Acolytes of Cthulhu

by Robert M. Price

  I guess maybe it had got to within three feet of the house. Real close anyways. And it was still rising. I could hear clumps of sod falling in, washing away. It was an awesome thing, being in all that dark and knowing that the river was hissing quietly by almost tight up against the house, like a giant, slowly coiling snake that had a life of its own. I could feel it going by as well as hear it.

  So I carefully worked my way round back to the kitchen window again, and I looked in, pretty boldly this time. But there was nothing unusual in there, except for how filthy it was.

  I waited for about five minutes. No signs of John returning. Everything was quiet.

  I tell you, I felt about as strange as I want to, just standing there. The sky was almost completely dark now, and the stars were really shining. It could have been peaceful that night, except for what was going on in the house. Or what I feared was going on.

  My stomach was really cramping up good by this time, and my hands were all cold, and my upper lip. It felt as if someone were sticking needles into the back of my neck.

  I stood there for a few more minutes, trying to decide. And then just suddenly I knew what I had to do. Moving as quietly as was possible for me, I came round to the steps and eased up onto the porch. I stood in front of the door, hesitating.

  My head was going this way and that. I wanted to run. But the Lehmanns were my friends, and I had to try to help, whatever the problem was.

  I opened the door carefully. I moved inside, at first as quietly as I could, but then in consideration of John I decided to make as much noise as possible, so he wouldn’t think I was sneaking around in his house.

  “John?” I called.

  There was no answer.

  “Where are you, John?”

  Again there was no answer of any kind.

  Then I got to really be frightened for him. I figured to try upstairs first, and I climbed up the steps to the bedrooms just as quickly as my old legs would take me, looked in one after another of them, but neither John nor Carrie was anywhere. Each room was clean and neat and all made up. Next I got myself up the narrow steps to his attic, and I searched around everywhere, but all I saw was old cribs and picture frames and boxes tied with faded ribbons. It looked like no one had even been in the attic for years.

  I stood up there shaking, and I expelled all the air that had been building up in my lungs. I forced myself to relax, and then I worked my way, slowly now, back down to the kitchen. I cannot tell you how depressed I had become. Their marriage, our friendship, the passing of the years, the joy of the last few weeks with them—all of it was a big whirl in my mind. I don’t know what I expected to find up there, but I did expect to find something. Carrie was missing, that was for sure, and that was bad news. And John was not answering my calls.

  Only the cellar was left.

  I was tired enough by the time I got back into the kitchen that I had to sit down for a little. The table was cluttered with dirty dishes and empty quart jars. That depressed me even more, because it looked to me like John had been alone for a good while, eating peaches out of a jar like an old bachelor who no longer cared very much. Or maybe the peaches reminded him of Carrie, I don’t know. Whatever it was, it was not a good sign either way.

  God, my head was awhirl with all these strange thoughts!

  I suppose I sat at that table for another five minutes, trying to calm myself. The only sound was the slow, even ticking of John’s Ansonia, which Carrie brought him home from the Chicago’s World’s Fair.

  But it was inevitable. I knew I had to go into the cellar. Wherever Carrie was, that was another story, but John, he couldn’t be anyplace else but down there.

  So I moved into the hallway, switched on the light, and stood in front of the cellar door. I know now what it means to be shaking like a leaf. I was so scared of what was ahead of me. I forced myself to wait for even a few more minutes till I got a better hold of my nerves.

  Finally I was ready. I eased open the cellar door just wide enough to squeeze through, and then I stood at the little landing at the top. It was pitch dark down there, pitch dark, and I switched the landing light on and off, but the bulb was burnt out or loose or something, because no light would go on. I couldn’t hear anything or anybody downstairs.

  “John?” I called out. “John?”

  It’s strange to me now, but I remember I called his name gently, almost as a loud whisper. Reverently even, I don’t know. Like I was afraid to be too loud. That’s a remarkable thing.

  There was no answer.

  I pushed open the cellar door as wide as I could to let in some light. And until my eyes got used to the darkness I just sat down on the second step from the top and waited.

  Still I heard nothing, but I could not get it out of my mind that John was down there somewhere, and he just was not answering my calls. Why, I could not say.

  Then little by little I started to see shapes, and before long I could see most of the cellar. I could make out the furnace and the air ducts, a cluttered work table, the churn, things like that. Not good, but I could see them.

  Nothing was moving. And I decided that I had guessed wrong when I figured John Lehmann was down there.

  But I wanted to be sure, and so I slowly and quietly eased myself, still sitting, one step at a time lower till I was maybe a third of the way down and could see all around the cellar, both in front of the steps and behind them.

  And then, God help me, I did see something. I was not in any way prepared for what was over on the far side, the side of the cellar along the river. I would never have guessed it in a million years.

  Everything was still only in shades of gray, nothing had any color, but by this time I could see lots of details. Close to the river wall was an old brass bed, with rumpled bedclothes. I guessed soon enough that it was where John had been sleeping, it sure looked like it, down there in the cellar. Probably ever since Carrie had disappeared.

  Then right away between the bed and the wall was a long mound, newly dug in the dirt floor. That took my breath away. I knew what it was, all right. That mound was just long enough, and slightly rounded, and I knew what it was.

  Lots of feelings went rushing through my head then. Fear, and anger, and pity, and hurt. And the inevitable, “Why?”

  Aw-w, God, that scene did pain me so.

  I could not imagine what the mound was doing down in the cellar. And why in the world he had buried her down there. She had died, sure enough, my fears were right, but Carrie belonged in a proper grave. She did. But here she was, down in a hidden pit in a moldy cellar. With a bed right next, and with the dark and the mildew. It was such an awful place.

  I do not think I can tell you just how sad and how alone I suddenly felt. With Carrie gone.

  Then I was able to see John moving a little. I had missed him till that moment. He was kneeling at the head of the mound, with his hands clasped together. And he was trembling, I made that out. I didn’t quite see his face, but he had to mean what he was doing, kneeling down like that. He was praying, is what.

  I could hardly believe he did not hear the noises I was making, nor the shouting. But he paid no attention. It was as if I did not exist.

  Well, he was right next to the wall. And the wall was right close to the river. And there was no way to tell what happened next but to say it right out.

  All of a sudden I caught hold of a noise, low down and far off, a kind of vague rushing sound. Then it got to be like a grinding noise. It grew. And it kept on. It got louder and louder and closer and closer until I could tell it was coming from outside. And still it got louder. Soon it was a roar, a loud whirring roar that was deep in the river and coming towards the house and then, whatever it was, it crashed into the cellar wall and broke clear through and forced the water through the hole like a piston. And that water lifted John clear up and smashed him hard against the wall right in front of my eyes.

  In just no time at all.

  The water came thundering through the hole
now, wailing through the hole, and it thrust every which way just violent, and I screamed and scrambled up the steps and out of the cellar just as the water pulled the steps away and filled the whole of the cellar. In only a few seconds. No more time than that.

  And I run from the house as fast as I could just as the water swirled up out of the cellar and across the floor and out of the house.

  I run till I couldn’t go no farther, up a little hill just about a hundred yards from my house. I fell down on the ground and couldn’t move, I was so tired. I lay there aching and heaving and panting, and I was crying and scared out of my wits.

  Then I sat up finally and forced myself to look. And what I saw didn’t even seem real to me. The water was spilling out of the house it looked like in slow motion now, out of the door and the first floor windows, with odd little gurgling sounds, slowly, slowly, as if it had almost found its level. But it surrounded the house as it came out, and the house became like an island in a sudden little lake that was connected to the river.

  In nothing but the moonlight it was an eerie sight, let me tell you. The moon glistening easy on the water. And the house all black.

  John was done for, that I knew. He was finished.

  Well, the house started to creak and groan now, from the heavy tow of the river, and the pressure got to pulling at it and pulling at it until it started to come up and away. It began to break apart and splinter, with awesome tearing sounds, and it wasn’t too long before there wasn’t no house there at all. The house was gone, torn all to pieces.

  And then all the pieces of it floated away, almost like each piece took its own turn, until there wasn’t even nothing left to see. And the river smoothed down again, as if the house in the moonlight never existed.

  There was one great deep swirl in the water right out in front of me. It lasted for only a few seconds and then it was gone too.

  John and Carrie Lehmann and their farm had disappeared forever, just like that.

  That’s the story.

  I know how crazy it sounds, but there was a live thing in the water, that I know. I don’t know what it was, or where it came from, but something smashed a hole in John’s cellar, right through from the river, and the high water that come in took away the house and everything in it and left only that silent inlet when everything was gone. Right in front of my eyes. And there was that great swirl. Something alive did that. So I know what I’m talking about.

  But there are lots of things I don’t know.

  For instance, I know what happened to John. I know how he died. There is no question about that. But I don’t think I or anyone will ever know what happened to Carrie.

  I hope she died natural. I know deep in my heart it wasn’t John that did it, I know him too well, but I just hope she died natural. I hope it wasn’t nothing else. I mean, I hope it wasn’t nothing she did, or caused to happen.

  I’m sure as I’m gonna die myself one day that she was down there, though. And whatever happened to her, John just went crazy with grief. It had to be that.

  I never told anyone what I saw. Right away when it happened there was talk about the bad flood in the valley below Garlock’s Bend, about all the heavy rains, and about poor John and poor Carrie.

  But I never told. I figured it was no one’s business but mine. It was me that seen it, and I had to deal with it my own way.

  Just about that time there was some trouble right up in Garlock’s Bend, in the church, and I was there through the whole of that one, too, but I hid the fact that some of it seemed so much the same to me.

  I don’t know, I guess I thought that one problem at a time was enough. But partly I kept quiet on account of Carrie. She was scared about something, she said. And she wanted to get back home because of the high water. She said it wasn’t safe because of the high water. And she used a line about the water being high enough for “…it to…” What the it was, and what it could do, those are good questions.

  She had to know something, or she wouldn’t have talked like that.

  So, I guess to somehow not stir things up, I didn’t tell. Maybe, considering everything, that was wrong.

  Maybe.

  But then come all the maybes.

  Maybe Carrie was innocent of anything bad, and I am doing her a terrible injustice, thinking evil things that go through my mind so often. I hope so. I hope to God she was innocent. I hope to God she was.

  But maybe, just maybe, she was involved in something or controlled by something or even just aware of something so wrong that I can’t even comprehend it. She had predicted the trouble to come, so at the very least, she knew of this thing in the water. She had to know of it. How she knew, and why, no one will ever get a handle on that.

  Some things, I guess, it’s maybe even better not to understand. What good would it do anyway?

  John now, I don’t know. That time we talked and I wanted to come in to see him, he did say that he was forbidden to let anybody in, he was “…just not allowed to.” Whatever that meant. He sounded so weak and frightened. Somehow, though, I get the feeling that he knew a whole lot less than Carrie did.

  All of this sounds crazy, and just even impossible, but there it is. I know it happened because I went through it, and I’m telling the truth. The sad thing is, I’m sure in my heart of hearts that I’ll never have the answers. That’s the terrible thing for me, not knowing the truth about Carrie.

  But one thing is certain—something alive was in the water. That much I know. I know that. Something alive that come from the river.

  My guess is it’s still there. Wherever it came from, it’s still out there somewhere. Waiting, maybe?

  You get these little hints at Miller’s, like maybe a few other people have been through something, too, but they have decided to keep quiet.

  There’s a thought could make anyone afraid.

  Carrie’s been on my mind a lot lately. In my quiet times. Her and those ice-blue eyes and all the passing years. And what I thought was lifelong innocence. And always I’m left with the questions that keep coming back. What did she know? What did she do? And why?

  And the question of questions—what took her?

  Well, whatever came for them out of the river, whatever it was that happened to them both, John did love her, no matter the cost to him in the end. He hung on like a man, too, and you can’t ask for more than that. Even if he died because of her, because of something she did, I believe he still loved her. I do.

  And maybe, at the last, that’s partly why I’m so troubled by the whole story myself, why I have so many questions, why I feel so much dread.

  I loved her too, you see.

  THE PURPLE DEATH

  BY GUSTAV MEYRINK

  THE TIBETAN FELL SILENT. THE EMACIATED FIGURE STOOD quietly for a while, erect and unmoving, then disappeared into the jungle.

  Sir Roger Thornton stared into the fire: if the Tibetan had not been a Sannyasin and a penitent to boot, if he had not been making his pilgrimage to Benares, then not a single word would have been believable. But a Sannyasin neither lies nor can be lied to.

  And yet, that horribly malicious expression that had flickered in the Asian’s face! Or was it just a trick of the flickering firelight that reflects so strangely in Mongolian eyes? The Tibetans hate the Europeans and jealously guard their magical secrets, with which they hope one day to exterminate the haughty, pompous foreigners, one day, when the great day dawns.

  He, Sir Hannibal Roger Thornton, himself one of these hated Europeans, must see with his own eyes whether supernatural powers really rested in the hands of these remarkable people. But he would need companions, brave men whose wills cannot be broken, even if they were pursued by the very screams of hell.

  The Englishman assessed his companions: there, the Afghan, the only one who could be considered an Asian, fearless as a panther, but superstitious. That left only the European’s servant. Sir Roger roused him with a nudge from his walking stick (Pompeius Jaburek had been completely deaf since the a
ge of ten, yet he understood every spoken word, fantastic as it may seem, by reading lips).

  Sir Roger explained, with frequent gestures, what he had learned from the Tibetan: About twenty days ride from here, near the Himavat, lay a very strange land, surrounded on three sides by sheer rock walls. The sole passage led through poisonous gas, which flowed out of the ground and would instantly kill any living thing which passed by. In the ravine itself, which was about fifty square English miles in extent, there lived a small tribe in the thick of the rankest vegetation. These people were of Tibetan stock, wore pointed red caps, and rendered worship to an evil, satanic being in the form of a peacock. This devilish entity had, over the course of centuries, instructed the inhabitants in the ways of Black Magic and imparted such secrets as could turn the whole earth upside down and kill even the strongest man in the blink of an eye.

  Pompeius smiled mockingly.

  Sir Roger explained that he planned to use diving helmets and aqualungs to pass through the poisonous plane to penetrate the mysterious ravine.

  Pompeius Jaburek nodded in agreement and rubbed his dirty hands together gleefully.

  * * *

  The Tibetan, indeed, had not lied: there, below, in the midst of vibrant greens, lay the strange ravine, a gold-brown desert-like belt of weather-beaten earth. It was roughly an hour’s walk in length, and then the entire area disappeared from the outside world.

  The gas, spiraling up from the earth, was pure carbon dioxide.

  Sir Roger Thornton, who had surveyed the width of this belt from the safety of a hilltop, decided that they would begin the descent on the following morning. The diving helmets, sent from Bombay, worked perfectly.

  Pompeius carried both repeating rifles and various equipment which His Lordship had considered indispensable. The Afghan, on the other hand, had stubbornly and fearfully refused to join the expedition, explaining that he would sooner climb into a tiger’s lair. He must, he objected, weigh the risks very carefully, since even his immortal soul might well hang in the balance. So, in the end, only the two Europeans dared the venture.