“Then those monsters you and Smith and Bloch and the others wrote about were real all along!”
“Just so!” he said. “But they weren’t real in our reality. They were cut off from it, helpless in limbo, just like poor old Cthulhu in my stories. Our writings and dreamings touched and wakened them, but it was only after I’d actually pulled one of them out of the ceiling in order to save my life—dragged the thing out into this world of ours by a force of will absurdly magnified by the threat of imminent death—that they could start to manifest. They have been busily and ceaselessly continuing to follow up that first breakthrough into this dimensional knot of space and time wherein we make our home ever since, Edwardius, and, I must say, they have gone about it in the drollest way imaginable!”
He turned over the slab of clay and then pushed it across the table so that its face looked up at me.
“Do you recognize that?” he asked.
I studied it with growing astonishment. It was a rough rectangle less than an inch thick and about five by six inches in area. On its upper surface, in a sort of cross between cubist and art deco styles, very obviously out of the twenties or thirties, someone had modeled a remarkably disturbing low bas-relief of a winged, octopoid monster squatting evilly before a multiangled, Picassoid building.
“It’s the dream-inspired sculpture of the artist Wilcox from ‘The Call of Cthulhu,’ ” I said, excitedly. “It’s the first tangible clue given in your mythos stories that the old gods exist!”
“Precisely,” said Lovecraft, nodding, “but not quite precisely. You’ll notice the signature of the artist cut into the slab’s back is Wilton, not Wilcox, and the date is 1938, not 1925, as it is in the story. And though the withered newspaper clippings you see here follow the same general pattern I created in ‘Call,’ they are all variations on that pattern; they all concern real people with names which vary—sometimes subtly, sometimes quite widely—from the names I gave my fictitious characters, and they all date from after my medical adventures in Jane Brown Memorial Hospital.
“It is the same with these tattered old notebooks. You will observe that they are not written by the dear old Professor George Gammell Angell whom I first dreamed up during the miseries of my Brooklyn exile in 1925, but that they are the desperate scrawlings of a flesh-and-blood gentleman who is also a professor—of Physics, not Semitic Languages, it is interesting to note—named Horace Parker Whipple. Both of these gentlemen, however, real and fictitious, did die after being mysteriously jostled by a sailor. The strange forces shaping this ongoing realization of my fictitious world always adhere quite closely to my stories’ more sinister original details.
“Along those lines it is also interesting to observe that—like those of my entirely imaginary Professor Angell—Whipple’s notebooks show that he had come across a cult whose god’s name is, indeed, Cthulhu. Though everything else in this continuing process of materializing the creatures and basic notions of my imaginary mythos and incorporating them into our universe seems subject to sometimes even whimsical change when needed, the names of all the deities and their servitors never vary by a letter from my original suggestions.”
“But the books,” I said. “If this changing of reality is all your doing, then how about the books? De Vermis Mysteriis and the others—I glimpsed some of the rest!—all those ancient tomes of black magic which I’d thought you and the others’d all made up for your stories—Cultes des Goules, Unaussprechlichen Kulten—those books are old! They’re ancient! They were here long before you were born!”
Lovecraft smiled.
“Yes, they were,” he said. “And all the hoary dates which Smith and Bloch and I and the others ascribed to them have turned out to be accurate. Oh, it’s true enough we were all only naive paupers, scribblers for the pulps with pathetic pretensions to scholarship, and none of us were near sophisticated enough to have a clue that what we were writing down might actually be the truth. But those books existed, all right, and they were very carefully hidden under lock and key by scholars, exactly as we thought; mainly, I think, to protect presumptuous upstarts such as ourselves in the old Weird Tales gang from getting our uncultured paws on ’em! It’s been quite a joke on us, not to mention our little planet, that the whole library of them turned out to be just as we’d made it up!”
He indulged himself once more in that rather unpleasant, somewhat witchlike cackle and leaned forward in a confidential manner.
“The only problem with those books, Edwardius,” he whispered with a wink, “was that until I and the others wrote about them, and that until I made contact with the forces behind them on my supposed deathbed—the problem was they didn’t work!”
He paused and leaned back with his fingers spread out on the dark wood of the table before him, and that stern solemnity I’d observed before fell over him, momentarily, like a shroud. Then, in a wink, it had lifted, and he was grinning triumphantly ear to ear.
“But now they work,” he whispered. “Now they work!”
I sat like something carved in stone, groping unsuccessfully in the confused whirl of my brain for something solid to cling to. Then I heard a gently discreet rapping at the library door and jumped as if someone had fired off a cannon by my ear.
“That will be Smith,” murmured Lovecraft; then called out, “Come in, Klarkash-Ton.”
The door opened and Smith glided in quietly. He studied me with an interested expression on his lean, wrinkled face and then turned to Lovecraft.
“I see by our young friend’s stunned expression that his initiation continues apace,” he said. Then he turned back to me, examining me further in a kindly but penetrating manner. “Do not be too hard on yourself, Edwardius, it is all very difficult to grasp. I certainly found it was when H.P.L. tried to explain the state of affairs to me after he’d chanted Borellus’s formula of evocation over my essential salts and brought me back to this simulacrum of my living self. And you are fortunate in that—when you finally do manage to grasp the situation’s colorful implications—you will be able to console yourself with the knowledge that you are not among those responsible for its coming about. At least you had no part, as did Howard and myself, in setting these monsters free.”
Lovecraft straightened in his chair, snorted softly, and glanced up at Smith with quiet disapproval.
“Monsters, Klarkash-Ton?” he asked. “Surely that is more than a little judgmental?”
“Monsters,” said Smith, clearly and firmly, smiling at Lovecraft a little grimly, then turning to me still smiling. “Howard is never slow with the implication that I am cosmically xenophobic.”
“I am not making an implication,” said Lovecraft firmly. “I am stating a simple fact. These beings are in no way malevolent regarding life on our planet—I have said it all along in my stories and it has turned out to be the simple truth—they are merely indifferent to it.”
Smith gazed at his old friend and sighed.
“When are you going to face it, Howard?” he asked. “These creatures we have let loose are monsters. They were monsters in whatever hell they came from, they are monsters here on Earth, and they will be monsters wherever they happen to go next. My good fortune is that I happen to be unfond enough of my fellow men and women not to be that overly disturbed at what we have unleashed upon them. Please don’t take my attitude to be one of moral disapproval. It is not the sure and certain domination and destruction of my dreadful species which troubles me, it’s embarrassment that my contribution was merely the accidental result of personal ineptness and ignorance. I would much rather have doomed my miserable race on purpose.”
Lovecraft grimaced with distaste, waved Smith’s comments aside with a weary gesture indicating he had done so many times before, and then looked at me from across the table with the air of a man who has suddenly had a very good idea.
“Since things are moving along so well and you’ve shown such a remarkable aptitude for expansion, Edwardius,” he said, “I believe I’ve thought of a simp
le, reasonable way of putting to rest any little fears or nagging doubts which Klarkash-Ton’s dreary speechifying may have roused within you regarding these visitors in our midst. It is, quite simply, to allow me to introduce one of them to you, in person, so that you can see it, talk with it, and then judge for yourself whether or not you think that it is a monster. Also, if you are to become involved with our continuing activities, it is important to discover whether or not they find you are tolerable. It is an obvious risk. Are you willing to take it?”
I gaped at him, my head spinning with the escalation of this whole affair.
“You’re suggesting that you’ll call one of these beings up?” I gasped.
“I do it all the time,” said Lovecraft casually. “There’s nothing simpler, once you’ve got the hang of it.”
Smith stirred, and I saw his expression had become even more ironic than usual.
“I think it only fair, H.P.L.,” he said, “to explain to Edwardius the little reason why you have such frequent occasion to summon up your chums.”
Lovecraft glanced up at him with a small frown, then shrugged and turned to me with a slight spreading of his hands.
“As an accomplished student of our literary efforts,” said Lovecraft, coolly, “you are, of course, aware that Klarkash-Ton is ever a lover of irony. The fact is that in order to continue on here in the luxury to which we have become accustomed, it is necessary, now and then, to offer up a little sacrifice. A human sacrifice, to be exact. Mind you, we have always been meticulously careful to offer up individuals whose loss either will not be missed or will actually be gratefully received by the thoughtful and intelligent. Arrogant or obtuse book critics, for instance, or some of those responsible for the cruder pastiches of my writings.”
“And of mine,” said Smith, with a grim little smile. “But, our good intentions aside, you must understand that if you allow Howard to make this proposed introduction you will be running the risk of becoming such a sacrifice yourself through misadventure. I am not sure these creatures can differentiate a bad critic from a good writer.”
Lovecraft stood.
“What Klarkash-Ton says is perfectly true, Edwardius,” he said. “This encounter will not be devoid of risk. But, unlike him, I can and do enthusiastically presume to recommend that you run that risk and undertake this adventure. I really think there is nothing I would not have gladly given if someone had proffered me an invitation such as this when I was a young man! So, then, Edwardius, are you game? Shall we do it?”
I hesitated a moment longer, then I rose and nodded firmly.
“I would never forgive myself if I didn’t,” I said.
Lovecraft and I left the library with a dubious Smith and made our way through halls and down stairways, myself always conscious of a painted villain or monster looking down at us from some wall. Lovecraft and I paused at the entrance to retrieve our capes and hats, since a fine, gusting drizzle had begun to fall, then the two of us were outside walking through grass as Lovecraft led me into a wooded area. After we’d made our way between its trees for some time more than I thought was likely in a property as small as this corner of Providence had seemed to be—especially when I noticed that those trees had turned from relatively new growth to wide-trunked, wizened old giants which were totally improbable in such an area—I turned to my host in some puzzlement.
“You are quite correct, Edwardius.” He smiled at me and nodded. “All this is much larger and older than it has any right to be, but then we’ve cheated a little with its time and space. On this excursion we shall only penetrate a little bit into the forest’s western edge. There is much more here, believe me, much for you to savor and explore once you’ve settled in with us. There’s an ancient ruined city, for example, and a wonderfully gloomy swamp, and caves and grottos beneath which I haven’t begun to explore. In any case, we’ve reached our goal.”
We’d entered a clearing, and I was thrilled to find myself standing dwarfed amidst the primitive spires of a small but impressive circle of monoliths. Lovecraft walked up to a grey standing stone which towered twice his height and stroked the damp undulations of its mossy side affectionately.
“These old rocks were carefully removed from a high, lonely mountaintop in the real world’s very nearly exact equivalent of Dunwich, which was, of course, the locale of my fictitious Wizard Whateley and his dangerous, not altogether human, brood,” he said. “I had them removed, then carefully arranged here in exactly the same sinister circular formation they originally enjoyed, and I’m pleased to say they’ve lost none of their awesome powers.”
He pointed at a formidable flat slab of granite in the center of the formation.
“That is the stone of sacrifice,” he said. “It was baptized long before the witches came from Europe to claim it for their own. The Indians used it in their rituals since ancient times, and recent contacts I have made assure me that older, much weirder entities gave it what it wanted during previous millennia. Walk up to it, Edwardius. Feel it. Not just its texture, but its mood. It has been involved in countless potent workings and sopped up much blood of many different kinds.”
The drizzle had now turned to a steady, windswept rain, and the smooth runnels carved into the stone caught the fallen water so that it gurgled suggestively as it was guided and poured into an insatiable, sloping pit dug into the stone’s center. I reached down with my hand, and at the instant my fingers made contact with the spreading, lichen-specked discoloration surrounding the opening, the ground itself was jarred by the impact of an ear-shattering clap of thunder overhead.
“Oh, that’s excellent,” said Lovecraft, peering up at the sky, totally unaware of the rain cascading down his face. “Oh, that’s very good. Look at the clouds, Edwardius—how smoothly they circle in from all horizons so as to form a single, larger cloud at that point overhead. Amusingly like witches scuttling to form a coven, isn’t it?”
The wind had furiously increased and was whipping our legs and the bases of the stones with the tall grass of the clearing, and snapping our capes about our bodies. Lightning angled everywhere across the sky, and soon each thunderclap overlapped the one before so that there was only a perpetual, steady roaring.
But I was only dimly aware of all that, for it was slowly coming clear to me that I was observing a phenomenon unparalleled by anything I’d seen or heard of in the natural world. I stared up at it, fully as intently as Lovecraft did beside me, and the more I watched of its unfoldments, the more my terrified awe turned unexpectedly into a kind of reverence.
The clouds had merged into one huge thing above us which, as I watched, swiftly took on a highly discomforting solidity while the lightning—flashing about it and in its depths—began revealing innumerable, increasingly clear details which I could easily see now were no longer mere gaseous swirlings, but the conscious movements of a vast multitude of living organs—first crudely formed, but soon swiftly sculpted and refined—each one born in frantic, greedy motion.
The insane range and variety of these members became clearer as their shapes clarified and their outlines grew more distinct. Some of them bore varying degrees of resemblance to the organs of creatures dwelling on our planet, but others were so totally alien to anything of Earth that they seemed to offer no possible relationship to any species or function I had ever seen or heard of.
Among those limbs and extensions at least somewhat identifiable I could make out claws and pincers of all possible descriptions snapping hungrily at the air; a seething mass of spidery legs groping with obscene curiosity in every direction, and innumerable wings—some webbed, some scaled, some raggedly and darkly feathered, but all of enormous span—which completely surrounded the thing’s entire body in a huge, vast ring, each one flapping in perfect time with all the rest.
Dominating all of this was an enormous, staring eye surrounded by four huge, quivering lids made up of thousands of smaller eyes, each one peering in a different direction from its own twisting stalk, with the result th
at the momentous entity above us would be all-seeing.
I jumped as Lovecraft’s hand suddenly grasped my shoulder.
“What do you think of it, Edwardius?” he shouted over the thunder. “Isn’t it magnificent? Isn’t it beautiful? Monster, indeed!”
I could think of no reply. I seemed momentarily beyond reply, and, besides, the overpoweringly steady roar of the thunder seemed to mock any little noises I might make.
Then I stiffened as I realized the sound of the thunder had begun to change and modulate. It was a while before I understood what I was hearing: the thunder was shaping itself, much as the cloud’s form had done before. It was steadily progressing from the random to the organic; it was starting to develop, in effect, a kind of mouth.
“You’ve grasped what’s happening, haven’t you, Edwardius?” said Lovecraft.
I started and turned and stared at him. I felt my legs tremble and leaned against the sacrificial stone for support. He frowned when he saw the gesture, and took hold of me and pulled me back.
“No,” he said. “That’s a mistake the victims always make. You stand by me.”
“It’s forming words,” I said. “It’s speaking!”
He cocked his head and listened critically.
“Well, not quite, not yet,” he said. “But any minute now!”
Keeping one hand on my shoulder, he stood a little ahead, peering upward.
“This is Edwardius,” he called out loud and clear. “He is a friend. He is to work with us. He is not a sacrifice.”
He repeated my name again, shouting out its syllables one by one and sounding them carefully.
“Ehd-ward-dee-uhs,” he called out. “Ehd-ward-dee-uhs!”
I stared up at the thing and saw with a new thrill of horror that a sort of titanic convulsion had started taking place in the center of its underside, a spreading, writhing, and untangling of tentacles and jointed legs, not to mention pseudo-pods and spiny, telescopic horrors, and other, totally incomprehensible things—it was like watching a sea of knots untie itself!
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