Acolytes of Cthulhu

by Robert M. Price

  Alan smiled discreetly. A wind such as this would make short work of any mists should they present themselves.

  But he was wrong.

  The night was dark and clear; the wind blew even stronger with a keening cry, whipping the shrubbery and bending the long grasses beneath its blasts. Alan chose a chair and sat quietly by the window, watching where Fletcher told him the vanguard of the mist would appear.

  And then, beneath the few faint and newly visible stars, long writhing streamers of fog appeared from over the brow of the hill above the marsh. Faint, white and utterly loathsome in their inexplicable defiance of natural laws, they moved toward the house against the wind! Alan watched the grass bend nearly flat by the whistling blasts which should have torn the fog to shreds, and knew that he was indeed witnessing something that completely opposed the laws of nature.

  Darkness was soon complete—the utter lonely dark of the countryside unrelieved by street lights or homely reflections from house lamps. But there was still light enough to discern indistinctly the writhing mists slowly approaching till they stretched forth damp, clammy arms and caressed the window panes in a loathsome embrace—a nebulous, vast grayness with misty, armlike tentacles that moved and writhed and poked curiously at each nook and corner of the building although the main body seemed immobile. The thought flashed into Alan’s mind that Fletcher’s likening had been inaccurate. Instead of an army with scouts, it seemed more like a huge, gray, smoky octopus that squatted before them, moving ghastly tentacles in threatening gestures.

  Fletcher finally broke the spell of silence that had settled over the interior of the cottage. He spoke quietly.

  “You have seen, Mr. Hasrad. What do you make of it?”

  Alan tore his gaze from the window. His figure was tense, his face engraved with lines of worry and haunting doubt which was foreign to his eager, enthusiastic nature. “I don’t know what to think of it—yet,” he confessed. “In view of the apparent strength of the wind, this has to be the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. What would happen if I were to go out?”

  Fletcher’s frail, pale face looked anxious. He stroked his white hair uneasily and his thin lips twisted grimly. “Don’t try it. Remember Kane and the widow and the livestock. It would make short work of a man. But, if past experience is any guide, we’re safely enclosed in here.” He moved to the windows and pulled down the shades, blotting from view the blindly crawling tentacles.

  “When did this first begin?” Alan asked when he had resumed his chair.

  “As best as I can determine, about five weeks ago,” Fletcher answered, his keen face haggard and drawn in the revealing rays of the light.

  Alan fell into a troubled silence. Finally: “I hardly know what to tell you, Dr. Fletcher, although my first inclination, after seeing that deadly mist, is to urge you as strongly as I can to leave this area until something can be done.”

  “That’s precisely my feeling. And I would probably have left a couple of weeks ago…” Suddenly his voice reflected a vehemence unusual to his normally quiet tones. “…But the fact is I have strong reason to believe that I myself might be responsible for what has been happening. My infernal, prying curiosity has, I suspect, loosed this terror on the countryside—this ominous dread of whose real nature no one yet has any conception. That’s why I’m so reluctant to leave. And I hesitate to take the legal authorities into my confidence, even if it would do any good. They’d confine me in an observation ward if I were to tell the truth, even the little I know, of this hideous death that stalks the vicinity at night. It’s too bizarre, too utterly incredible, for any normal person to accept as factual.

  “But I’m going to tell you all about it. I have read accounts of strange encounters you have had with hellish entities, and you are one of the very few people I know who might be able to advise me about the problems here. I’ve had it on my mind for five weeks now, and it’ll do me good to tell it to someone I can trust. You see, I gave a hint or two to my cousin the Medical Examiner, and the way he looked at me made me quit right there and pass it off as a joke. And even then he suggested I take things easy and not let my imagination work overtime.”

  Fletcher stared silently into the dancing flames for a while before continuing.

  “Mr. Hasrad, I’m anxious to hear your views when I tell you of my conviction that a horror, possibly dormant and unsuspected since the dawn of recorded history, has emerged to prey upon humanity—a foul and terrible thing which must have lain in a sort of suspended animation for untold eons, only to be released by the poking curiosity of a fool like me. You’d think I was batty, wouldn’t you?”

  Alan smiled faintly at the unexpected colloquialism used by the professor.

  “But it’s the only answer. Part of it is deduction, of course—I don’t actually know anything about its past—but I can testify to the conditions under which I found it and, to my great sorrow, released it.”

  He stared into the glowing coals left by the nearly consumed wood, his briar now dead in his hand, then tossed another small log onto the dwindling fire. A faint chill seemed to be in the dwelling.

  “You ask what I think about all of this,” responded Alan, shifting his eyes from the glowing embers to the gaunt face of the professor, “and I must reply that your analysis is possibly correct.”

  It had come to Alan that the fantastic idea which had occurred to him earlier might not be so impossible as he first had judged. Now, it seemed to him, it was a very real, very deadly possibility.

  “I’ve seen enough to know that something utterly beyond the knowledge of man is on the loose. But… tell me more. Just what is this mist and just how did you come to be responsible for its presence?”

  Fletcher stuffed tobacco into the minute orifice left by the carbon in the pipe’s bowl and began to pace the carpet restlessly.

  “I don’t know what it is, but I’m sure it’s something utterly unnatural, a form of life created perhaps when the earth was in its infancy which should have perished long epochs before the stone age; certainly, it is nothing of which archaeology or paleontology could offer any hint!”

  “Perhaps,” mused Alan, “it is not even of this earth, but rather some unspeakable cosmic malevolence from an another, unknown section of the universe.”

  Dr. Fletcher stopped and nodded slowly. “That, too. After what I’ve seen I’m willing to believe nearly anything. I just don’t know. But I can tell you how I found it, discovered it under conditions which make it seem that it must have been sealed in its rocky prison long, long ago, to be held there until I unintentionally broke in and left the way open for its escape.

  “It happened a little more than a month ago, on the afternoon of one of those drowsy Indian summer days we were enjoying here at the time. I’ve always maintained an interest in geology; made it a sort of spare-time hobby when I wasn’t tied down with strictly paleontological pursuits. Well… on this particular day, I’d knocked off work on my latest book—it was such lazy weather I thought I’d do myself more good outdoors—and gone for a ramble with my hammer.

  “I’d circled about half the marsh behind us and was climbing the shrub-tangled bluff which overlooks the Miskatonic River on the other side, when I tripped on a root and rolled back halfway down the incline. That started things! I crashed through a growth of bushes into the mouth of a cave which they concealed. It’s typical of the formations one sometimes finds around here; they’re not uncommon, but because of its natural concealment I’d never known of this one.

  “If only destiny had grabbed my ankles and prevented me from entering that cave! But no such intervention occurred and I pressed through the opening into a hidden cavern that perhaps had not been entered by man for many thousands of years—if ever! I took a large flashlight from my knapsack and played its rays over the ceiling and floor. Presently I advanced still further, making my way to the rear wall, tapping occasionally at projections of the rough rock as I examined it. It was only a very common variety of granite,
but it was incredibly old—very, very ancient rock.

  “Water, oozing from a spring in the rock above, trickled down the face of the blank wall at the back and dropped to the cavern’s floor with an endless drip-drip-drip. I’m mentioning this to explain what happened next. I took another step towards the wall and, in the uncertain footing of the slippery, pebble-covered floor, I slipped. My ankle turned; I teetered wildly for balance, twisted half around, and crashed against the rear wall. And my elbow went through that rock as if it had been a pane of window glass! The water, evidentally dripping for eons, must have eroded the stone to paper-thinness.

  “The flashlight was fortunately undamaged. I got up with a throbbing ankle and elbow and played the light on the hole I had made in the wall; it was as big as my head. Extending the light through it, I saw beyond a cell-like chamber, perhaps ten feet square, from which dead, musty air seeped into the larger cavern.

  “I stood back for a minute or two until the air in the smaller enclosure had improved. Then I inserted the light again and moved its rays over the uneven walls and rubble-covered floor. I was viewing a place which I now confidently believe had been sealed for perhaps countless thousands of years.

  “And then I saw, almost at once, a huge flat stone, shaped—if you can credit this—in the perfect form of a conventional five-pointed star! The circular part I judged to be approximately three feet in diameter and lay on the floor near the center of the inner chamber. Mr. Hasrad, you can understand my astonishment and my determination to investigate more closely.

  “I went outside and after a little search returned with a thick branch that made a fairly effective crowbar. With the leverage it provided I broke down the rotting wall ’till I could squeeze through the opening. Inside, I found myself in a naturally vaulted chamber; and just a few feet away was that star-shaped stone I mentioned. God, how I wish I had left it alone! Even now I don’t know what prompted me to move it. Just a sudden inspiration, I guess. Well, I had been studying some curious symbols engraved on its surface which I suspected might be ancient writing of some sort—though I could not even begin to identify it let alone decipher it—when it occurred to me to turn it over to inspect the other side. And that, of course, fool that I am, is just what I proceeded to do. I found the slab, however, too heavy for me to lift, but during the attempt managed to slide it over a little. Mr. Hasrad, that star-shaped stone was covering a pit!

  “I moved the covering over until more than half the opening to that nightmarish shaft was exposed! I knelt at its edge and, as though I were looking down a well, peered at smooth walls that descended as far as the light would reach. It was nearly three feet in diameter, and from my vantage point I could see the walls run down and down in a manner suggesting the inside of a telescopic tube, which lost itself at a lower level, giving no hint as to just how deep it was.

  “As I lay on the rock floor peering over the rim it occurred to me that the smooth polished roundness of the sides was at odd variance with the crudely hewn walls and ceiling of the chamber itself. My next observation was that the sides of this shaft were not made of rock at all but were composed of what might be a metallic substance which I was unable to identify.

  “But speculation was purposeless. I selected a good-sized stone, tossed it over the brink, then waited second after second ’till a faint thudding noise was returned to me. Judging from the time elapsed by the fall, that hole was incredibly deep! I don’t believe the sound would have been audible at all had not the walls of the pit magnified it and carried it upwards to me. That shaft, I decided, must be hideously deep, and I backed away from it.

  “At that point, my curiosity far from satiated, I resumed my inspection of those insane scribblings on the slab, unaware that the stone I had dropped had disturbed something that lived far below. Several minutes passed before I again felt the urge to examine the shaft, and as I did so my eyes focused upon a most astonishing sight.”

  Alan shifted his position in the easy chair. “And just what was it you saw, Dr. Fletcher?” he asked.

  “What I saw, far down in the depths, was movement where none should have been. Up into the glare of the light came a swirling whitish mass that filled the pit from side to side. It seemed as though amorphous pseudopodian filaments stretched forth cautiously, writhing insanely; incredible feelers that contracted and heaved in a curiously obscene manner as they rose higher and higher. They were still far below, understand, and I had plenty of time to replace the stone slab had the thought occurred to me; but instead I knelt there watching its rapid ascent with an awe and fascination which seemed to render me immobile.

  “Can you understand, Mr. Hasrad, how fantastic and incredible a phenomenon it was to see in such a place? There was something indefinable and utterly unnatural about the sight that chilled me. Hitherto I had been actuated by pleased curiosity; now I began to feel an intense fear, and I actually trembled at the sight of what I thought to be rising smoke or fog. But I continued to wait, crouching at the edge and peering down at the depths where the flashlight rays seemed to tenderly caress and melt within the ascending horror.

  “It kept on and on, stopping for a few seconds now and then, not behaving at all as would rising smoke. I don’t know how I had the brainless, unthinking audacity to crouch there and watch that thing inch its way up the passage in the glare of my flashlight. Suddenly I was trembling through and through, my heart was pounding as though it would smash through my chest, and my mouth was dry. Such was my response to the masses of matter composing that thing.

  “Then, something seemed to click in my mind and I realized I must somehow halt its advance. I picked up assorted rubble littering the floor with my free hand and hurled it down on the pulsating mass. This had no effect, as the stones passed right through it, plunging down that seemingly bottomless shaft. The horror continued upward, and like a crazy old fool I waited, bent over the pit, my flashlight spraying into the depths as I watched that incredible monstrosity rise ever closer.”

  Alan barely stirred, his attention riveted upon the professor whose voice began to quiver as he became more troubled and unsettled.

  “And then it reached the rim of the shaft. Nonplussed, I remained frozen at the spot, watching small tendrils poke up tentatively into the chamber and begin to probe and undulate about. With them rose an unexpected odor of mustiness which soon became overpowering in that narrow space. My hand was but inches away from one of the reaching tentacles, and when at last it touched me I finally moved. No longer was I stricken by the paralyzing fear which had seized me. I remember screaming once; then, squeezing through the opening to the chamber I had made, I dashed through the outer cave and into the sunshine. I scrambled up the embankment and ran till I lost my breath and fell to the ground, panting as though I had just run the marathon! A few minutes passed before I finally realized I was out of immediate danger.”

  Fletcher stopped abruptly and stared at Alan. His jaw muscles stood out with tension as he relived in memory the anxious moments he had described.

  “And that, of course,” Alan prompted, “was not the last you saw of it?”

  Fletcher pulled his gaze away from the flames and began to reload his briar once again. His mind seemed to suddenly be preoccupied. “Eh? Oh, yes. I learned of the mysterious depredations about the countryside and I knew—I realized with a terrible certainty just what was behind them.”

  Alan gazed upon the gaunt, angular countenance of his new acquaintance and reflected as to just how much he should tell him of the awful suspicions that had been crowding into his own mind. Was Fletcher bordering on the brink of insanity or total collapse, as Alan at first had feared, or was there a hidden strength present that would sustain him when he learned of the awful suspicion Alan held?

  Alan decided, relying on his intuitive judgment, that the fortitude of this man would probably endure the strain of the esoteric knowledge it was in his power to relate.

  “Dr. Fletcher, you were right to invite me here, and I do believe
I can assist you. Unless I am greatly mistaken, we are dealing with an intelligence far older than mankind—indeed, older than planet earth itself. Although it has never been an active force within the history of man, its existence is mentioned in various ancient volumes, the most notable of which is the Pnakotic Manuscript brought down to us from ancient Hyperborea by a secret cult; and the Necronomicon of the mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred, devotes brief passages to it. It is from this son of the desert whom I happen to be descended. I’ve also read of this entity in various translations, inexact as they might be, of the Eltdown Shards; also, mention of them is made in the De Vermis Mysteriis of Ludvig Prinn and the Sigsand Manuscripts which Robert W. Chambers consulted so frequently. The Cuites des Goules, written by the Comte d’Erlette, makes brief mention, and laconic notations in von Junzt’s Unaussprechlichen Kulten gives us even further hints. From some place in space this hellish entity was spawned and, after traveling from galaxy to galaxy, reached earth when our planet was but a seething, bubbling, coalescing mass.

  “In the elder books it is written as to how this presence, which you know to be inimical to mankind, was imprisoned deep within the ebony bowels of the earth by several of the Elder Gods. Now, it seems, that which held this entity imprisoned has been removed, and a new horror is now free to terrorize the lives of mankind.”

  “But its purpose, Mr. Hasrad?” Fletcher interjected with a nervous query. “If it is intelligent, as we both believe, surely it has a reason for its nightly presence.”

  Alan smiled firmly at the noted paleontologist. “Of course it has a purpose. It is feeding.”

  “Feeding?”

  “Exactly. My guess is that it is still very weak, having remained dormant for countless millions of years, and needs nourishment—an attribute of all life forms. Since being released, unfortunately by yourself, it has gradually been building up its mass and strength by suitable repasts, keeping in hiding during the process, starting with the smallest of creatures and progressing each night to the larger. In some inexplicable way it must be gaining sustenance from the protein it has consumed during its nightly foraging. It seeks to grow, to expand, to regain the mountainous strength of near galactic proportions it once had. And then…