by Peter Rawlik
The next month or so was quite difficult for me, as I did my best to ignore the man who had so greatly influenced my life over the last few years, and with whom I had finally broken, despite the fact that he lived just a few yards away. I kept tabs on the staff, and from them I learned of an odd device or machine that was being constructed. Peaslee had, over the course of several days, placed orders with craftsmen and manufacturers all over the world, and it was toward the middle of September that these orders were coming to fruition. What the device was, no one could say, and Peaslee had barred the housekeeper and maid from the room in which it had been assembled. The workman, whose knowledge of tools and parts was apparently needed at some point, described the mechanism as a confusion of metal rods and mirrors, some concave, some convex, assembled in a complex manner reminiscent of a weathervane or a whirligig. Peaslee was obsessed with the thing, apparently spending hours tinkering with its parts and perfecting the motions of its components. What it actually was, the workman would not hazard.
Peaslee redoubled his efforts to convince people that he was regaining some of his old memories, often suggesting that he was drifting in and out of different states of being in which he was at one point his new persona, and then once more his old self. I listened to these secondhand discourses with some amusement, as it was becoming more and more apparent, at least to me, that Peaslee was planning something untoward, and I shuddered at the things that I believed he had already done, and the loss of life that had resulted. Just a few days later, all of my suspicions were validated when the first chapter of the strange case of the man who forgot himself came to a crashing end.
For me, the events that led to the final closure began on Monday, September 22, 1913, for that was the day that I first saw the swarthy man that seemed to play such a crucial part in those final days. The high days of summer had passed, and now that the temperature was more tolerable I would spend my mornings between breakfast and my first patient lounging on the front veranda with my coffee and the morning edition of The Arkham Advertiser. I found such morning repasts to be invigorating. The sound of the city waking up, birds singing, bees buzzing, car engines humming in a mechanical drone, the soft regular step of the milkman, and the wind meandering through the streets and the trees brought a sense of much-desired normalcy to my day. But it was on that particular Monday that I noticed the dark sedan roll cautiously onto the street and crawl down the row like a cat, until it found a found a convenient place to park. Truth be said, that car to me was like an entity unto itself; with its dark windows and sleek look I did not think of it as a machine or as a possession of someone else that was operating it. No, for me that sedan was its own creature with its own will and motivations. It was only when the door opened and the swarthy man stepped out did it even dawn on me to think that there was an actual driver.
As I have said, he was a swarthy man, olive-skinned, lean with a foreign manner to his stance and walk. He was clean-shaven with round glasses perched below bushy eyebrows. Oddly, he wore no hat, nor did he even carry one. His hair was jet-black and neatly cut. As he walked he took out a pack of cigarettes, even from a distance I could tell they were Morleys, and he casually lit one before shaking the match out and letting it fall into the street. His steps, as I said, had a foreign manner to them, but he walked with purpose and determination to a rhythm that was in my mind not entirely benign. He walked as if he planned to hurt someone, as if there would soon be blood on his hands.
I leaned back into the shadows, hoping that my presence would remain unnoticed, but the movement revealed me and as those eyes turned to look at me a shudder traveled down my spine. His stride never broke as he looked me up and down with those deep black eyes that peered out from behind the curls of smoke rising from his cigarette. He took a long smooth drag before palming the smoke and reaching the curb. I stared back, mesmerized by his graceful movements and penetrating gaze. It was only after he reached the steps to Peaslee’s home that he turned away, and in that moment I knew without a doubt that all the things that I had ever suspected Peaslee of doing, all those horrible things, all those dead people, I knew then that they were true, and I knew that Peaslee had brought that horror home with him to Arkham.
The swarthy man was ushered inside by Peaslee himself, and I saw no more of him that first day, though I knew that he was gone by noon, which was when the housekeeper and maid always began their days. Peaslee had long ago adjusted the schedule of the house to one of his own liking, and that included privacy in the morning hours, after which he would often consume a massive midday meal followed by a similar evening meal. Both the housekeeper and the maid would normally stay at least until eight in the evening. Not bound to this schedule was the workman who would begin his day much earlier, but had strict instructions not to enter the house in the morning or to create any significant disturbances prior to that. Thus the gardening and any of the light outdoor work was carried out in the early part of the day while other noisier work was delayed to the afternoon.
The pattern repeated itself on Tuesday and Wednesday, though on these days the visitor carried with him several large iron-clasped books with tattered covers and thick rough-cut pages. Large metallic characters that I did not recognize were inscribed on their covers, and consisted mainly of groupings of triangular shapes linked by lines. Intrigued, and knowing that whatever was going on between the two men was likely of a devious nature, I took some time Thursday morning, and when the strange swarthy man made his way from the car to the house I endeavored to copy the characters as best I could. I then met with a friend at the University who specialized in the study of Middle Eastern language and literature. I explained to him about the strange visitor and how I was concerned for the safety of my client. He was intrigued by the design of the characters and suggested that they were reminiscent of cuneiform writing that was amongst the earliest of known languages. While he couldn’t promise me anything, he said he would try and figure out what the characters meant. I thanked him and hurried home. I had not expected to hear from my friend for several days or perhaps even weeks, but to my surprise it was on the morning of the next day that he surprised me by meeting me on the veranda while I was having coffee.
Dr. Angell was very excited over what he had found, but the details escaped me. As I tried to calm the young academician my gaze was drawn to the sleek black sedan as it crawled down the road and coasted to a stop in the location it had occupied every morning of this week. I must have been staring, because Angell turned to look at what had distracted me and saw for himself the swarthy man as he stalked across the road with his armful of books, the strange and intriguing symbol glinting in the morning sun. Angell stepped away from me, and even though I put a hand on his shoulder to stop him, he twisted away and with a leap down the stairs and a brisk pace he was soon on a course to intercept the man. Angell called out, asking the man if he could ask him a question. When the man did not respond, did not even break his queer stride, Angell tried again, this time in Latin. As the man reached the curb he turned and allowed Angell to approach him. Angell spoke to the man at length in Latin, though my own grasp of the language being poor I cannot tell you exactly what he said. After nearly a minute of this Angell paused in his monologue, obviously expecting an answer. He waited in silence for a response. The stranger looked the young teacher up and down and in silence turned to leave. Forgetting himself, Angell reached out and gently tried to persuade the man to stay. As soon as his hand touched the man there was a flurry of motion, and suddenly Angell was on the ground. I moved off the porch, but the man’s violent stare and a single raised finger made it clear that I was not to interfere. As I raised both my hands in a gesture of peace, the angry dark man opened his mouth and in a clear and booming voice uttered a strange and violent phrase, “WARD AM NA TAK!” Then as if we weren’t there at all he turned and went up the walkway to Peaslee’s house where, as ever, he was ushered in by Peaslee himself.
I rushed to my friend’s side and helped him
up and onto the veranda. I brought him a drink and allowed Angell to compose himself before questioning him. The young man related how after I had left him with my copy of the glyphs he had almost immediately recognized them for what they were, and was quick to consult the works of master linguist Harley Warren. The figures seemed to be Nacaal, a kind of proto-Akkadian, the language of the ancient Sumerians. Nacaal had been the language of the gods, and was used in only the most sacred of institutions, religious texts, laws, ceremonies and the like. The symbols that I had provided seemed at first to be a Nacaalian version of the Sumerian Summa Izbu, literally the law books for the prophecy of monsters, an ancient codex which suggested that the appearance of certain human oddities and mythological creatures could be used to predict the future. This in itself, the discovery of a text purporting to be the Summa Izbu, as opposed to clay tablets, would have been a significant anthropological discovery, as would have been the sect that had maintained it. However, the more Angell delved the more he realized that the subtle differences between the Akkadian glyphs and the Nacaal were not merely the result of a drift in the style of form, but rather represented a true difference in words, phrase and meaning. The symbols on the book were not Summa Izbu, but rather Summa Ysgl, a phrase that Angell translated as a course in the prophecy of monsters, though this was not a literal translation. More literally, the Summa Ysgl would mean “A Future History of the Monsters of the Earth,” although even this was difficult because the term Monsters of the Earth was never defined.
Angell cursed as he finished up his coffee. “If we were to obtain a copy of that book, Stuart, the recorded history of our world, everything we know about the ancient civilizations, might be changed forever.”
Thankfully Angell had not yet developed my sense of foreboding when it came to dealing with Peaslee, and I viewed his optimism as refreshing, for while he looked to the book as potentially a fresh window that would illuminate the past of the human race, I feared it, for I thought that it might be something men should not have, a scrying glass that would forever doom our futures. Composed, Angell made to leave, but I stopped him before he reached the sidewalk.
“He said something to you, something I couldn’t understand.”
Angell nodded as he put his hat on and twisted it down over his ears. “I can’t be sure, mind you, but I think it was Nacaal. It sounded about right though I have never heard it spoken before, but we have always assumed it would sound much like Arabic or Hebrew, and this fits the bill. It was a simple phrase, and if I were to guess it would probably be in a pidgin so that I would be sure to understand it. He made it clear that I was not to bother him in the future.”
Frustrated by Angell’s indirectness, I finally put the question to him directly, “What did he say?”
Angell turned away and started down the walkway, smiling as he did so. I thought he was going to leave me guessing, but after a few steps he turned round and with an odd tone to his voice he repeated those strange words. “Ward Am Na Tak means ‘A slave should know his place’.” And with that young Dr. Angell continued his meandering walk back to Miskatonic University.
The rest of the day went as normal. I saw patients and a quick glance out the window let me know that the dark man, whom in my mind I kept referring to as the Akkadian (although clearly this was a misnomer), was gone before the housekeeper and maid arrived at noon. Over dinner, I resigned myself to the fact that if I were to gain any more knowledge concerning what was going on in my neighbor’s house, I was going to have to take a more active role. It was as this serendipitous thought rolled about in my head that a most curious thing occurred. As I have said, the housekeeper and maid were scheduled daily from noon till about eight in the evening, but for some odd reason I suddenly heard the voices of these two women walking past my house hours earlier than normal. Eavesdropping on their conversation, I soon learned that Peaslee had dismissed them for the evening. Realizing that events might be coming to a head, I finished my own dinner and quickly locked up the house and turned off all of the lights. Any casual observer would conclude that I had either retired early or gone out for the night.
It was just after ten when the great black sedan arrived and took up its perch on the street. The Akkadian crossed the street with that strange smooth gait that was so foreign in its cadence with the iron-clasped books tucked under his arm. It was hypnotic, the way he moved, and it was different than how he had done so during the day. The dark of night seemed to feed him somehow, lending him an air of mystery and weirdness. He walked like a man with a purpose; he walked with confidence and grace, as if the world were watching and as if the whole of existence depended on what he did next. It wasn’t until the door opened up and the Akkadian slithered out of my view that I was finally able to take my eyes off of him. It was then that a seed of a plan began to take root and grow within my mind.
To tell the truth there was not much of a plan, but I was determined to learn what my nefarious neighbor and his strange foreign partner were up to. It had been many years since I had skulked about in the fields and woods outside of Herbert West’s farmhouse, but those trips had served me well, and soon I was slinking out the side door and creeping through the gardens. I cursed silently at Tillinghast and his damned penchant for beds full of delicate flowers and soft soil, but I negotiated the treacherous lovelies without leaving any tell-tale signs of my presence. In mere moments I was secreted beneath the window which led to Peaslee’s private study, the one from which the servants had been barred. With great care I slowly rose up until I could see through the window and into the room.
There were heavy curtains on the inside of the window, drawn tight but not tightly enough, for a small gap near the sill allowed me a limited but sufficient view of the room. Through the gap I could see that Peaslee and the Akkadian were going over the contents of several sheaves of paper that were covered in clusters of the symbols which Angell had identified for me as Naacal. They were not speaking English; I would say that the words had to them a Semitic sound, not unlike Hebrew, and certainly not unlike the words cursed at Angell when he accosted the Akkadian on the street. In all likelihood they were speaking Nacaal. What they were saying was unknown to me, but there seemed to be some disagreement over how what was written on the free sheaves compared to what was written in one of the iron-clasped books, the one that Angell had suggested was called the Summa Ysgl. Evidently Peaslee was unhappy with how certain things had been transcribed from one to the other. I wish I could say that the argument was one that had occurred between equals, but from what I could see it was plain that Peaslee was the dominant party and that the Akkadian was subservient, for soon the strange dark man was amending the contents of the book, albeit under Peaslee’s close supervision.
The changes took more than an hour, and there seemed to me to be some pressing need to complete the task. More than once Peaslee paced about the room, several times coming dangerously close to the window; each time I shrank back, thinking he might casually part the curtains and catch me there spying on him. At just after midnight Peaslee finished reviewing the Akkadian’s work and seemed to find it satisfactory. It was then that an even stranger argument began to ensue. In the study’s fireplace the Akkadian quickly built a small but functional blaze and busied himself feeding the free sheaves of paper into it, and then stirring the flecks of burnt and burning paper into a fine unreadable ash. The disagreement seemed to concern a stack of manila envelopes that Peaslee produced from his desk drawer. The Akkadian seemed to have no desire to involve himself with these files, and indeed there apparently had been some breach of protocol, for suddenly the Akkadian was outraged and insistent. From the way he grabbed at the documents and motioned, it was clear that the man was intent on burning these as well. The heated discussion went on for a good two or three minutes when suddenly Peaslee snapped and in a firm bellowing voice repeated the same words that I had heard the Akkadian mutter the day before, “WARD AM NA TAK,” a slave should know his place!
The
re was what appeared to be much supplication on the Akkadian’s part, and some sort of arrangement concerning the envelopes was agreed upon, though what it was I could not say. The stack of files was placed on a side table and the moldy text that was the Summa Ysgl was placed on top of them. The desk top was cleared of whatever clutter remained and from off to the side somewhere the Akkadian produced a crate about two feet tall and a foot both deep and wide which he carefully set in the center of the desk. He deftly clipped free two pairs of latches and with some trepidation lifted the crate off of its base revealing the contents within.
It was every bit as odd as the handyman Tillinghast had said, and I could see why his description had referenced the whirligig, for indeed there was resemblance to that childhood plaything, but it was so much more complicated than that. There were rods jointed to rods with more joints and more rods yet. There were mirrors as well, convex, conical things that splayed light across the room, and deep concave bowls that seemed to swallow light into tiny pools of infinite darkness. With a simple flick of his finger the Akkadian put the tiniest of tertiary rods in motion, sending the convex mirror at its apex spinning, and showering the room in a prism of color that danced around the walls in a multitude of streaking stars.
What happened next I do not fully understand, for I did not see the Akkadian or Peaslee touch the device, but inexplicably the electric lights throughout the house suddenly went dark while the spinning rod accelerated to a point that the radiant streaks about the room seemed to cease being singular points but rather had become smears shifting from indigo at one end through the full range of the spectrum and then vanishing into the sharp burning red at the other. It was then that I heard that awful high-pitched whine, and the single smear of lights was suddenly joined by another set traveling perpendicular to the first. Somehow, without losing any of its own velocity, the spinning tertiary rod had enticed the secondary rod to which it was attached to begin moving as well. This spontaneous transfer of energy from one plane of movement to another was inexplicable to me, and I must admit that I stood outside that window with the lights spinning and dancing with a look of utter bewilderment upon my face.