Acolytes of Cthulhu

by Robert M. Price

  “Nathan, come quickly, man. We can’t hold it. It’s breaking out of the Crib!”

  Over Cullum’s voice came the sound of splintering wood and a ravening ululation such as never sprang from human throat. The telephone crashed to the floor as Buttrick leapt to struggle into his clothes. He vaulted across the yard to the barn, scarce feeling the bite of the early hoarfrost. With frantic speed he harnessed the team and urged them out of their warm quarters into the chill darkness of the road where the moon hardly penetrated the roof of overhanging trees.

  Five minutes after the call, the wild-eyed horses lunged through the shadows of Penaubsket Bridge onto the gravel of Windham Road. Although the doctor was a good master to his animals, now he whipped them cruelly. He called the two mares by name, hurling imprecations foreign to his lips in an effort to gain more speed. Black masses of maple and oak lashed by, their sharp twig-ends striking blood from Buttrick’s face when the surrey veered too close to the road’s edge. Twice it seemed that all—horses, surrey, and driver—must surely fall to perdition, so headlong was their flight in rounding curves where granite outcroppings changed the road’s direction. If a goodman of the town had been abroad at that hour, he would have crossed himself in utter terror at the approach of the flying team and whipman.

  It seemed an age to Buttrick, but at last the lights of Cullum House glimmered through the thickets ahead. At the stone pillars which marked the entrance to the estate the horses shied, nearly throwing the doctor from his seat. The whip cracked once, twice, but they would not enter. The team stood ready to bolt in the face of a terror which their senses could detect even at that far remove.

  Cursing, Buttrick leapt down from the surrey and made for the house afoot. The rains of early autumn had washed innumerable gullies into the clay of the drive. Several times he stumbled, almost twisting an ankle beneath him. Over the sound of his labored breathing came a confusion of high-pitched cries. The nighthawks were swarming above the house in a dense cloud. Their mass eclipsed the light of the moon as they climbed to an apogee, plummeted suicidally toward the ground, then arced upwards. All about him the doctor heard the beat of their wings.

  Nearing the great house Buttrick saw that the French doors which he had opened in another world, it seemed, were still ajar. The parlor within was lighted. Sobbing from his exertions he lurched onto the terrace and leaned against the door frame. “Laurence,” he cried. “Laurence, where are you?”

  The doctor’s gaze slowly swept the room. The ottoman on which he had set his bag that afternoon lay on its side, the stuffing exposed through a long rent in the fabric. On the far wall the tapestry hung in folds from one of its corners. Beneath, the discolored area of the wall framed a gaping hole partially obstructed with shards of plaster and fang-like laths. By main force, the captive behind that wall had clawed and butted its way out of the Crib.

  Buttrick stepped into the room, aghast at the wreckage of the once-sumptuous chamber. From behind an overturned sofa a moan broke the stillness, more like a sigh than an expression of pain. Cullum lay crumpled against the wall, hurled there by the inhuman force of the thing as it rushed from its confinement.

  “Laurence! Are you all right, man?” cried the physician. There was a deep gash on Cullum’s brow.

  “See—see to Amadee. In the hall. I—I’m afraid it caught him, Nathan.”

  Buttrick found the Acadian halfway down the hallway which led to the steel door of the Crib. The Hell-Child had seized him at his middle, and dashed him fatally against the floor. Beside the dead servant lay the bullwhip, a puny weapon against a force of such unutterable malevolence.

  The doctor returned quickly to attend Cullum. The shock of the events could prove dangerous to the aneurism. The weak spot of the brain artery might rupture from the slightest stress. But the heir indicated dazedly that he was unharmed except for the head wound.

  “It went outside,” whispered Cullum. “I could hear it scrabbling about on the portico before you came. Thank God it’s stopped screaming. I could not bear that sound another minute.”

  “Are there any firearms in the house?” asked Buttrick.

  “Only an ancient pistol which failed me.” Cullum pointed to an old handgun lying at the middle of the floor. “I tried to fire at it as it came through the wall, but the mechanism was rusty from age. The beast flicked me off like a doll and went for Amadee, perhaps because he took so much pleasure in whipping it. But it will return to finish me, Nathan, because it has now matured, and needs its guardian no longer.” Cullum smiled weakly as a wistful expression fixed itself upon his pallid face. “If death is the price of freedom from that child of the Pit, then I shall pay it gladly,” he said.

  Buttrick suddenly stiffened. Somewhere beyond the open doors of the entry-way he heard the sound of deep, animal respirations. A growl loosed itself from a savage throat.

  “I must close and bar those doors,” the doctor muttered to himself, for Cullum had lapsed into an almost trance-like state. He grasped a heavy poker and walked carefully through the hall. “If it comes at me,” he thought, “I must slash at the eyes. The eyes.”

  The main doors of the house stood thrown open to the night. Although it now rode the treetops, the moon illumined the steps up which Buttrick would have raced had he not entered through the French doors. The cries of the ominous birds had ceased. They roosted in the elms and oaks, as though awaiting a climactic event.

  The doctor peered out onto the lawn, keeping well within the shadows of the entry-way. Nothing stirred. He stepped into the doorframe and quickly scanned right and left. Again there was only the wash of moonlight on the lawn and long-deserted walks. No sound was audible except an occasional chirrup from the trees.

  Buttrick exhaled slowly. It seemed that the thing had run off, perhaps to Mohegan Swamp where it had claimed its first victim. This was work for a search party in the morning, not for a middle-aged physician unarmed except for a poker.

  Wiping his brow against his sleeve, Buttrick stepped onto the portico beneath the massive jawbones. The moon caught the whiteness of the eccentric archway. He ran his palm along the ivory smoothness, grateful for a touch of cool solidity. Standing there for a moment, the man seemed to gain strength from the contact of his hand with the curving pillars of bone. On the steps of the mansion he took a final surveying glance over the grounds, unwilling to stray farther from the light. All was quiet. “We will run the beast to earth in the bogs come sunup,” he thought. “Surely it cannot escape us there.”

  Suddenly the trees at the edge of the estate swayed at their tops as the nighthawks again winged aloft. The doctor’s calmness left him. He started up the steps to regain the relative security of the house. But as he mounted the last step his eyes caught a dark mass hulking at the very top of the arch where the whalebones intersected. At the same moment a guttural cry which seemed to tremble the entire portico pealed down at him. Buttrick’s head snapped up. On the peak of the arch, balanced on its claw-like hands, crouched the Hell-Child! Its long, snarled hair cascaded down over the joint where the tops of the bones were clamped together. The fantastically developed shoulder and arm muscles knotted as the creature prepared to hurl itself downward upon Buttrick.

  In the split-second it took his arm to bring the poker up, he realized that the thing had expected him to enter through the main door when he arrived in answer to Cullum’s call for help. It had climbed to the top of the arch, hidden there by the shadow of the eaves, in order to fall upon him as he entered the house. Then all thought ceased for Nathan Buttrick as he saw the macabre figure let go the top of the arch and launch itself at him with a bellow.

  The poker flashed sideways in a vicious arc, aimed at the point in space where the eyes should have been at that moment. But it smote the empty air. For as Buttrick began his stroke the long, raven hair of the beast caught in the ironwork which braced the top of Hugh Cullum’s arch. The momentum of its lunge carried the Hell-Child clear of the ivory columns. It plummeted downward fo
r the merest fraction of a heartbeat—then a terrible jerk ceased its plunge. It swung between the columns like a grotesque marionette, hanging by its own matted hair.

  The doctor could not breathe as he gaped at the frantic contortions of the creature. The cruel arms flailed and beat the air as it struggled to haul itself back to the top of the arch. From that brutish throat came a scream of incredible fury. The face grimaced from pain and rage. Flecks of foam spotted the snarling lips. For a moment it seemed that the hair surely must part, unable to support such a weight. But then a report like a muffled gunshot stilled the writhing of that hideous form. Its neck broken, the Hell-Child hung limply above the steps of the house it had terrorized through the long decades.

  Unstrung by the terrible self-execution he had witnessed, Buttrick fell to his knees on the floor of the portico. For minutes he sagged there, his fingers still gripping the haft of the useless poker. The trembling which shook his entire frame gradually subsided. Suddenly remembering the wounded heir who lay inside, he roused himself and entered the house.

  Cullum was sitting as before, propped against the wall. His face was ashen, but his eyes glimmered with surprise as Buttrick knelt beside him. “You—you are alive, Nathan!” he whispered. “Does the beast still live?”

  The doctor quickly related the grisly death of the Hell-Child. It was apparent to him that his friend was falling into a decline from which he would never recover. The aneurism had been fatally disturbed by the night’s events.

  “Then I am free!” cried Cullum. “At long last free of that terrible presence. Ah, liberty. Blessed, blessed liberty…” The voice of the heir trailed off in a final sob. Buttrick gently placed a pillow beneath the still head, and closed the eyes. The master of Cullum House, the last guardian of the Hell-Child, was dead.

  For a long time the physician stood in the shambles of the parlor, trying to fathom some meaning in what he had experienced. Two corpses lay in that silent mansion. Beneath the whalejaw archway hung the carcass of the family’s child of darkness, claimed by this architectural whim of its first guardian. The grim sequence of events was too unsettling to comprehend.

  But now it was time for action. Impelled by some allegiance which endured even the death of the last Cullum, the doctor resolved never to divulge the horror in which he had participated. Crawling into the Crib through the broken wall, he cleaned the chamber of all traces of the Hell-Child’s occupancy. On the portico he cut down the monstrous body and loaded it onto the surrey.

  Buttrick inched the surrey down the dark fire-road to Mohegan Swamp. In a desolate reach of the bog he interred the remains of the vicious life which had brought Cullum House to ruin. Only then did he call the Sabbathday constable.

  The account which that officer received was deliberately intended to excite no undue curiosity. As Buttrick told it, he had received a nighttime call from the heir requesting medication for his condition. Near the end of their conversation the line abruptly went dead. Upon his arrival at the house he found that apparently a burglar of considerable strength had slain Amadee. Cullum had been struck once, as the single gash on his brow testified. The blow had fatally aggravated his aneurism. Foiled by the steel door of the strongroom behind the parlor, the thief and murderer had broken through the wall into the chamber. But he found no treasure, for the room had not been used for years.

  No person in Sabbathday, not even the investigating constable, questioned the veracity of the doctor’s explanation. Nathan Buttrick hid within himself the memory of that ghastly night at Cullum House until death eased him of the woeful burden.

  * * *

  Now, residents of the village rarely speak of the Cullum tragedy. Since there were no heirs, the great house reverted to Windham County and was razed for its timbers. In the town cemetery the Cullum family crypt is sealed forever and the Sabbathday Burial Ground is a place of peace, embraced on all sides by the northern forest.

  But in Mohegan Swamp, the nighthawks disturb the twilight calm. They have inhabited the lowlands since the pulling down of Cullum House. At sundown, while the main flock wheels and cries over the brackish water, a few night-fliers roost atop a curious mound near the shoulder of a fire-road through the swamp. Each year the mound grows somewhat higher.

  The forest warden who first noticed the growth believed it to be merely a subterranean tangle of living willow roots sent out by the trees which overhang the bog. Yet the birds who frequent the hillock utter strange, fervid cries as if urging on the evolution of something within the peculiar pile. It is unlikely that the mound will stir the curiosity of the townsfolk. Whatever phenomenon is at work will reach completion undisturbed.

  THE LAST WORK OF PIETRO DE OPONO

  BY STEFFAN B. ALETTI

  I ARRIVED LAST SPRING, FULL OF HOPE FOR THE EARLY AND triumphant completion of my doctorate in Italian Renaissance studies. Padua, Perugia, Ravenna, Firenze! All names that practically shivered me with delight. Here I was, in the very seat of the Renaissance, that bright green and gold arousing of mankind from his long, shaggy medieval sleep. It was through these sumptuous hills that Petrarch wandered, singing of Laura, and Dante of Beatrice. It was here that Landini lent his name to that cadence that would color music until the baroque, and it was under these bright Tuscan trees and skies that Leonardo and Michelangelo both strove to make men into angels.

  But my quarry was more elusive than these giants; I was seeking a man who had been swallowed up in one of those tragic, dark pockets that even the Renaissance contained. Pietro, or Peter, of Apono had been born in 1250 in, logically, Apono, a little hamlet not far from Padua. He had been a great man; a philosopher, writer, poet, mathematician, and astrologer. Following the practice of his time, he turned these various skills over to the study of medicine, and his fame as a physician was renowned even as far as the great walled city of Paris, where his cures had been nothing short of miraculous. When he returned to Italy a famous man, he got into a silly squabble with a neighbor, over the use of a spring on the man’s property. The man, apparently an ill-tempered lout, finally forbad Pietro to use the spring, and within a few days, the well mysteriously dried up. It was then rumored about the neighborhood that old Pietro was a sorcerer, and that it was he who, out of spite, caused the well to dry.

  From this germ of nonsense, a great host of stories and accusations spread and fell upon Pietro’s head; he was finally brought to the attention of the Inquisition.

  The inquisitors took hold of the kindly old man and burned his flesh, broke his bones, and stretched him out of shape; still, Pietro would not admit to being driven by demons, or in consort with the devil himself. But his body was not as strong as his will, and the old man died painfully, yet free in spirit.

  Of course the inquisitors were furious at being cheated out of an execution, so, only a few days after the luckless Pietro had been buried, a group of pious priests were sent to exhume his body and burn it in the public square. To their horror, the body had disappeared—risen it was assumed—and the inquisitors fled back to Padua with a tale that soon dissolved into legend.

  Needless to say, the explanation was much less cosmic than that. One of Pietro’s friends and benefactors, one Girolamo da Padova, had the body exhumed and re-interred in his own crypt, to save his old friend’s spirit from the indignities that the Inquisition had intended. I alone of living men knew this, for I had found a collection of old letters, including one that Girolamo had sent a trusted friend to explain the “resurrection.” In the letter Girolamo states that he took all of Pietro’s books for himself, except the one that he had been translating at the time of his arrest. He adds:

  It was in Maestro Pietro’s province to bring all things to light, no matter how loathsome. He believed that the light of reason would make everything beautiful and holy, but I tell thee, my good Ludovico, this book from Paris is the devil’s work. Cursed from remotest antiquity, this parchment hath caused the ruin of all who deal with it, and, as thou seest, Pietro himself was the last of their
line. He tried, as was his wont, to turn the cursed thing to good, to use its blasphemies for healing and helping, but its grotesque blood rites and hymns to desecration shocked even good Pietro. He had decided that the work was too blasphemous and too degrading to ever be turned towards good, and he was resolved to destroy it and his own partial translation. But the Holy Inquisition caught him before he could accomplish this.

  Fortunately, he had hidden both behind one of the books in his cabinet before the inquisition came through the door. I have taken both; his translation is now buried with him in my own family’s crypt in the Church of San Giueseppe, and the parchment itself, unfit for holy ground, hath been buried outside the city walls. I pray that my own handling of it hath not endangered mine own soul.

  So I, a lowly student, was about to find the bones and last work of the legendary Pietro of Apono.

  II

  THE BUSINESS OF THE BOOK HAD EXCITED ME. WHAT HAD IT been? Could it have been one of the early Latin translations of the Necronomicon? Or possibly the now-fabled Delancre translation of the horrid Mnemabic Fragments? Or was it some heretofore uncovered masterpiece of ancient or gothic imagination? I immediately envisioned my doctoral thesis as an edition of this newly discovered work; its first edition in 700 years.

  Girolamo’s family had died out in the plague that sent Boccaccio fleeing to the hills of Florence to give us the Decameron. Therefore, the crypt in the cellar of the San Giueseppe church was untended, and of only minor archaeological interest. My request, consequently, to spend the night studying the badly worn monuments and inscriptions was granted by the monks without undue trouble.

  Alone, finally, and not a little nervous at being surrounded by the long dead, I began to poke my way about the ruins of the vaults. The cement binding the slabs to the coffins themselves had long since crumbled, so lifting off the covers was simply a matter of judicious use of a crowbar and a strong back.