The new sound was a subterranean one; that is, it seemed to come from far below the house, deep down under the surface of the earth. It might have been earth settling, it might have been a fissure opening and closing, it might readily have been a fugitive trembler, except that it came and went with a certain regularity, as if it were made by some very large thing moving along a colossal cavern far beneath the house. It lasted perhaps half an hour; it seemed to approach from the east and diminish in the same direction in a fairly even progression of sounds. I could not be sure, but I had the uncertain impression that the house trembled faintly under these subterranean sounds.
Perhaps it was this which impelled me on the following day to poke about in the storeroom in an effort to find out for myself what my inquisitive neighbor had meant by his questions and hints about the Bishops. What had they been doing that their neighbors thought so bad?
The storeroom, however, was less crammed than I had expected it to be, perhaps largely because so many things had been put out on the verandah. Indeed, the only unusual aspect of it that I could find was a shelf of books which had evidently been in the process of being read when tragedy had obliterated the family.
These were of various kinds.
Perhaps chief among them were several gardening texts. They were extremely old books, and had been long in disuse, quite possibly hidden away by an earlier member of the Bishop family, and only recently discovered. I glanced into two or three of these, and found them to be completely useless for any modern gardener, since they described methods of raising and caring for plants which were unknown to me, for the most part— hellebore, mandrake, nightshade, witch hazel, and the like; and such of the papers which were given over to the more familiar vegetables were filled with bits of lore and superstition which held utterly no meaning for anyone in this modern world.
There was also one paper-covered book devoted to the lore of dreams. This did not appear to have been much read, though its condition was such for dust and lint, that it was impossible to draw any conclusions about it. It was one of those inexpensive books which were popular two or three generations ago, and its dream interpretations were the most ordinary; it was, in short, just such a book as one might expect a rather ignorant countryman to pick up.
Indeed, of them all, only one interested me. This was a most curious book indeed. It was a monumental tome, entirely copied in longhand, and bound by hand in wood. Though it very probably had no literary worth whatsoever, it could have existed in any museum of curiosa. At that time I made little attempt to read it, for it seemed to be a compilation of gibberish similar to the nonsense in the dream book. It had a crudely lettered title which indicated that its ultimate source must have been some private old library—Seth Bishop, His Book: Being Excerpts from the “Nekronomicon” & the “Cultes des Ghouls” & the “Pnakotic Manuscripts” & the “R’lyeh Text” Copied in His Own Hand by Seth Bishop in the Yrs. 1919 to 1923. Underneath, in a spidery hand which did not seem likely for one known to be so uneducated, he had scrawled his signature.
In addition to these, there were several works allied to the dream book. A copy of the notorious Seventh Book of Moses, a text much prized by certain oldsters in the Pennsylvania hex country—which, thanks to newspaper accounts of a recent hex murder, I knew about. A slender prayer-book in which all the prayers seemed to be mockeries, for all were directed to Asarael and Sathanus, and other dark angels.
There was nothing of any value whatsoever, apart from being simply curious items, in the entire lot. Their presence testified only to a diversity of dark interests on the part of succeeding generations of the Bishop family, for it was fairly evident that the owner and reader of the gardening books was very probably Seth’s grandfather, while the owner of the dream book and the hex text was most likely a member of Seth’s father’s generation. Seth himself seemed interested in more obscure lore.
The works from which Seth had copied, however, seemed appreciably more erudite than I had been led to believe a man of Seth’s background would be likely to consult. This puzzled me, and at the first opportunity I traveled into Aylesbury to make such inquiries as I could at a country store on the outskirts of the village, where, I reasoned, Seth might most probably have made purchases, since he had had the reputation of being a reclusive individual.
The proprietor, who turned out to be a distant relative of Seth’s on his mother’s side, seemed somewhat loath to speak of Seth, but did ultimately reveal something in his reluctant answers to my persistent questions. From him, whose name was Obed Marsh, I gathered that Seth had “at first” —that is, presumably as a child and young man—been as “backward as any of that clan”. In Seth’s later teens, he had grown “queer”, by which Marsh meant that Seth had taken to a more solitary existence; he had spoken at that time with frequency of strange and disturbing dreams he had had, of noises he had heard, of visions he believed he saw in and out of the house; but, after two or three years of this, Seth had never mentioned a word of these things again. Instead, he had locked himself up in a room downstairs—which had certainly been the storeroom, judging by Marsh’s description—and read everything he could lay his hands on, for all that he never “went past the fourth grade”. Later on, he had gone into Arkham, to the library of Miskatonic University, to read more books. After that “spell”, Seth had come home and lived as a solitary until the time of his outbreak—the horrible murder of Amos Bowden.
All this, certainly, added up to little save a tale of a mind ill-equipped for learning, trying desperately to assimilate knowledge, the burden of which seemed to have ultimately snapped that mind. So, at least, it appeared at this juncture of my tenure of the Bishop house.
II
That night events took a singular turn.
But, like so many other aspects of that strange sojourn, I was not aware immediately of the full implications of what happened. Set down baldly, it seems absurd that it should have given me any cause for second thought. It was nothing more than a dream which I experienced in the course of that night. Even as a dream, it was not particularly horrifying or even frightening, rather more awesome and impressive.
I dreamed simply that I lay asleep in the Bishop house, that while I so lay a vague, indefinable, but somehow awesome and powerful cloud—like a fog or mist—took shape out of the cellar, billowed up through the floors and walls, engulfing the furniture, but not seeming to harm it or the house, taking shape, meanwhile, as a huge, amorphous creature with tentacles flowing from its monstrous head, and swaying like a cobra back and forth all the while it gave voice to a strange ululation, while from somewhere in the distance a chorus of weird instruments played unearthly music, and a human voice chanted inhuman words which, as I subsequently learned, were written thusly:
Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.
In the end, the amorphous creature billowed ever further upward and engulfed also the sleeper who was I. Thereupon it seemed to dissolve into a long dark passageway, down which came at a frantically eager lope a human being who was certainly similar in appearance to descriptions I had had of the late Seth Bishop. This being grew in size, too, looming almost as large as the amorphous fog, and vanished even as it had done, coming straight at the sleeping figure in the bed in that house in the valley.
Now, on the face of it, this dream was meaningless. It was a nightmare, beyond question; but it lacked any capacity for fear. I seemed to be aware that something of tremendous importance was happening to me or about to happen to me, but, not understanding it, I could not fear it; moreover, the amorphous creature, the chanting voice, the ululations, and the strange music all lent a ritual impressiveness to the dream.
On awakening in the morning, however, I found it readily possible to recall the dream, and I was obsessed with a persistent conviction that all its aspects were not really strange to me. Somewhere I had heard or seen the written equivalent of that fantastic chanting, and, so thinking, I found myself once more in the storero
om, poring over that incredible book in Seth Bishop’s handwriting; reading here and there and discovering with wonder that the text concerned an ardent series of beliefs in Elder Gods and Ancient Ones and a conflict between them, between the Elder Gods and such creatures as Hastur and Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu. This, at last, struck a familiar note, and seeking further, I discovered what was certainly the chant I had heard—with, moreover, its translation in Seth Bishop’s hand, which read:
In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.
The one disturbing factor in this discovery was that I had most certainly not seen the line of the chant on occasion of my examination of the room. I might have seen the name “Cthulhu”, but nothing more in that cursory glance at the Bishop manuscript. How then could I have duplicated a fact which was not part of my conscious or subconscious store of knowledge? It is not commonly believed that the mind can duplicate in a dream state or any other any experience which is utterly alien to it. And yet I had done so.
What was more, as I read on in that often shocking text of queer survivals and hellish cults, I found that hints in vague descriptive passages described just such a being as I had seen in my dream—not of fog or mist, but of solid matter, which was a second occurrence of the duplication of something utterly alien to my experience.
I had, of course, heard of psychic residue—residual forces left behind at the scene of any event, be it major tragedy or any powerful emotional experience common to mankind—love, hate, fear—and it was possible that something of this sort had brought about my dream, as were it the atmosphere of the house itself invading and possessing me while I slept, which I did not regard as completely impossible, since certainly it was strange and the events which had taken place there were experiences of impressive power.
Now, however, though it was noon and the demands of my body for food were great, it seemed to me that the next step in the pursuit of my dream lay in the cellar. So to it I made my way at once, and there, after a most exhaustive search, which included the moving away from the walls of tiers of shelves, some still with ancient jars of preserved fruit and vegetables on them, I discovered a hidden passageway which led out of the cellar into a cave-like tunnel, down part of which I walked. I did not go far, before the dampness of the earth underfoot, and the wavering of my light, forced me to return—but not before I had seen the disquieting whiteness of scattered bones, embedded in that earth.
When I returned to that subterranean passageway after replenishing my flashlight, I did not quit it before ascertaining beyond reasonable doubt that the bones were those of animals—for, clearly, there had been more than one animal. What was disturbing about their discovery was not their being there, but the puzzling question of how they had got there.
But I did not at that time give this much thought. I was interested in pushing deeper into that tunnel, and I did so, going as far in the direction, I thought, of the seacoast, as I could before my passage was blocked by a fall of earth. When at last I left the tunnel it was late in the afternoon, and I was famished; but I was reasonably certain of two things—the tunnel was not a natural cave, at least at this end; it was clearly the work of human hands; and it had been used for some dark purpose, the nature of which I could not know.
Now for some reason, these discoveries filled me with excitement. Had I been fully in control of myself, I have no doubt that I would have realized that this in itself was unlike me, but at the moment I was faced and challenged with a mystery which seemed to me insistently of the greatest importance, and I was determined to discover all I could of this apparently hitherto unknown part of the Bishop property. This I could not very well do until another day, and in order to find my way through the cave, I would need implements I had not yet found on the property.
Another trip to Aylesbury was unavoidable. I went at once to the store of Obed Marsh and asked for a pick and shovels. For some reason, this request seemed to upset the old man beyond all reason. He paled and hesitated to wait on me.
“You aimin’ to dig, Mr. Bates?”
I nodded.
“’Tain’t none ’o my business, but maybe you’d like to know that was what Seth took to doin’ for a spell. Wore out three, four shovels, diggin’.” He leaned forward, his intense eyes glittering. “And the queerest thing about it was nobody could find out where he was diggin’—never see a shovel-ful of dirt anywhere.”
I was somewhat taken aback by this information, but I did not hesitate. “That soil there around the house looks rich and fertile,” I said.
He seemed relieved. “Well, if you’re aimin’ to garden, that’s a different thing.”
One other purchase I made puzzled him. I needed a pair of rubber boots to shield my shoes from the muck and many parts of the tunnel floor, where, doubtless, the nearness of the brook outside caused seepage. But Marsh said nothing about this. As I turned to go, he spoke again of Seth.
“Ain’t heard tell anything more, have you, Mr. Bates?”
“People hereabouts don’t talk much.”
“They ain’t all Marshes,” he replied, with a furtive grin. “There’s some that do say Seth was more Marsh than Bishop. The Bishops believed in hexes and such-like. But never the Marshes.”
With this cryptic announcement ringing in my ears, I took my leave. Prepared now for the tunnel, I could hardly wait for the morrow to come, so that I could return once more to that subterranean place and carry on my explorations into a mystery which must certainly have been related to the entire legendry surrounding the Bishop family.
Events were now moving forward at an increasing tempo. That night two more occurrences were recorded.
The first came to my attention just past dawn, when I caught sight of Bud Perkins lurking about outside the house. I was needlessly annoyed, perhaps, since I was making ready to descend into the cellar; just the same I wanted to know what he was after; so I opened the door and stepped out into the yard to confront him.
“What are you looking for, Bud?” I asked.
“Lost a sheep,” he said laconically.
“I haven’t seen it.”
“It come this way,” he answered.
“Well, you’re welcome to look.”
“Sure hate to think this’s all settin’ up to start again,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“If you don’t know, ’twon’t do any good to say. If you do, it’s better I don’t say a thing, anyway. So I’m not sayin’.”
This mystifying conversation baffled me. At the same time, Bud Perkins’ obvious suspicion that somehow his sheep had come to my hands was irritating. I stepped back and threw open the door.
“Look in the house if you like.”
But at this, his eyes opened wide in positive horror. “Me set foot in there?” he cried. “Not for my life.” He added, “Why I’m the only one’s got gumption enough to come this close to the place. But I wouldn’t step in there for all the money you could pay me. Not me.”
“It’s perfectly safe,” I said, unable to conceal a smile at his fright.
“Maybe you think so. We know better. We know what’s waitin’ there behind them black walls, waitin’ and waitin’ for somebody to come. And now you’ve come. And now things are startin’ up again, jest like before.”
With that, he turned and ran, vanishing as on his previous visit into the woods. When I had satisfied myself that he was not coming back, I turned and reentered the house. And there I made a discovery which ought to have been alarming, but which seemed to me then only vaguely unusual, since I must clearly have been in a lethargic state, not yet fully awake. The new boots I had bought only yesterday for my use had been used; they were caked with mud. Yet I knew indisputably that they had been clean and unused yesterday.
At sight of them, a growing conviction took form in my mind. Without putting on the boots, I descended into the cellar, opened the wall into the tunnel, and walked rapidly to the area of the barrier. Perhaps I had a premonitory certainty of w
hat I would find, for I found it—the cave-in of earth had been dug partially away, sufficiently for a man to squeeze through. And the tracks in the wet earth were clearly made by the new boots I had bought, for the stamped trade-mark in the sole of those boots was plainly to be seen in the glow of my flashlight.
I was thus faced with one of two alternatives—either someone had used my boots in the night to effect this change in the tunnel, or I myself had walked in my sleep to bring it about. And I could not much doubt which it had been—for, despite my eagerness and anticipation, I was fatigued in a way which would have been accounted for only by my having spent a considerable portion of my sleeping hours digging away at this blockade in the passageway.
I cannot escape the conviction now that even then I knew what I should find when I pursued my way down that tunnel—the ancient altar-like structures in the subterranean caverns into which the tunnels opened, the evidence of further sacrifice—not alone animals this time but undeniably human bones, and at the end, the vast cavern opening downward and the faint glimmering far below of waters, surging powerfully in and out through some opening far down, the Atlantic ocean itself beyond doubt, which had made its way to this place by means of sub-surface caverns on the coast. And I must have had a premonition, too, of what else I should see there at the edge of that final descent into the aquatic abyss—the tufts of wool, the single hoof with its portion of torn and broken leg—all that remained of a sheep, fresh as the night just past!
I turned and fled, badly shaken, unwilling to guess how the sheep had got there— Bud Perkins’ animal, I felt certain. And had it, too, been brought there for the same purpose as the creatures whose remains I had seen before those dark and broken altars in the lesser caverns between this place of constantly stirring waters and the house I had left not long ago?
The Mask of Cthulhu Page 13