Acolytes of Cthulhu

by Robert M. Price

  Relative after relative, I studied—Antonello, Giorgio, Tonio, Lucia, etc. All I encountered in these beautifully decorated marble coffins was moulded skulls and various bones; mostly the bones no longer adhered to each other, so that all semblance of a body or human form was lost. They were just piles of bones and mounds of shredded, wormy velvet and silk. For some reason, I’m glad to say, it had not occurred to me that I was desecrating the dead. Scholars are well known to get carried away by their work, and so with me that night. I am not a particularly brave man, and I would not even walk alone through a graveyard at night without qualms; but that fearful night I was alone, because I did not want to have to share my discovery with anyone. There I was, marauding through a crypt at night, rummaging through bones and cloth, without any thought other than honest, if selfish, scholarship.

  It must have been that black hour prior to dawn, that I opened the tomb next to Girolamo’s. In it lay a surprisingly well preserved body, but it lay horribly twisted and broken, and on its legs and arms were the remnants of linen bandages. The skull lay at an odd angle from the body, and its lipless and crag-toothed mouth was open wide in what still, after 700 years, looked like a howl of pain. My fortitude was gone, in an instant. Here, unquestionably, was Pietro, still bearing traces of the horror of the Inquisition. I sickened and began to gasp for air as the foetid odor leapt at me from the long-shut tomb. I fled to the stairway and sped up it in an instant.

  The church itself now seemed populated by millions of rustling, whispering things that were lent shape by my now rampant imagination. I imagined it to be visited by the shade of every lost man, woman and child who had ever sat within its walls. Terrified, I fell to my knees at the thought and, before I lost consciousness, I thought I saw coming up the dreadfully dark nave, a procession of decayed clergy, grinning, and swinging incense which smoked red and gave off the same horrid odor that met me when I lifted the slab of Pietro’s tomb. I collapsed against a pew; at the same time my hand came to rest upon a cross carved in relief on its side.

  Dawn had already begun to spread its silver to the inside of the church when I awoke to its vast, empty hall.

  III

  STILL BATHED IN SWEAT, I STOOD UP FROM THE POSITION INTO which I had crumbled a few hours earlier. I walked to the back of the church and climbed back down the stairs, each step presenting me an opportunity to exert every ounce of will power I contained.

  Once in the crypt, I was faced with the choice of either replacing the slab and leaving the job to bolder men, or thoroughly searching the sarcophagus for the scroll. To my everlasting damnation, I girded up my loins and chose the latter course.

  I brought the lamp close to the corpse, and looked at it. It had not changed in any aspect from the previous night; I was happy and relieved to see that. It rather convinced me that the only thing that had chased me up the stairs and down the nave was my own fevered and overwrought mind. And I was overcome with pity for poor Pietro. While I was thus sentimentally occupied, I noticed a still bright red ribbon lying by the crushed right hand.

  My heart stopped; the ribbon encircled a scroll of parchment. I grabbed it, and, with effort—I found that I was considerably weaker than I had been the previous night—replaced the slab. I quickly gathered up my tools and lights and left the church.

  Even the musty odor that hung about my hands and shirt did not drive away the incomparable smell of an Italian early summer morning. Everything was as bright as gold and glory, and, by the time I had reached my lodging, my night’s terror had dissolved under the mantel of drowsiness. I slept, undreaming, until I awakened of my own accord, at dusk.

  With the darkness, I was wide awake, and once more a bit jittery. I dressed and took the scroll. It was almost a foot long and rather thick with folds—apparently Pietro had done quite a bit of translating before his fate had overtaken him.

  I unrolled it, and it still seemed surprisingly pliant and firm after such a very long time. It was a treasure! Not only did it contain translations, but what amounted to editorial comments in the vernacular by Pietro. I do not know from what language the original had been translated, but it was now in Latin, and its title stood out in disconcerting relief—Gloriae Cruoris; in English, roughly, the glories of blood or bloodshed. And the author’s name was Serpencis—whether the author’s true name or a latinization, I do not know. Pietro’s opening comments are cautious and circumspect—the agony of a man trying to make something of value out of a blasphemous thing.

  “Let us analyze,” he writes, “the properties of blood as the learned Serpencis relates them. First, blood is the liquid of life, as the body is the vessel of life.”

  He then quotes Serpencis as saying that blood is the primal life force; that without it man will die, and with it, no matter whose, man can extend his life beyond its normal bounds. Serpencis concludes that:

  After one has committed the necessary desecrations, and has immured himself to the smell and touch of the dead, he can commune with them, liberating their souls and putting them to his own use and service. Man’s power is measured by the number of souls he commands, and a great number can be attained by the twin sanctities of murder and the drinking of blood.

  I sat there aghast, as Pietro must have done so many centuries ago.

  “Gloriae” was the work of a vampire and necrophile who, at some remote time, either medieval or ancient, must have terrorized his neighborhood and possibly had been the leader of some foul and monstrous cult. This was not going to be easy to turn into the kind of benign and dignified research with which one gains a doctor’s degree.

  Still, I read on. I was too bound up in modern life to turn away from the book in fear, the way Pietro had done; as I read its gruesome pages I was battling nausea and disgust rather than terror. The margin of the manuscript contained Pietro’s notes on how he combated the evil spells he felt influencing him; he used various incantations and equally efficacious spells of white magic to dispel the aura of evil. I, of course, did not; I merely read on through the jumble of medieval Latin and Italian, and descended, spiritually, to a depth of degradation and inhumanity which I had never imagined possible. Serpencis had been a master ghoul who would have made the monstrous and infamous Gilles de Retz look like an effeminate weakling.

  At length I was near the end of the scroll. The last section contained what was apparently the first of a series of spells performed so that one can give one’s self over to the demons who presided over vampiric activity. More a fool than ever, I decided to perform the rite.

  Once the pentagram was chalked on the floor, I lit two candles and began to chant aloud from the manuscript. I was quite thrilled at reproducing a sound that had been unheard for centuries; it was in this spirit of re-enacting a play, that I first became aware of subtle changes within the room itself.

  The darkness had closed in more around the candles, so that their glow spread only about six inches or so, leaving nearly the entire room and me in total darkness. Heretofore, the walls and bookcases had been dimly present, but they were now gone, and the candle closest to me illuminated the manuscript, my hand, and no more. And with this spreading blackness came now a stench that seemed to be some frightful amalgam of the twin odors of the sewer and the grave, an odor terribly similar to that in the church less than twenty-four hours earlier.

  At this point I was all for stopping, for I realized that I had indeed succeeded in crossing that delicate line between the real and unreal, between the natural and the supernatural. And I was terribly frightened. But I also realized now that I was no longer in complete control over what was happening. I couldn’t stop; cursing myself, I continued the daemonic chanting.

  Suddenly there was a blast of foul wind, and the room glowed with a kind of ruby-red light that spread evenly from corner to corner without any seeming point of origin. There now appeared to be something forming right next to me, within the pentagram. It whirled together, like a motion picture of something flying apart that is run backwards on th
e projector. And as I stood there, within arm’s length of it, it began to assume a horrifying, humanoid shape. I say humanoid, because, when it was formed, its dimensions were roughly human, but not close enough to be mistaken for anything other than what it was—a blasphemy from the malignant depths of hell, and the darkest corners of the human soul. Its quivering red face was turned toward me, and I could see, as I stared into it, not merely that sweating, featureless red jelly, but I could see, somehow, a vast complex of forests, rivers, mountains, a primordial land that suggested to me the vast land of Gaul when Paris was an undiscovered island, a land that would have to wait aeons for Caesar to be born to conquer it.

  My terror was now too strong for whatever possessed me; I shrieked and dropped the manuscript into the whirling darkness. As the red melted quickly into a huge blackness, I saw the creature reach towards me. I felt faint, and my last memory was of being encircled in a slightly luminous and damp fog, which though itself impalpable, carried within it a solid network of bones, which I could feel around my waist.

  I do not think that I remained unconscious for more than a few minutes; when I awoke I could tell, without opening my eyes, that the room was still dark. Too frightened to move or even open my eyes, I remained sprawled in the position in which I fell, until I was sure that sunlight had filled the room.

  IV

  THIS TIME THE DAWN DID NOT BRING WITH IT THE JOY OF LIFE, that strength that allowed me to renew my efforts at the church. I got up and searched the room, making sure that it was empty. It was, but it was also a mess. That whirling wind had torn everything loose; papers, books, utensils, even dishes, were scattered, ripped and broken. I had feverishly hoped that I would, on waking, be able to attribute the whole thing to an overactive imagination. No, I had not dreamed.

  Before I hid Pietro’s monstrous work, I read his last comments on the rite I had almost completed:

  This thing is too strong for me! I cannot fight its magic—it has at its command the legions of hell, its servants, human and not human. Despite my knowledge of magic and alchemy, I barely escaped the last rite with my soul still mine and God’s. I will not go on with this work and imperil my soul and salvation. God save thee, O reader, from the knowledge this book contains. Unless thou art stronger than I, attempt not even those things that are written here. Certainly seek not the book in its entirety. In the name of God, I mean to see that my copy of Gloriae Cruoris is destroyed…

  Here the manuscript breaks off, in mid-sentence. It was here, I suppose, that Pietro hurriedly hid the parchment and the manuscript, and was taken off to his doom at the hands of the Inquisition.

  And I had attempted to materialize the blasphemy without the slightest knowledge of magic, white or black.

  V

  IT HAS NOW BEEN NEARLY A WEEK SINCE THAT HORRIBLE night; I have neither worked nor slept. When I close my eyes my senses are instantly bombarded with images of red corpses and ever-present pools and fountains of blood. I have thoroughly lost my appetite, but the thought of blood makes me swell with a sensation that is closer to hunger than anything else that I can think of. When I pass a butcher shop, I gaze at the various animals hung upside down, their throats slit and dripping blood; my own throat grows thick and my mind begins to haze with anticipation. I have to keep myself from running into the shop to do God knows what horrible and loathsome thing.

  Whatever has my soul does not have it all; I can still feel, think, and function normally, but I feel myself growing less and less coherent, and the need for blood now and again fills me to the exclusion of every other thought or sensation. I cannot even seek help, as there are no longer men who are versed in the practice of white magic and magical curing; and any doctor would attribute the whole thing to some sort of fabulous psychosis, and put me in a madhouse.

  Thank God there is enough of my soul and mind left at my own command so that I was able to burn the last work of Pietro of Apono. I hope that the place in which Girolamo chose to bury the original parchment will forever remain undiscovered.

  Though I had unwittingly committed the first required acts of desecration, and had unwittingly undergone a sort of indecent communion with the dead spirits that apparently abound in San Giueseppe church, I had not completed the first rite. My only hope now is to die while the good in me can still overpower the steadily growing evil influence that is corrupting my mind and body like a leprosy. I have lost all that I was and all that I could have been; but my will to good is greater than my will to evil, and thus I hope to salvage my soul while I still can.

  To any readers that this may have, I ask that they pray for my soul, and not exhibit curiosity of unwholesome things. Civilized man has lost the knowledge and ability necessary to combat this kind of evil. If some unwitting fool like me should find the entire Gloriae Cruoris, listen to me, the latest man to be destroyed by it; do not experiment with it, do not even read it. Burn it, or God help you and humanity.

  I shall now take poison, and go out into the Italian sunshine and look once more at the lovely poplar trees, which I shall miss dearly.

  THE EYE OF HORUS

  BY STEFFAN B. ALETTI

  THIS MANUSCRIPT IS HERE PRESENTED BY ME IN ITS ORIGINAL form, as handed to me on an incredibly hot June day by George Warren, an amateur Egyptologist from New York. My name is Michael Kearton; I am an importer of dyes and was staying in a town named Wadi Hadalfa for business purposes. It is the last stop before the train tracks cross through the terrible Nubian desert to Abu Hamed.

  Warren had just returned from an expedition to a spot several miles outside of Akasha, a smaller town about seventy-five miles away. He was in a state of shock and fever, and was badly cut and bruised; but in the week and a half left to him, he typed the following report and gave me the carbon for safekeeping. It is well he did so, as the original unaccountably disappeared with his death. As I barely knew the man, I will not make any statements as to my opinion of his mental condition at the time directly before his death; all I will say is that whatever had happened in the heat of the Nubian desert had been terrible, for his physical condition was very bad. Yet, to me, he seemed lucid. At any rate, the reader must form his own conclusions from the manuscript.

  M.K.

  “I have risen, I have risen like the mighty hawk (of gold) that cometh forth from his egg; I fly and I alight like the hawk which hath a back of four cubits width, and the wings which are like unto the mother-of-emerald of the South.”

  So begins the chapter of performing the transformation into a Hawk of Gold, from the great Egyptian Book of the Dead.

  “O grant thou (speaking to Osiris) that I may be feared, and make thou me to be a terror.”

  These words—I first read them when I was a boy—have now taken on a new and immensely terrifying dimension, a dimension that stretches back in time and touches the most archaic fear of men—the fear of death, and their resulting need for gods. Man still dies, but his gods live on endlessly—I know that now. Some day we will discover Isis and Osiris, Ptah and Anubis, Ishtar, Chemosh, and even Zeus and Jupiter. They are all waiting.

  I don’t know precisely where to begin this narrative, but should it turn out to be the only record of this whole affair, I shall start at the beginning.

  Suffice it to say that I arrived in Cairo five years ago, an amateur Egyptologist who, by fortune or fate, had come into an immense sum of money by the age of thirty.

  By offering money, I immediately became attached to the Cairo Museum expedition to the lower portion of Nubia. There it became obvious that the only reason I was along was that I financed the business, and therefore had a right to go along—but only as an observer. Though I became a friend of Mustafa, the native foreman of the diggers, the staff was no more than coldly polite to me, and my prying into their affairs was regarded with scorn.

  Nevertheless I stayed with the museum expeditions and staff for three digging seasons, and got none of the credit for having been in on the discoveries of numerous early and predynastic grave si
tes.

  Sick of being the silent partner with the money, I withdrew my support and went to Nubia on my own, accompanied by Mustafa, who was now too old for the museum’s liking.

  Thus we arrived at Aswan. Once there, I found that my fame (that is, my reputation for having a lot of money) preceded me, and shortly I became acquainted with William Kirk and Andriju Kalatis.

  Kirk is a British Egyptologist, now a very old man, and generally rather drunk. Among his papers and papyri he found several bills of sale dealing with shipments of grain for the priests to the Temple of Horus, the Falcon God. One papyrus also gives explicit directions on the whereabouts of the temple, and, to my surprise, it was close to a city of which a few ruins still remain, about ten miles outside of a town called Akasha, not far from Aswan.

  Kalatis, a young Greek soldier of fortune, proposed to accompany me on an expedition, financed by me, to find the temple.

  After checking on Kirk’s background and reputation and, after seeing the papyrus (it was undeniably authentic), I decided to give the business a try. Success would bring me worldwide fame and recognition as an Egyptologist. I did not particularly trust Kalatis, but I can take care of myself, and Mustafa would be along as foreman of the diggings. At any rate, I did not anticipate trouble from Kalatis unless we found something valuable enough to steal rather than give to the Egyptian government.

  The first digging season was spent partly in research and partly in the digging of long rows of trenches in the chosen area. Kirk was too old to come, but Kalatis, much to my surprise, proved an admirable companion and a good worker despite his disappointment at finding no great treasure.

  The second season went essentially the same way until one day early this month, when Mustafa came running to our tent to announce that he had found the top of what seemed to be a flight of steps. By that afternoon we had uncovered seven stone steps, and a small, narrow door.