The Book of Iod
Page 3
I bowed to my companion and would have proceeded on my way to the upper parts of the castle, but he barred my path. He shook his head slowly, his scar hideous in the phosphorescent gloom.
I said, “May I not go yet?”
He stared at me with tortured, smoldering eyes that had looked into hell itself, and he pointed to what lay beside me, and in a flash of nightmare realization I knew the secret of the curse of Kralitz. There came to me the knowledge that made my brain a frightful thing in which shapes of darkness would ever swirl and scream; the dreadful comprehension of when each Baron Kralitz was initiated into the brotherhood of blood. I knew — I knew — that no coffin had ever been placed unoccupied in the tombs, and I read upon the stone sarcophagus at my feet the inscription that made my doom known to me — my own name, “Franz, twenty-first Baron Kralitz.”
The Eater of Souls
by Henry Kuttner
Of this brief tale, Lovecraft was more restrained in his praise: “It has some good touches.” Ouch. As a writer of Dunsanian pastiches himself Lovecraft might have had a good bit more to say of this one had he liked it—or if he disliked it!
Lin Carter followed both Kuttner and Lovecraft in writing his own Dunsany pastiches, his Simrana tales. One of these, “The Gods ofNiom Parma”, is perhaps his best work. At any rate, let it be noted that the formula introduction of all the Simrana tales, “In Simrana they tell the tale of…”, derives neither from Lovecraft nor from Dunsany, but rather from Kuttner’s two tales of Bel Yarnak.
First publication: Weird Tales, January 1937.
* * *
They tell it in Bel Yarnak, in a language not of Earth, that a malignant and terrible being once dwelt in that incredible abyss named the Gray Gulf of Yarnak. Not on earth, nor on any planet that spins about any star in the skies we know, is Bel Yarnak; but beyond Betelgeuse, beyond the Giant Stars, on a green and joyous world still in its lusty youth are the towers and silver minarets of this city. Nor are the dwellers in Bel Yarnak anthropoid nor in any way man-like; yet there are fires during the long warm nights in curious hearths, and wherever in this universe there are fires there will be tales told about them, and breathless listeners to bring contentment to the heart of the teller of tales. The Sindara rules benignantly over Bel Yarnak; yet in the old days fear and doom lay like a shroud over the land, and in the Gray Gulf of Yarnak a brooding horror dwelt loathsomely. And a strange enchantment chilled the skies and hid the triple moons behind a darkened pall.
For a being had come to glut its evil hunger in the land, and those who dwelt in Bel Yarnak called it the Eater of Souls. In nowise could this being be described, for none had seen it save under circumstances which precluded the possibility of return. Yet in the gulf it brooded, and when its hunger stirred it would send forth a soundless summons, so that in tavern and temple, by fireside and in the blackness of the night some would rise slowly, with a passionless look of death upon their features, and would depart from Bel Yarnak toward the Gray Gulf. Nor would they ever return. It was said that the thing in the gulf was half a demon and half a god, and that the souls of those whom it slew served it eternally, fulfilling strange missions in the icy wastes between the stars. This being had come from the dark sun, the hydromancers said, where it had been conceived by an unholy alliance between those timeless Ancients who filter strangely between the universes and a Black Shining One of unknown origin, the necromancers said other things, But they hated the hydromancers, who were powerful then, and their rune-casting was generally discredited. Yet the Sindara listened to both schools of mages, and pondered upon his throne of chalcedony, and presently determined to set forth voluntarily to the Great Gulf of Yarnak, which was reputed to be bottomless.
The necromancers gave the Sindara curious implements made of the bones of the dead, and the hydromancers gave him intricately twisted transparent tubes of crystal, which would be useful in battling the Eater of Souls. Thereafter the necromancers and the hydromancers squatted on their haunches in the city gate and howled dismally as the Sindara rode westward on his gorlak, that fleet but repugnantly shaped reptile. After a time the Sindara discarded both the weapons of the hydromancers and the necromancers, for he was a worshipper of Vorvadoss, as had been each Sindara in his time. None might worship Vorvadoss save the Sindara of Bel Yarnak, for such is the god’s command; and presently the Sindara dismounted from his gorlak and prayed fervently to Vorvadoss. For a time there was no response.
Then the sands were troubled, and a whirling and dancing of mist-motes blinded the Sindara. Out of the maelstrom the god spoke thinly, and his voice was like the tinkling of countless tiny crystal goblets.
“Thou goest to doom,” Vorvadoss said ominously. “But thy son sleeps in Bel Yarnak, and I shall have a worshipper when thou art vanished. Go therefore fearlessly, since god cannot conquer god, but only man who created him.”
* * *
Speaking thus cryptically Vorvadoss withdrew, and the Sindara, after pondering, continued his journey. In time he came to that incredible abyss from which men say the nearer moon was born, and at its edge he fell prone and lay sick and shuddering, peering down into mist-shrouded emptiness. For a cold wind blew up from the gulf, and it seemed to have no bottom. Looming far in the distance he could just discern the further brink.
Clambering up the rough stones came he whom the Sindara had set out to find; he came swiftly, making use of his multiple appendages to lift himself. He was white and hairy and appallingly hideous, but his misshapen head came only to the Sindara’s waist, although in girth his spidery limbs rendered a shocking illusion of hugeness. In his wake came the souls he had taken for his own; they were a plaintive whispering and stirring in the air, swooping and moaning and sighing for lost Nirvana. The Sindara drew his blade and struck at his enemy.
Of that battle sagas are still sung, for it raged along the brink for a timeless interval of eternity. In the end the Sindara was hacked and bleeding and spent, and his opponent was untouched and chuckling loathsomely. Then the demon prepared for his meal.
Into the Sindara’s mind came a whisper, the thin calling of Vorvadoss. He said: “There are many kinds of flesh in the universes, and other compounds which are not flesh. Thus doth the Eater of Souls feed.” And he told the Sindara of the incredible manner of that feeding, of the fusing of two beings, of the absorption of the lesser, and of the emergence therefrom of an augmented half-god, while the uncaged soul flew moaning in the train of those who served the being. Into the Sindara’s mind came knowledge and with it a grim resolve. He flung wide his arms and welcomed the ghastly embrace, for Vorvadoss had also spoken of the manner in which the doom might be lifted.
The thing sprang to meet him, and an intolerable agony ground frightfully within the Sindara’s bone and flesh; the citadel of his being rocked, and his soul cowered shrieking in its chamber. There on the edge of the Gray Gulf of Yarnak a monstrous fusion took place, a metamorphosis and a comingling that was blasphemous and horrible beyond all imagining. As a thing disappears in quicksand, so the being and the Sindara melted into each other’s body.
Yet even in that blinding agony a sharper pain came to the Sindara as he saw across the plain the beauty of this land over which he had ruled. He thought he had never seen anything so beautiful as this green and joyous land of his, and a pain was in his heart, a sense of empty loss and an aching void which could not ever be filled. And he looked away to the black evil eyes of the Eater of Souls that were but inches away from his own, and he looked beyond the being to where cold emptiness lay gray and horrible. There were tears in his eyes and a gnawing ache in his heart for the silver minarets and towers of Bel Yarnak, that had lain naked and beautiful beneath the glowing light of the triple moons, for he should never see that place anymore.
He turned his head again, and for the last time, blinded with his tears and with his doom upon him. As he leaped forward he heard a despairing shriek, and then half-god and man were spinning dizzily downward, seeing the precipice rushing
up past them. For Vorvadoss had said that thus, and only thus, could the spell be lifted.
And the cliff wall curved inward as it swept down, so presently it receded into the dim gray haze, and the Sindara fell in empty mist and into final unstirring darkness.
The Salem Horror
by Henry Kuttner
This story is the best known of Kuttnet’s Mythos pastiches, but for this honor it has paid the price of carrying with it a puzzling and ludicrous typographical error. In the Arkham House Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos and all reprints based on that text we read that the old witch’s idol was a “worm-eating image.” Neat trick. Of course, Kuttner wrote “worm-eaten image. ”
Lovecraft had a lot to say about this one:
“The Salem Horror gave me much pleasure, & I certainly think it is a great deal better than much of the stuff which Wright continually prints. {Had Wright rejected a first draft of the tale? It sounds like HPL is commiserating.} My own criticism would be that the tale is a little vaguely motivated. Just what started the major phenomena at the particular time they did start? Surely Carson was not the first to occupy the old witch’s room—& yet one can hardly imagine a repetition of this sort of phenomena every time someone lights a fire in the fireplace. In stories where nameless entities are evoked from the abyss it is always well to attribute their summoning to some specific act or circumstance which has never occurred before (or has never occurred without a similar result), yet whose occurrence seems to come naturally & inevitably as a result of preceding events. I’ve largely forgotten my own “Witch House”, but I think I had my student-victim dabbling in mathematico-magical formulae of a rare kind, which eventually reached a dangerous parallel with those of the bygone witch—hence placed the two in rapport…. Another criticism I’d make is that the colour is laid on too thickly—strange things come too rapidly in succession, & with too great abruptness…. Another point—you need to give Salem a little more research to make the setting ring true. ” (March 12, 1936)
It is clear that Lovecraft recognized Kuttner1s tale as a rehash of his own “The Dreams in the Witch House”, but he didn’t seem to mind, any more than he ever acknowledged the dependence of Mearle Prout’s “The House of the Worm” on his own “The Call of Cthulhu.”
Though Lovecraft pointed out the anachronisms in Kuttner’s descriptions of Salem (Kuttner dutifully corrected them), he let another go without comment: in his Necronomicon passage Kuttner has Abdul Alhazred make a passing reference to the Great Khan of the Mongols—who lived several centuries after Abdul Alhazred! (In my Critical Commentary on the Necronomicon I resort to the expedient of excising the whole passage as a later interpolation into the text of Alhazred.)
First publication: Weird Tales, May 1937.
* * *
When Carson first noticed the sounds in his cellar, he ascribed them to the rats. Later he began to hear the tales which were whispered by the superstitious Polish mill workers in Derby Street regarding the first occupant of the ancient house, Abigail Prinn. There was none living today who could remember the diabolical old hag, but the morbid legends which thrive in the “witch district” of Salem like rank weeds on a neglected grave gave disturbing particulars of her activities, and were unpleasantly explicit regarding the detestable sacrifices she was known to have made to a worm-eaten, crescent-horned image of dubious origin. The oldsters still muttered of Abbie Prinn and her monstrous boasts that she was high priestess of a fearfully potent god which dwelt deep in the hills. Indeed, it was the old witch’s reckless boasting which had led to her abrupt and mysterious death in 1692, about the time of the famous hangings on Gallows Hill. No one liked to talk about it, but occasionally a toothless crone would mumble fearfully that the flames could not burn her, for her whole body had taken on the peculiar anesthesia of her witch-mark.
Abbie Prinn and her anomalous statue had long since vanished, but it was still difficult to find tenants for her decrepit, gabled house, with its overhanging second story and curious diamond-paned casement windows. The house’s evil notoriety had spread throughout Salem. Nothing had actually happened there of recent years which might give rise to the inexplicable tales, but those who rented the house had a habit of moving out hastily, generally with vague and unsatisfactory explanations connected with the rats.
And it was a rat which led Carson to the Witch Room. The squealing and muffled pattering within the rotting walls had disturbed Carson more than once during the nights of his first week in the house, which he had rented to obtain the solitude that would enable him to complete a novel for which his publishers had been asking — another light romance to add to Carson’s long string of popular successes. But it was not until sometime later that he began to entertain certain wildly fantastic surmises regarding the intelligence of the rat that scurried from under his feet in the dark hallway one evening.
The house had been wired for electricity, but the bulb in the hall was small and gave a dim light. The rat was a misshapen, black shadow as it darted a few feet away and paused, apparently watching him.
At another time Carson might have dismissed the animal with a threatening gesture and returned to his work. But the traffic on Derby Street had been unusually noisy, and he had found it difficult to concentrate upon his novel. His nerves, for no apparent reason, were taut; and somehow it seemed that the rat, watching just beyond his reach, was eyeing him with sardonic amusement.
Smiling at the conceit, he took a few steps toward the rat, and it rushed away to the cellar door, which he saw with surprise was ajar. He must have neglected to close it the last time he had been in the cellar, although he generally took care to keep the doors shut, for the ancient house was drafty. The rat waited in the doorway.
Unreasonably annoyed, Carson hurried forward, sending the rat scurrying down the stairway. He switched on the cellar light and observed the rat in a corner. It watched him keenly out of glittering little eyes.
As he descended the stairs he could not help feeling that he was acting like a fool. But his work had been tiring, and subconsciously he welcomed any interruption. He moved across the cellar to the rat, seeing with astonishment that the creature remained unmoving, staring at him. A strange feeling of uneasiness began to grow within him. The rat was acting abnormally, he felt; and the unwinking gaze of its cold shoe-button eyes was somehow disturbing.
Then he laughed to himself, for the rat had suddenly whisked aside and disappeared into a little hole in the cellar wall. Idly he scratched a cross with his toe in the dirt before the burrow, deciding that he would set a trap there in the morning.
The rat’s snout and ragged whiskers protruded cautiously. It moved forward and then hesitated, drew back. Then the animal began to act in a singular and unaccountable manner — almost as though it were dancing, Carson thought. It moved tentatively forward, retreated again. It would give a little dart forward and be brought up short, then leap back hastily, as though — the simile flashed into Carson’s mind — a snake were coiled before the burrow, alert to prevent the rat’s escape. But there was nothing there save the little cross Carson had scratched in the dust.
No doubt it was Carson himself who blocked the rat’s escape, for he was standing within a few feet of the burrow. He moved forward, and the animal hurriedly retreated out of sight.
His interest piqued, Carson found a stick and poked it exploringly into the hole. As he did so his eye, close to the wall, detected something strange about the stone slab just above the rat burrow. A quick glance around its edge confirmed his suspicion. The slab was apparently movable.
Carson examined it closely, noticed a depression on its edge which would afford a handhold. His fingers fitted easily into the groove, and he pulled tentatively. The stone moved a trifle and stopped. He pulled harder, and with a sprinkling of dry earth the slab swung away from the wall as though on hinges.
A black rectangle, shoulder-high, gaped in the wall. From its depths a musty, unpleasant stench of dead air welled out, and involuntarily Cars
on retreated a step. Suddenly he remembered the monstrous tales of Abbie Prinn and the hideous secrets she was supposed to have kept hidden in her house. Had he stumbled upon some hidden retreat of the long-dead witch?
Before entering the dark gap he took the precaution of obtaining a flashlight from upstairs. Then he cautiously bent his head and stepped into the narrow, evil-smelling passage, sending the flashlight’s beam probing out before him.
He was in a narrow tunnel, scarcely higher than his head, and walled and paved with stone slabs. It ran straight ahead for perhaps fifteen feet, and then broadened out into a roomy chamber. As Carson stepped into the underground room — no doubt a hidden retreat of Abbie Prinn’s, a hiding-place, he thought, which nevertheless could not save her on the day the fright-crazed mob had come raging along Derby Street — he caught his breath in a gasp of amazement. The room was fantastic, astonishing.
It was the floor which held Carson’s gaze. The dull gray of the circular wall gave place here to a mosaic of varicolored stone, in which blues and greens and purples predominated — indeed, there were none of the warmer colors. There must have been thousands of bits of colored stone making up that pattern, for none was larger than a walnut. And the mosaic seemed to follow some definite pattern, unfamiliar to Carson; there were curves of purple and violet mingled with angled lines of green and blue, intertwining in fantastic arabesques. There were circles, triangles, a pentagram, and other, less familiar, figures. Most of the lines and figures radiated from a definite point: the center of the chamber, where there was a circular disk of dead black stone perhaps two feet in diameter.
It was very silent. The sounds of the cars that occasionally went past overhead in Derby Street could not be heard. In a shallow alcove in the wall Carson caught a glimpse of markings on the walls, and he moved slowly in that direction, the beam of his light traveling up and down the walls of the niche.