Acolytes of Cthulhu

by Robert M. Price

  “I’m afraid I possess an utterly scientific outlook when it comes to records such as those you have just mentioned,” went on the other calmly, regarding Walton closely. “These old records have all been shown to be fiction. Certainly it is fiction of a highly skilled order, but none the less, there isn’t a grain of truth in any of them.”

  “Oh, come now, Professor,” grinned the other easily. “You can’t possibly dismiss everything as easily or as simply as that. Life would be extremely easily and well-ordered for people such as myself, if we looked at things that way. And there’s no doubt it would remove some of the fascination out of life.”

  “It would also relegate these works to where they belong,” snapped the other sharply. “To the realms of fiction.”

  “I’m sorry you think that way, Professor,” said the other, still retaining his equanimity. “But I’ve a feeling that, skeptic as you are, even your faith in the scientific approach to these problems will be severely shaken when we get to Easter Island.”

  “That remains to be seen,” said the other in a tone which ended the conversation on that particular topic.

  It was almost dark that evening before they came within sight of Easter Island. It rose up out of the sea like a great smudge on the horizon, taking shape as they bore down upon it through the surging swell. Mitchell stood on the deck and watched it through narrowed eyes. Even from that distance, he could sense the strange air of mystery which lay like an invisible pall over it.

  Small wonder, he reflected, that the people who had been living here when the Dutch had first arrived, had known more about the sun and moon and stars than about any other land on the face of the earth. They were so far removed from the nearest land, from the nearest place of human habitation, that their language had been filled with references to the celestial bodies which were visible all the time in the clear sky above their heads, rather than to other islands, which were so far away that they had almost sunk to the status of myth.

  They sailed closer and dropped anchor in a small bay which sheltered them from the current. Mitchell could feel the breeze on his body, a breeze which blew off the island, bringing with it a feeling of mystery, and a little touch of terror also as he thought of those carved stone images which dotted the grassy slopes. What race of creatures had posed for those vast statues? he wondered inwardly. A race of men long dead who had left behind these relics of civilization at which it was only possible to guess?

  When he finally went below, a riot of thoughts ran through his spinning mind. In the morning, they would go ashore and their work would begin. Above all, he wanted to see these weird inscriptions on the stone statues and to talk with the people, try to dig back into their past, not to the legends of their own race, but those, if any, of the race which had inhabited this place possibly thousands of years ago.

  He slept little that night and his uneasy dozing seemed troubled by strange dreams, more real and frightening than any he could remember before. Mostly, they consisted of a jumbled series of kaleidoscopic scenes or vivid glimpses of vast, hideous creatures walking a landscape which seemed totally unfamiliar to him, but which he felt he had seen before. He seemed, in his dreams, to hear a weird and awful chant that seemed never-ending and he worked with it ringing in his ears, the sweat starting out on his body and a shivering fit which seized him in spite of all he could do to fight it off.

  He sat up in the bunk and looked about him, trying to force calmness into his mind. What had brought about that nightmare? he wondered as his heart slowly thumped into a more normal, slower beat. It was now almost dawn and there was a faint grey light showing through the porthole. He got up and stood on the cold floor of the cabin in his bare feet, staring out at the island less than a quarter of a mile away.

  It looked bare and deserted, an undulating place with rocky, rising hummocks of land here and there and a few of the enigmatic statues just visible on the slopes. The sight of them stirred something inside his mind, and for a moment, he felt his breath catch at the back of his throat.

  The air over the island seemed laden with mystery. He wondered whether Nordhurst was awake yet and if so, what emotions were running through his mind as he gazed out at the curious, almost awe-inspiring landscape which had opened before them. Possibly, he too, would be a little apprehensive, wondering what they might find out there. And Walton. He would be excited now, he felt sure of that. A fellow-spirit, he reflected, among the disbelievers.

  Breakfast was a meal of silence, quickly over. Everyone, including Nordhurst, seemed anxious to get ashore, if only to get away from the monotonous swaying and pitching of the vessel. Even though they were at anchor here, there was still a swell running from the ocean.

  Mitchell went in the first boatload, along with Walton and the Professor.

  By now, the grey of the dawn had turned to roseate light edged with gold and suddenly, above the rim of the sea, the sun came up, leaping into the cloudless heavens. The boat touched down on the rock-strewn beach and Walton clambered out, giving a hand to Professor Nordhurst. Mitchell stepped out after them and stood looking about him in awed wonder for several moments. It seemed scarcely credible that he was here at last, that the mystery of which he had dreamed for so many years was actually there, all about him, spread out on all sides.

  Stretching in both directions, the grey lava beach curved away around the rocky headland, cut here and there with precipices and loose blocks of stone, but these had obviously been carved by time and not by man.

  “God, what a place,” breathed Walton hoarsely. His eyes were wide in his head. “If there are ghosts of ancient civilizations anywhere in the world, surely they must be here.”

  Nordhurst snorted derisively. “I’ll believe that when I see it,” he said thinly. “I suppose we’d better find a suitable place to set up camp first of all and then start exploring the area. I noticed several of those huge stone figures on that slope over there about a half a mile away. It ought not to be difficult to locate them.”

  “It also looks as though we have company,” said the Skipper, pointing.

  Mitchell glanced up in the direction of the other’s finger. A crowd of natives had gathered at the top of a narrow, winding lava path which ran up the steep side of the slope in front of them, meandering between grotesquely etched boulders, like a naturally formed stairway.

  “I wonder how many of them speak English?” muttered Mitchell.

  Before anyone could answer, Walton had stepped forward. He cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled at the top of his voice:

  “Ia-o-rana kurua!”

  “Ia-o-rana kurua!” Yelled from a score of voices, the sound came rushing down the cliff wall, bouncing from boulder to boulder like a crushing wave. They came down, following the vast shout.

  Mitchell stood to one side as Walton spoke quickly to the natives who crowded around them. Several of them spoke English, he discovered, and almost all of them spoke some form of Spanish. It was not going to be difficult to converse with them, he decided, but how difficult it would be to get anything worthwhile out of them was another matter altogether.

  After setting up camp, under the inquisitive eyes of the natives, bringing most of their supplies ashore, they left two of the ship’s crew on guard, the natives of Easter Island being well-known for their thievery. It seemed almost a fetish with them and was certainly not looked upon as a crime on the island.

  Mitchell set off with Professor Nordhurst and Walton, accompanied by a score of the crew members and many natives. Half an hour later, after stumbling over uneven, treacherous ground, they reached the place which Nordhurst had spotted from the ship, where the great stone statues stared out across the island with their backs to the sea.

  All of them, thought Mitchell, with a faint sense of curiosity, facing away from the sea.

  A coarse type of grass, yellowed by the sun, grew around the bases of the statues which towered above them, to a height of twenty feet or more. Mitchell shivered a little as he star
ed at that strange, frightening, inscrutable gaze. There was something here which he could not understand. But what it was, he didn’t quite know.

  He turned, looked around at Nordhurst. The other stood several yards away, issuing a few orders to the ship’s crew as they lowered their spades and picks from their shoulders and stood ready to begin excavations. How far they would have to dig before they came upon anything important was something no one knew at that time. Mitchell could only guess that they would have to dig at least as far as the feet of these statues, if they had any feet, and judging from the side of the heads, which was all that stood out above the ground, they would have to go down at least forty feet; and if they hit solid rock on the way, then it would undoubtedly slow up their progress in that direction to an unguessable extent.

  “What do you think of it, Professor?” he asked, going over to the other.

  “I’m not sure, Doctor Mitchell. We may find something of archaeological importance here, but I’m not banking on anything. Certainly, I’m convinced there’s nothing here to support your theory, that of an ancient, almost prehistoric civilization.”

  “Not even forty feet down at the base of these statues?”

  “Not even there.” The other shook his head and there was a gleam in his eyes which Mitchell had never seen there before. Goddamnit, he thought savagely, the other was actually enjoying himself now, playing like a cat with a mouse, waiting for the expedition to turn up nothing more important than a few earthenware pots, relics of the recent civilization. Then he would really be on top of his form.

  The men started digging in the hot sunlight. Sweat boiled off their brown bodies as they worked. The earth was reasonably soft on top, easily loosened by the picks. Within three hours, the earth had been cleared away to a depth of almost seven feet. As Mitchell had guessed, the statues had been buried in the earth and the bodies, brought to light for the first time in God knew how many years, were made of exactly the same kind of stone as the inscrutable heads which gazed out across the land towards the center of the island.

  That night, as he lay in his blankets, inside the white tent which had been thrown up along with several others, on a smooth plateau, Mitchell felt strangely contented. There was still a feeling of tension in his body, a tightness which had not yet gone away, would probably not go away until he knew for certain what lay under the ground around those graven images. The moon had risen and was gleaming vividly over the great stone faces, some of which he could see through the half open flap of the tent. For some reason, he felt a trifle afraid as he lay there on his side, his head pillowed in his arm, eyes running through his mind; a hundred burning questions to which he had, as yet, no answers, but which he knew he would have to answer before he left Easter Island.

  What strange race of people had hewn and erected these great images and how long ago? Five hundred—a thousand years? Or beyond the dawn of recorded history as they knew it? During the daytime, he had questioned one or two of the natives as to the origin of the statues and had learned that they had been dug by the Old Ones, the Long Ears, from a quarry inside the extinct volcano of Rano Raraku.

  So far, he had seen no reason to doubt this statement. There had to be somewhere on the island where these vast colossi had been hewn from the solid rock. It was totally inconceivable that they could have been brought there from any other islands so many miles away.

  Yet somehow, he had the strange and unshakable impression that there was something more about the island than they had seen. It was true that they had only been there for a day and, quite naturally, there was a lot they had yet to see. But he had the feeling that there was something hidden—but where? Possibly inside the crater of Rano Raraku. Possibly even somewhere underground. In the morning, he would question the natives still further. Any who were unable to speak English or Spanish, he would bring along to Walton and allow him to act as interpreter. It had been a stroke of unexpected luck to find that the other was able to speak the native language sufficiently to make himself understood.

  All in all, he mused, Walton was proving himself to be something of a mystery. There were many things about him which he was only beginning to realise. The strange way in which he was able to find his way around the island. The way in which he could converse fluently with these people.

  None of this had been apparent while they had been at the University. The man’s talents were entirely unexpected.

  In the moonlight darkness, before he finally fell asleep, fragments of half-forgotten demoniac lore flashed through his mind, things he could just remember reading in his student days. He shivered. There was a strangeness about this island, set so far from any other inhabited place, holding its mystery hidden from prying eyes. And what had happened to those seven men from the Spanish ship which had anchored offshore as their own vessel was at that very moment? Where had they vanished to, in the darkness of the abysmal night?

  It was just possible, he reflected, that even if he discovered the secret, he might not live to tell it. The natives seemed friendly enough at the moment, willing to help in the excavations provided they were well paid, but they might change completely if he started probing too deeply into the past, into things which they might consider did not concern him. Holding this view, he fell asleep and when he woke, the yellow moonlight was gone and the greyness of dawn was giving way to the full light of day.

  In spite of his thoughts the previous night, he ate a hearty meal and then went off with the others to the excavation site. Work was progressing a little more slowly now that they were digging deeper into the ground. Here the earth was far harder than before and on many occasions, the picks struck sparks from hidden rocks under the soil and large boulders had to be heaved manually out of their age-old resting place.

  A few of the natives had gathered to watch once more and he walked over to them, motioning to Walton to accompany him.

  “Are you going to question them, Ralph?” asked the other, and there seemed to be a touch of uneasiness in his deep voice.

  “That’s the general idea. Apart from what we manage to find down there, I think there’s a lot more we can learn by questioning the natives. They must have some legend, some myths.”

  “It’s quite likely, but whether or not they’ll talk about them is a different matter,” warned the other. “We can only try to worm something out of them, but something tells me they’ll be very reticent.”

  They approached the small knot of natives. Mitchell eyed them curiously. Olive-skinned, they seemed to bear no resemblance whatsoever to the images which dotted the plain. It was quite obvious that the human, or subhuman likenesses which had been the models for those stone faces, had long since left the island, had vanished in mystery somewhere in the far mists of time.

  One of the men, a tall, stern-faced man in his fifties as near as Mitchell could judge, spoke reasonably good English.

  “Those statues over there,” began Mitchell, waving an arm which embraced the plateau where the rest of the crew were toiling in the glaring sunlight. “Do any of you know when they were made, and who carved them?”

  The man regarded him closely for a long moment, so long that Mitchell had half despaired of an answer. Then he said slowly: “They have been here since the beginning of time. They came from the inside of Rano Raraku. If you go there you can see many more which have not been taken to their final resting place. They are waiting there now.”

  Almost foolishly, Mitchell went on: “And do you believe that they will ever go to their final resting place? Or will they remain there forever?”

  “That we do not know. If they wish to go, then they will go.”

  “And yet you have no stories about them—no legends as to why they were carved?”

  “There are stories, but they cannot be told, not to strangers.”

  “Why not?” pressed Mitchell sharply. “Are you afraid to tell us?”

  He had noticed the brief expression which had flickered over the man’s face, and there seemed to
have been a fragmentary glance in Walton’s direction. Mitchell felt puzzled. He could understand a reticence on the other’s part if he was trying to hide something until the price had been made right for any information, but this was something he did not understand. That the other seemed afraid was obvious. But afraid of what? Of some reaction on the part of the other natives if he should talk of sacred things, or reveal any of the carefully guarded secrets of the island?

  It seemed feasible, but the other must have known that none of his companions spoke a word of English and therefore could not understand anything he said.

  “These are things so old that no one can talk about them. They have been guarded from the beginning of time.”

  So that was that, thought Mitchell angrily. Once again, he had come up against this stone wall of impenetrable silence. It was almost as if this was killing knowledge, as if possession of it could be dangerous. But now, more than ever before, he felt certain that it had been handed down by word of mouth from one generation to another on the island, that the old knowledge was still there, but whispered around the fires in the night, or perhaps incorporated in the weird chants he had heard the previous night, the eerie sound wailing over the silent plateau.

  He brushed aside the other’s sudden silence and said harshly: “If you won’t talk to me about these things, then at least tell me someone who will, someone who isn’t afraid like a child.”

  If he had expected the insult to sting the other into some unguarded retort, he was sadly disappointed. The other merely pursed his lips, then shook his head, turned on his heels and stalked off with his head held stiffly in the air. After a moment’s pause, the other natives followed him.

  Mitchell turned impulsively, exasperated, to Walton. “How in God’s name do you get stubborn people like that to talk?”