The Burrowers Beneath

by Brian Lumley

  He had been back only a few months when he suddenly left London and invited me up to his cottage, isolated here on the Yorkshire Moors, to keep him company. This invitation was a thing strange in itself, as he was one who had spent months in absolute solitude in various far-flung desolate places and liked to think of himself as something of a hermit. I accepted, for I saw the perfect chance to get a little of that peaceful quiet which I find particularly beneficial to my writing.

  ii

  One day, shortly after I had settled in, Sir Amery showed me a pair of strangely beautiful pearly spheres. They measured about four inches in diameter, and, though he had been unable to positively identify the material from which they were made, he was able to say that it appeared to be some unknown combination of calcium, chrysolite, and diamond-dust. How the things had been made was, as he put it, “anybody’s guess.” The spheres, he told me, had been found at the site of dead G’harne—the first intimation he had offered that he had actually found the place—buried beneath the earth in a lidless stone box which had borne upon its queerly angled sides certain utterly alien engravings. Sir Amery was anything but explicit with regard to those designs, merely stating that they were so loathsome in what they suggested that it would not do to describe them too closely. Finally, in answer to my probing questions, he told me that they depicted monstrous sacrifices to some unthinkable cthonian deity. More he refused to say but directed me, since I seemed “so damnably eager,” to the words of Commodus and the hag-ridden Caracalla.

  He mentioned that also upon the box, along with the pictures, were many lines of sharply cut characters much similar to the cuneiform and dot-group etchings of the G’harne Fragments and, in certain aspects, having a disturbing likeness to the almost unfathomable Pnakotic Manuscript. Quite possibly, he went on, the container had been a toy-box of sorts and the spheres, in all probability, were once the bauble of a child of the ancient city; certainly children, or young ones, were mentioned in what he had managed to decipher of the odd writing on the box.

  It was during this stage of his narrative that I noticed Sir Amery’s eyes were beginning to glaze over and his speech was starting to falter, almost as though some strange psychic block was affecting his memory. Without warning, he began muttering of Shudde-M’ell and Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth and Yibb-Tstll—“alien Gods defying description” —and of mythological places with equally fantastic names: Sarnath and Hyperborea, R’lyeh and Ephiroth, and many more.

  Eager though I was to learn more of that tragic expedition, I fear it was I who stopped Sir Amery from saying on. Try as I might, on hearing him babbling so, I could not keep a look of pity and concern from showing on my face which, when he saw it, caused him to hurriedly excuse himself and flee to the privacy of his room. Later, when I looked in at his door, he was engrossed with his seismograph and appeared to be relating the markings on its graph to an atlas of the world which he had taken from his shelves. I was concerned to note that he was quietly arguing with himself.

  Naturally, being what he was and having such a great interest in peculiar ethnic problems, my uncle had always possessed, along with his historical and archaeological source books, a smattering of works concerning elder-lore and primitive, doubtful religions. I mean such works as The Golden Bough and Miss Murray’s Witch Cult. But what was I to make of those other books which I found in his library within a few days of my arrival? On his shelves were at least nine works which I knew were so outrageous in what they suggest that they have been mentioned by widely differing authorities over a period of many years as being damnable, blasphemous, abhorrent, unspeakable, literary lunacy. These include the Cthaat Aquadingen by an unknown author, Feery’s Notes on the Necronomicon, the Liber Miraculorem, Eliphas Lévi’s History of Magic, and a faded, leather-bound copy of the hideous Cultes des Goules. Perhaps the worst thing I saw was a slim volume by Commodus which that “Blood Maniac” had written in A.D. 183 and which was protected by lamination from further fragmentation.

  And moreover, as if these books were not puzzling and disturbing enough, there was that other thing … .

  What of the indescribable droning chant which I often heard issuing from Sir Amery’s room in the dead of night? This first occurred on the sixth night I spent with him, when I was roused from my own uneasy slumbers by the morbid accents of a language it seemed impossible for the vocal cords of a man to emulate. Yet my uncle was weirdly fluent with it, and I scribbled down an oft-repeated sentence-sequence in what I considered the nearest written approximation of the spoken words I could find. These words—or at least sounds—were:

  Ce’haiie ep-ngh fl’hur G’harne fhtagn,

  Ce’haiie fhtagn ngh Shudde-M’ell.

  Hai G’harne orr’e ep fl’hur,

  Shudde-M’ell ican’icanicas fl’hur orr’e G’harne.

  Though at the time I found the thing impossible to pronounce as I heard it, I have since found that with each passing day, oddly, the pronunciation of those lines becomes easier—as if with the approach of some obscene horror I grow more capable of expressing myself in that horror’s terms. Perhaps it is just that lately in my dreams, I have found occasion to mouth those very words, and, as all things are far simpler in dreams, my fluency has passed over into my waking hours.

  But that does not explain the tremors—the same inexplicable tremors which so terrorized my uncle. Are the shocks which cause the ever-present quiverings of the seismograph stylus merely the traces of some vast, subterrene cataclysm a thousand miles deep and five thousand miles away—or are they caused by something else? Something so outré and fearsome that my mind freezes when I am tempted to study the problem too closely.

  iii

  There came a time, after I had been with him for a number of weeks, when it seemed plain that Sir Amery was rapidly recovering. True, he still retained his stoop, though to me it seemed no longer so pronounced, and his so-called “eccentricities,” but he was more his old self in other ways. The nervous tic had left his face completely and his cheeks had regained something of their former color. His improvement, I conjectured, had much to do with his never ending studies of the seismograph; for I had established by that time that there was a definite connection between the measurements of that machine and my uncle’s illness. Nevertheless, I was at a loss to understand why the internal movements of the Earth should so determine the state of his nerves. It was after a trip to his room, to look at that instrument, that he told me more of dead G’harne. It was a subject I should have attempted to steer him away from.

  “The fragments,” he said, “told the location of a city the name of which, G’harne, is known only in legend and which has in the past been spoken of on a par with Atlantis, Mu, and R’lyeh. A myth and nothing more. But if you give a legend a concrete location you strengthen it somewhat—and if that location yields up something of the past, centuried relics of a civilization lost for aeons, then the legend becomes history. You’d be surprised how much of the world’s history has in fact been built up that way.

  “It was my hope, a hunch you might call it, that G’harne had been real; and with the deciphering of the fragments I found it within my power to prove, one way or the other, G’harne’s elder existence. I have been in some strange places, Paul, and have listened to even stranger stories. I once lived with an African tribe whose people declared they knew the secrets of the lost city, and their storytellers told me of a land where the sun never shines; where Shudde-M’ell, hiding deep in the honeycombed ground, plots the dissemination of evil and madness throughout the world and plans the resurrection of other, even worse abominations!

  “He hides there in the ground and awaits the time when the stars will be right, when his horrible hordes will be sufficient in number, and when he can infest the entire world with his loathsomeness and bring about the return of those others more loathsome yet!

  “I was told stories of fabulous star-born creatures who inhabited the Earth millions of years before Man appeared, who were still here, in cer
tain dark places, when he eventually evolved. I tell you, Paul—” his voice rose—“that they are here even now—in places undreamed-of! I was told of sacrifices to Yog-Sothoth and Yibb-Tstll that would make your blood run cold, and of weird rites practiced beneath prehistoric skies before Old Khem was born. These things I’ve heard make the works of Albertus Magnus and Grobert seem tame; de Sade himself would have paled at the hearing.”

  My uncle’s voice had been speeding up progressively with each sentence, but now he paused for breath and in a more normal tone and at a reduced rate he continued:

  “My first thought on deciphering the fragments was of an expedition. I may tell you I had learned of certain things I could have dug for here in England—you’d be surprised what lurks beneath the surface of some of those peaceful Cotswold hills—but that would have alerted a host of so-called ‘experts’ and amateurs alike, and so I decided upon G’harne. When I first mentioned an expedition to Kyle and Gordon and the others I must surely have produced quite a convincing argument, for they all insisted upon coming along. Some of them, though, I’m sure, must have considered themselves upon a wild-goose chase. As I’ve explained, G’harne lies in the same realm as Mu or Ephiroth—or at least it did—and they must have seen themselves as questing after a veritable Lamp of Aladdin; but despite all that they came. They could hardly afford not to come, for if G’harne was real … why! Think of the lost glory! They would never have forgiven themselves. And that’s why I can’t forgive myself. But for my meddling with the G’harne Fragments they’d all be here now, God help them … .”

  Again Sir Amery’s voice had become full of some dread excitement, and feverishly he continued:

  “Heavens, but this place sickens me! I can’t stand it much longer. It’s all this grass and soil. Makes me shudder! Cement surroundings are what I need—and the thicker the cement the better! Yet even the cities have their drawbacks—undergrounds and things. Did you ever see Pickman’s Subway Accident, Paul? By God, what a picture! And that night … that night!

  “If you could have seen them—coming up out of the diggings! If you could have felt the tremors—The very ground rocked and danced as they rose! We’d disturbed them, do you see? They may have even thought they were under attack, and up they came. My God! What could have been the reason for such ferocity? Only a few hours before I had been congratulating myself on finding the spheres, and then … and then—”

  Now he was panting and his eyes, as before, had partly glazed over; his voice, too, had undergone a strange change of timbre and his accents were slurred and alien.

  “Ce’haiie, ce’haiie—the city may be buried but whoever named the place dead G’harne didn’t know the half of it. They were alive! They’ve been alive for millions of years; perhaps they can’t die … ! And why shouldn’t that be? They’re gods, aren’t they, of a sort? Up they come in the night—”

  “Uncle, please,” I interrupted.

  “You needn’t look at me so, Paul,” he snapped, “or think what you’re thinking either. There’s stranger things happened, believe me. Wilmarth of Miskatonic could crack a few yarns, I’ll be bound! You haven’t read what Johansen wrote! Dear Lord, read the Johansen Narrative!

  “Hai, ep fl’hur … Wilmarth … the secretive … . What is it he knows that he won’t tell? Why was that which was found at those Mountains of Madness so hushed up, eh? What did Pabodie’s equipment draw up out of the earth? Tell me those things, if you can! Ha, ha, ha! Ce’haiie, ce’haiie—G’harne icanicas … .”

  Shrieking and glassy-eyed he stood, with his hands gesticulating wildly in the air. I do not think he saw me at all, or anything—except, in his mind’s eye, a horrible recurrence of what he imagined had been. I took hold of his arm to calm him but he brushed my hand away, seemingly without knowing what he was doing.

  “Up they come, the rubbery things … . Good-bye, Gordon … . Don’t scream so—the shrieking turns my mind—but it’s only a dream. A nightmare like all the others I’ve been having lately. It is a dream, isn’t it? Good-bye, Scott, Kyle, Leslie … .”

  Suddenly, eyes bulging, he spun wildly around. “The ground is breaking up! So many of them . . . I’m falling!

  “It’s not a dream—dear God! It’s not a dream!

  “No! Keep off, do you hear? Aghhh! The slime … got to run! Run! Away from those—voices?—away from the sucking sounds and the chanting … .”

  Without warning he suddenly broke into a chant himself, and the awful sound of it, no longer distorted by distance or the thickness of a stout door, would have sent a more timid listener into a faint. It was similar to what I had heard before in the night and the words do not seem so evil on paper, almost ludicrous in fact, but to hear them issuing from the mouth of my own flesh and blood—and with such unnatural fluency:

  “Ep, ep-eeth, fl’hur G’harne

  G’harne fhtagn Shudde-M’ell hyas Negg’h.”

  While chanting these incredible mouthings Sir Amery’s feet had started to pump up and down in a grotesque parody of running. Suddenly he screamed anew and with startling abruptness leaped past me and ran full tilt into the wall. The shock knocked him off his feet and he collapsed in a heap on the floor.

  I was worried that my meager ministrations might not be adequate, but to my immense relief he regained consciousness a few minutes later. Shakily he assured me that he was “all right, just shook up a bit,” and, supported by my arm, he retired to his room.

  That night I found it impossible to close my eyes. I wrapped myself in a blanket instead, and sat outside my uncle’s room to be on hand if he were disturbed in his sleep. He passed a quiet night, however, and paradoxically enough, in the morning, he seemed to have got the thing out of his system and was positively improved.

  Modern doctors have known for a long time that in certain mental conditions a cure may be obtained by inciting the patient to relive the events which causes his illness. Perhaps my uncle’s outburst of the previous night had served the same purpose—or at least, so I thought, for by that time I had worked out new ideas regarding his abnormal behavior. I reasoned that if he had been having recurrent nightmares and had been in the middle of one on that fateful night of the earthquake, when his friends and colleagues were killed, it was only natural that his mind should become temporarily—even permanently—un—hinged upon awakening and discovering the carnage. And if my theory were correct, it also explained his seismic obsessions … .

  iv

  A week later came another grim reminder of Sir Amery’s condition. He had seemed so much improved, though he still occasionally rambled in his sleep, and had gone out into the garden “to do a bit of trimming.” It was well into September and quite chilly, but the sun was shining and he spent the entire morning working with a rake and hedge clippers. We were doing for ourselves and I was just thinking about preparing the midday meal when a singular thing happened. I distinctly felt the ground move fractionally under my feet and heard a low rumble.

  I was sitting in the living room when it happened, and the next moment the door to the garden burst open and my uncle rushed in. His face was deathly white and his eyes bulged horribly as he fled past me to his room. I was so stunned by his wild appearance that I had barely moved from my chair by the time he shakily came back into the room. His hands trembled as he lowered himself into an easy chair.

  “It was the ground … I thought for a minute that the ground … .” He was mumbling, more to himself than to me, and visibly trembling from head to toe as the aftereffect of the shock hit him. Then he saw the concern on my face and tried to calm himself.

  “The ground, Paul, I was sure I felt a tremor—but I was mistaken. It must be this place. All this open space. The moors. I fear I’ll really have to make an effort and get away from here. There’s altogether too much soil and not enough cement! Cement surroundings are the thing … .”

  I had had it on the tip of my tongue to say that I too had felt the shock, but upon learning that he now believed himself
mistaken I kept quiet. I did not wish to needlessly add to his already considerable disorders.

  That night, after Sir Amery had retired, I went through into his study—a room which, though he had never said so, I knew he considered inviolate—to have a look at the seismograph. Before I looked at the machine, however, I saw the notes spread out upon the table beside it. A glance was sufficient to tell me that the sheets of white foolscap were covered with fragmentary jottings in my uncle’s heavy handwriting, and when I looked closer I was sickened to discover that they were a rambling jumble of seemingly disassociated—yet apparently linked—occurrences connected in some way with his weird delusions. These notes have since been delivered permanently into my possession and are as reproduced here:

  HADRIAN’S WALL.

  A.D. 122-128. Limestone Bank. (Gn’yah of the G’harne Fragments?) Earth tremors interrupted the diggings, which is why cut basalt blocks were left in the uncompleted ditch with wedge-holes ready for splitting.

  W’nyal Shash. (MITHRAS?)

  The Romans had their own deities—but it wasn’t Mithras that the disciples of Commodus, the Blood Maniac, sacrificed to at Limestone Bank! And that was the same spot where, fifty years earlier, a great block of stone was unearthed and discovered to be covered with inscriptions and engraven pictures! Silvanus the Centurion defaced it and buried it again. A skeleton, positively identified as Silvanus’ by the signet ring on one of its fingers, has been lately found beneath the ground (deep) where once stood a Vicus Tavern at Housesteads Fort—but we don’t know how he vanished! Nor were Commodus’ followers any too careful. According to Atullus and Caracalla they also vanished overnight—during an earthquake!