I did not tarry in the house long, either, but made my way into Aylesbury once again, apparently aimlessly, but, as I know now, pressed by my need to know yet more of what legend and lore had accumulated about the Bishop house. But at Aylesbury I experienced for the first time the full force of public disapproval, for people on the street averted their eyes from me and turned their backs on me. One young man to whom I spoke hurried past me as if I had not spoken at all.
Even Obed Marsh had changed in his attitude. He was nothing loath to take my money, but was surly in his manner and obviously wished that I would leave his store as soon as possible. But here I made it clear I would not move until my questions had been answered.
What had I done? I wanted to know, that people should shun me as they did?
“It’s that house,” he said finally.
“I’m not the house,” I retorted, dissatisfied.
“There’s talk,” he said then.
“Talk? What kind of talk?”
“About you and Bud Perkins’ sheep. About the way things happened when Seth Bishop was alive.” Then he leaned forward with a dark, beetling face, and whispered harshly,” There’s them that say Seth’s come back.”
“Seth Bishop’s dead and buried this long time.”
He nodded. “Aye, part of him is. But part of him maybe ain’t. I’ll tell you, best thing in the world is for you to clear out now. You got time yet.”
I reminded him coldly that I had leased the Bishop place and had paid the rent for at least four months, with an option to complete a year there. He clammed up at once and would say nothing further about my tenure. I pressed him, nevertheless, for details about Seth Bishop’s life, but all he would or could tell me was clearly the summation of vague, uncertain hints and dark suspicions which had been common in the vicinity, so that I left him at last not with any picture of Seth Bishop as a man to be feared, but rather of him as a man to be pitied, kept at bay in his black-walled house in the valley like an animal by his neighbors on the ridge and the people of Aylesbury, who were at one in hating and fearing him, without any but the most circumstantial evidence that he had committed any crime against the safety or peace of the environs.
What, in fact, had Seth Bishop knowingly done—apart from the final crime of which he had been proved guilty? He had led a recluse’s existence, abandoning even the strange garden of his ancestors, turning his back, certainly, on what was reputed to be his grandfather’s and father’s sinister interest in wizardry and the lore of the occult, instead of which he had interested himself obsessively in a far more ancient lore which appeared to be fully as ridiculous as that of witchcraft. One might expect such interests not to falter in such isolated areas, and, in particular, among families so ingrown as the Bishop family was.
Perhaps somewhere in the old books of his forebears Seth had found certain obscure references which had sent him to the library at Miskatonic, where, in his consuming interest, he had undertaken the monumental task of copying great portions of books, which, presumably, he could not get permission to withdraw from the library. This lore which was his primary concern was, in fact, a distortion of ancient Christian legend; reduced to its most simple terms, it was a record of the cosmic struggle between forces of good and forces of evil.
However difficult it was to summarize, it would appear that the first inhabitants of outer space were great beings, not in human shape, who were called the Elder Gods and lived on Betelguese, at a remote time. Against these certain elemental Ancient Ones, also called the Great Old Ones, had rebelled—Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth, the amphibious Cthulhu, the bat-like Hastur the Unspeakable, Lloigor, Zhar, Ithaqua, the wind-walker, and the earth beings, Nyarlathotep and Shub-Niggurath; but, their rebellion failing, they were cast out and banished by the Elder Gods—locked away on far planets and stars under the seal of the Elder Gods—Cthulhu deep under the sea in the place known as R’lyeh, Hastur on a black star near Aldebaran in the Hyades, Ithaqua in the icy arctic barrens, still others in a place known as Kadath in the Cold Waste, which existed in time and space conterminously with a portion of Asia.
Since this initial rebellion—which was basically in a legend pattern paralleling the rebellion of Satan and his followers against the arch-angels of Heaven—the Great Old Ones had continually sought to regain their power to war against the Elder Gods, and there have grown up on earth and other planets certain cultists and followers—like the Abominable Snowmen, the Dholes, the Deep Ones, and many others, all dedicated to serve the Ancient Ones, and often succeeding in removing the Elder Seal to free the forces of ancient evil, which had then to be put down again either by direct intervention of the Elder Gods or by the alert watchfulness of human beings armed against them.
This was the sum total of what Seth Bishop had copied from very old and very rare books, much of it repetitive, and all surely the wildest kind of fantasy. True, there were certain disturbing newspaper clippings appended to the manuscript—of what happened at Devil Reef off Innsmouth in 1928, of a supposed sea serpent in Rick’s Lake, Wisconsin, of a terrible occurrence at nearby Dunwich, and another in the wilds of Vermont, but these, beyond question, I felt to be coincidental accounts which happened to strike a parallel chord. And, while it was also true that there was as yet no explanation for the subterranean passage leading toward the coast, I felt comfortably certain that it was the work of some distant forebear of Seth Bishop’s, and only appropriated for his own use at a considerably later date.
All that emerged from this was the portrait of an ignorant man striving to improve himself in the directions which appealed to him. Gullible and superstitious he may have been, and at the end, perhaps deranged—but evil, surely not.
III
It was at about this time that I became aware of a most curious fancy.
It seemed to me that there was someone else in the house in the valley, an alien human being who had no business there, but intruded from outside. Though his occupation seemed to be to paint pictures, I was reasonably certain that he had come to spy. I caught only the most fugitive glimpses of him—on occasion a reflection in a mirror or in a windowpane when I was near, but I saw in the north room of the ground floor the evidence of his work—one unfinished canvass on his easel, and several that had been completed.
I did not have the time to look for him, for the One below commanded me, and each night I descended with food, not for him, for he devoured what no mortal man knew, but for those of the deeps who accompanied him, and came swimming up out of that cavernous pit, and were to my eyes like a travesty born of men and batrachian things, with webbed hands and feet, and gilled, and wide, frog-like mouths, and great staring eyes made to see in the darkest recesses of the vast seas about the place where He lay sleeping, waiting to rise and come forth once more and take possession again of his kingdom, which was on Earth and in the space and time all about this planet, where once he had ruled above all others until the casting-down.
Perhaps this was the result of my own coming upon the old diary, which now I settled down to read as were it a book I had treasured since childhood. I found it by accident in the cellar, mildewed and showing the effects of having been long lost—a fortunate thing, for there were in it things no outsider should see.
The early pages were gone, having been torn out and burned in an access of fear, before any self-confidence had come. But all the others were still there, and plan to be read in their spidery script …
“Jun. 8, Went to the meeting-place at eight, dragging the calf from Mores. Counted forty-two of the Deep Ones. Also one other, not of them, which was like an octopus, but was not. Remained there three hours.”
That was the first entry I saw. Thereafter the entries were similar—of trips underground to the water pits, of meetings with the Deep Ones and occasionally other water beings. In September of that year, a catastrophe . .
“Sept. 21, The pits crowded. Learned something terrible had happened at Devil Reef. One of the old fools at Innsmouth gave thing
s away, and the Federal men came with submarines and boats to blast Devil Reef and the waterfront at Innsmouth. The Marsh crowd got away, most of them. Many Deep Ones killed. Depth charges did not reach R’lyeh where He lives dreaming …
“Sept. 22, More reports from Innsmouth. 371 Deep Ones killed. Many taken from Innsmouth, all those who were given away by the Marsh ‘look’. One of them said what was left of the Marsh clan had fled to Ponape. Three of the Deep Ones here tonight from that place; they say they remember how old Captain Marsh came here, and what a compact he made with them, and how he took one of them and married her, and had children who were born of man and the Deep Ones, tainting the whole Marsh clan forever, and how ever since then the Marsh ships fared well, and all their sea enterprises succeeded beyond their wildest dreams; they grew rich and powerful, the wealthiest of all the families at Innsmouth, to which they took their clan to live by day in the houses and by night slipping away to be with the other Deep Ones off the reef. The Marsh houses in Innsmouth were burned. So the Federal men knew. But the Marshes will be back, say the Deep Ones, and will begin again toward that day when the Great Old One below the sea will rise once more.
“Sept. 23, Destruction terrible at Innsmouth.
“Sept. 24, It will be years before the Innsmouth places will be ready again. They will wait till the Marshes come back.”
They might say what they liked about Seth Bishop. No fool, he. This was the record of a self-educated man. All that work at Miskatonic had not been in vain. He alone of all who lived in the Aylesbury region knew what lay hidden in the Atlantic off the coast; none other even suspected… .
This was the direction of my thoughts, the preoccupation of my days at the Bishop house. I thought thusly, I lived so. And by night?
Once darkness had come to the house, I was more keenly aware than ever that something impended. But somehow memory rejects what must have happened. Could it be otherwise? I knew why the furniture had been moved out on the verandah—because the Deep Ones had begun to come back along the passage, had come up into the house.
They were amphibious. They had literally crowded the furniture out and Seth had never taken it back.
Each time I left the house to go any distance, I seemed to see it once again in its proper perspective, which was no longer possible while I occupied it. The attitude of my neighbors was not quite threatening. Not only Bud Perkins came to look at the house, but some of the Bowdens and the Mores, and certain others from Aylesbury. I let them all in, without comment—those who would come. Bud would not, nor would any of the Bowdens. But the others searched in vain for what they expected to find and did not.
And what was it they expected to find? Certainly not the cows, the chickens, the pigs and the sheep they said had been taken. What use would I have for them? I showed them how frugally I lived, and they looked at the paintings. But one and all went away sullenly, shaking their heads, unconvinced.
Could I do more? I knew they shunned and hated me, and kept their distance from the house.
But they disturbed and troubled me, nevertheless. There were mornings when I woke near to noon, and woke exhausted, as if I had not slept at all. Most troubling of all, often I found myself dressed, whereas I knew I had gone to bed undressed, and I found blood spattered on my clothing and covering my hands.
I was afraid to go back into that subterranean passage by day, but I forced myself to do so one day, just the same. I went down with my flashlight, and I examined the floor of that tunnel with care. Wherever the earth was soft, I saw the marks of many feet, passing back and forth. Most of them were human footprints, but there were disquieting others—naked feet with blurred toes, as if they were webbed! I confess I turned the light away from them, shuddering.
What I saw at the edge of the water pits sent me fleeing back along the passage. Something had climbed out of those watery depths—the marks were plain to see and understand, and what had taken place there was not difficult to imagine, for all the evidence scattered there in the mute remains which lay gleaming whitely under the glow of my flashlight!
I knew it could not be long before the neighbors allowed their resentment to boil over. There was no peace capable of achievement in that house, nor, indeed, in the valley. Old hatreds, old enmities persisted, and thrived in that place. I soon lost all sense of time; and existed in another world, literally, for the house in the valley was surely the focal point for entry into another realm of being.
I do not know how long I had been n the house—perhaps six weeks—perhaps two months—when one day the sheriff of the county, accompanied by two of his deputies, came grim-faced to the house with a warrant for my arrest. He explained that he did not wish to use the warrant, but that nevertheless, he wished to question me, and if I did not accompany him and his men willingly, he would have no alternative but to use the warrant, which, he confided, was based on a serious charge, the nature of which seemed to him grossly exaggerated and entirely unmotivated.
I went along willingly enough—all the way to Arkham, in which ancient, gambrel-roofed town I felt strangely at ease and completely unafraid of what was to come. The sheriff was an amiable man who had been driven to this deed, I had not the slightest doubt, by my neighbors. He was almost apologetic, now that I found myself seated opposite him in his office, with a stenographer to take down notes.
He began by wanting to know whether I had been away from the house night before last.
“Not to my knowledge,” I answered.
“You could hardly leave your house and not know it.”
“If I walked in my sleep, I could.”
“Are you in the habit of walking in your sleep?”
“I wasn’t before coming here. Since then, I don’t know.”
He asked seemingly meaningless questions, always skirting the central point of his mission. But this emerged presently. A human being had been seen in charge of a company of some kind of animals, leading the pack to an attack on a herd of cattle in night pasture. All but two of the cattle had been literally torn to pieces. The cattle had belonged to young Sereno More, and it was he who made the charge against me, an act in which he was abetted by Bud Perkins, who was even more insistent than Sereno.
Now that he had put the charge into words, it seemed more ridiculous than ever. He himself apparently felt so, for he became more than ever apologetic. I myself could hardly forebear laughing. What motive could I have for so mad an act? And what “animals” could I have led? I owned none, not even a dog or cat.
Nevertheless, the sheriff was politely persistent. How had I come by the scratches visible on my arms?
I seemed to be aware of them for the first time and gazed at them thoughtfully.
Had I been picking berries?
I had, and said so. But I added also that I could not recall having been scratched.
The sheriff seemed relieved at this. He confided that the scene of the attack on the cattle was bordered on one side by a hedge of blackberry bushes, the coincidence of my bearing scratches was bound to be noticed, and he could not ignore it. Nevertheless, he appeared to be satisfied, and, being satisfied that I was no more than I pretended to be, he became somewhat more loquacious; thus I learned that once before a similar event had occurred, with the charge that time being leveled at Seth Bishop, but, like this, it had come to nothing, the Bishop house had been searched, nothing had been found, and the attack was so baseless and unmotivated that no one could be brought to trial on the suspicions, however dark, of the neighbors.
I assured him that I was perfectly willing that my house be searched, and he grinned at this, and told me in all friendliness that it had been searched from roof to cellar while I was in his company, and once again nothing had been found.
Yet, when I returned to the house in the valley, I was uneasy and troubled. I tried to keep awake and wait upon events, but this was not to be. I fell asleep, not in the bedroom, but in the storeroom, poring over that strange and terrible book in Seth Bishop’s hand.
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That night I dreamed again, for the first time since my initial dream.
And once again, I dreamed of a vast, amorphous being, which rose out of the water pit in the cavern beyond the passage under the house; but this time it was no misty emanation, this time it was horribly, shockingly real, built of flesh that seemed to have been created out of ancient rock, a vast mountain of matter surmounted by a neckless head, from the lower edges of which great tentacles writhed and curled, reaching out to singular lengths; this came rising out of the waters, while all around it flowed the Deep Ones in an ecstasy of adoration and subservience, and once again, as before, the weirdly beautiful music which had accompanied it rose, and a thousand batrachian throats called harshly “Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!” in accents of worship.
And once again came the sound of great footfalls below the house, in the bowels of the earth . .
At this juncture I woke, and to my terror, heard still the subterranean footfalls, and felt the shuddering of the house and the earth in the valley, and heard distantly the incredible music fading away into the depths below the house. In my terror, I ran and burst from the house, running blindly to get away, only to face into still another danger.
Bud Perkins stood there, his rifle aimed at me.
“Where you think you’re goin’?” he demanded.
I stopped running, not knowing what to say. Behind me, the house was silent.
“Nowhere,” I said finally. Then, my curiosity overcoming my dislike of this gaunt neighbor, I asked, “Did you hear anything, Bud?”
“We all been hearin’ it, night after night. Now we’re guardin’ our stock. You might as well know it. We don’t aim to shoot, but if we have to, we’ll do it.”
“It’s not my doing,” I said.
“’Tain’t nobody else’s,” he answered laconically.
The Mask of Cthulhu Page 14