Acolytes of Cthulhu

by Robert M. Price

“I warned you that it wouldn’t be easy,” said the other evenly. He took out his pipe, filled it slowly, methodically, and lit it carefully, blowing the smoke into the air through pursed lips. “But there may be a way. I think we may have our friend Professor Nordhurst to thank for it, too.”

  “How do you mean?” countered Mitchell.

  “He’s been spreading it around that he doesn’t believe in the old legends, whatever they are. Sooner or later, I have the idea that someone is going to show him how wrong he is. We only have to wait until then to find out some of the answers.”

  Mitchell gazed at him without smiling. “You seem to know a lot more about these people than I ever gave you credit for,” he said eventually. “Just where do you fit into this deal? First I discover that you can speak their language, speak it fluently, too. Secondly, you seem to know how their minds work.”

  “Let’s say I’ve made quite a study of them, especially on the voyage here. I’ve had plenty of time to read up on most of what there is to know about them.”

  Mitchell would have liked to have questioned the other further, but at that moment there was a sudden shout from the valley a little below them and he turned to see. Nordhurst was waving his arms excitedly. They hurried down the grassy slope.

  “What is it?” he asked breathlessly.

  The Professor pointed. Mitchell stared down at the body of the great stone statue where it had been uncovered by the sweating men. He leaned forward, realising as he did so, that Walton was peering intently over his shoulder. He heard the other’s sharp intake of breath.

  The designs etched into the solid stone sent little shivers running up and down his spine. They were unlike anything he had ever seen before, carvings of unmistakable significance, of brooding terror, of creatures which were neither man nor bird, but something inexplicably between the two, all speaking mutely of a way of life, strange and terrible, led by inhabitants which were perhaps half-beast, half-man, possibly gigantic, although there was nothing there to give any indication of their true size.

  “You’re thinking of those strange images carved on the walls of the caves in New Guinea,” said Walton quietly.

  “Yes—and in a few other places of the world,” Mitchell nodded. “Those in Peru are extremely similar to these, although there are some differences which may be significant.”

  “Hasn’t it already been established that the people of Easter Island must have originally come from South America?” suggested Nordhurst.

  “That’s true,” agreed Mitchell, straightening his back. “But those carvings weren’t quite like these. There’s something—well, terrible—about these, something you can almost feel.”

  “Nonsense! It’s merely because these have just been exposed after centuries. I’ve seen those ancient Aztec and Mayan inscriptions for myself first-hand.” The other spoke with a certain amount of pomposity. “At least give me some credit for knowing what I’m talking about.”

  “My apologies,” said Mitchell thinly. He kept his temper with a supreme effort of will. “I didn’t mean to question your authority to speak on that point. I gather that we differ only on one point, Professor. I firmly believe these drawings had once a living model, you don’t.”

  “Certainly not,” Nordhurst stared at him as though doubting his sanity. “Surely you aren’t going to suggest that at some time, on this island, there was a race of creatures like that. But it’s utterly preposterous, completely ridiculous.”

  “Professor Nordhurst,” muttered Mitchell hoarsely, keeping his temper tightly under control. “I not only believe that at one time such a race existed here on Easter Island, but that another race co-existed with them, namely the race of giants who built and erected these images. And furthermore, I’m equally convinced that we shall find sufficient evidence here to convince you.”

  He half expected the other to make some form of protest, but Nordhurst merely smiled knowingly and bent to examine the carvings more closely. As the work went on, more and more carvings were found on the trunk of the stone giant which lay half-uncovered now. All in all, Mitchell judged its length to be close on sixty feet and its weight many tons. How it had been brought down from the interior of Rano Rardaku without machinery of any kind, seemed an insoluble problem.

  * * *

  Three weeks later, the excavations had reached a stage where a few questions had been answered to Mitchell’s satisfaction; but a hundred more had been posed. To them, there seemed no possible answer. The natives still refused to speak in spite of everything that Walton had been able to do to make them talk. None of the presents which had been offered to them, to their headman, or the religious head, had made the slightest effect on their refusal to talk.

  On any other subject, they would converse for hours in an extremely friendly manner, but once he tried to turn the conversation towards the old times before their race had come to the island, to what they had discovered when they arrived there, the talk had abruptly dried up and they had politely refused to be drawn into any further conversation.

  He was beginning to despair of ever finding out anything of importance with which to counter the sarcasm of Professor Nordhurst which was daily becoming less veiled and more direct in its manner. Then, one evening, shortly after dark, Walton came into his tent and sat down on the stool with his back to the flap.

  For a long moment, he remained silent, then he said very softly: “I’ve been talking with one of the old men on the island. I think I’ve finally talked him around to telling you something. How important it will be, I don’t know. But it seems that he’s heard what the Professor has been saying and it must hurt his pride because he seems ready to talk.”

  “Did he ask you to come and fetch me?” asked Mitchell carefully. So many times in the past, he had gone out to meet these natives, only to be disappointed when he arrived. Either they had suddenly shut up like a clam or they had talked endlessly about nothing important, merely telling him several things which he already knew.

  “Yes,” Walton nodded. “I think we may be on to something this time. I think he’s a little scared, but he’ll talk. And what’s more to the point, I really believe that he knows something. Not the lies they’ve tried to give us in the past whenever they’ve claimed to tell us the old secrets, but something worth knowing.”

  “Very well, I’ll come,” said Mitchell wearily, as he got to his feet. “But if this is just another false trial, then—” He left the rest of his sentence unsaid and followed the other out into the darkness. The moon was half full, lying out over the smooth water, throwing weird, grotesque shadows across the lava track which they followed around the shoulder of the hill.

  Mitchell shivered as the night wind blew about him. There was sweat on his forehead and across the small of his back and it made his thin clothing stick uncomfortably to his flesh. Time seemed to pass with abnormal slowness that was oddly disconcerting and he had the feeling of eyes watching him every step of the way, unfriendly eyes, not those of the natives, but of something else which crouched in the black, moon-thrown shadows.

  His ears seemed at times to catch faint sounds along the track, sounds which could not quite be identified with anything which seemed to inhabit the island normally. He wished that his senses were not so preternaturally keen in the darkness. But something in the solitude and the stillness seemed to have sharpened them above their normal pitch.

  He thought of vague, irrelevant things as he stumbled close behind the other, of the strange things he had seen in other places, how they fitted in with what was here, and of the unknown, inaccessible, alien things which must have existed at the very beginning of time and which could, conceivably, still exist in such an out-of-the-way place as this, where civilization had barely touched the people, where they could still believe in the old things. This could be one of the last outposts of these alien things on earth, he reflected. He often liked to speculate about these things, but never had they seemed so vivid as at that particular moment.

  Wh
ether it was the surroundings or the utter stillness which had brought such ideas to his mind, he did not know. But in spite of everything he did, it was impossible to rid his mind of them. The deadness and the silence were virtually complete. After a while, he found himself deliberately shuffling his feet on the smooth rocks to make some kind of noise, to still the nerves which jumped and twitched spasmodically in his body.

  Around him there was the suggestion of odd stirrings. Of things, half-hidden at the edge of his vision, which moved over that strange and alien landscape, lurching forward with a cumbersome manner out of the black shadows. It seemed abnormally cold, too; a coldness which could not be completely explained by the fact that they were some distance above sea level and the wind was blowing directly off the water. Nothing was so definite he could put his finger on anything wrong, and yet he felt that the swirling air about him was not uniformly quiet, that there were strange variations in pressure which made themselves felt, but which he couldn’t even begin to understand.

  They made their way down the narrow, twisting path as they came over the top of the hill. In front of him, he could make out nothing but blackness, then he saw the small cluster of native huts. Walton walked directly towards one of them, climbed the narrow, swaying ladder and went inside, motioning Mitchell to follow.

  For some odd reason, his heart was bumping madly inside his chest as he followed on the other’s heels. He hardly knew what to expect inside. There was a little candle flickering on a small table and behind it sat an old, wizened figure, skinny hands pressed firmly on top of the table.

  Mitchell judged the other to be almost ninety, but from his features, it was impossible to be sure. He could have been far older than that, with only the black swiftly darting eyes alive in the skeletal face.

  “Does he speak English?” asked Mitchell, seating himself in front of the other.

  Walton shook his head. “No. But he knows some Spanish. I think you ought to be able to converse in that language.”

  Mitchell nodded, tried to force his heart into a slower, more normal beat. After all, he tried to tell himself, there was nothing to fear from the other. Merely an old man who thought he knew some of the ancient secrets, who was possibly the only one on the island who did. But would he talk? And if he did, would he be telling the truth, or were there more lies to come?

  “My friend tells me that you have something you wish to speak to me about,” he said slowly, loudly, speaking in Spanish.

  The other’s lips moved and his voice, like a dry whisper said, “You come here asking questions about the stone faces of the island. Who made them and who carried them here?”

  “That’s right. Do you know anything of this?”

  The other nodded his head almost imperceptibly. “I would not have agreed to tell you these things had I not thought that you might believe,” whispered the other thinly. He sat very still, watching Mitchell unwinkingly with black, empty eyes. “But your friend has assured me that you are not like the others, that you might believe.”

  “Yes, yes. Go on.” Once again, Mitchell felt that curious twinge of doubt about Walton, but let it pass in the sudden surge of excitement. At last, he thought with a savage exultation, he might discover something which would show Nordhurst who had been right from the very beginning.

  “If I told you that the great statues moved themselves down from Rano Raraku to where you now find them—would you believe that?” There was a beat of sarcastic humor in the dry voice.

  For a moment, Mitchell felt his hands tighten on the table in front of him, then he forced himself to relax. Somehow, at the back of his mind, he had always subconsciously known that it might have been something like this, incredible as it was.

  “Go on,” he said tightly. “I’m not going to deny what you say.”

  “That is good.” The other nodded his head slightly once more. “We have been here on Easter Island for many centuries, but as you will have guessed, we were not the first to come. Long before we arrived, there were others. They were not like us. Compared to them, we are as pygmies. They were the long ears whose stone faces you can see outside. Now they ring the island, watching for any who may try to escape to the sea.”

  “And those others. The bird-men!”

  “Yes. They were here, too. The struggle between those two mighty forces was long indeed. This was the primal struggle of good and evil between the Old Ones and the Gods.”

  Ralph Mitchell nodded. Everything seemed to fit into place. The carvings and the manner in which those huge figures had been brought many miles from that quarry in the heart of Rano Raraku.

  “So good finally triumphed,” he said finally. “At least Nordhurst will have to believe me now.”

  He grew aware that the other was shaking his head and there was a curious smile on his lips.

  “No,” said the reedy voice. “That is not so. The good were not triumphant.”

  Mitchell stared at him, scarcely able to frame his thoughts and put them into words. He remembered the feeling which had all but overpowered him on the way there in the darkness. Suddenly, he knew what the other meant, but he wanted to hear him say it.

  “No?” He forced his voice to remain steady.

  “No. It was the forces of evil which triumphed over those of good. The Gods were defeated and that evil still exists here to this day. The struggle continues and will do so until the end of time.”

  Mitchell turned his head to glance at Walton. The other, he saw, was not looking at him, but was staring straight ahead, his lips pursed into a hard, thin line, his face fixed into a strange expression.

  “Do you believe what he’s saying?” he asked, switching to English. “It seems utterly fantastic.”

  “I warned you it might be difficult to believe,” said the other quietly. “But I see no reason to disbelieve him. After all, why on earth should he lie to us? He isn’t making anything out of it; and he was the one who approached us with this story.”

  “It’s possible,” admitted the other. “But somehow, I don’t think that’s the answer. I’m inclined to believe that he’s telling us the truth.”

  “Do you realize what you’re saying? That there still exists on the island, if not actual remains of that lost race, people who can perpetrate this evil he speaks of?”

  “I know. I find it incredible, difficult to believe, but I’ve studied enough of these people to get to know when they’re lying and when they’re telling the truth.”

  Mitchell turned back to the old man. While they had been speaking, he had been staring into space, taking no interest in what they were saying. He scarcely seemed aware of their presence there.

  Mitchell swallowed hard and forced down the sudden inexplicable rising of fear in his throat. The dark, empty eyes stared impassively into his and for a moment, the feeling was there that a black, intensely malignant aura lay around the other like some odd cocoon, spreading out from him in an evil wave. He blinked his eyes rapidly several times and forced himself to look away. It was more than likely that such men had mastered the art of some form of hypnotism, he thought tightly.

  Finally, he forced himself to speak quietly. “There are writings of my people which tell of men who landed here from a ship many, many years ago. They were never seen again and the ship had to leave without them. Do you know what happened to them?”

  The eyelids never flickered. “The Old Ones must have taken them,” was the simple reply.

  “The Old Ones?” persisted Mitchell, “and are they still here?”

  “They are all here. Those that the Old Ones take to themselves have immortality. They cannot die.”

  Mitchell shrugged. What the other was saying was impossible, of course. This didn’t make sense at all. He had the feeling that this conversation was about two different things, that neither of them was on common ground. But he was damned if he was going to let this superstitious old fool beat him. He had come here for information and he intended to get it at any cost. These natives had fobb
ed him off once too often. He glanced out of the corner of his eye at Walton, but the other had fallen strangely silent and seemed reluctant to take any further part in the proceedings.

  “This immortality you speak of,” he went on, “just what does that mean? That they still live here, as you or I, and that they’ll go on living for all time?”

  For the first time, the other smiled; a toothless grin that sent an involuntary shiver through him.

  “They are here with the others and here they will remain,” was all that he could get out of the old fellow. Finally, in exasperation, he climbed sharply to his feet, and stood looking down at the other, his face angry.

  “This is what I expected, of course,” he said tightly, deliberately speaking in Spanish so that the old man could understand every word. “A pack of lies and half forgotten superstitions which anyone could have told me. I don’t know why I listened to you, Walton. I thought I might learn something here which would be important. More and more, I’m getting the impression that perhaps, although I don’t like to admit it, Professor Nordhurst had been right all along the line. There is nothing here to bear out my ideas and theories. This expedition was nothing more than a complete waste of time. I’m going and this is the last time I agree to come and meet any of these—fools!” He spat the words out as he turned on his heel and moved towards the door. He had almost reached it when the old man called him back. There was a sharp, biting quality in his voice now, a note of warning.

  “Just before you go, señor, there’s one thing I want to tell you. Don’t make the mistake of thinking as your friend thinks. He came here disbelieving everything and swears that nothing will change his mind. He is a very foolish man, because there are things here far beyond anything he can comprehend. I know them for what they are, the power of darkness and evil that were spawned thousands of years ago, between good and evil on this lonely island.

  “Things which were born then and have not died over the centuries. They can never die so long as the island is alive. They’re out there now, in the darkness. Perhaps you felt their presence on your way here tonight. But your friend will soon discover these things for himself and when that happens, be sure that you are not of the same mind as he is. Be guided by your friend here,” he inclined his head slowly in Walton’s direction. “He can see these things, he has the mind of one who believes.”