Acolytes of Cthulhu

by Robert M. Price

  He held it forward, open. The pages showed dull and blank.

  “They’re written in letters of cold fire,” reminded Thunstone. “Letters that show only in the dark.”

  “Shall we make it dark, then?”

  Thorne switched off the lamp.

  Thunstone, who had not stirred from his lounging stance at the door, was aware at once that the room was most completely sealed. Blackness was absolute in it. He could not even judge of dimension or direction. Thorne spoke again, from the midst of the choking gloom:

  “Clever of you, staying beside the door. Do you want to try to leave?”

  “It’s no good running away from evil,” Thunstone replied. “I didn’t come to run away again.”

  “But try to open the door,” Thorne almost begged, and Thunstone put out his hand to find the knob. There was no knob, and no door. Of a sudden, Thunstone was aware that he was not leaning against a doorjamb any more. There was no doorjamb, or other solidity, against which to lean.

  “Don’t you wish you knew where you were?” jeered Thorne. “I’m the only one who knows, for it’s written here on the page for me to see—in letters of cold fire.”

  Thunstone took a stealthy step in the direction of the voice. When Thorne spoke again, he had evidently fallen back out of reach.

  “Shall I describe the place for you, Thunstone? It’s in the open somewhere. A faint breeze blows,” and as he spoke, Thunstone felt the breeze, warm and feeble and foul as the breath of some disgusting little animal. “And around us are bushes and trees. They’re part of a thick growth, but just here they are sparse. Because, not more than a dozen steps away, is open country. I’ve brought you to the borderland of a most interesting place, Thunstone, merely by speaking of it.”

  Thunstone took another step. His feet were on loose earth, not on carpet. A pebble turned and rattled under his shoe-sole.

  “You’re where you always wanted to be,” he called to Thorne. “Where by saying a thing, you can make it so. But many things will need to be said before life suits you.” He tried a third step, silently this time. “Who will believe?”

  “Everybody will believe.” Thorne was almost airy. “Once a fact is demonstrated, it is no longer wonderful. Hypnotism was called magic in its time, and became accepted science. So it is being achieved with thought transference, by experimentation at Duke University and on radio programs in New York. So it will be when I tell of my writings, very full and very clear—but haven’t we been too long in utter darkness?”

  On the instant, Thunstone could see a little. Afterwards he tried to decide what color that light, or mock-light, actually was. Perhaps it was a lizardy green, but he was never sure. It revealed, ever so faintly, the leafless stunted growths about him, the bare dry-seeming ground from which they sprang, the clearing beyond them. He could not be sure of horizon or sky.

  Something moved, not far off. Thorne, by the silhouette. Thunstone saw the flash of Thorne’s eyes, as though they gave their own light.

  “This country,” Thorne said, “may be one of several places. Another dimension—do you believe in more dimensions than these? Or a spirit world of some kind. Or another age of the world we know. I brought you here, Thunstone, without acting or even speaking—only by reading in my book.”

  Thunstone carefully slid a hand inside his pocket. His forefinger touched something smooth, heavy, rectangular. He knew what it was—a lighter, given him on an occasion of happy gratitude by Sharon, the Countess Monteseco.

  “Cold fire,” Thorne was saying. “These letters and words are of a language known only in the Deep School—but the sight of them is enough to convey knowledge. Enough, also, to create and direct. This land is spacious enough, don’t you think, to support other living creatures than ourselves?”

  Thunstone made out blots of black gloom in the green gloom of the clearing. Immense, gross blots, that moved slowly but knowingly toward the bushes. And somewhere behind him a great massive bulk made a dry crashing in the strange shrubbery.

  “Are such things hungry?” mused Thorne. “They will be, if I make them so by a thought. Thunstone, I think I’ve done enough to occupy you. Now I’m ready to leave you here, also by a thought—taking with me the book with letters of cold fire. You can’t have that cold fire—”

  “I have warm fire,” said Thunstone, and threw himself.

  It was a powerful lunge, unthinkably swift. Thunstone is, among other things, a trained athlete. His big body crashed against Thorne’s, and the two of them grappled and went sprawling among the brittle twigs of one of the bushes. As Thorne fell, undermost, he flung up the hand that held the book, as if to put it out of Thunstone’s reach. But Thunstone’s hand shot out, too, and it held something—the lighter. A flick of his thumb, and flame sprang out, warm orange flame in a sudden spurting tongue that for a moment licked into the coarse shaggy hair of the untanned hide that bound the book.

  Thorne howled, and dropped the thing. A moment later, he pulled loose and jumped up. Thunstone was up, too, moving to block Thorne off from the book. Flame grew and flurried behind him, into a paler light, as if burning something fat and rotten.

  “It’ll be ruined!” cried Thorne, and hurled himself low, like a blocker on the football field. An old footballer himself, Thunstone crouched, letting his hard knee-joint come in contact with Thorne’s incharging bald skull. With a grunt, Thorne fell flat, rolled over and came erect again.

  “Put out that fire, Thunstone!” he bawled. “You may destroy us both!”

  “I’ll chance that,” Thunstone muttered, moving again to fence him off from the burning book.

  Thorne returned to the struggle. One big hand made a talon of itself, snatching at Thunstone’s face. Thunstone ducked beneath the hand, jammed his own shoulder up under the pit of the lifted arm, and heaved. Thorne staggered back, stumbled. He fell, and came to his hands and knees, waiting. His face, upturned to Thunstone, was like a mask of horror carved to terrorize the worshipers in some temple of demons.

  It was plain to see that face, for the fire of the book blazed up with a last ardent leap of radiance. Then it died. Thunstone, taking time to glance, saw only glowing charred fragments of leaves, and ground them with a quick thrust of his heel.

  Darkness again, without even the green mock-light. Thunstone felt no breeze, heard no noise of swaying bushes or stealthy, ponderous shape-movement—he could not even hear Thorne’s breathing.

  He took a step sidewise, groping. His hand found a desk-edge, then the standard of a small lamp. He found a switch and pressed it.

  Again he was in Thorne’s hotel room, and Thorne was groggily rising to his feet.

  When Thorne had cleared his head by shaking it, Thunstone had taken a sheaf of papers from the desk and was glancing quickly through them.

  “Suppose,” he said, gently but loftily, “that we call the whole thing a little trick of imagination.”

  “If you call it that, you will be lying,” Thorne said between set teeth on which blood was smeared.

  “A lie told in a good cause is the whitest of lies… this writing would be a document of interest if it would convince.”

  “The book,” muttered Thorne. “The book would convince. I whisked you to a land beyond imagination, with only a grain of the power that book held.”

  “What book?” inquired Thunstone. He looked around. “There’s no book.”

  “You set it afire. It burned, in that place where we fought—its ashes remain, while we come back here because its power is gone.”

  Thunstone glanced down at the papers he had picked up. “Why talk of burning things? I wouldn’t burn this set of notes for anything. It will attract other attentions than mine.”

  His eyes rose to fix Thorne’s. “Well, you fought me again, Thorne. And I turned you back.”

  “He who fights and runs away—” Rowley Thorne found the strength to laugh. “You know the rest, Thunstone. You have to let me run away this time, and at our next fight I’ll know better
how to deal with you.”

  “You shan’t run away,” said Thunstone. He put a cigarette in his mouth and kindled it with the lighter he still held in his hand.

  Thorne hooked his heavy thumbs in his vest. “You’ll stop me? I think not. Because we’re back in conventional lands, Thunstone.

  “If you lay hands on me again, it’ll be a fight to the death. We’re both big and strong. You might kill me, but I’d see that you did. Then you’d be punished for murder. Perhaps executed.” Thorne’s pale, pointed tongue licked his hard lips. “Nobody would believe you if you tried to explain.”

  “No, nobody would believe,” agreed Thunstone gently. “That’s why I’m leaving you to do the explaining.”

  “I!” cried Thorne, and laughed again. “Explain what? To whom?”

  “On the way here,” said Thunstone, “I made a plan. In the lobby downstairs, I telephoned for someone to follow me—no, not the police. A doctor. This will be the doctor now.”

  A slim, gray-eyed man was coming in. Behind him moved two blocky, watchful attendants in white jackets. Silently Thunstone handed the doctor the papers that he had taken from the desk.

  The doctor looked at the first page, then the second. His gray eyes brightened with professional interest. Finally he approached Thorne.

  “Are you the gentleman Mr. Thunstone asked me to see?” he inquired. “You—yes, you look rather weary and overwrought. Perhaps a rest, with nothing to bother you—”

  Thorne’s face writhed. “You! You dare to suggest!” He made a threatening gesture, but subsided as the two white-coated men moved toward him from either side. “You’re insolent,” he went on, more quietly. “I’m no more crazy than you are.”

  “Of course not,” agreed the doctor. He looked at the notes again, grunted, folded the sheets and stowed them carefully in an inside pocket. Thunstone gave a little nod of general farewell, took his hat from the bed, and strolled carelessly out.

  “Of course, you’re not crazy,” said the doctor again. “Only—tired. Now, if you’ll answer a question or two—”

  “What questions?” blazed Thorne.

  “Well, is it true that you believe you can summon spirits and work miracles, merely by exerting your mind?”

  Thorne’s wrath exploded, hysterically. “You’d soon see what I could do if I had that book!”

  “What book?”

  Thunstone destroyed it—burned it—”

  “Oh, please!” begged the doctor good-naturedly. “You’re talking about John Thunstone, you know! There isn’t any book, there never was a book. You need a rest, I tell you. Come along.”

  Thorne howled like a beast and clutched at his tormentor. The doctor moved smoothly out of reach.

  “Bring him to the car,” said the doctor to the two men in white coats. At once they slid in to close quarters, each clutching one of Thorne’s arms. He snarled and struggled, but the men, with practiced skill, clamped and twisted his wrists. Subdued, he walked out between them because he must.

  * * *

  Thunstone and the Countess Monteseco were having cocktails at their favorite rear table in a Forty-seventh Street restaurant. They were known and liked there, and not even a waiter would disturb them unless signaled for.

  “Tell me,” said the countess, “what sort of fantastic danger were you tackling last night?”

  “I was in no danger,” John Thunstone smiled.

  “But I know you were. I went to the concert, and then the reception, but all the time I had the most overpowering sense of your struggle and peril. I was wearing the cross you gave me, and I held it in my hand and prayed for you—prayed hour after hour—”

  “That,” said Thunstone, “was why I was in no danger.”

  HORROR AT VECRA

  BY HENRY HASSE

  …an ancient evil that will not die,

  but draws men, soul and brain,

  The pale stars peering fearfully down

  remember whence it came.

  The very darkness where They wait

  doth shudder at the Name…

  —Monstres and Their Kynde

  NOW, AFTER TWELVE YEARS, VAGUE REPORTS ARE ISSUING again from the vicinity of Vecra. As yet they are little more than rumors, but they have served to awaken the remote horror in my brain—horror, for I now realize I must have failed, a dozen years ago, when I stood there on that brink of madness for a few hell-filled seconds.

  I used dynamite then—enough of it, I thought—and believed that was the end. Now I can only wonder if this is the same evil, or some spawn of it that will never die. Perhaps even now it is not too late. I have kept silence, but now I shall tell my story and if I cannot then enlist aid, I will myself… But lest I become too incoherent, I had best begin on that day a dozen years ago.

  Bruce Tarleton and I were returned to Boston from a two-week camping trip. Bruce was driving, and before very long I began to suspect that he had taken the wrong fork back at North Eaton; though he maintained a stolid silence as the dirt road became gradually narrower and ruttier. I had a disquieting feeling that it was luring us on and on into this strange New England back-country.

  Our way twisted through gloomy stretches of forest where limbs hung low over the road—they seemed strangely gnarled and misshapen. Queer patches of colorless vegetation pressed in upon us. We crossed narrow wooden bridges whose loose planks rumbled beneath us as the car rolled slowly over them. We dipped into shallow valleys where the evening sunshine seemed oddly depressing and not as bright as it should be.

  For the most part these valleys seemed barren and rock-strewn, but after a while we came upon occasional poorly tilled fields and square, ungainly, unpainted farmhouses. These were set upon slopes far back from the road, reminding me of nothing so much as dead things sprawled there in that unhealthy sunshine.

  Neither of us had spoken much since leaving North Eaton, but I somehow got the impression that Bruce was secretly enjoying all this. At last we rumbled across a rickety wooden bridge, followed the turn of the road to the right, and with startling suddenness found ourselves in a little village. My first impression was one of surprise that it should be there at all; then, without exactly knowing why, I knew that I loathed the place.

  “I guess this is Vecra,” Bruce said, almost to himself.

  “How do you know that?”

  He turned and looked at me queerly. “Huh? Why, the sign—at the other end of the bridge back there. Didn’t you see it?”

  I looked at him suspiciously. No, I hadn’t seen it; and I thought that was strange, because for the last twenty miles I had been watching for some such sign of a town. But I didn’t say anything—instead, I looked about me. Vecra had evidently been at one time a more prosperous town than present indications showed. A score of frame houses lined each side of the road that was the main street; but now most of them were desolate, empty and weather-beaten, long since fallen into a state of sad decay. Only in a scattered few did we see pitiful enough signs of habitation, as oil lamps gleamed meagerly in the approaching dusk. Those lamps seemed no more meager than our own gloomy situation. Apparently the only way out of this forsaken country was back along the road we had traveled, and the prospect of retracing that route at night did not appeal to me!

  We stopped at what appeared to be the general store, to inquire where we might stay overnight. A small, bent, leathery old man shuffled toward us as we entered. I took an immediate dislike to him. Maybe it was his suspicious black eyes that peered from beneath a tangle of dirty white hair. Maybe it was his quaint old dialect, and the way he seemed to be secretly enjoying something at our expense.

  “Lost yur way, hev ye, young fellers? I seed ye drive up out there, an’ I reckoned as haow that war the case; ain’t many outside uns has call ter come thissaway, ceptin’ them as takes the wrong rud back at Naorth Eaton.” He peered closer at us and chuckled. “Them as does, alius comes cleer on ter Vecra, acause thur ain’t no other way they kin come.” I glanced nervously at Bruce, but saw tha
t he was listening with intense interest to the old man’s archaic speech. After another evil chuckle, he went on:

  “Naow, as I war sayin’, folks as gits up ter Vecra in daylight most alius goes back to Naorth Eaton. An’ them as gets up here by dark… they be mostly skeered ter travel back afore mornin’.” He leered at us with yellowish, bloodshot eyes. “Which be ye?”

  “I guess we’ll stay over for the night,” I said hurriedly, “if there’s someone who will be kind enough…”

  “Yep! Reckon Eb Corey kin fix ye up fer the night. His place be easy ter find—the big haouse daown’t end o’ the rud. Tell Eb thet Lyle Wilson sent ye.”

  As we went out the door I looked back and saw the old man still leering at us. Although I couldn’t hear him, I imagined he was chuckling evilly again.

  “I don’t like him,” I said to Bruce.

  Bruce chuckled, and it didn’t sound much better than the old man’s. “I do. He’s certainly a queer old bird. I think I’ll come down here tomorrow and have a longer talk with him.”

  * * *

  We found the Corey place without any trouble. Eb Corey, a tall, gaunt, slow-speaking man, received us stolidly. However, I imagined his wife was vaguely perturbed. There was something tragic about her, especially in her eyes, as though she had been haunted a long time ago and had never quite forgotten. She served us a plain but substantial meal, and we ate appreciatively. The room was large and appeared to me as definitely nineteenth century, including the smell; it was lighted by only two or three oil lamps, and shadows clung to the far corners. The room seemed full of dozens of children of all sizes, though we learned later there were only five. As their mother sent them upstairs to bed, they peered back at us curiously through the stair banister.

  “Many outsiders up this way?” Bruce asked at last, when we had finished the meal.

  “Last was a few months ago,” Corey replied. He seemed reluctant to talk.