Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos

by Robert M. Price

  Walking homeward beneath a pale half-moon, my enthusiasm waned. He had not mentioned precisely what he intended to summon with his alarming music. Yergler himself was singularly vague on that point, or else Sheffield had deleted sections of the hideous text—an entirely logical premise. Indeed, what earthly music—i.e., musical tones audible to the human ear—could call from the gulf something totally unearthly? My better judgment revolted. Baldwyn was lighting dangerous fires, but the very limits of man’s knowledge regarding space, time and infinity would keep him from getting his fingers burned. Still, Yergler had done it; or something just as bad, and I recalled Sheffield’s preface, which gave a guarded account of the alchemist’s mysterious death in the madhouse.

  During a severe thunderstorm there was heard outside and above his room a hideous cacophony, seeming to come from the very heavens. There had been a broken shutter, a wild scream; and Yergler had been found slumped in a corner of the room in an attitude of extreme terror, dead eyes bulging upward, his face and body pitted with holes that resembled burns but were not. However, I knew that many early historians had possessed the grievous fault of gross exaggeration and verbal distortion.

  I could scarcely wait for the ensuing week to pass, realizing that Baldwyn was alone in that upstairs room, browsing in a blasphemous book from the past and composing weird music on his devil’s machine. But at last Saturday came, and I approached his door about one o’clock in the afternoon, because I knew he hadn’t seen the sun rise for years. Encouraged by seeing a finger of smoke twist from the leaning chimney, I opened the sagging wooden gate, crossed the shadow of the maple and knocked on the door.

  Presently it opened, and I was shocked at the change in my friend’s face. He had aged five years; new lines creased his pale brow. His greeting was mechanical. We sat in the parlor and talked, while he lit one cigarette after another.

  When I asked him if he’d had any sleep or solid food, he refused to answer. Baldwyn did his own light housekeeping, and unless watched, never ate enough to keep more than half alive. I told him he looked terrible, but he passed it off with a wave of his hand. What hellish thing had made him a gaunt image of his former self? I remonstrated; I demanded that he leave that sinister music and get some rest. He wouldn’t listen.

  I began to become afraid of what he’d discovered, for it was evident he had met with success of a sort. His very manner said so. Without further conversation, he remarked that he’d be busy all afternoon, and told me to return at ten-thirty that evening. I inquired about the experiment, but it was of no use. I left, promising to come back at the appointed hour.

  When I rapped on his door again I had in my pocket a .38 revolver I’d bought in town that very afternoon. I cannot say precisely what I planned to shoot; the gesture was prompted by a feeling of impending tragedy. There had been in Baldwyn’s manner a reticence I didn’t like. Always before he had told me of his triumphs and discoveries.

  Without a word Baldwyn led me to the upstairs room. Motioning me to a chair near the Lunachord, he sat on the bench and turned the switch that operated the electric motors. The thinness and pallor of his cheeks frightened me. He crushed out his cigarette and faced me.

  “Rambeau, you’ve been very patient—I know you’re curious. You also think I’m killing myself. I’ll rest up for a while when I get through—here. I think I’ve found what I’m after—the rhythm of space, the music of the stars and the universe that may be very near or very far. You know how we’ve hunted for those other books, the Necronomicon, and so on? This translation of Yergler isn’t very clear, but I’ve tried to bridge the gaps and produce the results he hinted at.

  “You see, at the very beginning there were two altogether different types of music—the type we know and hear today, and another one that isn’t really earthly at all. It was banned by the ancients, and only the early historians remember it. Now, the negro jazz element has revived some of these outré rhythms. They’ve almost got it! These polyrhythmic variants are close; boogie-woogie has a touch. Earl Hines came near with his improvisation, ‘Child of a Disordered Brain.’ . . .

  “What will happen I can’t say. Yesterday I had a letter from Lancaster in Providence, and he’s positively scared! I told him my plans the last time I wrote.

  “He finally admitted that he’d read the original Chronike , which is infinitely more terrible than this book we have. Lancaster warns me repeatedly against playing the music he’s afraid I’ve written. Actually, it can’t be written—there are no such symbols! It would require a new musical language. I’m not going to try that just yet, however . . .

  “But it can’t be that bad. He says there might even be some violent manifestation—the music might summon a certain thing from the shadows of another dimension.

  “What I’ve done surely can’t do anything like that . . . but it will be an interesting experiment. And remember, Rambeau, no interruptions.”

  I wanted to grab him by the neck and shake some sense into his head. My mouth opened twice, but no words came. He had started to play, and the whispering chords silenced me quicker than a hand clapped over my mouth. I had to listen; genius will permit nothing else. I was bewitched, eyes fastened on his flying fingers.

  The music swelled, following strange rhythm patterns I had never heard before and hope never to hear again. They were unearthly, insane. The music stirred me deeply; goose-pimples raced over me; my fingers twitched. I crouched forward on the edge of the chair—tense, alert.

  A wave of cold horror swept me as the awful melody and counter-melody rose to a higher pitch. The instrument quivered and screamed as with agony. The mad fantasia seemed to reach beyond the four walls of the room, to quaver into other spheres of sound and movement, as if some of the notes were escaping my ear and going elsewhere. Baldwyn’s pale lips were set in a grim smile. It was madness; the rhythms were older than the dawn of mankind, and infinitely more terrible. They reeked of a nameless corruption. It was evil—evil as the Druid’s song or the lullaby of the ghoul.

  During a sudden lull in the music, it happened. The skylight above us rattled, and the moonlight splashing the glass seemed to liquify and race downward. A single bolt of intense whiteness smashed the glass, and the entire pane buckled inward. It struck the floor with a crash. The floor-lamp dimmed and went out. Still the mad overture continued, its hideous echoes shaking the entire house, seeming to reach into infinity—to caress the very stars....

  In the dim uncertain moonlight I saw my friend crouched over the keyboard, oblivious to all else but the music. Then, above his head, I saw something else. At first it was only a deeper shadow. Then it moved. My mouth opened and I screamed, but the sound was lost in that bedlam of horror.

  The blob of shadow floated downward, a shapeless mass of denser blackness. It thickened and gradually took shape. I saw a flaming eye, a slimy tentacle, and a grisly paw extending downward.

  The music stopped, and the silence of the utter void enveloped us. Baldwyn leaped to his feet, turned and looked upward. He screamed as the blackness shifted nearer, and a smoky talon seized him. His face in the dim light was a mask of horror.

  I pawed at the gun in my pocket, gazing transfixed as the writhing shadow from outside slowly encircled his head. Unsteadily, imitating the movements of a zombie, Baldwyn raised his arms to fend off the monstrosity, and they were lost in the heaving shadow.

  I must have gone slightly mad then, for there is much I cannot remember. I know I leaped at the cloud, drove my fists into it. My hands touched nothing . . . though I recall a foetid odor. The revolver had somehow leaped into my hand and I fired at the mass, five times. The bullets smashed the wall—nothing else. Something struck me on the temple, and I fell backward. It may have been one of Baldwyn’s pawing arms; I do not know.

  A loud crash of discordant sound brought me to my senses. I lay on my back on the moonlit floor, revolver in hand. A nauseating odor brought me to my knees, gasping for air. Baldwyn had slumped backward over the keyboard, ine
rt. The notes piped on, filling the chamber with hideous discord. The horror I could not see, but I felt it near.

  Baldwyn’s head rolled and jerked up. It was no longer human— something ghastly and alien. It was dotted with tiny gouts of blood and with holes that looked like burns, but were something else. His lips writhed, and he groaned through clenched teeth.

  “...Rambeau!...Rambeau!...Ican’tsee...Areyouthere...? It’s got me—partofme!...runforyour life!...Shoot me! Kill me! I can’t let it—get the rest . . .”

  His command froze me with horror. In that instant I lived ten years. I forgot the impossible shadow and the lurking fear. I saw only my friend’s face and the fond memories it recalled. I thought of peaceful sunny days spent in earnest conversation beneath the huge maple; I thought of saner nights and saner music.

  But that vision darkened and the horror returned. Baldwyn sank lower, his grip on the instrument gave way, and he tumbled to the floor, face upward in the moonlight. The last ghastly echoes rang in my ears; then silence. I saw the awful shadow near his head, its groping claws outstretched....

  I waited no longer. I knew he meant what he said. With trembling hand I raised the revolver and shot him in the temple. My last conscious effort was a mad scramble down the twisting stair. I stumbled and fell into a pit of darkness.

  Hours later I awoke and groped my way through the house, staggered out into the moonlight. My mind was blank; I could remember very little. The terrible events were a chaotic jumble of horror. As I ran I kept looking over my shoulder, staring at the peak of the dark gable near my friend’s upstairs room.

  I have confessed, and I suppose the judge and jury will hang me. I really can’t blame them. They would never understand why I killed him. And now I too must pay with my life for meddling in those forbidden realms of nightmare.

  All of Baldwyn’s manuscripts were burned—including the copy of Yergler’s evil book—by a special court order. It seems the neighbors heard the screams and the savage music.

  And now another terror haunts me. Often in my dreams I see a nebulous cloud of utter blackness dropping from the nighted sky to engulf me. And in the center of that nimbus I see a face, a hideous distortion of something that once was human and sane—the face of my friend; pitted and burned, even as the grisly face of Yergler’s must have been.

  The Aquarium

  Carl Jacobi

  Miss Emily Rhodes had been in London a little more than a year when she decided to give up her apartment and rent a house. The apartment was really quite comfortable but, as Miss Rhodes put it, she was tired of having her paints and easel next to her teacups. Accordingly she turned to the advertisements in the Times.

  In April she found what she was looking for. The advertisement read:

  TO LET: On Haney Lane. Near Knightsbridge Station. 2 storeys, 12 rooms, including cnsrvtry and aq. Completely furnished.Longeway and Longeway, agents.

  She read the advertisement a second time. The conservatory she could turn into a studio and sounded ideal, but what in the world was an aq? The two letters meant nothing to her.

  Miss Rhodes was thirty-two. A tall angular woman with black hair and metal grey eyes, she had never married for the simple reason that her painting had occupied too much of her time.

  The next day she called at the offices of the agents and was ushered in to see Talbot Longeway, senior partner of the firm, a thin, cadaverous-looking individual with a completely bald pate.

  “Ah, yes,” said Mr. Longeway, “the house on Haney Lane. A very nice bit of property. And furnished, y’know! Would you care to see it?”

  “First,” replied Miss Rhodes, “would you mind telling me what is an ‘aq’?”

  The agent coughed. “I’m afraid that was more or less of a joke on the part of my son who is the junior member of this firm.”

  “But what does it mean?”

  Talbot Longeway stirred uncomfortably. “The fact is ‘aq’ refers to an aquarium which the former owner had constructed in the library and which has never been removed. It needn’t concern you at all,” he added hastily. “As a matter of fact it’s a rather attractive piece even though, I will admit, excessively large.”

  It didn’t concern Miss Rhodes. She told the agent she would like to see the property, whereupon Mr. Longeway called a cab and the two of them drove to the Haney Lane address. Miss Rhodes went through the house with a critical eye. She made certain minor objections—a suspected leak in the roof over the bedroom ceiling, a weakened spoke in the balustrade, a sticky sash weight in one of the dormer windows—all of which the agent agreed to repair. After a little haggling over price, she signed a lease.

  The following day Miss Rhodes oversaw the transportation of her paints, canvasses and personal possessions to her new home. Then she dispatched a letter to Edith Halbin, her old friend in Bristol. She had acquired a house, she wrote, and needed someone to occupy it with her. Now there was nothing in the way of Edith’s long-contemplated move to London.

  On the twelfth of April Edith Halbin, a gaunt, prematurely grey woman, arrived, together with two portmanteaux, three trunks, a Siamese cat named Kuching, and four kittens.

  Miss Rhodes greeted her warmly and proceeded to show her the house. “Of course, it’s much more space than we need,” she said gayly, “but I like breathing room and . . . Whatever is the matter?”

  Just over the threshold of the library, Edith had stopped and stood staring into the center of the room. “What’s that?” she asked.

  Miss Rhodes frowned slightly and led the way forward like an unwilling museum guard asked to describe an unpleasant picture. The aquarium was mounted on a low platform and measured nearly ten feet in length, three in width. At first glance, it resembled a sarcophagus of antiquity with ornamental stonework at each corner and eight legs that looked like enormous claws. The glass tank occupying the midsection of this structure was filled to the three-quarters mark with roily water into which Edith Halbin peered now with troubled eyes.

  “Do you mean to say fish live in that?” she asked.

  Miss Rhodes shook her head. “No, there are no fish. Whoever had this aquarium installed was a conchologist. He wanted to duplicate as closely as possible the natural conditions the specimens are found in.”

  “What’s a conchologist?”

  “A collector of shells. It’s quite a study, you know. I would have put in fresh water but the valve seems to be stuck.”

  Edith Halbin took a step closer. An overpowering smell of putrefaction and stagnant water rose up out of the aquarium and crawled into her nostrils. With one hand she reached for the heavy cover.

  “That’s stuck too,” said Miss Rhodes. “I shall have to have a man out to fix the thing.”

  In most respects, the house proved to be all that Miss Rhodes had hoped for. The conservatory jutted off from the rear and offered both good lighting and seclusion for her work. The bedrooms were large and airy.

  Only the library was a disappointment. The furniture there was heavy and cumbersome and the entire room had an atmosphere of gloom and depression. The door, too, a heavy oak affair, persisted in squeaking no matter how much oil was applied to the hinges; it was equipped with a latch that had a trick of locking of its own accord.

  A week after they had taken up their joint residence, the two women had their first visitor. Answering the door, they found themselves confronted by a middle-aged man with a bristly moustache, greyish temples, and pale eyes behind huge bone-rimmed spectacles.

  “I believe this is yours,” he said without preamble, handing across a very wet and bedraggled cat.

  “Kuching! Wherever have you been?” cried Edith Halbin.

  “She was on my roof and couldn’t get down,” explained the man. “I’m your neighbor—Lucius Bates.”

  While Edith took charge of the Siamese, Miss Rhodes thanked their visitor and asked him in to tea. She led the way to the library which seemed the most masculine room of the house.

  “I see you’ve still got th
e aquarium,” Lucius Bates said some time later. “If I were you, I’d have that thing taken out of here.”

  Miss Rhodes began to pour the tea.

  “It takes up too much room and it’s an ugly piece at best,” he continued. “And personally I don’t care too much for its contents.”

  “You mean the shells?”

  Bates nodded. “They were collected, you know, by Horatio Lear, the former owner of this house. He died a year ago.”

  Edith Halbin, who had finished drying the Siamese with a cloth, looked up.

  “Is that the Lear who was famous for his deep sea work?”

  “Yes, in a diving bell. He explored the Senarbin Deep off the coast of Haiti. He was a conchologist, too, and brought up some rare shells from the ocean floor.”

  “I seem to remember,” said Edith Halbin, “some unpleasantness connected with his name....”

  Lucius Bates nodded. “That would be about his brother, Edmund. For years, there was bad feeling between the two men. It reached a climax when Edmund publicly accused Horatio of falsifying reports as to the depths he had reached in the diving bell. But they must have patched up their differences, for they continued to live here together—until one day Edmund left.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “I don’t really know. Horatio wasn’t sure either, though he said something about his brother having interests in Haiti.”

  “Is this all of Horatio’s shell collection?” asked Edith Halbin, nodding toward the tank.