Mysteries of the Worm

by Robert Bloch

  The doctor rose, signifying that the interview was over. Fiske remained seated, shifting his briefcase.

  “Now if you will excuse me,” the physician murmured.

  “In a moment. There are still one or two brief questions I’d appreciate your answering.”

  “Certainly.” If Doctor Dexter was irritated, he gave no sign.

  “Did you by any chance see Lovecraft before or during his last illness?”

  “No. I was not his physician. In fact, I never met the man, though of course I knew of him and his work.”

  “What caused you to leave Providence so abruptly after the Blake affair?”

  “My interests in physics superseded my interest in medicine. As you may or may not know, during the past decade or more, I have been working on problems relative to atomic energy and nuclear fission. In fact, starting tomorrow, I am leaving Providence once more to deliver a course of lectures before the faculties of eastern universities and certain governmental groups.”

  “That is very interesting to me, Doctor,” said Fiske. “By the way, did you ever meet Einstein?

  “As a matter of fact, I did, some years ago. I worked with him on—but no matter. I must beg you to excuse me, now. At another time, perhaps, we can discuss such things.”

  His impatience was unmistakable now. Fiske rose, lifting his briefcase in one hand and reaching out to extinguish a table lamp with the other.

  Doctor Dexter crossed swiftly and lighted the lamp again.

  “Why are you afraid of the dark, Doctor?” asked Fiske, softly.

  “I am not af—”

  For the first time the physician seemed on the verge of losing his composure. “What makes you think that?” he whispered.

  “It’s the Shining Trapezohedron, isn’t it?” Fiske continued. “When you threw it into the bay you acted too hastily. You didn’t remember at the time that even if you left the lid open, the stone would be surrounded by darkness there at the bottom of the channel. Perhaps the Haunter didn’t want you to remember. You looked into the stone just as Blake did, and established the same psychic linkage. And when you threw the thing away, you gave it into perpetual darkness, where the Haunter’s power would feed and grow.

  “That’s why you left Providence—because you were afraid the Haunter would come to you, just as it came to Blake. And because you knew that now the thing would remain abroad forever.”

  Doctor Dexter moved towards the door. “I must definitely ask that you leave now,” he said. “If you’re implying that I keep the lights on because I’m afraid of the Haunter coming after me, the way it did Blake, then you’re mistaken.”

  Fiske smiled wryly. “That’s not it at all,” he answered. “I know you don’t fear that. Because it’s too late. The Haunter must have come to you long before this—perhaps within a day or so after you gave it power by consigning the Trapezohedron to the darkness of the Bay. It came to you, but unlike the case of Blake, it did not kill you.

  “It used you. That’s why you fear the dark. You fear it as the Haunter itself fears being discovered. I believe that in the darkness you look different. More like the old shape. Because when the Haunter came to you, it did not kill but instead, merged. You are the Haunter of the Dark!”

  “Mr. Fiske, really—”

  “There is no Doctor Dexter. There hasn’t been any such person for many years, now. There’s only the outer shell, possessed by an entity older than the world; an entity that is moving quickly and cunningly to bring destruction to all mankind. It was you who turned ‘scientist’ and insinuated yourself into the proper circles, hinting and prompting and assisting foolish men into their sudden ‘discovery’ of nuclear fission. When the first atomic bomb fell, how you must have laughed! And now you’ve given them the secret of the hydrogen bomb, and you’re going to teach them more, show them new ways to bring about their own destruction.

  “It took me years of brooding to discover the clues, the keys to the so-called wild myths that Lovecraft wrote about. For he wrote in parable and allegory, but he wrote the truth. He has set it down in black and white time and again, the prophecy of your coming to earth—Blake knew it at the last when he identified the Haunter by its rightful name.”

  “And that is?” snapped the doctor.

  “Nyarlathotep!”

  The brown face creased into a grimace of laughter. “I’m afraid you’re a victim of the same fantasy-projections as poor Blake and your friend Lovecraft. Everyone knows that Nyarlathotep is pure invention—part of the Lovecraft mythos.”

  “I thought so, until I found the clue in his poem. That’s when it all fitted in; the Haunter of the Dark, your fleeing, and your sudden interest in scientific research. Lovecraft’s words took on a new meaning:

  “And at last from inner Egypt came

  The strange dark one to whom the fellahs bowed.”

  Fiske chanted the lines, staring at the dark face of the physician.

  “Nonsense—if you must know, this dermatological disturbance of mine is a result of exposure to radiation at Los Alamos.”

  Fiske did not heed; he was continuing Lovecraft’s poem.

  “—That wild beasts followed him and licked his hands.

  Soon from the sea a noxious birth began:

  Forgotten lands with weedy spires of gold.

  The ground was cleft and mad auroras rolled

  Down on the quaking cities of man.

  Then crushing what he chanced to mould in play

  The idiot Chaos blew Earth’s dust away.”

  Doctor Dexter shook his head. “Ridiculous on the face of it,” he asserted. “Surely, even in your—er—upset condition, you can understand that, man! The poem has no literal meaning. Do wild beasts lick my hands? Is something rising from the sea? Are there earthquakes and auroras? Nonsense! You’re suffering from a bad case of what we call ‘atomic jitters’—I can see it now. You’re preoccupied, as so many laymen are today, with the foolish obsession that somehow our work in nuclear fission will result in the destruction of the earth. All this rationalization is a product of your imaginings.”

  Fiske held his briefcase tightly. “I told you it was a parable, this prophecy of Lovecraft’s. God knows what he knew or feared; whatever it was, it was enough to make him cloak his meaning. And even then, perhaps, they got to him because he knew too much.”

  “They?”

  “They from Outside—the ones you serve. You are their Messenger, Nyarlathotep. You came, in linkage with the Shining Trapezohedron, out of inner Egypt, as the poem says. And the fellahs—the common workers of Providence who became converted to the Starry Wisdom sect—bowed before the ‘strange dark one’ they worshipped as the Haunter.

  “The Trapezohedron was thrown into the Bay, and soon from the sea came this noxious birth—your birth, or incarnation in the body of Doctor Dexter. And you taught men new methods of destruction; destruction with atomic bombs in which the ‘ground was cleft and mad auroras rolled down on the quaking cities of man.’ Oh, Lovecraft knew what he was writing, and Blake recognized you, too. And they both died. I suppose you’ll try to kill me now, so you can go on. You’ll lecture, and stand at the elbows of the laboratory men urging them on and giving them new suggestions to result in greater destruction. And finally you’ll blow earth’s dust away.”

  “Please.” Doctor Dexter held out both hands. “Control yourself—let me get you something! Can’t you realize this whole thing is absurd?”

  Fiske moved towards him, hands fumbling at the clasp of the briefcase. The flap opened, and Fiske reached inside, then withdrew his hand. He held a revolver now, and he pointed it quite steadily at Doctor Dexter’s breast.

  “Of course it’s absurd,” Fiske muttered. “No one ever believed in the Starry Wisdom sect except a few fanatics and some ignorant foreigners. No one ever took Blake’s stories or Lovecraft’s, or mine for that matter as anything but a rather morbid form of amusement. By the same token, no one will ever believe there is anything wrong with y
ou, or with so-called scientific investigation of atomic energy, or the other horrors you plan to loose on the world to bring about its doom. And that’s why I’m going to kill you now!”

  “Put down that gun!”

  Fiske began suddenly to tremble; his whole body shook in a spectacular spasm. Dexter noted it and moved forward. The younger man’s eyes were bulging and the physician inched towards him.

  “Stand back!” Fiske warned. The words were distorted by the convulsive shuddering of his jaws. “That’s all I needed to know. Since you are in a human body, you can be destroyed by ordinary weapons. And so I destroy you—Nyarlathotep!”

  His finger moved.

  So did Doctor Dexter’s. His hand went swiftly behind him, to the wall master light-switch. A click and the room was plunged into utter darkness.

  Not utter darkness—for there was a glow.

  The face and hands of Doctor Ambrose Dexter glowed with a phosphorescent fire in the dark. There are presumable forms of radium poisoning which can cause such an effect, and no doubt Doctor Dexter would have so explained the phenomenon to Edmund Fiske, had he the opportunity.

  But there was no opportunity. Edmund Fiske heard the click, saw the fantastic flaming features, and pitched forward to the floor.

  Doctor Dexter quietly switched on the lights, went over to the younger man’s side and knelt for a long moment. He sought a pulse in vain.

  Edmund Fiske was dead.

  The doctor sighed, rose, and left the room. In the hall downstairs he summoned his servant.

  “There has been a regrettable accident,” he said. “That young visitor of mine—a hysteric—suffered a heart attack. You had better call the police, immediately. And then continue with the packing. We must leave tomorrow, for the lecture tour.”

  “But the police may detain you.”

  Doctor Dexter shook his head. “I think not. It’s a clear-cut case. In any event, I can easily explain. When they arrive, notify me. I shall be in the garden.”

  The doctor proceeded down the hall to the rear exit and emerged upon the moonlit splendor of the garden behind the house on Benefit Street.

  The radiant vista was walled off from the world, utterly deserted. The dark man stood in moonlight and its glow mingled with his own aura.

  At this moment two silken shadows leaped over the wall. They crouched in the coolness of the garden, then slithered forwards towards Doctor Dexter. They made panting sounds.

  In the moonlight, he recognized the shapes of two black panthers.

  Immobile, he waited as they advanced, padding purposefully towards him, eyes aglow, jaws slavering and agape.

  Doctor Dexter turned away. His face was turned in mockery to the moon as the beasts fawned before him and licked his hands.

  Notebook Found in a Deserted House

  This effective story has the distinction of being the first piece of Cthulhu Mythos fiction that young Ramsey Campbell stumbled upon, before he’d even run across the name Lovecraft. It was the direct inspiration for one of his earliest efforts, “The Hollow in the Woods”, published in Crypt of Cthulhu #50.

  “Notebook Found in a Deserted House” gains much of its effect from the device shared with Arthur Machen’s “The White People”: we are at a certain remove from the action, since we view it from the perspective of a child narrator. We know better than the narrator because we lack his/her innocence. This narrative technique allows an ominous irony to emerge through stylistic restraint. Oh, and the misspellings in the story are naturally Willie’s, therefore, and not Bloch’s.

  In this story Bloch is actually pursuing some themes (e.g., the connection between the Druids and the tree-like shoggoths) he had used in an earlier tale, “The Druidic Doom” Weird Tales, April 1936; Kurt Singer, ed., Bloch and Bradbury, Tower Books, 1969.

  Notebook Found in a Deserted House

  by Robert Bloch

  First off, I want to write that I never did anything wrong. Not to nobody. They got no call to shut me up here, whoever they are. They got no reason to do what I’m afraid they’re going to do, either.

  I think they’re coming pretty soon, because they’ve been gone outside a long time. Digging, I guess, in that old well. Looking for a gate, I heard. Not a regular gate, of course, but something else.

  Got a notion what they mean, and I’m scared.

  I’d look out the windows but of course they are boarded up so I can’t see.

  But I turned on the lamp, and I found this here notebook so I want to put it all down. Then if I get a chance maybe I can send it to somebody who can help me. Or maybe somebody will find it. Anyway, it’s better to write it out as best I can instead of just sitting here and waiting. Waiting for them to come and get me.

  I better start by telling my name, which is Willie Osborne, and that I am 12 years old last July. I don’t know where I was born.

  First thing I can remember is living out Roodsford way, out in what folks call the back hill country. It’s real lonesome out there, with deep woods all around and lots of mountains and hills that nobody ever climbs.

  Grandma use to tell me about it when I was just a little shaver. That’s who I lived with, just Grandma on account of my real folks being dead. Grandma was the one who taught me how to read and write. I never been to a regular school.

  Grandma knew all kinds of things about the hills and the woods and she told me some mighty queer stories. That’s what I thought they was, anyway, when I was little and living all alone with her. Just stories, like the ones in books.

  Like stories about them ones hiding in the swamps, that was here before the settlers and the Indians both and how there was circles in swamps and big stones called alters where them ones use to make sacrefices to what they worshipped.

  Grandma got some of the stories from her Grandma she said—about how them ones hid in the woods and swamps because they couldn’t stand sunshine, and how the Indians kept out of their way. She said sometimes the Indians would leave some of their young people tied to trees in the forest as a sacrefice, so as to keep them contented and peacefull.

  Indians knew all about them and they tried to keep white folks from noticing too much or settling too close to the hills. Them ones didn’t cause much trouble, but they might if they was crowded. So the Indians gave excuses for not settling, saying there weren’t enough hunting and no trails and it was too far off from the coast.

  Grandma told me that was why not many places was settled even today. Nothing but a few farmhouses here and there. She told me them ones was still alive and sometimes on certain nights in the Spring and Fall you could see lights and hear noises far off on the tops of the hills.

  Grandma said I had an Aunt Lucy and a Uncle Fred who lived out there right smack in the middle of the hills. Said my Pa used to visit them before he got married and once he heard them beating on a tree drum one night along about Halloween time. That was before he met Ma and they got married and she died when I come and he went away.

  I heard all kinds of stories. About witches and devils and bat men that sucked your blood and haunts. About Salem and Arkham because I never been to a city and I wanted to hear tell how they were. About a place called Innsmouth with old rotten houses where people hid awful things away in the cellars and the attics. She told me bout the way graves was dug deep under Arkham. Made it sound like the whole country was full of haunts.

  She use to scare me, telling about how some of these things looked and all but she never would tell me how them ones looked no matter how much I asked. Said she didn’t want me to have any truck with such things—bad enough she and her kin knew as much as they did—almost too much for decent God fearing people. It was lucky for me I didn’t have to bother with such ideas, like my own ancestor on my father’s side, Mehitabel Osborne, who got hanged for a witch back in the Salem days.

  So they was just stories to me until last year when Grandma died and Judge Crubinthorp put me on the train and I went out to live with Aunt Lucy and Uncle Fred in the very s
ame hills that Grandma use to tell about so often.

  You can bet I was pretty excited, and the conductor let me ride with him all the way and told me about the towns and everything.

  Uncle Fred met me at the station. He was a tall thin man with a long beard. We drove off in a buggy from the little deepo—no houses around there or nothing—right into the woods.

  Funny thing about those woods. They was so still and quiet. Gave me the creeps they was so dark and lonesome. Seemed like nobody had ever shouted and laughed or even smiled in them. Couldn’t imagine anyone saying anything there excep in whispers.

  Trees and all was so old, too. No animals around or birds. Path kind of overgrown like nobody used it much ever. Uncle Fred drove along right fast, he didn’t hardly talk to me at all but just made that old horse hump it.

  Pretty soon we struck into some hills, they was awfully high ones. They was woods on them, too, and sometimes a brook come running down, but I didn’t see no houses and it was always dark like at twilight, wherever you looked.

  Lastly we got to the farmhouse—a little place, old frame house and barn in a clear space with trees all around kind of gloomy-like. Aunt Lucy come out to meet us, she was a nice sort of middle-aged lady who hugged me and took my stuff in back.

  But all this don’t hold with what I’m supposed to write down here. It don’t matter that all this last year I was living in the house here with them, eating off the stuff Uncle Fred farmed without ever going into town. No other farms around here for almost four mile and no school—so evenings Aunt Lucy would help me with my reading. I never played much.

  At first I was scared of going into the woods on account of what Grandma had told me. Besides, I could tell as Aunt Lucy and Uncle Fred were scared of something from the way they locked the doors at night and never went into the woods after dark, even in summer.

  But after a while, I got used to the idea of living in the woods and they didn’t seem so scarey. I did chores for Uncle Fred, of course, but sometimes in afternoons when he was busy, I’d go off by myself. Particular by the time it was fall.