During the day Dr. Clark decided he would talk to Lewis Theobald, the librarian, for additional light on Henry Paget-Lowe that evening. While he was at it, he felt he should kill two birds with one stone and consult the occult books at the library with the intention of determining if the graffiti were really magic symbols. Fighting back his aversion to entering the cellar was difficult, but he persisted and copied on a slip of paper some of the more perfectly made.
After his supper, he left the house and went over to the main part of town and entered the library. He browsed about the occult shelf in random fashion until luckily he found in a book at least one symbol resembling one on his slip of paper. According to the text, it was a conjuring sign used in necromancy by the infamous Dr. Dee.
As he stared at the symbol he thought of another question vexing him with doubt of his own sanity. Were people who believed they were victims of psychic possession actually suffering schizophrenia, the extra personality being to their paranoiac view a hostile, outside entity?
Being very familiar with all the clinical symptoms of schizophrenia, he decided it was redundant to read about it in some medical reference in the library. Besides, he harbored the belief, perhaps egotistically, that he was too well-balanced to fit the bill. That left him with the dilemma of accepting the remaining option that he was a victim of a very real psychic possession; not only a very unscientific pill to swallow but actually leading dangerously close back to the schizo explanation.
He culled references out of the indexes of many occult books but found little enlightenment. In their genre the symptoms of psychic possession were of vague generalizations. Part of the doctrine portrayed it as a complete usurpation, though other occult books contradictorily depicted it as both intermittent and transitory in some alleged historical cases.
But there was nothing about when or how it might occur. Then he chanced on the slim reprint of a Renaissance metaphysical volume by an obscure thinker named Linnaeus.
He read its few references of psychic possession with little interest until he encountered the following: “Most subjugation takes place more easily during sleep when the host personality’s will is at its greatest decline and cannot strongly resist the parasitic entity. Considered in this light, sleepwalking is no longer a mysterious quirk of the slumberer but instead a sinister, unrelatable errand.”
He sat quietly, staring into space, but inside his mind erupted a veritable volcano of doubt and confusion compounded from his entertaining three mutually incompatible and warring theories of his mental experience, the theories being commissurotomy, psychic possession, and schizophrenia. Any one of them was sufficient to undermine his peace of mind. He decided to bypass this perplexity, and having Lewis Theobald pointed out to him, returned to the pursuit of the graffiti mystery.
“Did you ever know Henry Paget-Lowe, a local writer?” he asked the elderly man.
“My goodness, yes, nephew,” laughed the old man in a familiar manner. “Henry often sought my assistance and opinion on research problems if he was in a hurry. But he really needn’t have. He was a thorough enough scholar himself that he would in time locate the quick answer I might give. Sometimes, though, I wonder if he wasn’t a practical joker…about some of his research problems.”
“Oh?”
The old man grinned in friendly fashion. “There was the time he was in the library at Princeton University, and he told me he accidentally stumbled onto, in the rare book catalogue, an index card for some hideous old manuscript or book in Medieval Greek. (I think the title was the Nekromanteia.) The next time he went there to get the call number on the card it had vanished from the file drawer. I told him there never was such a book, that a student obviously put it there for a typical college hoax, and that a thoroughly humorless college librarian had expunged it. But he was insistent, almost violently so, that there was a malevolent cloud about it all, that someone wished to keep secret its existence.
“On the other hand, it was about that time Henry had a particular research project underway. He was seeking and collecting from Medieval books on magic various formulae for raising spirits, invoking Lucifer and all that sort of thing—books by Albertus Magnus, Eliphas Levi and Nicholas Flamel. I believe he was of the conviction the Princeton book was such a book.”
SATURDAY JUNE 10
On getting up that morning Dr. Clark had a general malaise and looked at the calendar to see if there was any conjunction of a full moon with that day. But that lunar phase was far off. He next thought he might be due to suffer the more than ordinary cyclic ebbing of the adrenalin tide in his blood that occurred on weekends and reduced the pain threshold of body tissues. (In a word, he said to himself, was it a warning of the onset of the migraine-like paroxysm he had been prone to the last several months?)
If terrible headache and/or nightmare were thus foreshadowed, what could he do about it besides the injection of Gynergen? His solution was unscientific and smacked of credence in some form of sympathetic magic, though to him it was a completely practical course of action. He would obliterate the baleful graffiti, on the illogical reasoning that the removal would terminate both the nightmares and the migraine (for he had come, through some elusive rationalization, to the conclusion that the graffiti were the focus of all his dreams and headaches).
Fighting his loathing of the cellar regions, he descended there and briskly swept out all the cabbalistic designs on the earth floor with a broom, and splashed over the walls a coat of hastily-mixed whitewash.
That night he dreamed again. He was composing a drug prescription, not only in the most academic Latin he could muster but equally in such atrocious and illegible handwriting that even another doctor, expert in such gibberish style writing, would be at wit’s end to decipher it. In fact, some of his Latin he merged in rebus-like or symbolic characters that even began to puzzle himself. He had laughed in glee at his quasi-practical joke, then ceased. What he wrote was not pharmaceutical/chemical directions but alchemic!
And what was he doing, kneeling in his pajamas, involuntarily writing with a broken pencil in the dirt of the cellar floor? There was a psychic sensation of vast, sable wings of fear beating and hovering over him, and the hair on the back of his neck stood up. He shuddered violently and passed back into nonawareness.
In the morning he awoke, greatly weakened as if from a migraine attack. Remembering his eccentric and queer nightmare, he smiled wanly. Then a wave of horror blasted his sanity. There was cellar dust on his pajamas.
* * * *
The sudden, almost panicky, moving out of the house by Dr. Clark was noticed by his closest neighbors and created the grist for the spread of the inevitable gossip. Did not Paget-Lowe likewise vacate in similar haste a year ago? Did not the moving men comment amongst themselves about the curious, excited mental state of Dr. Clark?
The rental agent again hopefully hung the “For Rent” sign on the front door of the empty house. But was it really empty? Prospective tenants viewing its bare rooms complained vaguely to the agent of the “atmosphere.” Their impression was a psychological reaction, a perception of an exhalation not definable in terms of normal senses.
Even the agent felt something (which he wisely kept to himself at the time) whenever he had to enter the premises to show it. A something that lingered on when he went home and to bed, where he was troubled with obscure dreams; dreams that were like the residue of someone else’s nightmares.
WHAT THE MOON BRINGS
Originally published in HPL, (1972).
I would never have become a specialist in oriental languages (and thus never had the strange experience to be related) if it had not been for certain family heirlooms—souvenirs of my dad’s navy service in the China Seas in 1905. These souvenirs, up to twenty years ago, reposed on the family mantelpiece, where even as a small boy I never tired of minutely scrutinizing them and wondering what stories were behind them.
On opposite sides of the mantel stood the two brown age-stained vases, each made of an entire hollow bamboo tree trunk, filigreed with bearded Chinese figures standing within a delicately carved, columned portice. My dad called each a representation of the “Goddess of Evil” and a superstitious older brother years later, having received them as a legacy, declared them “bad luck” and passed them to me.
Sitting somewhere near one of the vases was a small Buddha of tarnished brass which my dad often said would have cost him his life if a Chinaman saw it. (He would tell simultaneously of a Buddhist temple he had visited after climbing an enormous rock cut staircase; and I suspect now he had stolen the idol from there.) The third item was a blackened, brass Chinese pipe with a large detachable mouth piece (for the owner) and two smaller ones (for guests). It always reeked faintly of an odd odor that in retrospect I feel was due to opium. And one more was a fairly bright brassy bowl with Chinese engraving on the outside circumference which served to hold dad’s pipe or tobacco ashes.
All these objects now sit atop my bookcase, having been passed on to me. But there is one more which I acquired myself recently: an amulet with Tibetan-Sanskrit writing on it, which I keep locked away and dare only look at in the dark of the moon.
* * * *
I was sitting one summer evening in my little study in Calcutta, contemplating all these family heirlooms while I wrestled with a philological problem, when there came a soft tapping on the glass of the opened balcony door.
As I glanced up a burnoose-garbed man came in, and, fearing a bandit, I reached on the desk for some weapon.
“May I see you? I have something to show you.” The voice was apologetic and familiar, but the little of the face visible was that of a stranger, an incredibly aged man.
I recognized the voice as belonging to a vagabond, named Haldane, a European whom I first saw about a year ago, who surprised me by his affecting the garb of a nomadic Kirghiz: wearing a pointed cap bordered with lambskin, a heavy fur coat despite the heat of the day, and boots. He made a precarious living by wandering in the short summer months across the deserts and steppes of Central Asia, looking for old Mongolian manuscripts in the ruins of monasteries, or buying them from livestock breeders or former Buddhist monks, for high re-sale to bibliophiles and scholars (like myself). Always he required I translate some portion of what he offered for sale to see if I gave him a fair price of its worth. This is what I thought his intentions were now.
I protested as he boldly drew the curtain, arguing that it would block circulation of the sultry atmosphere.
Again he apologized. “I know. But I have an aversion to moonlight which will soon be shining through this window.”
The dark shade of the lamp threw a cone of light upon the desk, leaving the rest of the study in shadow. The visitor withdrew into this concealing darkness and removed from around his neck what appeared to be a Mongol coin with a golden chain running through a square hole in its center. I saw a second time the shocking physical change in this man as a withered hand came into the light with the coin. Was it leprosy or the premature aging from opium addiction?
As the object was thrust into my palm I experienced a light but unpleasant tingling as of an electric current flowing from it. I winced and dropped it hurriedly upon the desk. At the same time I noted a terrific pull of my watch towards it, indicating it was of some ferromagnetic alloy.
Despite the magnifying glass the carving on the coin seemed to shift in focus as if in some infinitesimal motion. The brief words were in Tibetan-Sanskrit. Because of the odd blurring, I did not make a complete translation, just the sense—the amulet—for its inscription now proved it was not a coin—reputedly drew some mystic influence from moonlight which it passed on to the wearer; there was a warning restriction on when not to wear it—during the time of the full and waning moon—and something else undecipherable. I laid it down until my eyes might recover from the curious fatigue gazing at it had induced.
“What does it say?”
“It would suggest that in Central Asia moon worship instead of fire worship was the Mongol’s religion. Where did you get it?”
“The lost tomb of Genghis Khan.”
I was startled and unbelieving.
“If I know no other name in Uighur-Mongolian script, I do know that one—you have identified it for me on a number of manuscripts sold you…I was resting at a Lamaist monastery when a caravan entered at dawn to wait, as do all Gobi travelers, for the fiery sun to set before continuing. Among them was Sing Lee, a Chinese Mohammedan.
“At first his manner held that subtle arrogance most of his race have for Occidentals; his face a typical, emotionless oriental mask, in which a nuance of racial hatred might slyly peek out if you caught him off guard. However, his aloofness vanished, to be replaced by another mask: an inscrutable smile and a talkative sociability.
“I had just rolled up my sleeves to wash the desert dust from my face and arms, exposing my tattooed right forearm.”
Haldane paused, and, rolling up the right sleeve of his burnoose, displayed on that terrible withered flesh a tattoo consisting of a black cat, skull and cross-bones, and the numeral thirteen, all intertwined in an arabesque fashion; bordering it was an ugly knife wound, recently healed. Then rolling down his sleeve, Haldane resumed his story.
“He muttered excitedly and touched and traced out with his forefinger my tattoo. Then realizing his breach of etiquette he bowed and meekly begged my pardon, and excusing himself profusely he asked me to wait, as he would be right back to show me something.
“From the bottom of a saddle bag he withdrew a number of odds and ends, including a meat cleaver and a parcel wrapped within a piece of soiled yellow silk. Unwrapping it with great care, he revealed the worm-eaten leather covers of what he called his ‘picture book,’ which he insisted on showing me. The extremely thin pages were water-stained, a few charred and all dirt-encrusted, and had the most peculiar feel to their texture. Red and blue were the only colors used. The line drawings were part bawdy, part naturalistic (animals, birds, etc.), and some were obscurely reminiscent of a carnival. With a shock of revulsion I realized I was looking at pieces of tattooed human skin.
“He seemed interested in my affairs, asking me innumerable questions and cautioning me not to continue to be a solitary traveler—with a broad hint I accept him as a temporary companion for mutual protection. When I told him that I might leave there in any direction on my search, he gave that inscrutable smile and said there were possibilities in some ruins half a night’s journey away. When I asked him for directions, he stated it would be impossible for me to find as the way wound through an ancient gully with many branches, only one leading to the ruins, the others meandering enough to lose the uninitiated. But as a favor in return for my pardoning his recent breach of etiquette, he insisted on guiding me there.
“At sunset we left the monastery, riding across a chill, windy desert. Shortly afterwards we entered the gully and found it as circuitous and confusing as he described, so that I was glad I had not tried it alone.
From time to time he would stop and examine the gravelly bottom for certain signs; finally he pointed a passage out and we climbed up where we had a clear view of the night sky, and after orienting himself by some starry configuration, he led the way. ‘Karakhota,’ he smiled, pointing ahead.
“Looming up was the dead city, its silhouette nebulous, for the moon had not risen; but as I got closer its roofs shone pale with the reflected phosphorescent fire of the Milky Way overhead; its graceful minarets and domes, filigreed mosques and curved-roof pagodas resembling a piece of polished, antique Chinese ivory inlay, somnolently serene under the stars; and I could not understand why that Chinese Mohammedan had called so picturesque a ruin as Karakhota, ‘black city.’
“Our horses became unmanageable, whining and shivering with fear the closer we got; so that finally near a ruined building we tethered
them and finished our approach on foot. Sing Lee slipped the meat cleaver into his belt and broadly grinning, explained, ‘Mebbe lobber there.’
“There were now unseen but familiar soft stirrings in the debris around us that the lizards, insects and other desert life make when they awake at nightfall; but these stirrings stopped at our approach and resumed after we passed.
“I browsed among the Islamic architecture which was of red sandstone and beautiful veined marble, some outer walls being inlaid with colored stones in Arabic letter patterns, and scanned the Chinese architecture with its ubiquitous dragon motif. Despite these evidences of beauty there was a subtle uneasiness I felt; it was unrelated to any definite impression, so that I resolved irrationally not to view in daylight whatever the merciful night now hid. And because of this, I decided to make a hurried search for loot, to be able to leave before dawn.
“In the center of that crumbling city, I found a mausoleum in the Chinese pagoda style, its sealed portal bearing unexplainable scratch marks. Over the lintel were inscriptions in Arabic, Chinese and Uighur-Mongol, none of which I could read, except one name in the latter language: ‘Genghis Khan.’ Had I stumbled by accident across his lost and elusive tomb?
“You know the story of his death and how as the funeral procession moved northward to the Onon River, the escort slaughtered every living thing encountered, whether man or beast, bird or reptile, almost as if they desired that no word of their line of march should be repeated; but rather than conceal their passage, this slaughter served to publicize it for hundreds of years.
“And because of this there were some who said that the Onon River burial place was but a final stratagem of the Khan’s, so that even in death he could outwit his enemies who might wish to despoil his grave and commit indignities on his corpse: that while this funeral procession proceeded on its ghastly way, another secretly carried his corpse deep into the Gobi desert.
“Some had mistakenly since looked for it in the Ordus region in the great bend of the Hwang Ho. But here it was in Karakhota, in an obscure corner of the Gobi.
The Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK™ Vol 2: George T. Wetzel Page 8