Acolytes of Cthulhu

by Robert M. Price

Bruce lit his pipe and blew a wreath of smoke at the ceiling. His next words were so abrupt and inventive they startled even me.

  “I hear you’ve got some mighty queer land hereabouts. I’m a government soil inspector—sent up from Boston.” I gaped at the lie, knowing he was nothing of the kind; but he sent me a silencing look.

  About land, especially about his land, and most particularly about what was wrong with his land, Eb Corey was more than willing to talk. For an hour or more they talked, while I smoked cigarettes in silence and listened amazedly to the technical knowledge of soil that Bruce displayed. He was a professor of languages at Boston College, a far cry from an expert in soil conditions; but then, I had learned always to expect the unexpected from Bruce Tarleton.

  Before retiring, we went out to move the car. We came back in time to hear Mrs. Corey remonstrating with her husband; it seemed to have something to do with our sleeping quarters. Corey was shaking his head stubbornly, and Mrs. Corey retired from the argument as we entered.

  “It’s that room in the back wing upstairs,” Eb explained as he led the way up the worn wooden stairs, lamp in hand. “There’s been some tale about it for more’n fifty years—Martha’s made me keep it locked lately. My grandfather built this place, added the wing later.”

  “Not haunted, is it?” Bruce asked with a show of jocularity. I noticed the falseness of his tone, the suppressed excitement, but Eb Corey did not.

  “Naw!” he said. “The story’s got something to do with a funny kind of dream people sometimes have when they sleep in that room; I don’t know what it is. Martha says she does, but she won’t talk about it. I slept in there a couple of times, but I never had any dream.”

  “That’s all right,” Bruce said. “I don’t dream either.”

  “I knew a scientific man like you wouldn’t put up with such stock. There’s only a small cot in there that one of you can use—and then there’s another small room across the hall. Sorry I can’t offer you better.”

  I looked about me dubiously as we passed along a narrow hall toward the rear of the old house. The lamplight made a pale, moving pattern on the papered walls that were worn smooth and brown from the contact of generations. I stopped at my door, and Bruce went along to his, which directly faced the length of the hall. Eb unlocked that door and said, “I’ll be out in the south field tomorrow, Mr. Tarleton; hope you’ll come out and take a look at the soil.”

  I saw Bruce nod, and I waited until Eb Corey made his way expertly back downstairs in the dark. Then I quickly crossed the hall to where Bruce stood with the lamp in his hand. “I don’t like this at all,” I began. “What’s this business about you being…”

  “Come on in here, and I’ll tell you.”

  Everywhere in this house I had been aware of that dank, age-old, peculiar odor. I might almost call it a yellow odor. I had smelled it in other old houses. But the moment we entered this upstairs room it seemed magnified, became almost tangible. The place seemed half bedroom and half store room. One side was piled haphazardly with trunks, boxes, broken tables and chairs. Bruce held the lamp high, looked around, and grinned most delightedly.

  Already he had espied a tall, clumsy bookcase in the far corner. He strode over to it, and examined the faded tomes. Quickly he pulled one out, then another, and another. I groaned. I might have known this. Bruce had had this detour planned all the time; he had come up here deliberately. I sat down on a rickety chair and watched him. Finally I said, “All right, what is it this time? And don’t give me any more of that Necronomicon stuff, for I know that’s a myth.” Bruce was an authority on certain terrible lores and forbidden books dealing with such lores, and he had told me things from a certain Necronomicon that literally made my flesh crawl.

  “What?” he said in answer to my question. “Why look at these! Not Necronomicons, but most interesting!” He thrust a couple of worn, leather-bound volumes into my hands. I glanced at the titles. One was Horride Mysteries by the Marquis of Grosse; the other, Nemedian Chronicles. I looked up at Bruce, and saw that he was genuinely excited.

  “Do you mean to say,” I said, “that you really didn’t expect to find these?”

  “Of course not! I’ll admit I came up here deliberately because I’ve heard certain rumors…”

  “Something to do with a dream?”

  “No, nothing to do with a dream. And I’m as surprised as you are to see these books. These two I’ve seen before in expurgated editions. But this I’ve never seen before, although I’ve heard vaguely of it.” He looked fondly at a third book he held, and I could see that his eyes were aglow with a sort of wild anticipation.

  I reached for the tome, and he relinquished it almost reluctantly. It was huge, heavy, and the pages were brittle and brown. There was no title on the spine or cover, but on the first page I read in a delicate, faded script: M-O-N-S-T-R-E-S A-N-D T-H-E-I-R K-Y-N-D-E. Each word was in script capital letters, free of each other. No author was mentioned. I placed the book on my knees and saw that the edges of the leather binding were well worn, frayed in places. As I turned a few pages at random, a powdery brown dust blew out and lodged in my nose. I sneezed.

  “Hey, be careful how you handle that!” Bruce took the volume back solicitously as a mother with her child. I took one more look around the room, sniffed the air distastefully, and said, “I’m getting sleepy. Good night.”

  I don’t think he even heard me. When I left him there, to cross the hall into my own room, he was sitting hunched over the table by the oil lamp, opening Monstres and Their Kynde tenderly, peering down into it.

  The next morning I was downstairs early only to be informed by Mrs. Corey that Bruce had preceded me. He had eaten hastily and said he was going down the road to see Lyle Wilson. She pronounced the name distastefully, and I could see that she didn’t like the old man. I didn’t blame her.

  I waived breakfast, my only concern being to get out of this morbid town as soon as possible. I was doomed to disappointment, however. Upon reaching Lyle Wilson’s store, I saw that Bruce and the old man had been talking in what appeared to be a mutual earnestness, if not eagerness. I came up in time to hear the latter say:

  “I’m sartinly glad yew intend ter stick araound a mite. Ain’t many outside uns hankers ter do thet. I’ve heerd more nor one o’ ’em calc’late as haow the sunshine, an’ the land, an’ all araound here be sorta unhealthy like…” He stopped a moment when I came up; then went on with renewed eagerness, as if he didn’t often have such an audience. “An’ leave me tell ye suthin’, young sirs—they may be right. Thur be sartin things I could tell abaout the cause o’ it, tew—things sech as ye’d never b’lieve. But mark ye this: they be more in this waorld nor meets the eye, an’ they be other things asides them as walks on top th’ graund…” He looked from one to the other of us, grinning, and I moved back a pace to avoid his obnoxious breath.

  But Bruce, to my surprise, said, “You mean things such as…” And he pronounced a word that I wouldn’t even attempt. Lyle Wilson’s eyes popped out in amazement. He looked at Bruce with a sudden startled suspicion.

  “I read about it,” Bruce hurried to explain, “in a book called Monstres and Their Kynde.” He regarded the old man carefully, to see the effect his words would have.

  The effect was one of relief. “Oh, thet book. It aren’t much. Belonged to old Hans Zickler—Eb Corey’s grandfather—he thet built the haouse. But d’ye know, I got a better book than thet…” He chuckled in a way that sent a cold chill up my spine. He paused and peered at Bruce as though waiting for him to exhibit some curiosity, but Bruce wisely did not.

  “I’ll tell ye anyway. I got old Zick’s diary! Eb Corey, he used ter hev it, but real suddint one day he told me as he war goin’ ter burn it. I reckon as haow he had been readin’ inter it. I asked Eb fer it, an’ I guess he war more’n glad ter give me it as payment fer some things he war owin’. Said he didn’t keer what become o’ it, ceptin’ as he wouldn’t have it in his haouse no longer.”

>   Now I could see Bruce’s curiosity surge up, and his voice bordered almost on excitement. “You say you still have this diary?”

  “Yep. Reckon I be the only person thet’s ever seed inter it, ceptin’ Eb Corey hisself, and I dun’t think he read much o’ it. He thought ’twar only the old man’s crazy ravin’s.” Wilson’s voice became confidential. “D’ye know, I’m kinda glad you fellers dropped by. Folk here-abaout wun’t lissen ter me. Acause they be scairt to, thet’s what; they be scairt o’ what I could tell ’em abaout ol’ Zickler an’—an’ sartin things I seed ’im do. Things thet—thet warn’t jest right. But sometimes when I gets ter ponderin’, an’ rememb’rin’, an’ readin’ in the diary agin, thur comes a kinda hankerin’ like; an’ I wanta try, so’s I kin know them things too, like ol’ Zick did. An’ sometimes the hankerin’ gits too strong like…”

  He stopped suddenly, as though afraid he would go too far, and a wild light died slowly out of his eyes.

  “O’ course,” he went on more calmly, “I war jest a young un then, when I spied on ol’ Zick, but I remembers right enough. An’ even ef the land dew be gittin’ better every year, an’ things araound here ain’t so bad as they used ter be, they’s still suthin’ abaout an’ active oncet in a while. Look’t the young Munroe boy, he as they claim wandered off an’ fell daown in the ravine. But I knows a heap better. Ef he fell daown the ravine whyn’t they ever find the body?” He moved his stool closer to Bruce, leered at him and repeated almost defiantly: “Eh? Whyn’t they ever find the body?” The old man chuckled delightedly at the sensation he had made.

  I was becoming considerably annoyed at all this crazy gibberish. I told Bruce I was going back to the house. He nodded absently. As I left, he hunched forward, listening intently as Lyle Wilson started on another wild trend.

  At noon Bruce showed up for lunch, seemingly preoccupied and puzzled about something. I wondered what further stories he had succeeded in getting out of Lyle Wilson. I suddenly remembered, too, something I had intended to ask Bruce, but had forgotten. So, half facetiously, I asked: “Well, did you dream last night?”

  Eb Corey, who had come in from the fields, looked at me curiously but not angrily. Mrs. Corey, however, shot me a look that made me wish I hadn’t asked the question. Nevertheless we all awaited Bruce’s answer—she most anxiously of all.

  “Yes,” he said, “I did. And that’s peculiar, because I usually never dream. Maybe it was because I was up pretty late reading in those books…”

  At the mention of the books Mrs. Corey looked at Bruce quickly, quizzically.

  “Oh,” Bruce said. “I’m sorry if I wasn’t suppose to look at them, but you see I’m interested in that kind of lore.”

  “It’s all right. Please go on.”

  “Sure,” I reminded him, “what about the dream? But I suppose you don’t remember it. Most people don’t…”

  “But I do. It was just a fragment of a dream really, but too vivid for me to forget. It seemed that I was walking somewhere in a sort of mist. Down a narrow dirt road. There was a rusty wire fence to my right, and I came to a gap in it. Automatically I turned and passed through it, and walked down a path behind a large house…” Bruce turned to me and smiled, as though he were reciting a fairy story to a child. “All this while, mind you, something was drawing me—I wasn’t walking of my own volition. I knew I should make an effort to run back, but at the same time, paradoxically, I seemed very anxious to get to whatever was drawing me. Well… the path was tangled with coarse grass and weeds, and suddenly I saw where I was walking: in a graveyard. All around me were tombstones, but not stones really, for most of them were ancient nameboards of wood, inclining at all angles and overgrown with weeds and brambles. Then—right before me—I saw a low cement tomb. It was cracked and moss-covered, but the wooden door was still solid, and the huge iron hinges, though rusty, were still intact. I stood a moment before that door; now I felt a very strong attraction, almost an affinity, to—to whatever lay beyond. I don’t doubt that I would have entered—in fact, I was just about to—but at that moment I awoke. I was lying on my cot upstairs and a cool breeze was coming in the window at my head. I closed the window and went back to sleep, but I didn’t dream any more.”

  I glanced at Mrs. Corey. She had sat there taut and silent as Bruce talked. Now she was biting her lips as though to keep from screaming, but the scream showed in her eyes. She rose in sudden agitation and left the room.

  Her husband continued eating for a moment in silence. Then he looked up, unperturbed, and said: “Martha’s easy upset. But maybe there’s good reason. You see, she had a sister that slept in that room once, and she dreamed that same dream, and then—she just disappeared. No trace ever found of her. Before that, it was the Munroe boy—I remember it like it was yesterday.”

  “Yes, Lyle Wilson was telling me about the Munroe boy’s disappearance,” said Bruce. “Do you know anything about it?”

  “Nothing except he was playing out in the fields near the ravine, and he disappeared. We searched, but no trace of him. Then—it must have been all of a week later—his younger brother came running home and said he’d seen Willie’s face, with a lot of others.”

  “His face!” Bruce sat bolt upright. “Is that what he said?”

  “Yep, that’s all he could say. He’d seen his brother’s face, with a lot of others. Said he’d been playing down in the ravine, but he didn’t know just where.”

  Bruce looked at me, and he wasn’t smiling now. Corey seemed to take everything stoically. “Of course,” he went on, “it used to be horses and cattle that disappeared—no trace. This all happened some few years ago. The land was pretty bad, then, too, but hasn’t been so bad since. Not ’til just recent.”

  “What do you think of all this, Eb?”

  Eb Corey looked at Bruce stolidly. “Mr. Tarleton, you’re a scientific man. I’m just trying to make a living here off of land that—that ain’t right, somehow. You said that books like them upstairs is a kind of hobby of yours. Then you oughta know more about all of this than I do. I looked into one of them books once—just once. I can say this: I didn’t understand much of it, but I know such studyin’ won’t bring you to no good end. But that’s your affair. Me—I just try not to think too much about it.” That’s the longest speech I ever heard Eb Corey make, and it seemed definite enough. Bruce apparently thought so, too, for he said, “I think I’ll come out there a little later this afternoon and take a look at your soil.”

  “Wish you would, Mr. Tarleton, wish you would. You’ll find me down on the south end.”

  I had listened to all this in silence, but something was bothering me, almost haunting me. I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Bruce’s dream. I arose from the table and left them there, still talking; and went upstairs, wondering just what it was about that dream that bothered me. The path across the old graveyard… the ancient tomb… something drawing him on…

  On a sudden impulse I entered that room where Bruce had slept. A faded green blind was still drawn over the single window. I raised the blind. Even before I looked, I knew. Then I looked and saw. The scene swept across my brain like a dash of icy water. As I stood there momentarily paralyzed, I felt the first hint of the cosmic horror that was soon to engulf both Bruce and myself, and come near to blasting my mind.

  There was the narrow dirt road, to the left. There was the rusty wire fence. The broken gap. There was the grass-tangled path, and the fallen tombstones in the ancient graveyard just behind this house. And there was the cracked cement tomb, just as Bruce had described it from his dream, only a short distance away from this window…

  * * *

  A few hours later, as we walked across the fields, I told Bruce what I had discovered—the graveyard behind the house, and the exact parallel to his dream. He wasn’t surprised, said he’d seen it, too.

  “I suppose you’re beginning to think that what I experienced wasn’t a dream at all—that I actually walked down that path toward the tomb. Well
, you’re wrong. It was nothing but a dream; I know I never left my room…” He seemed for a moment about to tell me more, then changed his mind.

  But I was, by now, very curious; not with the avidity of a student of the ancient lores such as Bruce displayed, but with a certain skepticism. “Did Lyle Wilson tell you any more stories? What about that diary—I know you were dying to see it?”

  “I saw it—but not enough of it. He brought it out and read me certain parts. Remember his saying he had a certain hankerin’ sometimes? Well, I told him I often had a sort of hankerin’, too. Then he brought out the diary.”

  “A hankerin’ for what, in heaven’s name?”

  “I don’t know—but I’m afraid it isn’t in heaven’s name. Whatever he was talking about. That’s what I wanted to find out.”

  “And did you?”

  “Very little. I got too curious, I guess, and Lyle got suspicious. Still, he read me quite a few passages from that diary of Hans Zickler’s, and I’m beginning to piece things together. Remember Corey saying his grandfather built this house, and added the back wing later? Well, that’s right. Maybe you noticed the wing brings that room pretty close to the edge of the graveyard?”

  “What about the diary?” I insisted.

  “Well, I learned this much. Old Zickler used to sit at the window of that upstairs back room, in the late evenings, and mumble a kind of gibberish. That window’s easily visible from the road; neighbors passing by soon got the idea that Zickler was crazy. Lyle Wilson says that he was just a young man then, but he remembers seeing old Zick sitting there—could hear him, too—and he was certainly a wild sight. Well… it seems that there was something in that tomb, and Zickler suggested that it had answered him—but in a strange way. Not audibly, but mentally. A sort of unearthly telepathy, I guess. Old Zick couldn’t explain it quite right. All I can gather is that it was teaching Zickler something, and that occasionally it thanked him for something. I’d certainly like to read more in that part of the diary, but old Lyle is too shrewd.