Mysteries of the Worm

by Robert Bloch

  Triumphantly, he strode across the camp-clearing to the excavation where the image stood. And it was there that he received his greatest shock.

  The idol had been reinterred! The workmen had not left the statue violated, but had completely filled in the excavation, even taking the precaution of placing the two original stones over the top. Stugatche could not move them single-handed, and when he realized the extent of this calamity he was filled with an overpowering dismay. He was defeated. Cursing would do no good, and in his heart he could not even hope to pray. Nyarlathotep—Lord of the Desert!

  It was with a new and deathly fear that he began his journey, choosing a course at random, and hoping against hope that the sudden clouds would lift so that he could have the guidance of the stars. But the clouds did not lift, and only the moon grinned grimly down at the stumbling figure that struggled through the sand.

  Dervish dreams flitted through Stugatche’s consciousness as he walked. Try as he might, the legend of the god haunted him with a sense of impending fulfillment. Vainly he tried to force his drugged mind to forget the suspicions that tormented it. He could not. Over and over again he found himself shivering with fear at the thought of a godly wrath pursuing him to his doom. He had violated a sacred spot, and the Old Ones remember . . . “his ways are best left unprofaned” . . . “God of the Desert” . . . that empty countenance. Stugatche swore viciously, and lumbered on, a tiny ant amid mountains of undulating sand.

  — 5 —

  Suddenly it was daylight. The sand faded from purple to violet, then suddenly suffused with an orchid glow. But Stugatche did not see it, for he slept. Long before he had planned, his bloated body had given way beneath the grueling strain, and the coming of dawn found him utterly weary and exhausted. His tired legs buckled under him and he collapsed upon the sand, barely managing to draw the blanket over him before he slept.

  The sun crept across the brazen sky like a fiery ball of lava, pouring its molten rays upon the flaming sands. Stugatche slept on, but his sleep was far from pleasant. The heat brought him queer and disturbing dreams.

  In them he seemed to see the figure of Nyarlathotep pursuing him on a nightmare flight across the desert of fire. He was running over a burning plain, unable to stop, while searing pain ate into his charred and blackened feet. Behind him strode the Faceless God, urging him onward with a staff of serpents. He ran on and on; but always that gruesome presence kept pace behind him. His feet became numbed by the scorching agony of the sand. Soon he was hobbling on ghastly, crumpled stumps, but despite the torture he dared not stop. The Thing behind him cackled in diabolical mirth, his gigantic laughter rising to the blazing sky.

  Stugatche was on his knees now, his crippled legs eaten away into ashy stumps that smoldered acridly even as he crawled. Suddenly the desert became a lake of living flame into which he sank, his scorched body consumed by a blast of livid, unendurable torment. He felt the sand lick pitilessly at his arms, his waist, his very throat; and still his dying senses were filled with the monstrous dread of the Faceless One behind him—a dread transcending all pain. Even as he sank into that white-hot inferno he was feebly struggling on. The vengeance of the god must never overtake him! The heat was overpowering him now; it was frying his cracked and bleeding lips, transforming his scorched body into one ghastly ember of burning anguish.

  He raised his head for the last time before his boiling brain gave way beneath the agony. There stood the Dark One, and even as Stugatche watched he saw the lean, taloned hands reach out to touch his fiery face; saw the dreadful triple-crowned head draw near to him, so that he gazed for one grisly moment into that empty countenance. As he looked he seemed to see something in that black pit of horror—something that was staring at him from illimitable gulfs beyond—something with great flaming eyes that bored into his being with a fury greater than the fires that were consuming him. It told him, wordlessly, that his doom was sealed. Then came a burst of white-hot oblivion, and he sank into the seething sands, the blood bubbling in his veins. But the indescribable horror of that glimpse remained, and the last thing he remembered was the sight of that dreadful, empty countenance and the nameless fear behind it. Then he awoke.

  For a moment his relief was so great that he did not notice the sting of the midday sun. Then, bathed in perspiration, he staggered to his feet and felt the stabbing rays bite into his back. He tried to shield his eyes and glance above to get his bearings, but the sky was a bowl of fire. Desperately, he dropped the blanket and began to run. The sand was clinging to his feet, slowing his pace and tripping him. It burned his heels. He felt an intolerable thirst. Already the demons of delirium danced madly in his head. He ran, endlessly, and his dream seemed to become a menacing reality. Was it coming true?

  His legs were scorched, his body was seared. He glanced behind. Thank God there was no figure there—yet! Perhaps, if he kept a grip on himself, he might still make it, in spite of the time he had lost. He raced on. Perhaps a passing caravan—but no, it was far out of the caravan route. Tonight the sunset would give him an accurate course. Tonight.

  Damn the heat! Sand all around him. Hills of it, mountains. All alike they were, like the crumbled, Cyclopean ruins of titan cities. All were burning, smoldering in the fierce heat.

  The day was endless. Time, ever an illusion, lost all meaning. Stugatche’s weary body throbbed in bitter anguish, filling each moment with a new and deeper torment. The horizon never changed. No mirage marred the cruel, eternal vista; no shadow gave surcease from the savage glare.

  But wait! Was there not a shadow behind him? Something dark and shapeless gloated at the back of his brain. A terrible thought pierced him with sudden realization. Nyarlathotep, God of the Desert! A shadow following him, driving him to destruction. Those legends—the natives warned him, his dreams warned him, even that dying creature on the rack. The Mighty Messenger always claims his own . . . a black man with a staff of serpents . . . “He cometh from out the desert, across the burning sands, and stalketh his prey throughout the land of his domain.”

  Hallucination? Dared he glance back? He turned his fever-addled head. Yes! It was true, this time! There was something behind him, far away on the slope below; something black and nebulous that seemed to pad on stealthy feet. With a muttered curse, Stugatche began to run. Why had he ever touched that image? If he got out of this he would never return to the accursed spot again. The legends were true. God of the Desert!

  He ran on, even though the sun showered bloody kisses on his brow. He was beginning to go blind. There were dazzling constellations whirling before his eyes, and his heart throbbed a shrieking rhythm in his breast. But in his mind there was room for but one thought—escape.

  His imagination began playing him strange tricks. He seemed to see statues in the sand—statues like the one he had profaned. Their shapes towered everywhere, writhing giant-like out of the ground and confronting his path with eerie menace. Some were in attitudes with wings outspread, others were tentacled and snake-like, but all were faceless and triple-crowned. He felt that he was going mad, until he glanced back and saw that creeping figure now only a half-mile behind. Then he staggered on, screaming incoherently at the grotesque eidolons barring his way. The desert seemed to take on a hideous personality, as though all nature were conspiring to conquer him. The contorted outlines of the sand became imbued with malignant consciousness; the very sun took on an evil life. Stugatche moaned deliriously. Would night never come?

  It came at last, but by that time Stugatche did not know it any more. He was a shambling, raving thing, wandering over the shifting sand, and the rising moon looked down on a thing that alternately howled and laughed. Presently the figure struggled to its feet and glanced furtively over its shoulder at a shadow that crept close. Then it began to run again, shrieking over and over again the single word, “Nyarlathotep”. And all the while the shadow lurked just a step behind.

  It seemed to be embodied with a strange and fiendish intelligence, for the shapel
ess adumbration carefully drove its victim forward in one definite direction, as if purposefully herding it toward an intended goal. The stars now looked upon a sight spawned of delirium—a man, chased across endlessly looming sands by a black shadow. Presently the pursued one came to the top of a hill and halted with a scream. The shadow paused in midair and seemed to wait.

  Stugatche was looking down at the remains of his own camp, just as he had left it the night before, with the sudden awful realization that he had been driven in a circle back to his starting-point. Then, with the knowledge, came a merciful mental collapse. He threw himself forward in one final effort to elude the shadow, and raced straight for the two stones where the statue was buried.

  Then occurred that which he had feared. For even as he ran, the ground before him quaked in the throes of a gigantic upheaval. The sand rolled in vast, engulfing waves, away from the base of the two boulders. Through the opening rose the idol, glistening evilly in the moonlight. And the oncoming sand from its base caught Stugatche as he ran toward it, sucking at his legs like a quicksand, and yawning at his waist. At the same instant the peculiar shadow rose and leapt forward. It seemed to merge with the statue in midair, a nebulous, animate mist. Then Stugatche, floundering in the grip of the sand, went quite insane with terror.

  The formless statue gleamed living in the livid light, and the doomed man stared straight into its unearthly countenance. It was his dream come true, for behind that mask of stone he saw a face with eyes of yellow madness, and in those eyes he read death. The black figure spread its wings against the hills, and sank into the sand with a thunderous crash.

  Thereafter nothing remained above the earth save a living head that twisted on the ground and struggled futilely to free its imprisoned body from the iron embrace of the encircling sand. Its imprecations turned to frantic cries for mercy, then sank to a sob in which echoed the single word, “Nyarlathotep”.

  When morning came Stugatche was still alive, and the sun baked his brain into a hell of crimson agony. But not for long. The vultures winged across the desert plain and descended upon him, almost as if supernaturally summoned.

  Somewhere, buried in the sands below, an ancient idol lay, and upon its featureless countenance there was the faintest hint of a monstrous, hidden smile. For even as Stugatche the unbeliever died, his mangled lips paid whispered homage to Nyarlathotep, Lord of the Desert.

  The Grinning Ghoul

  Bloch, long skeptical of the pretensions of psychiatrists (see the roasting he gives them in Psycho II, for example), and regarding them as little more than shamans in suits, here supplies an early example of the too-confident shrink who quails in the face of mysteries undreamt of in Vienna.

  Cultes des Goules is another sorcerous creation of Robert Bloch. One often sees it ascribed to August Derleth (who, years later, could not keep the facts straight himself), but Bloch was its inventor. The confusion arose from the fact that Bloch dubbed its fictive author “the Comte d’Erlette”. This was a reference to Derleth’s pretensions to Old World nobility.

  The Grinning Ghoul

  by Robert Bloch

  Fate plays strange tricks on one, doesn’t it? Six months ago I was a well-known and moderately successful practicing psychiatrist; today I am an inmate of a sanatorium for mental cases. In my capacity of alienist and physician I have often committed patients to the selfsame institution in which I myself am now confined, and today—irony of ironies!—I find myself their brother in misfortune.

  And yet I am not really mad. They sent me here because I chose to tell the truth, and it was not the kind of truth men dare to reveal or recognize. Of course I really have no substantial proof to offer; I have never seen Professor Chaupin since that eventful night last August, and my subsequent investigations failed to substantiate his claim to a post at Newberry College. This, however, only testifies to the validity of my statement; a statement which sent me to shameful confinement, to a living death which I abhor.

  There is one other concrete proof which I could give if I dared, but that would be too terrible. I must not lead them to the exact spot in that nameless cemetery and point out the passage that yawns beneath that tomb. It is better that I should suffer alone, that the world at large be spared the knowledge that destroys sanity. Yet it is hard for me to live like this, and to the drabness of my days my nighted dreams add endless torment. That is why I choose to set down this account—perhaps the unfolding of my story will serve somehow to ease the painful burden of my memory.

  The affair began one day last August, at my downtown office. It had been a dull vigil that morning, and the long, hot afternoon was nearly over when the nurse ushered in the first patient. It was a gentleman who had never consulted me heretofore; a man who gave his name as Professor Alexander Chaupin, of Newberry College. He spoke sibilantly, with a peculiar foreign intonation which led me to assume that he was not a native of this country. I requested him to be seated, and tried to appraise him quickly as he complied with my invitation.

  He was tall and thin. His hair was startlingly white, almost platinum; yet his general physique and appearance were that of a man of forty. His green, unwavering eyes were deeply set in a pale, protruding forehead and were surmounted by long, jet-black brows. The nose was large, with sensual nostrils, but his lips were thin—a physical contradiction which I immediately noticed. The lean hands resting on the table were exceedingly small, with long, tapering fingers terminating in lengthy nails—probably cultivated for use in reading and reference work, I decided. His supple posture was akin to that of a panther in repose; he had the foreigner’s ease and graceful manner. In the sunlight I was able to observe his face, and I discovered his entire countenance to be covered with a network of tiny wrinkles. I noted, too, the peculiar pallor of his skin, which indicated some dermatological disturbance. But by far the queerest thing about him was his unusual mode of dress. His clothes, while obviously new, were incongruous in two respects; they were formal attire in midday, and they did not seem to fit him. They were curiously large; his striped gray trousers sagged, and his coat bulged strangely. There was dried mud on his patent-leather pumps, and he carried no hat. Obviously he was an eccentric type; a schizophrenic, perhaps, with tendencies toward hypochondria.

  I prepared to ask him the routine questions, but he intervened. He was a busy man, he told me, and he would inform me at once of his difficulty, without unnecessary preliminaries or introductions. He settled himself back in his chair, where the sunlight faded into shadow; cleared his throat nervously, and began.

  He was troubled, he said, because of certain things he had heard and read of; they sent him queer dreams, and often caused him spells of uncontrollable melancholia. This was interfering with his work, and yet he could do nothing; for his obsessions were founded on reality. Finally he had decided to come to me for an analysis of his difficulties.

  I asked him for an account of his dreams and fancies, half expecting to hear one of the usual image-patterns of the dyspeptic. My assumption, however, proved to be woefully incorrect.

  The most commonplace dream revolved around what I shall call the Misericorde Cemetery, for reasons soon to be apparent. This is a large, ancient, half-abandoned tract in the oldest section of the city, which flourished in the latter part of the past century. The exact location of his nocturnal vision was in and around a certain secluded vault situated in the most dilapidated and archaic portion of the graveyard. The incidents of the dream always occurred at nightfall, beneath a waning and sepulchral moon. Fantastic visions seemed to brood somberly over the midnight landscape, and he spoke vaguely of half-heard voices that seemed to urge him onward as he found himself on the gravel walk that led to the doors of the tomb.

  His dreams usually began in this fashion, in the midst of a sound slumber. He would suddenly be walking up a tree-shaded pathway in the night, and enter this tomb by unfastening the rusted chains that barred its portal. Once inside, he seemed to experience no difficulty in guiding his footsteps thro
ugh the darkness, but with uncanny familiarity would go at once to a certain niche among the biers. He then knelt and pressed a tiny, concealed spring or lever set in the crumbling stones of the floor. A pivot would revolve at the base of the niche and reveal to him a small opening, leading to a moldering cavern below. He spoke here of the nitrous dampness that emanated from this passageway, and the peculiarly nauseous odors of the denser darkness that rose from below. Nevertheless, in his dream he was not repelled, but would immediately enter the chasm and subsequently descend a succession of interminably long staircases cut in stone and earth. Abruptly he would find himself at the bottom.

  Then began another lengthy journey through endless labyrinthine caverns and charnel vaults. On and on he wandered, through cave and crypt, tunnel and abyss-burrowed pit; all cloaked in the blackness of immemorial night.

  Here he paused in his narrative, and his voice shrank to a shrill, excited whisper.

  The horror always came next. He would suddenly emerge into a series of dimly lighted chambers, and as he stood undetected in the shadows, he would see things. These were the dwellers that laired beneath; the ghastly spawn that ravened on the dead. They dwelt in nighted caverns lined with human bones and adored the primal gods before altars shaped of skulls. They had tunnels leading to the graves, and burrows still farther below in which they stalked a living prey. These were the grisly night-gaunts that he beheld in dreams; these were ghouls.