Acolytes of Cthulhu

by Robert M. Price

  The events began for me in the summer of 1940. Coler had just returned from an expedition to Arabia, and had asked me to stop in at his manor in Severnford because he wished to show me “a little curiosity which I dug up in the Arabian desert.” As I was myself not involved in anything of overwhelming exigency, I came immediately. Inviting me in, he then left to fetch his prize. He returned moments later.

  It would be both trite and untrue to say that the thing was then at all significant of terror: it was anomalous only in that it was unfathomable. What it seemed to be was a roughly rectangular glass or crystal box, of a dull viridescent color. The one peculiarity was that the figure had no seam or opening in it; so that if it were indeed a box, then it was a box whose manner of use had yet to be discovered. That it was merely an object of decoration seemed improbable, for it was, by our standards, hardly attractive in any way. Seeing all of this I looked up to Coler, mutely expressing my apprehension.

  “I’m as confused as you are,” he said, “not only as to its function but as to its constituents. It does superficially resemble fluorite, and, if it were not so dull, one might think it pure dioptase; but my chemical tests prove that it is neither. It certainly is some sort of crystal, yet it is a crystal which seems to have few or no earthly elements.”

  “My dear fellow,” I cried, “you must show it to the Archaeological Institute!” I was referring to the Royal Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. “What a find!”

  “No, Collins, no,” he replied: “my reputation is too precarious. They will think it a hoax or some cleverly planned practical joke on my part. I’ve been in similar situations before: the result has always been the same.” He spoke with a dreary acerbity from which one could glean his remembrance of the past.

  “How did you find it, anyway?” I queried.

  “That’s another curious business! Our party was exploring some strange pillared ruins (possibly, though not certainly, Alhazred’s ‘fabulous Irem, City of Pillars’), and it happened that, while I was digging somewhere with a trowel, the ground beneath me suddenly gave way, and I plunged down what seemed to be a narrow pit. I fell down some twenty feet, landing finally on another sandy surface under the ground. Now my falling must have unearthed this crystal, for I then saw it lying next to me, still half-buried in the earth. Some of my men, who had seen me fall, threw me a rope, and I climbed out of the pit, bringing this thing up with me.”

  It was, as he said, curious, but not totally out of the ordinary. When I asked him what he planned to do with the object, he replied:

  “I don’t know, Collins, I don’t know. At present, there is nothing I can do, save somehow to find out its constituents and its purpose.”

  “One moment, Coler,” I suddenly burst out. I had only then remembered some of my own readings in the arcane, which, although not within Coler’s level, were not inconsiderable. “Might this not be Blake’s Shining Trapezohedron?”

  “I thought of that, too, Collins, but I’ve now dismissed the idea. Remember what Blake says about the Shining Trapezohedron: it is a many-faceted crystal or ‘glowing stone’ inside an ‘open box of yellowish metal.’ Now, in addition to the fact that our discovery has no opening, what we have here is simply a crystal box itself, or perhaps a solid block of crystal. Whatever it is, it is not the Shining Trapezohedron.”

  Coler was staring at the thing as if hypnotized, and my gaze too became fixed on it. Its apparent functionlessness was what made it peculiar, not any inherent quality of the crystal itself. I am tempted to write that it even then gave off a miasma of otherworldly manufacture, and I cannot definitely adduce whether this view is actual or merely born of imperfect memory and subsequent explication. The thing was strange, but really nothing more; terror would come a little later.

  * * *

  Research and publishing of an historical-archaeological report on Roman ruins in Wales kept me almost constantly busy for an entire week after my visit with Coler. Indeed, it was exactly a week later that Coler called me again, saying that there had been a new development concerning his discovery. I had only concluded my work that morning, and was glad that Coler’s summons had come at such an opportune time. Again, I must refrain from adding that any feeling of dread was then overcoming me; for the enigma of the crystal was as yet minute, and in the course of my own activities, I had all but forgotten it. It would be the most pathetic of platitudes to say that the importance and significance which I gave it was far short of the mark.

  The “new development” of which Coler had spoken was not as radical as I had supposed: its shape and color were still the same, and the only change was that there could be detected in the center of the green object a small glowing, as if some sort of phosphorescent ball had been placed within it. That this had resulted of its own accord was obvious, what with the seamlessness of the thing; and, because we knew not what the purpose of the box itself was, we could hardly have any notion as to the function of this odd glowing. I asked Coler when the glowing had begun, and he replied:

  “I first detected it this morning, though it could well have started any time last night. But it is not that which bothers me: it is what we are to make of it.”

  I could not but agree.

  “What does it mean, man,” he said, more to himself than to me, “what does it mean? I cannot even begin to hypothesize on it, so outré and senseless does it seem. I can’t help feeling, however, that there is more here than meets the eye…

  “The answer,” he continued, “may well be in one of my books. I’ve begun looking myself—there’s nothing in Prinn—but I still have dozens of volumes to go through.”

  There could be nothing clearer than that Coler wanted help in his task. Being free of my own activities, I proffered my services, and he assented with an eagerness which told of his relief at not having to ask me himself. In his experience-gained self-sufficiency he had grown loath both of asking favors and of doing them. My suggestion that we begin at once was quickly adopted, and we two retired to his library, where his priceless collection of tomes lay.

  Coler had already been some two-thirds of the way through von Junzt’s Unaussprechlichen Kulten when I called, and, taking up that book again, advised me to look through any of the other volumes I wished. I had never completely read Alhazred’s Necronomicon, and considered that now would be as good a time as any to do so. I took down the handwritten copy which Coler had purchased from an old occultist in Massachusetts, and began its perusal, seating myself in one of the two occasional chairs in the room, in the other of which Coler himself was seated.

  How many hours we were in that room reading I have been unable to determine; but the fact that the first time I looked up from Alhazred’s volume, I saw through the window that night had fallen, and that the grandfather’s clock in the library registered well past 9, proves that no inconsiderable time had elapsed in the course of our task. Coler’s despair at discovering not even the vaguest reference to his find in von Junzt was matched by my own discouragement at the apparent uselessness of the Necronomicon. I had managed to get half through the tome, and there could not be discerned in even its allegorical whisperings any obscure allusions to Coler’s crystalline receptacle. Alhazred’s mentioning of a box which was a “window to space and time” could be nothing other than a citation of the Shining Trapezohedron, coinciding as it did exactly with the descriptions in both the Blake manuscript and in Prinn’s De Vermis Mysteriis. That being the case, it could be of no use to us; although Alhazred’s later noting something called “Nyarlathotep’s weapon” could have meant anything from those “Druid” stones in Avebury to that mysterious round tower in Billington Woods near Arkham, Massachusetts. Coler, late in the afternoon, had finished the von Junzt and had begun Warangal’s Civitates Antiquae Fantasticae, though even that Indian philosopher’s work seemed to be as ignorant of the green crystal as Prinn’s and Alhazred’s had been, so that our disheartenment at finding no clues soon turned to a dread that not a single vol
ume in Coler’s library would bring any facts to light. Our exhaustion was as great as our frustration, and Coler, gentleman to the last, told me, at close on 9:30, to stop our work and partake of a late supper. No suggestion could have been more apt.

  The next day proved to be more productive, though in ways which we could not yet understand. The morning found me again in Coler’s library recommencing my examination of the Alhazred volume, while Coler himself continued to tackle the Warangal tome. Some time afterwards, perhaps an hour before noon, I, resting my eyes from the crabbed and blurred writing, looked at that morning’s paper, which was lying haphazardly on the floor next to me. In it was an article which, though small and of apparent inconsequence, proved later to be vastly significant. The article was this:

  OCCULTISTS HOLD CLANDESTINE MEETING

  Brichester: 2 July 1940. A band of some two dozen occult worshippers, ranging in age from eighteen to over seventy, were seen performing some dark ritual on the top of Sentinel Hill outside Brichester yesterday night, where there are located some primitive Druid megaliths. No sacrifices seem to have been made, but the leader of the flock, an old man of about sixty, who seemed to serve the function of a priest, was heard intoning weird chants which the “congregation” echoed. The whole incident seemed to be of little importance, for the ritual or ceremony lasted scarcely half an hour. This was the first of such meetings in over six months, and officials are fearing a recurrence of the disappearance of various young children which occurred the last time the gathering met, in late December 1939.

  It cannot be said that, when I first read the article, I paid any great attention to it. In the quest for ascertaining the origin and function of Coler’s crystal, I was hardly about to give much notice to some absurd litany performed by a handful of degenerate, semi-crazed individuals. I remember remarking to myself that the Brichester Herald must truly be desperate for news, if it were lowered to including such trite and ludicrous affairs in its pages.

  My subsequent finishing of the Necronomicon two hours later coincided almost exactly with Coler’s completion of the huge Warangal tome; the result, of course, was as before: although both the Necronomicon and Civitates Antiquae Fantasticae contained detailed accounts of Irem, the City of Pillars, there was nothing in either volume which we could relate to the excavated crystal. Our minds were already weary with reading, and Coler’s suggestion that we take some lunch was heartily accepted by me.

  The phone call came immediately after we had finished. Coler was informed by the operator, when picking up the instrument, that he was receiving a call from Wolverhampton Airport from a man who was a resident, of all places, of Arkham, Massachusetts! Wilmarth, who had probably forgotten Coler’s very name, surely could have nothing to do with us, and the reputation for eccentricity and, it must be admitted, rank enmity of his colleagues which was Coler’s further created a mystery as to the identity of our transatlantic caller. The enigma was solved, however, immediately upon the utterance of the American’s first words.

  “Meredith!” Coler jovially exclaimed in reply. “It’s been nearly fifteen years since I’ve heard your voice! Why in the world are you in Tewkesbury?… To see me? For what reason?… I understand… As a matter of fact, I am, but it has been so discouraging that I’d be glad to give it up and tackle something fresh… We will be there shortly. Good day.”

  Upon Coler’s hanging up the phone, he related to me the gist of the conversation. It seemed that Joseph Meredith, now head of the Archaeology Department at Miskatonic, and one of Coler’s few friends, had come here to give Coler an ancient and curious hieroglyphic tract which a Miskatonic expedition to Egypt had recently discovered. Meredith’s staff, unable to decipher the evidently millennia-old fragment, had decided to put the thing in Coler’s hands, knowing that he was one of the world’s foremost authorities on elder tongues. The archaeologist had just arrived here, at Wolverhampton Airport in Tewkesbury, and had asked that Coler come and fetch him and bring him back here so that work might be begun on the text; to which request Coler had agreed.

  When we arrived at the airport, we saw Meredith with, not only suitcases, but another small black container which we knew was a special housing case for old parchments, a case which would protect the manuscript from the decimating effects of time and the elements. As we entered the car and drove back to Coler’s manor, Meredith explained more about the find.

  The trip to various ruins in Egypt had been made only that winter, and, aside from other minor archaeological artifacts, this parchment had been the only significant product. Its being unearthed in a ruin near the town of Kurkur had given it the name of the Kurkur Fragment. Linguists, archaeologists, and antiquarians alike had been baffled as to the language or dialect of its writing; that it was either a modern or archaic dialect of Egyptian had been almost at once ruled out, and, as it might easily have been transported to Egypt from as far a place as India, tests had been made as to whether the document was in either Arabic, Sanscrit, or the dozen modern and obsolete Indian dialects; but the results had all been equally negative, serving only to confirm that it was either penned in a language of unbelievable obscurity, or that it was inexplicably written in code. Meredith himself, remembering Lang’s Voynich Manuscript, had put forth the theory that the work might be in a sort of hybrid language, i.e. Sanscrit letters (for this much was obvious from the text) perhaps forming Hittite or Assyrian words. The work on this hypothesis had only begun, for there seemed to be, considering the unknown origin, almost no end of permutations that could be had. Meredith had then thought of letting Coler scrutinize the tract so that the possibility of its being in some abstruse tongue, known only to Coler and other such specialists, might be explored. This was, then, the reason for Meredith’s arrival.

  Coler would not stand for Meredith’s lodging in a hotel, and offered his own mansion—a multi-roomed stone edifice whose construction might have dated from the sixteenth century, and only a fraction of which was used—as a temporary residence and base of operations. The afternoon was progressing by the time we had returned to Severnford, and Coler’s suggestion of an early dinner which would leave the entire evening free for studying the manuscript was accepted by both Meredith and myself.

  That evening, however, was important not so much for our working on the Kurkur Fragment as for an incident which made us realize, perhaps for the first time, that we were involved in matters whose scope was far greater than we had originally supposed.

  Putting forth the thoroughly justifiable plea of fatigue from his 4,000-mile trip, Meredith retired early that night. We did not fail, however, first to show him Coler’s anomalous crystal; indeed, it was Meredith himself who had requested to see it, having heard of the find from one of Coler’s party, a Miskatonic graduate student named Craig Phillips. Coler told his colleague all the facts about its discovery, its sudden commencing to glow, and our own inefficacious efforts at trying to enucleate its origin and use. Coler, too, explained that the glowing had definitely grown larger since the morning, the phosphorescent ball inside now approaching a diameter of two and a half inches. Meredith, not unnaturally involved in his own arcanum, seemed to pay Coler only enough attention as might just be within the bounds of courtesy, and then tried to steer Coler’s mind back to the new mystery which he had dropped in his lap. This was not a difficult task to perform, considering our double irritation at the total absence of any clues as to the crystal’s function and significance.

  It must have been close on 11 o’clock when it occurred. Coler had initially given me a part of Meredith’s manuscript and had me make certain arrangements of the curious and faded letters which would allow him to break the centuries-old cipher, but after a time stopped me, telling me that he had perhaps discovered the base and method of the text. I had recommenced finding the answer to our other enigma, picking up Laurent de Longnez’s comparatively recent L’Histoire des Planetes (1792), to see if that contemporary of Sade and La Bretonne had any knowledge of the age-old green thing
that had come from Arabia. De Longnez’s French was filled with irritating punctuational and literary archaisms that made reading none too easy, so that after a time I found myself bent almost double over the book, perpetually squinting my eyes and following with my head each individual line. Several hours of this had hypnotized me to the book, so much that I all but forgot the presence of Coler at the desk across the room. Only until I heard a sudden shuffling movement close at hand did I merge from my reverie and, for the first time in hours, look up.

  What I saw was another man in the room, not Meredith, nor Coler, but one whose slovenly attire and facial vacuity told that his origin could be nothing else but that squalid decadence called Lower Brichester.

  How the man had gotten in the house became more an enigma than what his object was, for it was now obvious that his steps were leading in straight to the glowing crystal on Coler’s desk, and now only yards separated him from his prize.

  Coler, miraculously, was so entranced in his studies that he still had no inkling that this intruder was here at all, and only looked up, mutely baffled and disturbed, when I flung myself bodily at the man, half wrestling him to the ground. Either through my underestimation of the degenerate miscreant’s strength or through my own unrealized enervation, I found myself soon with my back to the ground, looking up into a visage which now held the image of absolute terror. Seeming now to be possessed of an incontrollable lunacy, the thief suddenly raised himself to his feet and, disregarding both his bizarre quest and any concern for bodily injury, flung himself headlong through the window of Coler’s library. Falling to the ground amidst a frightful shattering of glass, the man got up and ran off into the night.

  Too awed at the whole spectacle to speak, I could only stand at the window and regard the curious voleur, who had now stopped running when he saw that he was unpursued. Coler, however, had not been idle: he suddenly came up behind me and, laying a hand on my shoulder, spoke the words: