The Mask of Cthulhu

by August Derleth

  The hallucination had appeared to persist. Moreover, it had had an existence in his sleeping hours on yet another plane in that, during sleep, Wecter accompanied the creature of the carving without difficulty into other dimensions outside our own space and time. Consistent illusions are not rarities in medical case-histories, nor are those which develop progressively, but such an experience as Jason Wecter’s was clearly more than illusory, since it extended insidiously into his very thought-patterns. I mused on this for a long time that night, turning over and over in my mind everything he had told me about the Elder Gods, the Great Old Ones, the mythological entities and their worshippers, into the culture pattern of which Wecter’s interest had penetrated with such disturbing results for him.

  Thereafter, I watched the Dial apprehensively for Jason Wecter’s column.

  Because of what he wrote in the intervening ten days before I saw him again, Jason Wecter was soon the talk of cultural Boston and the surrounding countryside. Surprisingly, by no means all the talk about him was condemnatory, though the expected points-of-view were present; that is, those who had supported him previously were outraged and now condemned him; those who had previously scorned him, now supported him. But his judgments of concerts and art shows, though completely awry to my eyes, were no less razor-sharp; all his customary incisiveness and invective were present, his keenness of perception seemed not altered save in that he perceived things now, as it were, from a different perspective, a perspective radically altered from his past point-of-view. His opinions were startling and often outrageous.

  The magnificent and aging prima donna, Madame Bursa-DeKoyer was “a towering monument to bourgeois taste, which, unfortunately, is not buried under it.”

  Corydon de Neuvalet, the rage of New York, was “at best an amusing imposter, whose Surrealistic sacrileges are displayed in Fifth Avenue shop windows by shopkeepers whose knowledge of art is somewhat less than an amount necessary to be seen under a microscope, though in his sense of color he is tenth-best Vermeer, even though he never challenges even the least of Ahapi.”

  The paintings of the insane artist Veilain excited his extravagant admiration. “Here is evidence that someone who can hold a brush and who knows color when he sees it can see more in the world around him than most of the benighted who look upon his canvasses. Here is genuine perception, uninhibited by any terrestrial dimensions, unhampered by any mass of human tradition, sentimental or otherwise. The appeal is to a plane which stems from the primitive, yet rises above it; the background is in the events of the past and present which exist in conterminous folds of space and are visible only to those gifted with extrasensory perception, which is perhaps a property of certain people adjudged ‘insane’.”

  Of a concert by Fradelitski of the conductor’s current favorite, the Russian symphonist, Blantanovich, he wrote so scathingly that Fradelitski publicly threatened suit. “Blantanovich’s music is an expression of that dreadful culture which supposes that every man is the precise political equal of every other, save those who are at the top, who are, to quote Orwell, ‘more equal’; it need not be played at all and would not be if it were not for Fradelitski, who is distinguished indeed among conductors, for in the entire world, he is the only one who learns progressively less with each concert he conducts.”

  It was not to be wondered at that Jason Wecter’s name was on every tongue; he was inveighed against, the Dial could not begin to publish the letters received; he was praised, complimented, damned, cast out from social circles to which he had hitherto always had invitation, but above all, he was talked about, and whether on one day he was called a Communist and on the other a die-hard reactionary seemed to make no difference to him, for he was seldom seen anywhere but at the concerts he had to attend, and there he spoke to no one. Yet, he was seen at one other place: at the Widener, and later it was reported that he had twice been seen in the rare book collection of Miskatonic University at Arkham.

  Such was the situation when, on the night of August twelfth, two days before his disappearance, Jason Wecter came to my apartment in a state which I should have judged at best to have been one of temporary derangement. His look was wild, and his talk even more so. The hour was close to midnight, but the night was warm; there had been a concert, and he had heard half of it, after which he had gone home to study in certain books he had managed to take from the Widener. From there he had come by taxi to my apartment, bursting in on me as I was getting ready for bed.

  “Pinckney! Thank heaven you’re here! I telephoned, but couldn’t get an answer.”

  “I just came in. Take it easy, Jason. There’s a scotch and soda over on the table; help yourself.”

  He bolted a glass with far more scotch than soda in it. He was shaking, not just in his hands, and his eyes were feverish, I thought. I crossed and put a hand to his forehead, but he brushed it brusquely away.

  “No, no, I’m not sick. You remember that conversation we had—about the carving?”

  “Quite clearly.”

  “Well, it’s true, Pinckney. It’s all true. I could tell you things—about what happened at Innsmouth when the government took over that time in 1928 and all those explosions took place out at Devil’s Reef; about what happened in Limehouse, London, back in 1911; about the disappearance of Professor Shewsbury over in Arkham not so very many years ago—there are still pockets of secret worship right here in Massachusetts, I know, and they are all over the world.”

  “Dream or reality?” I asked sharply.

  “Oh, this is reality. I wish it were not. But I have had dreams. Oh, what dreams! I tell you, Pinckney, they are enough to drive a man mad with ecstasy to wake to this mundane world and to know that such outer worlds exist! Oh, those gigantic buildings! Those colossi towering there into those alien skies! And Great Cthulhu! Oh, the wonder and beauty of it! Oh, the terror and evil! Oh, the inevitability!”

  I went over and shook him, hard.

  He took a deep breath and sat for a moment with his eyes closed. Then he said, “You don’t believe me, do you, Pinckney?”

  “I’m listening. Belief isn’t important, is it?”

  “I want you to do something for me.”

  “What is it?”

  “If something happens to me, get hold of that carving—you know the one—and take it out somewhere, weight it, and drop it into the sea. Preferably—if you can make it—off Innsmouth.”

  “Look, Jason, has someone threatened you?”

  “No, no. Will you promise?”

  “Of course.”

  “No matter what you may hear or see or think you hear or see?”

  “If you wish.”

  “Yes. Send it back; it must go back.”

  “But tell me, Jason—I know you’ve been pretty cutting in your notices during the past week or so—if anyone’s taken it into his head to get back at you… . ”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Pinckney. It’s nothing like that. I told you you wouldn’t believe me. It’s the carving—it’s reaching farther and farther into this dimension. Can’t you understand, Pinckney? It’s begun to materialize. Two nights ago was the first time—I felt its tentacle!”

  I withheld comment and waited.

  “I tell you, I woke from sleep and felt its cold, wet tentacle pulling away the bedclothes; I felt it against my body—I sleep, you know, without any covering but the bedding. I leapt up, I put on the light—and there it was, real, something I could see as well as feel, withdrawing now, diminishing in size, dissolving, fading—and then it was gone, back into its own dimension. In addition to that, for the past week or so I’ve been able to hear things from that dimension—that fluted music, for instance, and a weird whistling sound.”

  At that moment I was convinced that my friend’s mind had cracked. “If the carving has that effect on you, why don’t you destroy it?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Never. That’s my only contact with outside, and I assure you, Pinckney, it’s not all dark over there. Evil exists o
n many planes, you know.”

  “If you believe, aren’t you afraid, Jason?”

  He leaned toward me with his glittering eyes fixed on mine. “Yes,” he breathed. “Yes, I’m horribly afraid—but I’m fascinated, too. Can you understand? I’ve heard music from outside; I’ve seen things over there—beside them everything in this world of ours palls and fades. Yes, I’m horribly afraid, Pinckney, but I will not willingly allow my fear to stand between us.”

  “Between you and who else?”

  “Cthulhu!” he whispered.

  At this moment he raised his head, his eyes far off. “Listen!” he said softly. “Do you hear it, Pinckney? The music! Oh, that wonderful music! Oh, Great Cthulhu!” And he rose and ran from my apartment, an expression of almost beatific bliss on his ascetic features.

  That was my last sight of Jason Wecter.

  Or was it?

  Jason Wecter disappeared on the second day thereafter, or during the night of that day. He was seen by others, though not to talk to, since his visit to my apartment, but he was not seen later than the following night, when a neighbor, coming in late, saw him by the light of his study window, apparently working at his typewriter, though there was no trace of any manuscript to be found, nor had anything been mailed to the Dial for publication in his column in that paper.

  His instructions in case of any untoward accident clearly called for my “ownership” of the carving described in detail as that of a “Sea God: Ponape Origin”— quite as if he had wished to conceal the identity of the creature depicted there; so presently, with the sanction of the police, I repossessed my property, and prepared to do with it as I had promised Wecter I would do, though not before I aided the police in substantiating their deduction that none of Wecter’s clothing was missing, that he had apparently risen from his bed and vanished stark naked.

  I did not particularly examine the carving when I removed it from Wecter’s house, but simply put it into my capacious brief-case and carried it home, having already made arrangements to drive to the vicinity of Innsmouth on the following day and throw the object, duly weighted, into the sea.

  That was why it was not until the last moment that I saw the revolting change which had taken place. It should be borne in mind that I did not actually see anything in the process of its taking place. But there is no gainsaying the fact that I did on at least two occasions previously carefully examine the carving in question, and one of those times was at the special behest of Jason Wecter to observe fancied alterations which I could not see. And what I did see I must confess to seeing in a rocking launch, while I heard a sound which can only be described as of someone’s voice calling my name as from an unfathomable distance, far far away, a voice like that of Jason Wecter, unless the excitement of that moment served to derange my own senses.

  It was when I took the already weighted carving out of my brief-case, sitting far out to sea off Innsmouth in the launch I had borrowed, that I was first aware of that distant and incredible sound which resembled a voice calling my name, and which seemed to come from below me, rather than from above. And it was this, I am certain, which halted my action long enough for me to look once again, however fleetingly, at the object in my hands before it was flung forth to sink out of sight beneath the gently rolling waters of the Atlantic. But I have no doubt about what I saw, none whatsoever. For I held the carving in such a manner that I could not miss the out-flared tentacles of the thing portrayed by that unknown, ancient artist, could not miss seeing that in one of the hitherto empty tentacles there was now clasped the tiny, unclothed figure, perfect in every detail, of a man, whose ascetic features were unmistakably familiar, a miniature of a man which existed in relation to the figure on the carving, in Jason Wecter’s own words, recurring with horrible finality there in that boat, “as a seed to a pumpkin”! And even as I flung it forth, it seemed to me that the lips of that miniature man moved in the syllables of my own name, and, as it struck the water, and sank below, I seemed to hear that far-away voice like the voice of Jason Wecter, drown my name, horribly gasping and gurgling, with but one syllable enunciated and the other lapped up in the fathomless water off Devil’s Reef!

  The Sandwin Compact

  I KNOW NOW that the strange and terrible happenings at Sandwin House had their beginnings much farther back than any of us then imagined, certainly farther back than Eldon or I thought at that time. Manifestly, there was no reason to suppose in those early weeks during which Asa Sandwin’s time was running out that his trouble grew out of something in a past so remote as to be beyond our comprehension. It was only toward the end of the affair at Sandiwn House that terrible glimpses were afforded us, hints of something frightful and awful behind the commonplace events of everyday life broke through to the surface, and ultimately we were enabled to grasp briefly the heart of what lay beneath.

  Sandwin House had originally been called Sandwin-by-the-Sea, but its later appellation had soon come to be far more convenient in use. It was an old-fashioned house, old as such houses were old in New England, standing along the Innsmouth road not too far from Arkham: of two stories and an attic, with a deep basement. The roof was many-gabled, with dormer windows rising from the attic. Before the house old elms and maples stood; behind, only a hedge of lilac separated the lawns from the sharp descent to the sea, for the house stood on a high point of land somewhat removed from the highway itself. In appearance it might have seemed a little cold to the casual passerby, but to me it had always been colored by memories of childhood vacations spent there with my cousin Eldon; it represented relief from Boston, escape from the crowded city. Until the curious happenings that began in the late winter of 1938, I retained my early impression of Sandwin House; even so, it was not until after that strange winter’s end that I became aware of how subtly but certainly Sandwin House had changed from the haven of childhood summers to a malign harbor for incredible evil.

  My introduction to those curiously disturbing events was prosaic enough; it came in the shape of a telephone call from Eldon as I was about to sit down to supper with my fellow librarians of Arkham’s Miskatonic University in the small club of which we were members. I took the call in the club’s lounging room.

  “Dave? This is Eldon. I want you to run up for a few days.”

  “Too busy, I’m afraid,” I replied. “I’ll try to make it next week.”

  “No, no—now. Dave—the owls are hooting.”

  That was all; there was nothing more. I returned to the heated discussion in which I had been engaged when I was summoned to the telephone and had actually picked up the threats of that discussion once more when what my cousin had said effected the necessary bridge into the years past, and instantly I excused myself and left for my rooms to prepare for the journey to Sandwin House. Long ago, almost three decades ago, in those carefree days of childhood play, there had been established between us a certain agreement; if ever one of us uttered a certain cryptic sentence, it was to be interpreted as a cry for assistance. To this we pledged ourselves. That cryptic sentence was: The owls are hooting! And my cousin Eldon had spoken it.

  Within an hour I had arranged for a substitute to take my place in the library of Miskatonic and was on my way to Sandwin House, driving faster than the law permitted. Candidly, I was half amused, half frightened; the pledge as we had made it in those days was serious enough, but it was, after all, a fancy of childhood; that Eldon had seen fit to utter now that cryptic sentence seemed to me evidence of something seriously disturbing in his existence; it seemed to me now rather the last appeal of dire distress than any casual harking back to childhood.

  The night descended before I reached Sandwin House; a chill night with frost. A light snow still covered the ground, but the highway was clear. The last few miles to Sandwin House lay along the ocean, so that the drive was singularly beautiful: the moonlight making a wide path of yellow on the sea, and the wind rippling the water so that the entire bosom of the sea sparkled and gleamed as with some inner light.
Trees, buildings, hill-slopes broke into the eastern horizon line from time to time, but lessened the sea’s beauty not at all. And presently the large ungainly structure that was Sandwin House broke into the skyline.

  Sandwin House was dark save for a thin line of light well toward the rear. Here Eldon lived alone with his father and an old servant, though a country woman or two came regularly to clean the place once or twice a week. I drove the car around to one side where an old barn served as a garage, put the car away, took my bag and made my way to the house.

  Eldon had heard me. I encountered him in the darkness just beyond the door, his long face touched a little with moonlight, his dressing-gown held closely to his thin body.

  “I knew I could count on you, Dave,” he said, taking my bag.

  “What’s up, Eldon?”

  “Oh, don’t say anything,” he said nervously, as if someone might hear. “Wait. I’ll tell you in time. And be quiet; let’s not disturb father for the time being.”

  He led the way into the house, going with extreme care down the wide hall toward the stairs, behind which his own rooms were. I could not help noticing the unnatural quiet of the house and the sound of the sea beyond; it struck me then that the atmosphere was faintly eery, but I shrugged away this feeling.

  In the light of his room, I saw that my cousin was seriously upset, despite a false air of healthy welcome; my coming was clearly not an end, but only an incident. He was haggard, his eyes were dark and red-rimmed, as if he had not slept for some days, and his hands moved constantly in that excess of nervousness so common to neurotics.

  “Now then, sit down; make yourself at home. You’ve had supper, eh?”

  “Enough,” I assured him, and waited for him to unburned himself.

  He took a turn or two about the room, opened the door cautiously and looked out, before he came back to sit down beside me. “Well, it’s about father,” he began without preamble. “You know how we have always lived without any visible income, and yet always seemed to have money. That’s been for several generations in the Sandwin line, and I’ve never bothered my head about it.. Last fall, however, money was running very low. Father said he needed to go on a journey, and he went. Father seldom travels, but I remembered then that the last time he traveled, almost ten years ago, we were also in dire straits. But when he came back, there seemed again to be plenty of money. I never saw my father leave the house, and I never saw him come back; one day he was gone; another, he was back. It happened the same way this time—and after he was back, there seemed again to be plenty of money available for our use.” He shook his head, perplexed. “I confess to you that for some time thereafter I looked through the Transcript with utmost care on the lookout for some notice of robbery; but there was none.”