by S. T. Joshi
“And the ocean behind—does that impress you?” Eric asked coolly.
“Ah, the ocean. I have a theory. When this Asshur-sin, whoever he was, built his wall, there was no ocean. And then later the waters rose up until”—he spread his tanned hands—“there you are.”
He remembered disputing this falsehood under the other’s mocking stare. Sheila had smiled the shadow of a smile, catching the flavor of the dark man’s irreverence.
6.
THE DRIVE ACROSS THE VALLEY FLOOR TOOK ON A nightmare quality for Eric. Always it seemed the Wall could get no larger, yet always it grew upward until at last its black face blocked half the sky. The effect was strange, a pressing on the chest and a shortness of breath, as if the Wall itself were squeezing out the stuff of life. He climbed dizzily from the Land Rover onto the packed brown sand, holding its roof for balance, his eyes irresistibly drawn to the summit.
The Wall was not perfectly vertical, though it appeared so when standing near its base. The blocks that formed it were made of black rock not indigenous to this part of Yemen, but the quarry for the Wall had never been located. The general presumption was that the stones had been brought from some distant land across the sea by barge. Each regular block was forty meters long and twelve meters high, but the foundation blocks at the base were even larger. Eric had never seen most of these stones with his own eyes. Half a century ago they had been obscured by a titanic slope of sand and rubble that ascended nearly to the top of the Wall. Yet nothing in his life was more familiar. He had studied thousands of photographs and films of the stones over the course of his archaeological researches.
Stepless ramps ascended either side of the Wall in diminishing zigzag diagonals to the top. In keeping with its monstrous proportions, each ramp was four meters wide, as though designed for a race of giants. When uncovered from beneath the debris fifty years ago, a debate had raged as to their purpose. They were unsuited for dragging large objects to the top due to the tight bends where the ramps met, and were in any case too narrow to accommodate the stones of the Wall itself, yet their architecture was wastefully extravagant, when narrow and steeper flights of steps would have served to provide ascent.
The waves a thousand meters above me, he thought, his mind numb. And through the stones where I stand, black ooze and things that have never seen the sun. This nameless hidden valley was the lowest land elevation in the world—more than twice as far beneath sea level as the previous record holder, the Dead Sea. If the Wall were ever to collapse …
He shuddered and took his wife’s arm, guiding her to the very foot of the edifice where the inscription had been unearthed from beneath uncounted of tons of till. Cut into the side of one of the massive foundation blocks was an unpretentious recess not more than two meters deep. It appeared to be a later addition to the architecture, added long after the building of the Wall itself, although its date remained unresolved. An open sarcophagus of the same native white stone they had driven across on their approach to the valley rested within the recess. Neither the lid of the sarcophagus nor any trace of its contents had ever been found. It lay upon an oblong dais of black Wall-stone, part of the great foundation block itself, that raised it to within arm’s length of the ceiling of the recess. Steps were cut into the sides of this dais as though to allow access to the open stone vessel, or from it.
Eric entered the recess and led his wife behind the elevated sarcophagus. The glare of the desert sun, reflected from the distant white mountains, shone into the cavity and highlighted the shadows of cuneiform characters that were deeply carved into the ceiling above the sarcophagus. Although he had studied reproductions of these letters on countless occasions, this was the first time he had seen them with his naked eyes. He felt a sense of awe tighten his throat.
“What does it say?” his wife asked in a casual tone, yet he detected suppressed interest in her words. Her large ice-blue eyes shone as she stared upward at the letters with an expression almost of reverence.
“It’s written in an ancient Sumerian proto-dialect,” he said, unconsciously adopting his professorial lecturing voice. “This is the only example that has ever been found, so all translations are conjectural. But I believe it to be some kind of warning.”
“A warning? How exciting!”
She took his hand into hers, and he felt the coolness of her palm. Her slender fingers were never warm. He pointed to each character in turn as he read the primary inscription aloud.
“Asshur-sin, king—or perhaps high-priest, or herald, it’s not clear which—keeps this Wall for—or perhaps against—the awakening of the Deep One. Beware his Emissaries.”
He pointed at one of the characters that had been damaged and was largely obscured.
“I take that to stand for the Wall itself, from the context of the text, although it is obviously illegible.”
“It has been chiseled away,” she said.
The confident tone in her voice caused Eric to glance at her. She stared at the damaged symbol almost with resentment.
“Possibly. Or it may have been chipped when the sarcophagus was placed on its dais.”
“Come on.” She pulled him by the hand back into the open. “Let’s climb it.”
He followed with his eyes the set of ramps that ran up the left side.
“It’s too far.”
The words caught in his throat. Suddenly he was a boy, running through the moonlit darkness from something that trilled and rustled over the sand behind his pounding heels. How many times had he awakened in his bed, drenched in sweat, with the memory of the same nightmare? He could almost see his pursuers in the corner of his vision when he turned his mind toward them, but at the last instant they always faded back into the darkness and left him shivering.
“I’m sure it looks worse than it really is,” she said lightly, pulling on his hand.
“You go—I’ll stay in the Rover.”
“Eric, I need you to come with me.”
He looked into her face, saw the determination there. The terror that had visited him five decades ago while he lay on top of the wall in the moonlight with his eyes squeezed tightly shut, hugging his knees to his chest, returned. With more violence than he intended, he tore his hand away. She stalked across the sand toward the lowermost ramp without a backward glance, leaving him to follow or not.
7.
AS THEY CLIMBED, THE FLOOR OF THE VALLEY WIDENED beneath them. He caught up with her and kept her to the inside of the inclines, supporting her alternately with his left and then his right arm as the direction of the ramps reversed at each landing. They stopped often to rest, when the ache in their legs became too demanding to ignore. The shadows of afternoon lengthened across the valley. Many years ago he had climbed the Great Pyramid. This was harder.
Imperceptibly, the nature of the valley altered as they mounted ever higher. Details merged and larger shapes defined themselves. What appeared from the ground to be chaotic piles of stones revealed themselves as the decayed foundations of the nameless city, tucked into the eastern end of the valley between looming mountains. Excavations had revealed roads wider than normal, and a curious lack of steps. Eric had done his doctoral thesis on the city. Gazing down upon it like some god on Olympus, he knew every structure, every alleyway. But of the inhabitants, no trace had ever been unearthed, not even their place of burial. The prevailing theory was that they had burned their dead, though where they had found fuel for these funeral pyres in the barren desert remained unclear.
“We’re almost there,” he puffed, badly out of breath. “Two more ramps to the top.”
“I can smell the ocean.”
The resonance in her deep voice startled him. He stole a glance at her face—it was radiant. Her prominent eyes shone with that curious icy-blue glow that made her so different from other women. Though his linen shirt was drenched with sweat, her pale cheeks were cool and she seemed unwearied.
He heard the muted rumble of the sea as it rhythmically broke itself aga
inst the immovable stones. It had done so without pause for uncounted thousands of years. Each rolling wave made the ramp tremble beneath his feet, as if from distant thunder.
“Now you must see,” he said somewhat incoherently as they mounted the last incline and the sea breeze touched their faces. “It’s the oddest feeling, standing with a vast empty space on one side and the horizonless ocean on the other. As if the world were flat and you stood balanced on its edge.”
He had no conscious memory of the view, yet somewhere deep within him he saw it lit with moonlight. They walked like insects across the twelve-meter-wide span known as the causeway to the edge of the ocean and gazed down on moving blue water that was so close, its broken spray caught in their hair and salted their lips. The rumble, as each successive wave struck the flat stones, made speech difficult.
Sheila approached the seaward side and stood with the toes of her hiking boots extended off its edge. She spread her arms wide and stared at the western horizon in exultation.
“Kthulhu p’tang ma’zathu agulu’ka,” she intoned in voice that rose above the thunder of the breakers.
Eric drew her gently back from the edge.
“What was that you recited?”
She shook her head, still staring out to sea.
“A line from a song my mother used to sing to me. Just nonsense words.”
They turned north and began to walk the Wall. It curved toward the ocean like the bow of the early moon, defying the pressure of the waves. He experienced a few moments of vertigo. The floor of the valley was so far away. Suddenly he seemed to be striding along the razor’s edge of the infinite, with the great ocean on one side poised to overwhelm the world on the other. Nothing held back the cataclysm save this tissue-thin structure of black stone.
“Show me where you found your medallion,” she suddenly demanded as they approached the midpoint of the wall.
Eric looked in front and behind him, trying to reawaken the long-buried memory of that night. Nothing appeared familiar. He did not even remember finding the golden disk, only running with it clutched in his hand through the moonlight, with those sliding menacing things following close behind. But that might be no more than a bad dream.
“I don’t remember—”
She took his arms in her hands and turned him roughly toward her, then stared into his face with solemn intensity.
“It’s important, Eric. Think. Where did you find the medallion?”
He realized he was sweating profusely, so much so that drops of perspiration ran down his face and fell from his nose and chin. An image flashed in his mind of something disgusting and horrible. It had a cluster of writhing tentacles at its top. Then it was gone, taking even the memory of the image with it. He grasped at the medallion and held it tight in his fist.
8.
A SHOUT MADE THEM TURN TO THE NORTH END OF the Wall. A man in a red shirt and white canvas pants approached along the causeway with rapid steps. He waved, and even at that distance Eric recognized the toothy smile of Johnny Azotha. His confusion turned to annoyance. His wife grabbed his hand and pulled him along. Fifteen minutes later the three met breathlessly.
“Johnny, what are you doing here?” Sheila demanded with delight.
“I felt like some exercise, and I knew you two were coming today, so I decided to join you.”
Was it his imagination, or did a glance pass between his wife and the dark man? Eric felt the irrational urge to hurl Azotha over the nearest edge. Instead he forced a polite smile.
The Arab took out a white silk handkerchief and mopped his face.
“Quite a climb. At least there’s a breeze from the ocean.”
The three turned and stared out to sea at the unbroken horizon through intermittent curtains of white foam cast up by the rhythmic breaking of the waves.
“I was trying to persuade Eric to tell me where he found the medallion around his neck.”
“Where did you find it, Doctor Tenisan?” Azotha asked. “I would be interested to hear the story.”
Eric shook his head and turned away from the sea to gaze at the distant mountains across the valley.
“Did you find it on the top? Was it near the center?”
“I don’t remember.”
Sheila hugged his arm possessively between hers.
“You must remember something, darling.”
“No.”
“Perhaps if we retraced your steps,” Azotha mused. “Where were you before you climbed the Wall?”
“Enough!” Eric jerked his arm free from his wife’s grasp and glared at the dark man.
Azotha smiled apologetically and spread his hands, then tucked his handkerchief into his vest pocket. Sheila folded her arms and walked toward the sea-edge of the Wall, her back stiff. There was an awkward silence.
Eric turned back to the mountains. His heart raced and the blood thundered in his ears, but not from anger. Suddenly he did remember. As clearly as though reflected in a mirror, he saw himself amid the ruins of the nameless city that sprawled across the eastern elevation of the valley. He stood in its oddly shaped plaza, gazing down the valley at the moonlit Wall. Before him, at the center of the plaza, rose an octagonal block of black Wall-stone two meters across and a meter in height. As he examined it with the eye of memory, he realized that it had served as some sort of pedestal for a statue—the center of the block was worn by the removal and replacement of some heavy stone object over a span of many centuries. It was curious that in the five decades he had studied Asshur-sin and the nameless city he had never before considered the true function of this stone block.
The moonlight shone strangely on the black stone. It cast into stark relief a circular ring of eight protrusions on its surface. Eric had examined images of the stone a number of times over the years and was sure these bumps were not visible in the photographs. Yet under the light of the full moon they were undeniable. He watched his younger self walk around the block counterclockwise as though moving in a trance, pressing each knob of stone as he passed it. As the final knob descended into the body of the stone, it rumbled softly. A square panel grew out from its eastern side. Eric recognized it as a drawer. He watched himself reach into it and take out the gold medallion, then place the medallion in the center of the octagonal pedestal and orient it in some way to the moon.
A feeling of awful dread clutched his heart. He closed his eyes and wiped his hand down his face. His sweat felt cold on his palm.
“It really is too bad you won’t tell me where you found the talisman, Doctor Tenisan,” Azotha was saying behind him. “It would have been so much easier.”
Eric turned and saw the dark man with his arm around Sheila’s throat. A black automatic pistol rested loosely in his other hand, pointed at his wife’s temple.
“Johnny, what are you doing?” Sheila began to struggle, her look of shock giving way to one of terror.
He cursed her in Arabic and tightened his grip on her throat.
“Be still, unless you want your brain splattered at his feet.”
“What are you doing?” Eric repeated with incomprehension. He took a step toward them. The warning in the Arab’s dark eyes made him hesitate.
“Listen to me, Doctor Tenisan. Unless you tell me where you found the talisman that hangs around your neck, I will shoot your lovely wife through the head. Do you understand?”
Eric could do nothing but stare.
Azotha pressed the barrel of the automatic into Sheila’s hair just above her ear and put his finger gently on the trigger.
In a numb voice Eric began to describe his childhood memory. Azotha questioned him on the details and made him describe the knobs on the octagonal pedestal several times.
“I know this black stone,” he said. “You have done the right thing, Dr. Tenisan. Now give me the talisman. Throw it to me.”
“Yes, of course, only don’t injure my wife.”
He undid the chain around his neck and slid the medallion off it, then let the chain f
all to the stone beside his shoe. He threw the gold disk in a careful underhand motion to Azotha, who caught it without loosening his grip on the woman.
“If you wanted to steal the medallion, why didn’t you just tell me? It’s not worth the safety of my wife.”
An expression of anger clouded Azotha’s features.
“Do you think me a common thief? I could have taken the talisman from you in Cairo. The talisman is useless without a knowledge of where you got it. My family searched for its hiding place for centuries, and you, a foolish child, stumble across it one night by some wild stroke of luck and use it for jewelry.”
The contempt in Azotha voice was palpable. As he talked, he relaxed his grip on Sheila’s throat. She straightened, her face no longer afraid, but strangely calm.
“You cannot begin to comprehend the power I hold in my hand,” Azotha continued. “My family is descended from the race that built that city below us. They worshipped a god of the ocean deeps that came from a distant star. They built their city at the base of this great thing we are standing on, what you call a wall. But it is not a wall, it is a portal, and this is its key.”
“You expect me to believe that you are descended from the people of Asshur-sin?”
“Asshur-sin was not of my people. He was the king who conquered this valley, overthrew its city, and had thousands of tons of stone and sand piled up against this portal to prevent it ever being opened again. He thought he had slain all my race, but a few survived. They managed to drug his food, and after he was laid to rest in his white sepulcher they came in the night and carried off his still-living body and committed abominable rites over it to insure that he would walk the pathways of hell for eternity. And so he walks in hell to this day.”
Eric paid little attention to the fantasy of this insane Arab. He watched his wife. Her eyes smoldered with a suppressed excitement that was almost exultation.