They were only small, but I made no effort to fight them off when half a dozen of them lifted me bodily to carry me out of my cave and into the gallery, and from there down that passage leading back to Lh-yib; one cannot fight that which does not exist! Instead of struggling I merely lay limply in their arms and studied them unbelievingly as they hurried me along. My fireflies had returned to me from their banishment, and the air was full of strange songs and a musty, alien odour—but I barely noticed these things in my amazement at my ruined psyche’s construction of such fantastic creatures.
The Thuun’ha were hideous, and no other word could adequately fit them. Perhaps four and one half feet tall, green as Yorkshire beer-bottles, bulge-eyed with flabbily hanging, wattled lips and strangely tapering, furred ears … hideous! And their touch was soft, their movements sure, and their telepathic songs were unutterably foreboding as they bore me to that incredible cavity wherein stood the Sister City.
It was all a mad rush to me, with my whirling thoughts only adding to the general confusion. My confusion, that is, for as I have hinted the Thuun’ha were very purposeful indeed; and each movement my bearers and their thronging escort made seemed in its sureness the ultimate in alien efficiency.
Darkness came quickly. At first, when the Thuun’ha took me in horror from the cave, my firefly cloud had followed to swirl in what could only be likened to dumb bewilderment about my head; but as I was borne more swiftly along the corridor to Lh-yib, those luminescent ranks thinned, until merely a speckling of light remained … and then even that vanished.
Once more I lost track of time completely as my light—less rush through the dark bowels of Earth continued, so that it seemed only a minute or so before light returned in blinding brilliance as I was borne out into the dizzy cave of the city. Without pause, closing my eyes against the terror of the journey, I was carried inert and unprotesting across a network of spindly bridges to the great central pillar and then, once again, darkness descended as my bearers hurried me in through a carved entranceway to commence a spiralling downward course.
During the descent within that great stalactite, at regular intervals, light would suddenly stream in to me, and turning my head I saw that the source of this radiance was the occasional window cut to look out over the Sister City. I remembered having noticed just such windows before, when first I had spied Lh-yib from that great landing onto which the lizard-being had led me from the cave of the mushrooms.
Quickly the descent was over, and still dizzy from the corkscrew fall I was borne out from the base of the huge stalagmite and through the lower streets of the city. There, in every doorway and from every window, peered the hostile minions of the water-lizard gods, leaving no doubt in my mind but that had they their way (and it seemed they had) my punishment would be fitting to my crime. Only once did I see what I took to be a group of the ‘gods’ themselves, well apart from the Thuun’ha and seemingly very aloof; but I was hurriedly bustled away from that area to the very outskirts of the city, then out across the grey, sandy plain, and finally I knew that my ultimate destination lay at the great pyramid—the Place of Worship!
Lying partly on my side in the arms of the six Thuun'ha, I was able to see that as before the silver stream ran and sparkled to the base of the pyramid, continuing its green altered course from that building to the hole in the far wall of the monster cave where it vanished again into the bowels of the earth; but even as I watched, the stream—where it emerged from under the pyramid—began to dry up as I had seen it do before. Inside the pointed building, for a purpose as yet unknown to me, the path of the stream had been rechannelled … but by that token I at least knew that it would soon be the Time of the Mist…
XVIII: Sacrifice
Dream-Phase Twelve
[The Masters Case: From the Recordings of Dr Eugene T. Thappon]
My mind was morbidly working overtime as I was rushed in through a low entranceway in the base of the great pyramid. Was I to be subjected to the green mist at its source, to choke and die in its poisoned fumes, or was there a yet more terrifying end in store for me in reckoning for my crime in the spawning place? Again I found myself in darkness: carried down, steeply down, in tortuous intestines of unlit earth before the course once more levelled out. Then those alien fingers fastened more securely about me as my bearers tightened their grip. There was to be no sudden escape, that much was obvious, and I guessed that it would not be long before the ultimate, unknown destination was reached.
In a few minutes more there came to my ears the rush of waters dulled by walls of rock, and I remembered how I had seen the stream beyond the pyramid dry up. Was this, then, the place to which the waters had been rechannelled from the pyramid? And if so—why? No sooner had I asked myself this question than I believed I could see the answer. As the dank air of the underworld swept by me (so it seemed in that lightless rush), it brought to my nostrils an acrid odour as alien to my sense of smell as was the touch of the Thuun’ha to my flesh. There were liquid gurgles, too, and the deep thrumming of ponderous machinery. In my mind’s eye I pictured black cauldrons and churning paddles, with greenly bubbling concoctions steaming and giving off lethally poisonous vapours.
How good my guess was became apparent when I was borne
through an extensive cave lit by dull fires which burned beneath lines of huge stone vats extending into the miasmal darkness. The entire place resounded to the chucklings of boiling liquids and the poundings of mixing or stirring devices. Here and there, shadowy Thuun'ha teams worked at the lips of the vats, pouring vessels of noxious chemicals into the bubbling liquids; and above, great vents in the ceiling sucked away the green mist as it rose from the vats in billowing, thickly opaque clouds. The merest wisp of vapour from one vat set me coughing and choking as I was bundled quickly through the awful place. The whole was a dark scene from Hieronymus Bosch—perhaps his ‘Hell’ from The Garden of Delights—and thinking on that artist’s nightmare conception, for a hideous moment I believed I was to be thrown into one of the fearsome vats. But then we passed on into the darkness of yet another tunnel.
Down again, ever deeper, to where it seemed the very netherpits must lie, and there in the darkness my fantastic journey came to an abrupt end. I felt myself bundled into a container of sorts, like a basket; and, with a slight swinging motion, there followed the sensation of being lowered into grotesque and even greater depths.
For some time the descent continued, and by groping around I discovered that I was indeed in a kind of basket, with two thick ropes connecting the vehicle to what could only be some sort of pulley system above. Stretching my arms over the side of the basket, I could feel the upward slide of a rough rock wall, and looking down I could make out a red glow not too far below.
Soon the basket swung down into a cave, passing through a ring of flaring, bracketed torches set in the ceiling around the opening of the shaft, so that for a moment I felt their heat on my face. From ceiling to floor the cave was all of fifty feet in height, and from wall to dimly lit wall about twice that distance.
As soon as I saw the place I was filled with a terrible foreboding. Somewhere in my severely damaged mind I dimly remembered having seen this cavern before. But there was something out of place, an awful silence which, unremembered from that previous vision, seemed somehow ghastly in its intensity. It was a silence that screamed.