The Burrowers Beneath

by Brian Lumley

  AVEBURY.

  (Neolithic A’byy of the G’harne Fragments and Pnakotic Manuscript???) Reference Stukeley’s book, A Temple to the British Druids—incredible! Druids, indeed! But Stukeley was pretty close when he said snake worship! Worms, more like it! COUNCIL OF NANTES. (9th Century.)

  The Council didn’t know what it was doing when it ordered: “Let the stones also which, deceived by the derision of the demons, they worship amid ruins and in wooded places, where they both make their vows and bestow their offerings, be dug up from the very foundations, and let them be cast into such places as never will their devotees be able to find them again … .” I’ve read that paragraph so many times that it’s become imprinted upon my mind! God only knows what happened to the poor devils who tried to carry out the Council’s orders … !

  DESTRUCTION OF GREAT STONES.

  In the 13th and 14th Centuries the Church also attempted the removal of certain stones from Avebury, because of local superstitions which caused the country folk to take part in heathen worship and witchcraft around them! In fact some of the stones were destroyed—by fire and douching—“because of the devices upon them.” INCIDENT.

  1320-25. Why was a big effort made to bury one of the great stones at Avebury? An earth tremor caused the stone to slip, trapping a workman. No effort appears to have been made to free him … ! The “accident” happened at dusk and two other men died of fright! Why? And why did the other diggers flee the scene? And what was the titanic Thing which one of them saw wriggling away into the ground? Allegedly there was a smell … . By their SMELL shall ye know them … . Was it a member of another nest of the timeless ghouls?

  THE OBELISK.

  Why was the so-called Stukeley Obelisk broken up? The pieces were buried in the early 18th Century but in 1833 Henry Browne found burned sacrifices at the site … and nearby, at Silbury Hill … . My God! That devil-mound! There are some things, even amid these horrors, which don’t bear thinking of—and while I’ve still got my sanity Silbury Hill had better remain one of them!

  AMERICA: INNSMOUTH.

  1928. What actually happened and why did the Federal Government drop depth-charges off Devil Reef in the Atlantic coast just out of Innsmouth? Why were half Innsmouth’s citizens banished—and where to? What was the connection with Polynesia and what also lies buried in the lands beneath the sea?

  WIND WALKER.

  (Death-Walker, Ithaqua, Wendigo, etc.) Yet another horror—though of a different type! And such evidence! Alleged human sacrifices in Manitoba. Unbelievable circumstances surrounding Norris Case! Spencer of Quebec University literally affirmed the validity of the case … and at …

  But that is as far as the notes go, and when first I read them I was glad that such was the case. It was quickly becoming all too apparent that my uncle was far from well and still not quite right in his mind. Of course, there was always the chance that he had written those notes before his seeming improvement, in which case his plight was not necessarily as bad as it appeared.

  Having put the notes back exactly as I found them, I turned my attention to the seismograph. The line on the graph was straight and true, and when I dismantled the spool and checked the chart I saw that it had followed that almost unnaturally unbroken smoothness for the last twelve days. As I have said, that machine and my uncle’s condition were directly related, and this proof of the quietness of the Earth was undoubtedly the reason for his comparative well-being of late. But here was yet another oddity: Frankly I was astonished at my findings, for I was certain I had felt a tremor—indeed I had heard a low rumble—and it seemed impossible that both Sir Amery and myself should suffer the same, simultaneous sensory illusion.

  I rewound the spool and then, as I turned to leave the room, I noticed that which my uncle had missed. It was a small brass screw lying on the floor. Once more I unwound the spool to find the countersunk hole which I had noticed before but which had not made an impression of any importance upon my mind. I am nothing where mechanics are concerned and could not tell what part that small component played in the workings of the machine; nevertheless I replaced it and again set the instrument in order. I stood then, for a moment, to ensure that everything was working correctly and for a few seconds noticed nothing abnormal. It was my ears which first warned of the change. There had been a low, clockwork hum and a steady, sharp scraping noise before. The hum was still attendant, but in place of the scraping sound was a jerky scratching which drew my fascinated eyes to the stylus.

  That small screw had evidently made all the difference in the world. No wonder the shock we had felt in the afternoon, which had so disturbed my uncle, had gone unrecorded. The instrument had not been working correctly then—but now it was!

  Now it could plainly be seen that every few minutes the ground was being shaken by tremors which, though they were not so severe as to be felt, were certainly strong enough to cause the stylus to wildly zigzag over the surface of the revolving graph paper … .

  I felt in a far more shaken state than the ground when I finally retired that night. Yet I could not readily decide the cause of my nervousness. Just why should I feel so apprehensive about my discovery? True, I knew that the effect of the now—correctly?—working machine upon my uncle would probably be unpleasant, might even cause another of his “outbursts”; but was that knowledge alone sufficient so to unsettle me? On reflection I could see no reason whatever why any particular area of the country should receive more than its usual quota of earth tremors.

  Eventually I concluded that the machine was either totally at fault or simply far too sensitive—perhaps the brass screw needed adjustment—and so finally I went to sleep assuring myself that the strong shock we had felt had been merely coincidental to my uncle’s condition. Still, I noticed before I dozed off that the very air itself seemed charged with a strange tension, and that the slight breeze which had wafted the late leaves during the day had gone completely, leaving in its passing an absolute quiet in which, during my slumbers, I fancied all night that the ground trembled beneath my bed … .

  v

  The next morning I was up early. I was short of writing materials and had decided to catch the lone morning bus into Radcar. I left the cottage before Sir Amery was awake, and during the journey I thought back on the events of the previous day and decided to do a little research while I was in town. In Radcar I had a bit to eat before calling at the offices of the Radcar Mirror where a Mr. McKinnen, a sub-editor, was particularly helpful. He spent some time on the office telephones making extensive inquiries on my behalf. Eventually I was told that for the better part of a year there had been no tremors of any importance in England, a point I must obviously have challenged had not further information been forthcoming. I learned that there had been some minor shocks and that these had occurred at places as close as Goole, a few miles away (that one within the last forty-eight hours), and as far as Tenterden near Dover. There had also been a very minor tremor at Ramsey in Huntingdonshire. I thanked Mr. McKinnen profusely for his help and would have left then but, as an afterthought, he asked me if I would be interested in checking through the paper’s international files. I gratefully accepted and was left on my own to study a great pile of interesting translations. Of course, as I expected, most of the information was useless to me, but it did not take me long to sort out what I was after.

  At first I had difficulty in believing the evidence of my own eyes. I read that in August there had been quakes in Aisne of such severity that one or two houses had collapsed and a number of people had been injured. These shocks had been likened to those of a few weeks earlier at Agen in that they seemed to be caused more by some settling of the ground than by actual tremors. In early June there had also been shocks in Calahorra, Chinchon, and Ronda in Spain. The trail went straight as the flight of an arrow and lay across—or rather under—the straits of Gilbraltar to Xauen in Spanish Morocco, where an entire neighborhood of houses had collapsed. Farther yet, to … But I had had enough; I dared lo
ok no more; I did not wish to know—not even remotely—the whereabouts of dead G’harne … .

  Oh! I had seen more than sufficient to make me forget about my original errand. My book could wait, for now there were more important things to do. My next port of call was the town library, where I took down Nicheljohn’s World Atlas and turned to that page with a large, folding map of the British Isles. My geography and knowledge of England’s counties are passable, and I had noticed what I considered to be an oddity in the seemingly unconnected places where England had suffered those “minor quakes.” I was not mistaken. Using a second book as a straight edge I lined up Goole in Yorkshire and Tenterden on the south coast and saw, with a tingle of monstrous foreboding, that the line passed very close to, if not directly through, Ramsey in Huntingdonshire. With dread curiosity I followed the line north and, through suddenly fevered eyes, saw that it passed within only a mile or so of the cottage on the moors!

  With unfeeling, rubbery fingers I turned more pages, until I found the leaf showing France. For a long moment I paused—then I fumblingly found Spain and finally Africa. For a long while I just sat there in numbed silence, occasionally turning the pages, automatically checking names and locations.

  My thoughts were in a terrible turmoil when I eventually left the library, and I could feel upon my spine the chill, hopping feet of some abysmal dread from the beginning of time. My previously wholesome nervous system had already started to crumble.

  During the journey back across the moors in the evening bus, the drone of the engine lulled me into a kind of half-sleep in which I heard again something Sir Amery had mentioned—something he had murmured aloud while sleeping and presumably dreaming. He had said: “They don’t like water … England is safe … have to go too deep … .”

  The memory of those words shocked me back to wakefulness and filled me with a further icy chill which got into the very marrow of my bones. Nor were these feelings of horrid foreboding misleading, for awaiting me at the cottage was that which went far to completing the destruction of my entire nervous system.

  As the bus came around the final wooded bend which hid the cottage from sight—I saw it! The place had collapsed! I simply could not take it in. Even knowing all I did—with all my slowly accumulating evidence—it was too much for my tortured mind to comprehend. I left the bus and waited until it had threaded its way through the parked police cars and others of curious travelers before crossing the road. The fence to the cottage had been knocked down to allow an ambulance to park in the now queerly tilted garden. Spotlights had been set up, for it was almost dark, and a team of rescuers toiled frantically at the incredible ruins. As I stood there, aghast, I was approached by a police officer. Having stumblingly identified myself, I was told the following story.

  A passing motorist had actually seen the collapse; the tremors attendant had been felt in nearby Marske. The motorist, realizing there was little he could do on his own, had driven on at speed into Marske to report the thing and bring help. Allegedly the house had gone down like a pack of cards. The police and the ambulance had been on the scene within minutes and rescue operations had begun immediately. Up to now it appeared that my uncle had been out when the collapse occurred, for as of yet there had been no trace of him. There had been a strange, poisonous odor about the place but this had vanished soon after the rescue work had started. The floors of all the rooms except the study had now been cleared, and during the time it took the officer to bring me up-to-date even more debris was being frantically hauled away.

  Suddenly there was a lull in the excited babble of voices. I saw that the sweating rescue workers were standing amid the ruins in a gang looking down at something. My heart gave a wild leap and I scrambled over the debris to see what they had found.

  There, where the floor of the study had been, was that which I had feared and more than half expected. It was simply a hole. A gaping hole in the floor—but from the angles at which the floorboards lay, and the manner in which they were scattered about, it looked as though the ground, rather than sinking, had been pushed up from below … .

  vi

  Nothing has since been seen or heard of Sir Amery Wendy-Smith, and though he is listed as being missing, I know that in fact he is dead. He is gone to worlds of ancient wonder and my only prayer is that his soul wanders on our side of the threshold. For in our ignorance we did Sir Amery a great injustice—I and all the others who thought he was out of his mind—all of us. Each of his queer ways, I understand them all now, but the understanding has come hard and will cost me dear. No, he was not mad. He did the things he did out of self-preservation, and though his precautions came to nothing in the end, it was fear of a nameless evil and not madness which prompted them.

  But the worst is still to come. I myself have yet to face a similar end. I know it, for no matter what I do the tremors haunt me. Or is it only in my mind? No, there is little wrong with my mind. My nerves may be gone but my mind is intact. I know too much! They have visited me in dreams, as I believe they must have visited my uncle, and what they have read in my mind has warned them of their danger. They dare not allow me further to investigate, for it is just such meddling which may one day fully reveal them to men—before they are ready!

  God! Why hasn’t that folklorist fool Wilmarth at Miskatonic answered my telegrams? There must be a way out! Even now they dig—those dwellers in darkness … .

  But no—this is no good! I must get a grip on myself and finish this narrative. I have not had time to tell the authorities the truth, but even if I had I know what the result would have been. “There’s something wrong with all the Wendy-Smith blood,” they would say. But this manuscript will tell the story for me and will also stand as a warning to others. Perhaps when it is seen how my passing so closely parallels that of Sir Amery, people will be curious; with this manuscript to guide them perhaps men will seek out and destroy Earth’s elder madness before it destroys them … .

  A few days after the collapse of the cottage on the moors, I settled here in this house on the outskirts of Marske to be close at hand if—though I could see little hope of it—my uncle should turn up again. But now some dread power keeps me here. I cannot flee … . At first their power was not so strong, but now … I am no longer able even to leave this desk, and I know that the end must be coming fast. I am rooted to this chair as if grown here and it is as much as I can do to type!

  But I must … I must … . And the ground movements are much stronger now. That hellish, damnable, mocking stylus—leaping so crazily over the paper!

  I had been here only two days when the police delivered to me a dirty, soil-stained envelope. It had been found in the ruins of the cottage—near the lip of that curious hole—and was addressed to me. It contained those notes I have already copied and a letter from Sir Amery which, if its awful ending is anything to go on, he must have just finished writing when the horror came for him. When I consider, it is not so surprising that the envelope survived the collapse; they would not have known what it was, and so would have had no interest in it. Nothing in the cottage seems to have been deliberately damaged—nothing inanimate, that is—and so far as I have been able to discover the only missing items are those terrible spheres, or what remained of them!

  But I must hurry. I cannot escape and all the time the tremors are increasing in strength and frequency. No! I will not have time. No time to write all I intended to say. The shocks are too heavy … too heavy. Interfering with my typing. I will finish this in the only way remaining to me and staple Sir Amery’s letter to this manuscript now.

  Dear Paul,

  In the event of this letter ever getting to you, there are certain things I must ask you to do for the safety and sanity of the world. It is absolutely necessary that these things be explored and dealt with—though how that may be done I am at a loss to say. It was my intention, for the sake of my own sanity, to forget what happened at G’harne. I was wrong to try to hide it. At this very moment there are men digging in
strange, forbidden places, and who knows what they may unearth? Certainly all these horrors must be tracked down and rooted out—but not by bumbling amateurs. It must be done by men who are ready for the ultimate in hideous, cosmic horror. Men with weapons. Perhaps flamethrowers would do the trick … . Certainly a scientific knowledge of war would be a necessity … . Devices could be made to track the enemy … I mean specialized seismological instruments. If I had the time I would prepare a dossier, detailed and explicit, but it appears that this letter will have to suffice as a guide to tomorrows horror-hunters.

  You see, I now know for sure that they are after me—and there’s nothing I can do about it! It’s too late! At first even I, just like so many others, believed myself to be just a little bit mad. I refused to admit to myself that what I had seen happen had ever happened at all! To admit that was to admit complete lunacy—but it was real, all right, it did happen—and will again!

  Heaven only knows what’s been wrong with my seismograph, but the damn thing’s let me down in the worst possible way! Oh, they would have got me eventually, but I might at least have had time to prepare a proper warning.

  I ask you to think, Paul … . Think of what has happened at the cottage … . I can write of it as though it had already happened—because I know it must! It will! It is Shudde-M’ell, come for his spheres … .

  Paul, look at the manner of my death, for if you are reading this then I am either dead or disappeared—which means the same thing. Read the enclosed notes carefully, I beg you. I haven’t the time to be more explicit, but these notes of mine should be of some help. If you are only half so inquiring as I believe you to be, you will surely come to recognize a fantastic horror which, I repeat, the whole world must be made to believe in … . The ground is really shaking now but, knowing that it is the end, I am steady in my horror … . Not that I expect my present calm state of mind to last. I think that by the time they actually come for me my mind will have snapped completely. I can imagine it now. The floor splintering, erupting, to admit them. Why! Even thinking of it my senses recoil at the terror of the thought. There will be a hideous smell, a slime, a chanting and gigantic writhing and … and then—