I had allowed for this failure, but it is one thing to allow for something and quite another to see it happen. Time and again, I said to myself that the solution of this enigma did not concern me and that the one true enigma was time, that seamless chain of past, present, and future, of the ever and the never. Such reflections turned out to be useless, however; after whole afternoons devoted to the study of Schopenhauer or Royce, night after night I would walk the dirt roads ringing the Casa Colorada. Sometimes I caught a glimpse upstairs of a very white light; other times, I thought I heard a moaning. It went on this way until the nineteenth of January.
It was one of those Buenos Aires days when a man feels himself not only bullied and insulted by the summer but even debased by it. At around eleven o’clock at night the storm broke. First came the south wind, and then the water in torrents. I wandered about looking for a tree. In the sudden glare of a lightning flash I found myself a few steps from the fence. Whether out of fear or hope I don’t know, but I tried the gate. Unexpectedly, it opened. I made my way, pushed along by the storm. Sky and earth threatened me. The door of the house was also open. A squall of rain lashed my face and I went in.
Inside, the floor tiles had been torn up and I stepped on matted grass. A sweet, sickening smell filled the house. Right or left, I’m not sure which, I tripped on a stone ramp. Quickly, I went up. Almost unawares, I turned on the light switch.
The dining room and the library of my memories were now, with the wall between them torn down, a single great bare room containing one or two pieces of furniture. I shall not try to describe them, since I am not altogether sure—in spite of the cruel white light—of having seen them. Let me explain myself. To see a thing one has to comprehend it. An armchair presupposes the human body, its joints and limbs; a pair of scissors, the act of cutting. What can be said of a lamp or a car? The savage cannot comprehend the missionary’s Bible; the passenger does not see the same rigging as the sailors. If we really saw the world, maybe we would understand it.
None of the meaningless shapes that that night granted me corresponded to the human figure or, for that matter, to any conceivable use. I felt revulsion and terror. In one of the corners, I found a ladder which led to the upper floor. The spaces between the iron rungs, which were no more than ten, were wide and irregular. That ladder, implying hands and feet, was comprehensible, and in some way this relieved me. I put out the light and waited for some time in the dark. I did not hear the least sound, but the presence there of incomprehensible things disquieted me. In the end, I made up my mind.
Once upstairs, my fearful hand switched on the light a second time. The nightmare that had foreshadowed the lower floor came alive and flowered on the next. Here there were either many objects or a few linked together. I now recall a sort of long operating table, very high and in the shape of a U, with round hollows at each end. I thought that maybe it was the bed of the house’s inhabitant, whose monstrous anatomy revealed itself in this way, implicitly, like an animal’s or a god’s by its shadow. From some page or other of Lucan there came to my lips the word “amphisbaena”, which hinted at, but which certainly did not exhaust, what my eyes were later to see. I also remember a V of mirrors that became lost in the upper darkness.
What would the inhabitant be like? What could it be looking for on this planet, no less hideous to it than it to us? From what secret regions of astronomy or time, from what ancient and now incalculable dusk can it have reached this South American suburb and this particular night?
I felt an intruder in the chaos. Outside, the rain had stopped. I looked at my watch and saw with astonishment that it was almost two o’clock. I left the light on and carefully began climbing down. To get down the way I had come up was not impossible—to get down before the inhabitant returned. I guessed that it had not locked the doors because it did not know how.
My feet were touching the next to last rung of the ladder when I felt that something, slow and oppressive and two-fold, was coming up the ramp. Curiosity overcame my fear, and I did not shut my eyes.
THE HORROR OUT OF TIME
BY RANDALL GARRETT
IT HAS BEEN MORE THAN THIRTY YEARS NOW SINCE I SAW THAT terrifying thing in the crypt-like temple, but I remember it as clearly, and with all the horror, as if I had seen it but an hour ago.
In those days, twenty years before the turn of the century, the sailing ship still held sway over most of the world’s waters; now, the steam-driven vessels cover in days distances that took months. All that no longer matters to me; I have not been abroad since I returned from that South Sea voyage, still weak from fever and delirium, over thirty years ago.
I think that before the end of this new century, scientific researchers will have proven as fact things which I already know to be true. What facts lie behind the mysteries of certain megalithic ruined cities found buried beneath the shifting sands on three separate continents? Are they merely the constructs of our prehistoric ancestors? Or are they much older than we know, the products of some primal race, perhaps from this planet, perhaps from another, far distant in space? The latter sounds wild, phantastick, perhaps even… mad, but I believe it to be true, and mayhap this narrative will be of some service to those researchers who already suspect the truth. Long before our ancestors discovered the use of fire, even before they had evolved beyond animal form and intellect, there were beings of vast power and malignant intelligence who ruled supreme over this planet.
I have always been a person of leisure, spending my time in historical research, in reading books on philosophy, both natural and metaphysical, and in writing what I believe to be scholarly articles for various learned journals. When I was younger, I was more adventurous; I traveled a great deal, not only to read and research in the great universities of the world, but to do original research in hidden places of the earth, where few learned folk have gone. I was fearless then; neither the rotten fetidness of tropic jungles, nor the arid heat of harsh deserts, nor the freezing cold of polar regions daunted me.
Until the summer of my twenty-sixth year.
I was aboard the White Moon, sailing homeward through the South Seas, after having spent some months exploring the ancient ruins on one of the larger islands. (Their age can be measured in mere centuries; they have nothing to do with the present narrative.)
During the time I had been aboard, I had become quite friendly with Captain Bork, the commander of the three-masted vessel. He was a heavy-set, bluff, hearty fellow, an excellent ship’s officer, and well-read in many subjects far divergent from mere nautical lore. Although self-educated, his behavior was that of one gently born, far above that of the common sailor of the day. He was perhaps a dozen years older than I, but we spent many an hour during that tedious journey discussing various subjects, and I dare say I learned as much from him as he learned from me. We became, I think, good friends.
One evening, I recall, we sat up rather late in his cabin, discoursing on daemonology.
“I’m not a superstitious chap, myself, sir,” said he, “but I will tell you that there are things that take place at sea that could never happen on land. Things I couldn’t explain if I tried.”
“And you attribute them to non-material spirits, Captain?” I asked. “Surely not.”
In the dim light shed by the oil-lamp swinging gently overhead, his face took on a solemn expression. “Not spirits, perhaps, sir. No, not spirits exactly. Something… else.”
I became interested. I knew the captain’s sincerity, and I knew that, whatever he had to tell me, it would be told as he knew it to be.
“What, then, if not spirits?” I asked.
He looked broodingly out the porthole of his cabin. “I don’t really know,” he said slowly in his low, rumbling voice, staring out at the moonless sea-night. After a moment, he looked back at me, but there was no change in his expression. “I don’t really know,” he repeated. “It may be daemons or spirits or whatever, but it’s not the feeling one gets in a graveyard, if you see what
I mean. It’s different, somehow. It’s as if there were something down there—”
And he pointed straight downward, as though he were directing my attention down past the deck, past the hull, to the dreadful black sea-bottom so far beneath. I could say nothing.
“Way down there,” he continued solemnly. “There is something old down there—something old, but living. It is far older than we can know. It goes far back beyond the dawn of time. But it is there and it… waits.”
A feeling of revulsion came over me—not against the captain, but against the sea itself, and I realized that I, too, had felt that nameless fear without knowing it.
But of course I could not fall prey to that weird feeling.
“Come, Captain,” said I, in what I hoped was a pleasant tone, “this is surely your imagination. What intelligence could live at the bottom of the sea?”
He looked at me for a long moment, then his countenance changed. There was a look of forced cheerfulness upon his broad face. “Aye, sir, you’re right. A person gets broody at sea, that’s all. I fear I’ve been at sea too long. Have to take a long rest ashore, I will. I’ve been planning a month in port, and it’ll rid me of these silly notions. Will you have another drink, sir?”
I did, and by the time I was in my own cabin, I had almost forgotten the conversation. I lay in my bunk and went fast asleep.
I was awakened by the howling of the wind through the rigging. The ship was heaving from side to side, and I realized that heavy seas had overtaken her. From above, I heard the shouts of the captain and the first mate. I do not remember what they were, for I am not fully conversant with nautical terms, but I could hear the various members of the crew shouting in reply.
It was still dark, and, as it was summertime in the southern hemisphere, that meant that it was still early. I hadn’t the faintest notion of time, but I knew I had not slept long.
I got out of my bunk and headed topside.
It is difficult, even now, for me to describe that storm. The sea was rolling like a thing alive, but the wind was almost mild. It shifted, now blowing one way, now another, but it came nowhere near heavy gale force. The White Moon swerved this way and that under its influence, as though we were caught in some monstrous whirlpool that changed its direction of swirl at varying intervals.
There were no clouds directly overhead. The stars shone as usual in every direction save to the west, where one huge black cloud seemed to blot the sky.
I heard the Captain shout: “Get below, sir! Get below! You’re only a hindrance on deck! Get below!”
I was, after all, no sailor, and he was master of the ship, so I went back to my cabin to wait the storm out. I know not how long that dreadful storm lasted, for there was no dawn that day. The enveloping cloud from the west had spread like heavy smoke, almost blocking out the sun, and the sky was still a darkling grey when the sea subsided into gentle swells. Shortly after it had done so, there was a rap at my cabin door.
“The Captain would like to see you on deck, sir,” said a sailor’s rough voice from without.
I accompanied the sailor up the ladder to the weather deck, where Captain Bork was staring into the greyness abaft the starboard rail.
“What is it, Captain?” I inquired.
Without looking at me, he asked, “Do you smell that, sir?”
I had already perceived the stench which permeated the sea air about us. There was the nauseous aroma of rotting sea flesh combined with the acrid bitterness of burning sulphur. Before I could answer his question, the Captain continued. “I caught that smell once before many years ago.” He turned to look at me. “Have you smelt it before, sir?”
“Once,” I said. “Not exactly the same, Captain, but similar. It was near a volcano. But there was no smell of rotten fish.”
Captain Bork nodded his massive head. “Aye, sir. That’s the smell of it. Somewhere to the west—” He pointed toward the area where the black cloud was densest. “—there’s been a volcanic explosion, the like of which we’ve not seen before. I knew it was no ordinary storm; this is not the season for typhoon.”
“But what is that horrid miasma of decay?” I asked. “No volcano ever gave off a smell like that.”
Before the Captain could answer, a call came from the top of the mizzenmast. “Land Ho-o-o-o!”
Captain Bork jerked his head around and squinted toward the north. He thrust an arm out, pointing. “Land it is, sir,” he said to me, “and that’s where your stench comes from. The seas are shallow in these parts, but there should be no islands about. Look.”
In the dim, wan light I saw a low, bleak headland that loomed above the surging surface of the sea.
I knew then what had happened. The volcanic eruption, and the resulting seismic shock, had lifted a part of the sea bottom above the surface. There before us, in black basalt, was a portion of the seabed which had been inundated for untold millennia. It was from that newly risen plateau that the revolting odour came, wafted by the gusting sea-breeze.
The Captain began giving orders. There were certain repairs which had to be made, and he felt it would be better to have the ship at anchor for the work, so he directed that the ship be brought in close to the newly risen island. Not too close, of course; if another volcanic quake stirred the sea, he wanted leeway between the White Moon and those forbidding rocks.
He found water shallow enough to set the anchors, and the crew went to work with a will. The stench from the island, while mephitic enough, was not really strong, and we soon grew accustomed to it.
I was of no use whatever aboard, and might as well have gone to my cabin and stayed there while the crew worked, but there was something about that bleak, malodorous island that drew my attention powerfully. The ship was anchored roughly parallel to the beach, with the island to port, so I found a spot forward where I would be out of the way of the work and examined the island minutely with a spyglass I had borrowed from Captain Bork.
The island was tiny; one could have walked across it with no trouble at all, had it been level and even. But it would be much more difficult over that craggy, slippery black surface.
The close-up view through the spyglass only made the island look the more uninviting. Rivulets of sea water, still draining from the upper plateau, cut through sheets of ancient slime that oozed gelatinously down the precipitate slopes to the coral-encrusted beach below. Pools of nauseous-looking liquid formed in pockets of dark rock and bubbled slowly and obscenely. As I watched, I became obsessed with the feeling that I had seen all this before in some hideous nightmare.
Then something at the top of the cliff caught my eye. It was something farther inland, and I had to readjust the focus of my instrument to see it clearly. For a moment, I held my breath. It appeared to be the broken top of an embattled tower!
It could not be, of course. I told myself that it was merely some chance formation of rock. But I had to get a better view of it.
I went in search of the Captain and requested his permission to climb a little way up the rigging, so that my point of view would be above the top of the cliff. Busy as he was, he granted my request almost offhandedly. Up I went, and used the spyglass once again.
The tower was plainly visible now. It appeared to be one of two, the second broken off much lower than the first. Both rose from one end of a rectangular block that might have been a partly buried building, as if some great fortress, aeons old, still stood there.
Or was my over-fervid imagination making too much of what, after all, was more likely to be a natural formation? I have often watched cloud formations take on weird and phantastick shapes as the wind shifts them across the sky; could not this be the same or a similar phenomenon? I forced my mind to be more objective, to look at the vista before me as it actually was, not as I might imagine it to be.
The spyglass showed clearly that the surface of that ugly, looming structure was composed of coral-like cells and small shellfish like those which cling to the bottom of sea-going vessels when t
hey have not been drydocked for too long a time. The edges of the building—if building it was—were rounded, and not angular. It could be merely happenstance, a natural formation of rock which had been covered, over the millennia, by limeshell creatures which had given that natural structure a vague, blurred outline resembling an ancient fortress. Still, would not a genuine artifact of that size and shape have looked the same if it were covered with the same encrustations? I could not decide. Even after the most minute examination through the spyglass, I could not decide. There was but one thing to do, so I approached the Captain with my request.
“Go ashore?” Captain Bork said in astonishment. “No, sir; I could not allow that! In the first place, it is far too dangerous. Those rocks are slippery and afford too precarious a foothold. And look to the west; that volcano is still active; a second quake might submerge that island again as easily as the first raised it. In the second place, I cannot, at this time, spare the men to row you ashore in a longboat.”
I had to make a firm stand. “Captain,” said I, “surely you realise the tremendous scientific importance of this discovery. If that structure is, as I surmise, an artifact rather than a natural configuration of stone, the failure to investigate it would be an incalculable loss to science.”
Acolytes of Cthulhu Page 39