Oddly enough, Carter had his own eyes covered by his trembling hands.
I felt a piercing coldness growing upon my back. I turned and saw the thick shadow increasing behind me, as if the suctioned light took all warmth and hope with it, and a vortex of black despair was rushing upon me.
“Al-Azizi!” I called out, turning to him with what must have been a shameful desperation—the dark pools of his eye sockets swirling with that same darkness as the living opacity gathering behind me. “Please … do reverse the phenomenon!”
Al-Azizi shrugged innocently. “Ah! If you like, Coleridge!”
He once more pinched the instrument, his fingertips pressing with practiced exactitude, and light disgorged from the instruments, spiraling up from the serpent’s mouth; the shadows wavered furiously a moment, like a flight of crows flapping away, and then the light in the room was restored.
Only a curious smell lingered, like stale frankincense mixed with the mineral reek of a deep, watery cavern. My feet seemed clammy in my shoes as if I’d got them wet.
And lingering, too, was that darkness pooling in the Egyptian’s eyes. Then he leaned back a little, and I could see his eyes once more. He smiled thinly. “Mr. Coleridge— are you quite well? You look pale, sir. And I believe you are shivering.”
I made myself straighten up and smile. “That was an impressive … illusion, sir. Something in the way of a magic lantern, perhaps.” I licked my lips and wished I might slip off to my room for a brandy. Gillman keeps none in the drawing room. “How you managed it I am quite unsure.”
“Illusion!” murmured Carter, rubbing his knees with his hands. “Would that it were so.”
Al-Azizi turned a sharp look at Carter, who instantly compressed his lips and said nothing more. I was amazed at Al-Azizi’s authority over him. Who had brought whom here?
I rubbed my hands together to warm them, wishing that we might have some more coal put in the basement furnace. I was about to call for the Bethesda when Al-Azizi picked up the brass-thorned crystal, tapped three of the spines in a distinct pattern, and whispered, “Listen!”
I heard nothing but Carter’s heavy breathing. I leaned a little closer, and then … surely those were voices? They were coming thinly from the crystal. A man’s voice wheedled, “Hullo, Freddie, old boy, how about spotting me a fiver! Here now, cully, I needs it!” Then a little girl said, “If Papa does not come home again tonight, we shall have to steal the cheese crusts from the kitchen rubbish again, and we are not to go into that part of the house with the better people!”
“Good Lord,” I said. “It is like a telescope for sounds! They must be speaking from the street below the hill!”
“They are rather more distant than that,” said Al-Azizi.
Then I heard another voice, this one speaking in a foreign tongue. At first I thought it a language obscure to me, like Mongolian; but after a moment I supposed the chirping, clicking, almost insectile sound might not be a human dialect at all. Yet it seemed to be speaking in something like sentences. It set my teeth on edge, I can tell you, De Quincey.
I was about to ask him to put the instruments away when the door opened and Bethesda came in, carrying the tea tray.
Al-Azizi put the instruments back into the bag, his motions quick and neat, and closed it with a snap. His voice was a steely monotone as he said, “I was given to understand we would not be interrupted.”
“I’m sure it will be but the interruption of a moment!” Carter assured him.
Bethesda O’Neill was, perhaps is, a full bosomed woman of thirty and four, with frowsy brown hair, a pert nose, thick ankles, and powerful arms; she wore a white servant’s bonnet, a black dress, and a white apron, and she bustled into the room in her prim, officious fashion, carrying a tray to the small tea table behind my chair. “Lor’, but there’s a chill on this room. Will the gentlemen take tea here, sir?”
“That will do very well, Beth,” I said.” Will you see to the furnace? I will pour the tea.”
“The furnace? Why, it has been burning coal by the ton all this day, sir. Are your registers not open? But they are! I shall have a look.”
She turned to go—and stopped dead, staring at Al-Azizi. I supposed at first she was affrighted of this swarthy foreigner. But she had the look of a rabbit enrapt by the eyes of a snake. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but said nothing, merely worrying at her apron with her fingers.
“Beth? This is Mr. Al-Azizi, my guest.”
“We met at the door,” Al-Azizi said smoothly. “Beth … yes. Bethesda. She escorted us within.”
“Yes. But was it him … ?” Beth breathed, as if speaking only to herself. “Was it this one then?”
Al-Azizi continued to look at her. Then he waved his hand dismissively, and she hurried, almost running, out of the room. She slammed the door in going.
I was puzzled. Al-Azizi had alarmed her overmuch, considering their harmless encounter—she had not seen the trick with the swirling light.
However, I myself had reason to be alarmed. I was thinking to myself that perhaps, after all, I should not like him to be my patron; that I would like him to take his leave. But I did not seem to have the inner strength to demand his departure. It was not fear of coarseness that held me back; it was something else I can only describe as a failure of my will.
“I could use some tea,” I said, my own voice sounding hoarse in my ears. Somehow I knew that Al-Azizi would not choose to sit at the tea table. I know not how this knowledge came to me.
I went to the table and poured a cup, returned, and offered it first to Al-Azizi. He merely shook his head, gazing up at me. I avoided his eyes. I offered it to Carter. He took the cup gratefully.
“Something stronger would not go amiss, as well,” Carter said.
“No,” said Al-Azizi, his voice calm but firm.
“No, quite right, too early,” said Carter hurriedly, sipping the tea.
I buttered Carter two biscuits, put them on a plate, and set it on the lamp table, but he ignored them.
I sat with a couple of biscuits and my tea, and had hardly begun when Al-Azizi said, “You have a stair that leads to the roof.”
It was not a question.
“Yes,” I said. “Dr. Gillman has an interest in meteorology.”
“Let us repair to the roof. I have something to shew you—the very thing I came to lay before you.”
I put my cup carefully upon its saucer. “You have shewn me a great deal, sir, quite a sufficiency for one afternoon. I do not wish to presume upon your generosity.”
Then—I cannot recall, precisely, De Quincey, how it came to be that we removed from the drawing room to the roof.
I have a dim memory of walking out the back door, with Al-Azizi ahead and Carter behind, and the creaking of the spiralling iron staircase under my foot as we ascended three storeys from the garden to the step between the gables, onto the copper rooftop terrace, a wide flat place between sloping pantiles where the doctor makes his observations.
My next clear recollection is of holding the twisted-wire spectacles. Al-Azizi was standing before me, with the crocodilian bag gaping open in his bony hands. It was a chill, windless afternoon, the indefinite fog a kind of ever-changing lacework around us. The cups of the weather indicator above us did not turn at all.
“But only put them on,” Al-Azizi said, “and the veil you wear all unknowing will be at last lifted; the blindfold will be tugged away from your eyes. You will see the stars.”
“First, sir,” I said, looking around as if I’d awakened here, “allow me to observe that it is not yet nighttime. The day is a trifle befogged and, though the dusk arrives, no stars are visible. And second, sir, seeing stars is in itself unremarkable. True, they may be seen more vividly with a telescope—yet that is often done …”
“I could shew you stars as you have never seen them,” said Al-Azizi smugly; “but to be perfectly clear, I plan to reveal a planetary object largely unknown to astronomers. If they see it, up
on occasion, it appears as star-like from Earth, just as Mars seems a star until gazed upon with a telescope. But you will see this Outer World more vividly than any man ever saw Mars—if you so choose! Of your own free will, place the instrument over your eyes—and thus remove the veil. Lift the blindfolds that perpetually dim your sight, Coleridge!”
It was partly curiosity, De Quincey, that led to my acquiescence. And I suspected he had beguiled me with illusions. As there were no lenses in the spectacles, I thus reasoned that in all probability their effect was to be sheer power of suggestion, mayhap enhanced by mesmerism. A suspicion had been growing upon me that the evident miracle I had perceived in the drawing room was the result of some form of hypnotism, combined with optical illusion. I thought my will strong—bending only to laudanum. Now forewarned, I intended to confront him with his own charlatanry.
I boldly secured the instrument over my eyes, just as a man slips on a pair of spectacles. I saw nothing but what I had seen before, truncated by the frames.
“Now, sir,” said Al-Azizi, “we shall make all dark so that the stars present themselves.”
I feared the coiling instrument and was about to object, but he quickly placed it upon the ground, activating it as he did so, and the light of the late afternoon began to thicken and spiral above us, compressing, leaving shadow as it declined.
In a moment, darkness had collected thickly above us, and the light of the day was pushed rudely aside. Gazing upward, I saw the stars shining within a circle of darkness directly overhead; it was as if they were seen from deep down a pit, a shaft plumbed into the Earth, much as I had imagined on Aetna.
The celestial array glittered with more presence of that unique starry blue-white than I had ever beheld before. But apart from that striking fulsomeness, they seemed as usual—a miracle of nature, no more.
Then Al-Azizi reached up and touched the spectacles with a forefinger, near my left temple.
Sparks flew, and arcs of electricity flashed across my vision, close to my eyes. Fearing to be blinded, I cried out and would have taken them off—but I also feared to touch them. Yet they were touching me …
Electricity flashed across the empty spaces over my eyes, as if its blue and yellow coursing had become the energetic lenses of the spectacles.
Then it cleared—and the veil was lifted.
A star thrust itself at me, as if hurtling meteorically toward us. It advanced with such malevolent determination that I wanted to throw myself aside—but suddenly it stopped partway, and simply whirled in place. The shining planetoid—for so it was, churning with glowing gases—was so bright I could scarcely bear the sight.
The planet’s whirling slowed, then ceased, and a black spot appeared on its face. This spot swelled and grew, consuming most of the shining planetoid, until all that was left was a kind of corona, and then something that cannot be described as a shape appeared within the coruscating circle. The apparition was a writhing thought made visual—a thought of annihilation, a thought of conscious mockery of all faith, a derision of all order; yet it had something of organism at its very centre. It reached out … And a horrible fascination took hold of me. I was shaking with fear, and yet I wanted to know…
“Behold Azathoth,” Al-Azzizi intoned. “Behold he who awaits when I have done with you, Coleridge! With your own free will have you gazed upon this majesty. Now—”
“No!” someone shouted.
It was Carter. A moment later I felt his spongy, pudgy hand slap my face—and the spectacles were knocked away.
Freed from the vision, if that is what it was, I was dizzy, nauseated, and my head throbbed. I saw that someone, probably Carter, had kicked over the serpentine instrument as well, and the dull late afternoon light was assaultive to my burning eyes in that moment.
Blinking, I turned, and saw that Al-Azizi, the crocodilian bag clutched in his hands, was stalking angrily toward Renwald Carter, who was backing away step by hesitant step toward the edge of the roof. He was about to pitch over backwards, off the roof to his death.
“You, sir! Al-Azizi!” I roared, putting all my will and volume into it. “Stop!”
Al-Azizi turned toward me, his face an icy mask of fury.
As if released from some unseen hold, Carter blinked and looked around, then turned and rushed to the stairs, clattering down them toward the garden. “I’m sorry, Coleridge!” he shouted as he went. “I’m sorry!”
Al-Azizi walked toward me—and seemed to come to some kind of decision. A most unpleasant smile appeared under his mustache. “Better to have one so choice as you, Coleridge, at a time of my own choosing. I have learned much about you today. Next time you will have no recourse. I will send my messenger to fetch you from your body. It matters not where you go. Verily, I can count on you to come to me. You hovered close to me many times, in years past, in what you supposed were dreams …”
Keeping his eyes upon me, he opened the crocodilian bag. I heard a hissing sound, and then he closed the bag and turned away. In a moment he had gone to the spiral stairs and descended them with no sound at all.
I looked at the rooftop. The Egyptian’s instruments were gone. I have no doubt he had somehow gathered them into his bag.
My knees gave way, and I sank down to the cold metal roof. I found I was panting and close to weeping, trying to take it all in. The thing I had seen coming at me from the planetoid… another illusion?
But De Quincey, it was no illusion. You cannot look upon that entity and not recognize the dreadful thing for what it is.
I wish I had looked away. Carter saved me, in a moment of conscience—which can sometimes set a man free. I wonder what price he has paid for knocking those spectacles aside.
I wish I could say I removed those spectacles myself, De Quincey. I could not have done so, I fear, to my shame. Scientific knowledge is good; but I was nigh surrendering to a predatory alien mind, to an embrace of all chaos and a lust for entropy itself—and that, my old, disaffected friend, has not scientific objectivity. It is an insight of metaphysics alone.
Suddenly, kneeling there, I realized that I owed Carter a great debt. I forced myself to my feet and tottered to the stairs, hoping to find him, to draw him away from Al-Azizi. To pay the debt in kind.
I went with difficulty down the slippery iron stairs and stumbled through the garden. I saw that the garden gate was open to the lane.
I rushed to it, and through—and to my horror I saw not only Carter, trailing after Al-Azizi, but also Bethesda! The housekeeper was walking along without coat, or handbag, quite methodically following along after the Egyptian.
“Bethesda!” I shouted. “Come back!”
She did not respond, not a twitch.
“Carter!” I shouted. “Wait!”
Carter looked back—imploringly. He desperately wanted to come away from Al-Azizi. But he was drawn inexorably away. They were striding up into the fog, becoming less and less real with each step as the haze, coal smoke perfectly wedded with mist, strove to erase them.
My hands were cold, and so was my heart. But I gathered my courage and started after them. I took a score of steps, beginning to run—then saw a coach waiting for them, just under the gas lamp.
“Stop!” I called, as loudly as I might. “Bring her back, both of you—come back! Coachman, hold!” I stumbled on, almost falling on the slick cobbles.
I arrived in time to see the coach clatter away, taking Al-Azizi, Carter, and Bethesda with it.
I stood there for a minute, perhaps two, dazed and uncertain. At last I walked slowly back to the house.
Soon after Dr. Gillman came home for dinner, I tried to tell him what had happened; but he thought me addled by a delirium tremens, by delusion due to insufficiency of my habitual dose—for he was late in providing it. Wearily, he unlocked the medical cabinet and poured me twice my usual dosage. As for Bethesda, he supposed she had merely taken up with another “ruffian,” as he put it. She had a weakness for sailors.
I thought to expla
in all to him on the morrow, as he was greatly fatigued and I could not fathom a means to convince him. I bowed, and went to my room with my double dose.
There I sank into a chair and looked dully around at the books covering every wall, their titles unreadable in the dim light of the lamp as if they were cryptic volumes seen in a dream. Before me on my little rosewood writing table lay pen, ink, and paper. I purposed then to write down the events of the day.
I reached for the laudanum before the pen and ink— and found I was reluctant to take the dose. As you know, De Quincey, this reluctance is an untoward turn of events with STC.
Why should I be afraid of something so familiar—so comforting?
The smell of the opiated brandy at last drew me to taking a sip, and then another. Soon it was all down. The increased dose induced me to nod in my chair.
A waking dream settled upon me. I saw a man sleeping in his bed—a man I knew. Then, standing beside the man, I looked through the dusty window and beheld the stars.
One of the celestial orbs rushed toward the window— and a spot appeared on the sphere. But this time the spot became a great black bird that soared toward me, its enormous wings ever so slowly flapping, each flap making the sound of a cracking whip. The messenger! It had not a beak—it had the mouth of a man. It spake!
Nyarlathotep, it said. He calls you, Coleridge. Come! And the bird spake again, quite clearly. Nyarlathotep. He calls you.
The giant bird, like a roc with a grin, rushed toward me—I struggled away from it, crying, “No!”
The vision suddenly flew asunder.
I sat up, sweating, and shook off the remnants of the dream. But it tried to reassert itself. Again—the bird was diving at me, coalescing from the shadows of the room.
I threw off the bedclothes, ran to the window, flung the sash wide, and breathed in great draughts of cold air. I refused to close the window till the vision had passed.
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