Cthulhu Cymraeg

by Probert, John Llewellyn

  I have composed nothing in these last few days. So obsessed have I become at my futile pursuit of the elusive music of my ‘angels’ that I have neglected all else. I must return to work. Even if it means that I block up my ears, like Odysseus, to their siren call, I must force myself to compose, in order that the capacity does not atrophy within me for want of use.

  But I am so very weary. I have slept little. Every time my eyes close in slumber, echoes of that fearful dream return to me, and even though I now know it to be the mere product of an over-stimulated imagination, the terror of it still jolts me awake.

  More, I believe that parts of the dream are becoming more vivid; it seems that the faces of the creatures that I saw are as clear as my own, seen in a flawless glass. Blanched skin; black, lidless eyes; organs that pulse repugnantly within their translucent forms; and a cluster of protrusions on the lower part of the face that wave and entwine as if possessed of independent life. I see them, borne on the wave that will ere long crush them into the depths of a new-born ocean, reach for me with long, many-jointed limbs mounted with fearsome claws, reach for me in desperation… Enough. I shall write no more this night.

  SEPT 24th

  The capacity of the human soul to renew itself once more became an astonishment to me. By putting aside all the hideous fancies which have of late beset me, and concentrating upon a pursuit most directly in opposition to that which has been upon my mind (I had embarked upon the composition of a series of variations of that same Welsh folk song which Miss Olwen Morgan played for me, when I visited upon her and her father), I raised myself this morning from the ‘slough of Despond’, and once more felt ready to face the world.

  The oppressive weather which has hung over these mountains has now lifted, and this afternoon I walked to the village, where I partook of a simple lunch of bread, cheese and ale at the inn. I find the Welsh to be, in general, a most courteous and hospitable people, yet I am not unaware of how curious a specimen they must perceive me to be. As I sat beside the fire in the inn, I heard the landlord and some of his ‘regulars’ speaking in low tones at the bar, in Welsh; and although I have as yet only the most scant of understanding of this tongue, I several times heard the word Saesneg (meaning ‘English’) used, as well as the word gwallgof (note; check spelling and pronunciation – as well as meaning – with Reverend Morgan).

  In late afternoon, I set out once more for my lodging-place, but decided – emboldened, I think, by my new-found rationality and ease of mind – to take the least circuitous route, along the edge of Llyn-yr-Eglwys.

  At first glance, the lake was much as I had seen it on that first day; calm, tranquil even. But the longer I stood there, the more I was unable to shed the feeling that this appearance of peace was only a mask, concealing something altogether more unsettling, more… malign. I realised, with the force of epiphany, that although there had been all day a vigorous breeze moving across the land, the waters were as untouched by it as if they were made of iron. Even on the lakeside, I could feel the wind upon my face, weaving mischievous fingers through my hair; and yet on the face of the waters – nothing. The lake contented itself to its passive, imperturbable state, reflecting sky, sun and cloud as perfectly as if that reflection were a continuation of heaven itself.

  And hard upon this, another revelation; it was not the wind alone which left this place undisturbed. Even at this period of the year, there should have been some sign of bird or animal life, either upon it or at its edge. But of such life was there none, not even the movement just below the surface of fish or amphibian.

  All about me, the trees hung silent. Nothing dared to sing.

  A most curious calm enveloped me, an absence of all emotion, care or joy, as if I had entered a place entirely beyond the reach of the temporal world. If I stayed there, at that spot (it seemed to me), I could remain ageless, rooted, part of the landscape, akin to one of those great ancient stone monoliths that some say are the petrified forms of knights of long-ago, perhaps even great Arthur himself.

  Curious to discover the consequences, however, I stepped closer to the water’s edge and, kneeling in the reeds, stretched forth one hand to touch the water’s surface.

  Instantly, a shock of great power, like unto a lightning-charge, leapt through me and convulsed my entire body.

  Visions. Blanched flesh, black pearl eyes. Talons. The aeons of cold time. Division. Lives incomplete, unrealised.

  We must return. We must be complete. You must assist us, summon us, guide us through the Door…

  I must have fallen in a faint. When I regained my senses, the sun was dipping behind the western hills, and my body shivered and ached terribly. Through dimmed eyes, I could see the lake, still so apparently demure and dormant. Darkness was slipping lower, and I knew that my sanity would never recover if I remained long in this place, so I dragged my unwilling form upright and set my feet for home.

  When at last I arrived, I secured the door behind me with great diligence, and, having lighted as many lamps and candles as I could to ward off the oppressive darkness, fell into my chair in a terrible fugue. I think I remained unmoving in that chair for at least an hour.

  It was as I finally stood, in order that I might come to my writing-desk to record the aforesaid experiences, that I felt a weight in the pocket of my coat. Reaching in, I found a long, wooden tube, approximately eighteen inches long. Holes were drilled along its length, as well as an opening at one end and a mouthpiece at the other; obviously a simple wind instrument of some kind.

  Besides the holes, a parade of stick-figures, man-like figures, engaged in a pursuit the precise object of which I would prefer not to speculate.

  I had no recollection of picking up this ‘pipe’, nor, I think, would I have kept it if my wits had been fully in my possession. I hastily put it in a desk drawer, to examine more fully in the light of day (and of Reason).

  SEPT 25th

  This morning, I examined the ‘flute’ (it seems most convenient to refer to it thus) in detail. In daylight, it seems a much less mysterious thing than it did last night, but it offers up no more ready answers than my previous perusal, except to say that its maker must have been a person of no mean skill, since the cutting of the wood seems to have been effected with very great precision (none of the clumsy scratches upon the wood that a more slipshod artisan would have left), and even the apparently primitive stick-figures along the side are executed with some care and deliberation.

  Perhaps I can reach some conclusions by playing upon the flute. I will undertake such an endeavour this afternoon.

  The same, later—

  As I sit to record my observations, I notice with some surprise that my labours have cost me no less than five hours! Time has sped past me as I sought to bring music from the flute. I was successful in this – but oh, what music it was!

  Unfamiliar as I am, on anything more than a rudimentary level, with the playing of woodwind instruments, I felt straight away that this instrument was not fashioned with an ordinary player in mind. The finger-holes were positioned too far apart to be bridged by the fingers of a hand of regular proportion, and the mouthpiece was of a most unorthodox shape.

  That said, I found myself capable, with some effort, of bringing forth a few notes. Only slowly, as my skill grew, did I realise that the sound I was producing was familiar to me. Played by musicians more adept than myself (perhaps naturally so) but nevertheless unmistakeable.

  It was the sound that I have heard in my mind for as far back as I can recall. My ‘music of the Angels’.

  Now it is clear to me why all my previous efforts to replicate that music were doomed to futility – such beauty can only be conveyed using the instruments of its original creators!

  Surely the hand of some divine Sponsor is at work here. Only such a force could have directed me to this place, at this time, to make this most glorious discovery! The true nature of my terrible, vivid dreams and forebodings is now clear to me; some agent of the Devil put them into
my mind in order to prevent me from attaining this Revelation of the divine, the visionary work which the Almighty has decreed for me.

  I offer up a prayer of thanks to my God, and dedicate my life to Him, and to the work of bringing to man the music of the Seraphim. “Holy, Holy, Holy.”

  Amen.

  A seven day gap in the journal now ensues.

  OCT 2nd

  I have had little time in the last week to record my activities, so only now at last do I take up my pen once more.

  In truth, little worthy of note has occurred to me in the mundane, temporal world. All that I have undertaken has been conducted within the confines of these four walls; more to the point, within the confines of this skull!

  It took me some time to master the art of playing that Angelic flute. My fingers ached from being stretched into (for me) un-natural contortions in order to reach notes. My breath was likewise found wanting, though this had much to do with my own lack of practice in the piper’s art; until I had perfected the necessary breath control, I oft-times found myself faint from the exertion.

  Nevertheless I have (once I had made some amendments to the customary system of notation to compensate for the unearthly nature of the music being recorded) filled sheet after sheet with the music which flows through me, as if at last I had one of its creators at my shoulder, urging me on to greater and greater achievement (though I must have a care; I am not exempt from the sin of pride).

  But the dreams remain. Evidently my demonic foe has not yet given up all hope of thwarting the Divine Will. They are subtly altered, however; I still find myself on that bleak, unyielding plain, gazing up at the tower. There is no sound, no music, no sign of the creatures or any other form of life within the citadel. I feel as if I am being silently watched, studied.

  Although for what, I cannot conceive.

  From this point onward, the entries become irregular, and are undated (though context suggests they were written over the space of 2-3 weeks subsequent to the last dated entry).

  I have not eaten, nor slept, in two days. Body and soul cry out for rest, for ease and sustenance, but what little sleep I find is plagued with visions of that nightmarish plain (always silent and still, poised on the brink of that final oblivion), and all food and drink tastes of naught but ashes. The most I can tolerate is a little water which I take from the rain barrel outside, but even this tastes sour and corrupt to me.

  I wander the house, playing upon the flute, the patterns and harmonies which I previously heard in the music now flattened out, almost atonal. Sometimes it seems I am not alone here, that there is another presence in this house; it darts along corridors and past doorways, always at the periphery of my vision, but is gone before I can look fully upon it. Do even the shadows conspire against me?

  But I am reluctant to leave this house. A dread of the sky has come upon me, for I fear to look up and see the heavens replaced with the bloody tumult of my dreams, and then to see that obscene black sun gape above me and disgorge upon the earth…

  The shadows are massing at my back. They will not reveal themselves to me, but I know who they are. They are the Damned, the ones left behind to die upon the Earth when their ‘angelic’ kindred found the means to escape the inevitable doom that would wipe them from history. They still remain, in the timeless spaces of the world, half-corporeal things, denied the rapturous transfiguration of the Winged Ones, shambling through dreams and shadows to work their influence upon mortal men, upon ME, to use me as their cat’s-paw and send them to the starry abode of those who abandoned them… or to bring back those ones back, to rule once more upon this world… or to have their vengeance upon them…

  I do not know! God help me, but their purpose, their minds, the sound-magic with which they exert their hold over my soul and body and the very universe itself… I cannot comprehend it!

  But it is not my place to comprehend. I must simply ‘do’. The music burns my mind now. They call the tune, and I must play.

  I slept, and I dreamed of the citadel.

  I dreamed that I stood before them, massed there within their nest, and played. They hissed, and writhed with delight.

  Their time was at hand.

  I awoke, beside the lake. The flute was in my hands. I was barefoot, wet, cold and shivering.

  Looking at those moon-haunted, imperturbable waters, I tried to recall how I had got here; but of memory was there none. An irrational rage rose in me; were they laughing at me? Was the lake? The moon itself?

  I gazed down at the flute in my hand, and considered for a moment – a long moment – simply throwing the accursed thing into the lake, as I should have done at the very beginning.

  Such thoughts were cleared from my mind when I caught sight of the grass and reeds around me. There was no sign of my footprints in the damp grass, or anywhere close by. There was, however, a long trail of flattened grass leading to my current location, from the direction of the cottage.

  I had crawled here. On my belly, like a serpent.

  The music will re-unite them. Scattered across the Cosmos, they await the signal – the music unheard on Earth in aeons – to once more be whole.

  I see the truth now. Not two species, two races, but one. They separated the godlike portions of their being and sent it away to an unknown star, to await the day when their earth-bound counterparts would find one (such as myself) able to summon them home.

  I have been prepared for this my whole life. This is the purpose of my existence, my music.

  The return of the Dark Gods. The obliteration of mankind.

  They make me dance. It amuses them to make me dance. The stick-figures on the side of the flute? They are me. Dancing to their tune.

  i crawl to the lake again and again to their sunken citadel below the waters, below time

  the taste of blood they have not tasted blood in millennia so sweet

  the night given shape

  they wait beyond the door the song so clear

  (The final entry, which may come from any time between late December 1801 and early January 1802, is spotted with a substance which could be blood. No analysis on the document has, as yet, been undertaken. — B.W.)

  POSTSCRIPT – A few weeks after the initial (and much commented upon, not all of it kindly) publication of these papers, I received a letter from Mr Kenneth Lewis, local historian and folklorist of the village of Brynteg, for some time engaged upon an edition of the collected sermons and writings of Reverend John Vaughan, grandson of Gwilym Morgan, who had followed in his grandfather’s footsteps by becoming pastor of Brynteg.

  In Morgan’s papers, he found a passage which, after reading the ‘Holt Breakdown Diaries’ (as they became known), he felt he should pass on to me. Reverend Gwilym Morgan had, according to his grandson, been witness to ‘a most curious and disturbing event’

  He writes;—

  “In the last weeks of 1801, into early January 1802, the village was much alarmed by a series of night-time attacks upon the flocks of local farmers. A wild beast, perhaps a wolf, was thought to be ravaging the countryside; livestock were being slaughtered and their partially devoured carcasses strewn about the fields. A group of locals, led by Ifor Beynon (who had suffered the greatest losses) set up a hunting party to try and bring the beast down.

  “One night, it was reported that a creature of some unknown type had been spotted along the shores of Llyn-yr-Eglwys, and a large hunting party convened, with lanterns, cudgels, and even a pistol or two, to make chase. My grandfather, despite his great age (and my mother’s protestations), was not to be left out, and joined with them to troop down to the lake.

  “For an hour, they prowled, halloo-ing to each other through the dark woods beside the lake, until at last the cry went up, that it had been located!

  “Close on midnight, in the circle of lanterns at the lake’s edge, a group of men stood swinging their lanterns to try and get a better view of something that lurked in he darkness at the base of the tree-line. My grandfather
could not make out what it was, but said it appeared to be seeking a way to get past the men and to the water.

  “Then, all at once, the creature darted from cover and charged at them, knocking one man over in the process. It had almost reached the water when Ifor Beynon discharged his pistol. The shot merely grazed the creature across the forehead, but it was enough to stun it long enough for a half-dozen or so of the village’s sturdiest men folk to wrestle it into submission.

  “Then there was a cry. ‘By God,’ says Dafydd Rees, ‘it’s a man!’

  “And to be sure, he was right. My grandfather came forward, and looked upon the face of the wretched specimen, and had to squint because of the poor light, and the blood upon the man’s face, and his own failing eyesight, but (he told me, many years later) he knew the man.

  “Though he would not name the man he saw, and took the secret with him to his grave (and made all the others there that night swear on the Bible to do the same), a rumour floated down to me from another source that an Englishman of some renown had been staying in the area, had gone violently insane, and been taken back to an asylum in London.

  “And also this; one of those present that night said that, before being taken down by the pistol shot, the ‘creature’ threw something resembling a stick out into the deep water…”