But of course you know, ladies and gentlemen, what it was that happened. I can see by the glitter in your eyes, the flush on your waxen faces, that you remember well how the colors appeared in the sky that night, a fabulous aurora sent by the sun and reflected by the moon, so that all the world would be baptized at once by the spectral light of truth. Willing or not, your hearts had heard the voice of the creature you thought mad. But they would not listen; they never have. Why did you force this transgression of divine law? And why do you still gaze with your wooden hate from the ends of the earth? It was for you that I committed this last and greatest sin, all for you. When have you ever appreciated these gestures from on high! And for this act I must now exist in eternal banishment from the paradise in which you exalt. How beautiful is your everlasting ruin.
Oh, blessed puppets, receive My prayer, and teach Me to make Myself in thy image.
Ten Steps To Thin Mountain (1989)
First published in Crypt Of Cthulhu #68, 1989.
1. One day I saw it on a very old map: Thin Mountain. No elevation was noted. In my mind vague images began to form. I set the map aside and closed my eyes. Then there was a sudden commotion, the kind that may start up anyplace, whether on a train rocking along on its tracks or just an old bench somewhere. A group of people ran by, waving their arms and making odd noises. What was it that suddenly made me reach for the old map, only to find it was gone? And I just sat there wondering what things were really like on Thin Mountain.
2. No one knows all the legends inspired by Thin Mountain, but here are a few I've recently picked up: that the air up there will turn you into a raving visionary in a matter of hours, that after a few days you experience strange yearnings that are impossible to fulfull, that long-time residents become immortal and after death walk the woods as skeletons. What can you expect from hearsay? But one thing is certain among these conjectures: no one wants to give Thin Mountain a chance.
3. Only one way to Thin Mountain: absolute madness. By this I mean to put forth no clever insight. To be at eye level with the world clearly leads straight to nowhere; on the other hand, once your gaze slips off the horizontal, everything else goes with it. That is to say, no one can any longer vouch for your sanity. You have become... wayward. A grinning dwarf beckons you from the ledge of a tall building, gargoyles perched on cathedrals angle their snouts in a certain direction. And before you know it you're lying around on Thin Mountain!
4. Not all that I have discovered about Thin Mountain is pleasant. Despite a great deal of picturesque scenery—floathing strands of mist, narrow trees, fabulous fingerlike peaks—this region contains more than a few perils. One of them is a solitude fit only for fanatics of exile, their eyes always draining the distances. Another is a wind which seems to be composed of countless tiny voices, the chattering populus of an invisible universe. The half-lit days and the sorcery of its nights, moments in which nothing moves and others in which everything does. But what else would you expect from a place called Thin Mountain?
5. Once I heard the words "Thin Mountain" spoken in a crowd. Did I say that I saw who said it? I did not. It could have been anyone standing along the platform, waiting for the train to arrive. The same day someone threw himself under the train. He was cut in half... but what a happy expression was plastered on the face of that corpse. "Thin Mountain!" I couldn't help crying out in front of everyone. But as I suspected, no one came forward to confront me.
6. Not once but a thousand times I wished to dwell forever on Thin Mountain, even at a price of my life or my sanity. No happiness except on those peaks!
7. One morning I awoke with great difficulty, and the pain, the noise was worse than ever. All day the pain, the noise. All day Thin Mountain.
8. Nothing secret, I now realize, concerning the existence of Thin Mountain. It seems everyone has known about it all along. I hear them discussing it everywhere. Oh, Thin Mountain, yes, Thin Mountain, certainly.
9. On Thin Mountain, no one talks about Thin Mountain.
10. The train will be here soon.
Studies In Horror (1989)
First published in Crypt Of Cthulhu #68, 1989.
This version taken from: Crypt Of Cthulhu.
Numerous sections of this piece were revised for the 'Notebook of the Night' portion of Noctuary and republished in 1994 as stand-alone vignettes.
Transcendent Horror
Those bells ringing on the mist-covered mountain signify that the Master of the Temple is dead. The fact of the matter is that the monks there finally killed him.
It seems that a few years ago the Master of the Temple began to exhibit some odd and very unpleasant forms of behaviour. He apparently lost all sense of earthly decorum, even losing control over his own body. Once an extra head sprouted from the side of the Master's neck, and this ugly little thing started to issue all sorts of commands and instructions to the monks which only their lofty sense of decency and order prevented them from carrying out. Eventually the Master of the Temple was confined to a small room in an isolated part of the monastery. There, this once wise and beloved teacher was looked after like an animal. For several years the monks put up with the noises he made, the divers shapes he took. Finally, they killed him.
It is whispered among students of enlightenment that one may achieve a state of being in which enlightenment itself loses all meaning, with the consequence that one thereby becomes subject to all manner of strange destinies.
And the monks? After the assassination they scattered in all directions. Some hid out in other monasteries, while others went back to live among the everyday inhabitants of this earth. But it wasn't as if they could escape their past by fleeing it, no more than they could rid themselves of their old master by killing him.
For even after the death of his material self, the Master of the Temple sought out those who were once under his guidance; and upon these unhappy students he now bestowed, somewhat insistently, his terrible illumination.
Gothic Horror
The room in the tower seemed to have closed in upon him while he slept, so he measured it off again and found its dimensions to be unchanged. His mind still uneasy, he measured it a second time, and then a third. Then he awoke and measured it off a fourth time, pacing between the walls of the room in the tower. "I am measuring my own coffin," he whispered to himself while staring intently at the splotched stones of the floor.
Once again he examined every bare corner of his cell. Then he wandered over to the low, handleless door—shaped like an arch—and, laying his cheek against the heavy, splintered wood, he squinted through the tiny openings in the iron grill, surveying the circular corridor of the tower. First he gazed in one direction and then, shifting over to the opposite side of the grill, in the other. Both directions offered the same view: cell door after cell door, each with an armed guard beside it, each progressively shrinking in the circular perspective of the corridor. It was the uppermost level of the castle's highest tower, a quiet place when all the prisoners were at rest. Then a tight-lipped moan broke the silence, waking him a second time from a second sleep. He measured off the dimensions of his cell once more, examining every bare corner, then surveyed the circular corridor through the tiny openings of the iron grill.
Once again he wandered over to the arch-shaped window of his prison cell. This aperture, the only means of escape aside from the low door, was constructed to include four pairs of sharp metal spikes: two pairs projecting from the right and left sides, two closing in from its top and bottom, and all forming a kind of cross whose parts did not quite join together. But these pointed impediments notwithstanding, there remained a perilous descent groundward. No means for securing either grip or foothold crucial for such a climb were offered by the castle's outer walls, nor was there any possibility of concealment, even, one might say especially, during the darkest of the castle's watchful nights. Beyond the window was a loftly view of sunlit mountains, blue sky, rustling forest, a seemingly endless tableau of nature which in othe
r circumstances might have been considered sublime. In the present circumstances the mountains and forests, perhaps the sky itself, seemed populated with human enemies and natural obstacles which made the mere dream of escape an impossibility.
Someone was now shaking him, and he awoke. It was the dead of night. Outside the window a bright crescent moon was fixed in the blackness. Within the room were two guards and a hooded figure holding a lamp. One of the guards pinned the dreamer to the floor, while the other reached underneath his ragged shirt, relieving him of a hidden weapon he had recently formed out of a fragment from one of the stone walls in the tower room. "Don't worry," the guard said, "we've been watching you." Then the hooded figure waved the lamp toward the doorway and the prisoner was carried out, his feet dragging over the dark stones of the floor.
From the room in the tower they descended—by means of countless stone staircases and long, torchlit passages—to the deepest part of the castle far underground. This area was a complex of vast chambers, each outfitted from its cold, earthen floor to its lofty, almost indiscernible ceiling with a formidable array of devices. In addition to the incessant echoes of an icy seepage dripping from above, the only other distinguishable sound was the creaking of this incredible system of machinery, with the refrain now and then of an open-mouthed groan.
His body was put in harness and hoisted so that the tips of his toes barely grazed the floor. The hooded figure, through a sequence of signals, directed the proceedings. During a lull in his agony, the prisoner once again tried to explain to his persecutors their error—that he was not who they thought he was, that he was suffering another man's punishment.
"Are you certain of that?" asked the hooded figure, speaking in an almost kindly tone of voice which he had never used before.
At these words a look of profound confusion appeared on the prisoner's face, one quite distinct from previous expressions of mere physical torment. And although no new manipulations had been employed, his entire body became grotesquely arched in agony as he emitted a single unbroken scream before collapsing into unconsciousness.
"Waken him," ordered the hooded figure.
They tried, but his body still hung motionless from the ropes, hunched and twisting in its harness. He had already been revived for the last time, and his dreams of measurements and precise dimensions would no longer be disturbed, lost as they now were in a formless nonsense of nothingness.
Exotic Horror
He had lost his guide—or else had been abandoned by this seething, wiry native of the city—and now he was wandering through strange streets alone. The experience was not entirely an unwelcome one. From the first instant he became aware of the separation, things became more... interesting. Perhaps this transformation had begun even in the moments preceding a full awareness of his situation: the narrow entranceway of a certain street or the shadowed spires of a certain structure appeared as mildly menacing to the prophetic edges of his vision, pleasantly threatening. Now his eyes were filled with the sight of an infinitely more wary scene, and a truly foreign one.
It was near sundown and all the higher architectures—the oddly curving roofs, the almost tilting peaks—were turned into anonymous forms with razor-sharp outlines by the low brilliance in the west. And these angular monuments, blocking the sun, covered the streets below with a thick layer of shadows, so that even though a radiant blue sky continued to burn above, down here it was already evening.
The torpid confusion of the streets, the crudely musical clatter of alien sounds, became far more mysterious without the daylight and without his guide. It was as if the city had annexed the shadows and expanded under the cover of darkness, as if it were celebrating incredible things there, all sorts of fabulous attractions. Golden lights began to fill windows and to fall against the crumbling mortar of old walls.
His attention was now drawn to a low building at the end of the street, and, avoiding any thought which might diminish his sense of freedom, he entered its lamplit doorway.
The place was one of indefinite character and intention. Stepping inside, he received a not unwelcoming glance from a man who was adjusting some objects on a shelf across the room, and who turned briefly to look over his shoulder at the foreign visitor. At first this man, who must have been the proprietor, was barely noticeable, for the color and texture of his attire somehow caused him to blend, chameleon-like, into the surrounding decor. The man became apparent only after showing his face, but after he turned away he retreated back into the anonymity from which he had been momentarily summoned by the intrusion of a customer. Otherwise there was no one else in the shop, and, left unbothered by its invisible proprietor, he browsed freely among the shelves.
And what merchandise they held. True curiosities in a thousand twisting shapes were huddled together on the lower shelves, met one's gaze at eye level, and leered down from dim and dusty heights. Some of them, particularly the very small ones, but also the very largest ones crouched in corners, could not be linked to anything he had ever seen. They might have been trinkets for strange gods, toys for monsters. His sense of freedom intensified. Now he was nearly overcome with the feeling that something unheard of could very possibly enter his life, something which otherwise might have passed him by. His sensation was one of fear, but fear that was charged with the blackest passion. He now felt himself as the victim of some vast conspiracy that involved the remotest quarters of the cosmos, countless plots all converging upon him. Hidden portents were everywhere and his head was now spinning: first with vague images and possibilities, then with... darkness.
What place he later occupied is impossible to say. Underground, perhaps, beneath the shop with the peculiar merchandise. Thenceforward it was always dark, except on those occasions when his keepers would come down and shine a light across the full length of his monstrous form. (The victim of a horrible magic, the guide would whisper.) But the shining light never disturbed his dreams, since his present shape was equipped with nothing that functioned as eyes.
Afterward money would be collected from the visiting spectators, who were sworn to secrecy before they were allowed to witness this marvel. Still later they would be assassinated to insure the inviolable condition of their vow. But how much more fortunate were they, meeting their deaths with a fresh sense of that exotic wonder which they had travelled so far to experience, than he, for whom all distances and alien charm had long ago ceased to exist in the cramped and nameless incarceration in which he had found a horrible home.
Spectral Horror
One may be alone in the house and yet not alone.
There are so many rooms, so many galleries and corridors, all laid out level upon level, a strange succession of mysteries, so many places where a peculiar quiet resounds with secrets. Every object and surface of the house seems darkly vibrant, a medium for distant agitations which are felt but not always seen or heard: dusty chandeliers send a stirring through the air above, walls ripple within patterns of raised filigree, grimy portraits shudder inside their gilded frames. And even if the light throughout much of the house has grown stale and become a sepia haze, it nevertheless remains a haze in ferment, a fidgeting aura that envelops this museum of tremulous antiquities.
So one cannot feel alone in such a house, especially when it is a remote edifice which clings to the very edge of the land and hovers above a frigid ocean. Through an upper window is a view of coastal earth falling away into gray, heaving waters. The lower windows of the house all look into the rustling depths of a garden long overgrown and sprouting in prolific tangles. A narrow path leads through this chaotic luxuriance, ending at the border of a dense wood which is aroused to life by a mild but perpetual wind. Ocean, garden, woods—surroundings possessed by a visible turbulence which echoes the unseen tremors within the house itself. And when the night masks the movements of this landscape, it is the stars that shiver around a livid, palpitant mood.
Yet one may not believe there is an exchange of influnce between the house and the world ar
ound it. And still there is a presence that pervades as though there were no walls to divide them.
From the moment on arrives at such a house there seems to be something moving in the background of its scenes, a hidden company whose nature is unknown. No true peace can establish itself in these rooms, however long they have remained alone with their own emptiness, abandoned to lie dormant and dreamless. Throughout the most innocent mornings and unclouded afternoons there endures a kind of restless pulling at appearances, an awkward or expert fussing with the facade of objects. In the night a tide of shadows invades the house, submerging its rooms in a greater darkness which allows a greater freedom to these fitful maneuverings.
And perhaps there is a certain room towards the very summit of the house, a room where one may sense how deeply the house has penetrated into a far greater estate: a landscape which is without boundaries either above or below, an infinite architecture whose interior is as tortuous and vast as its exterior. The room is long and large and features a row of double doors along the full length of one wall, doors which lead out to a narrow terrace overlooking the ocean and staring straight into the sky. And each door is composed of a double row of windowpanes, opening the room to the images of the expansive world outside it and allowing the least possible division between them.
There are no working light fixtures in this room, so that it necessarily shares in the luminous moods of the day or night beyond the windows. Discovering this chamber on a certain overcast afternoon, one settles into an apartment that itself is hung with clouds and enveloped by dull twilight for endless hours. And yet the room appears to gain all the depth that the day has lost: whereas the sky has been foreshortened by a low ceiling of soft gray clouds, the dim corners and shaded furnishings reach into immense realms, great wells and hollows beyond vision. Certainly the echoes one hears must be resonating in places outside that room, which muffles one's movements with its thick and densely figured carpet, its plumply upholstered chairs, and its maze of tables, cases, and cabinets in dark weighty wood.
The Collected Short Fiction Page 41