The End of the Story

by Clark Ashton Smith

A fear which we had never experienced even in dreams, of which we had found no hint in our most perilous nocturnal excursions, deprived us of the faculty of speech, but not of movement. We recoiled a few paces from the bowl, and coincidentally with our steps, the horrible neck and arms continued to lengthen. Then the whole mass of the dark fluid began to rise, and far more quickly than the suvana-juice runs from my pen, it poured over the rim of the basin like a torrent of black quicksilver, taking as it reached the floor an undulant ophidian form which immediately developed more than a dozen short legs.

  What unimaginable horror of protoplastic life, what loathly spawn of the primordial slime had come forth to confront us, we did not pause to consider or conjecture. The monstrosity was too awful to permit of even a brief contemplation; also, its intentions were too plainly hostile, and it gave evidence of anthropophagic inclinations; for it slithered toward us with an unbelievable speed and celerity of motion, opening as it came a toothless mouth of amazing capacity. As it gaped upon us, revealing a tongue that uncoiled like a long serpent, its jaws widened with the same extreme elasticity that accompanied all its other movements. We saw that our departure from the fane of Tsathoggua had become most imperative, and turning our backs to all the abominations of that unhallowed shrine, we crossed the sill with a single leap, and ran headlong in the moonlight through the suburbs of Commoriom. We rounded every convenient corner, we doubled upon our

  tracks behind the palaces of time-forgotten nobles and the warehouses of unrecorded merchants, we chose preferably the places where the incursive jungle trees were highest and thickest; and at last, on a by-road where the outlying houses were no longer visible, we paused and dared to look back.

  Our lungs were intolerably strained, were ready to burst with their heroic effort, and the various fatigues of the day had told upon us all too grievously; but when we saw at our heels the black monster, following us with a serpentine and undulating ease, like a torrent that descends a long declivity, our flagging limbs were miraculously re-animated, and we plunged from the betraying light of the by-road into the pathless jungle, hoping to evade our pursuer in the labyrinth of boles and vines and gigantic leaves. We stumbled over roots and fallen trees, we tore our raiment and lacerated our skins on the savage brambles, we collided in the gloom with huge trunks and limber saplings that bent before us, we heard the hissing of tree-snakes that spat their venom at us from the boughs above, and the grunting or howling of unseen animals when we trod upon them in our precipitate flight. But we no longer dared to stop or look behind.

  We must have continued our headlong peregrinations for hours. The moon, which had given us little light at best through the heavy leafage, fell lower and lower among the enormous-fronded palms and intricate creepers. But its final rays, when it sank, were all that saved us from a noisome marsh with mounds and hassocks of bog-concealing grass, amid whose perilous environs and along whose mephitic rim we were compelled to run without pause or hesitation or time to choose our footing, with our damnable pursuer dogging every step.

  Now, when the moon had gone down, our flight became wilder and more hazardous—a veritable delirium of terror, exhaustion, confusion, and desperate difficult progression among obstacles to which we gave no longer any distinct heed or comprehension, through a night that clung to us and clogged us like an evil load, like the toils of a monstrous web. It would seem that the creature behind us, with its unbelievable facilities of motion and self-elongation, could have overtaken us at any time; but apparently it desired to prolong the game. And so, in a semi-eternal protraction of inconclusive horrors, the night wore on… but we never dared to stop or look back.

  Far-off and wan, a glimmering twilight grew among the trees—a foreomening of the hidden morn. Wearier than the dead, and longing for any repose, any security, even that of some indiscernible tomb, we ran toward the light, and stumbled forth from the jungle upon a paven street among buildings of marble and granite. Dimly, dully, beneath the crushing of our fatigue, we realized that we had wandered in a circle and had come back to the suburbs of Commoriom. Before us, no farther away than the toss of a javelin, was the dark temple of Tsathoggua.

  Again we ventured to look back, and saw the elastic monster, whose legs had

  now lengthened till it towered above us, and whose maw was wide enough to have swallowed us both at a mouthful. It followed us with an effortless glide, with a surety of motion and intention too horrible, too cynical to be borne. We ran into the temple of Tsathoggua, whose door was still open just as we had left it, and closing the door behind us with a fearful immediacy, we contrived, in the superhuman strength of our desperation, to shoot one of the rusty bolts.

  Now, while the chill drearness of the dawn fell down in narrow shafts through the windows high in the wall, we tried with a truly heroic resignation to compose ourselves, and waited for whatever our destiny should bring. And while we waited, the god Tsathoggua peered upon us with an even more imbecile squatness and vileness and bestiality than he had shown in the torchlight.

  I think I have said that the lintel of the door had crumbled and splintered away in several places. In fact, the beginning process of ruin had made three apertures, through which the daylight now filtered, and which were large enough to have permitted the passage of small animals or sizable serpents. For some reason, our eyes were drawn to these apertures.

  We had not gazed long, when the light was suddenly intercepted in all three openings, and then a black material began to pour through them and ran down the door in a triple stream to the flagstones, where it re-united and resumed the form of the thing that had followed us.

  “Farewell, Tirouv Ompallios,” I cried, with such remaining breath as I could summon. Then I ran and concealed myself behind the image of Tsathoggua, which was large enough to screen me from view, but, unfortunately, was too small to serve this purpose for more than one person. Tirouv Ompallios would have preceded me with the same laudable idea of self-preservation, but I was the quicker. And seeing that there was not room for both of us to the rearward of Tsathoggua, he returned my valediction and climbed into the great bronze basin, which alone could now afford a moment’s concealment in the bareness of the fane.

  Peering from behind that execrable god, whose one merit was the width of his abdomen and his haunches, I observed the actions of the monster. No sooner had Tirouv Ompallios crouched down in the three-legged bowl, when the nameless enormity reared itself up like a sooty pillar and approached the basin. The head had now changed in form and position, till it was no more than a vague imprint of features on the middle of a body without arms, legs or neck. The thing loomed above the brim for an instant, gathering all its bulk in an imminent mass on a sort of tapering tail, and then like a lapsing wave it fell into the bowl upon Tirouv Ompallios. Its whole body seemed to open and form an immense mouth as it sank down from sight.

  Hardly able to breathe in my horror, I waited, but no sound and no movement came from the basin—not even a groan from Tirouv Ompallios. Finally,

  with infinite slowness and trepidation and caution, I ventured to emerge from behind Tsathoggua, and passing the bowl on tip-toe, I managed to reach the door.

  Now, in order to win my freedom, it would be necessary to draw back the bolt and open the door. And this I greatly feared to do because of the inevitable noise. I felt that it would be highly injudicious to disturb the entity in the bowl while it was digesting Tirouv Ompallios; but there seemed to be no other way if I was ever to leave that abominable fane.

  Even as I shot back the bolt, a single tentacle sprang out with infernal rapidity from the basin, and, elongating itself across the whole room, it encircled my right wrist in a lethal clutch. It was unlike anything I have ever touched, it was indescribably viscid and slimy and cold, it was loathsomely soft like the foul mire of a bog and mordantly sharp as an edged metal, with an agonizing suction and constriction that made me scream aloud as the clutch tightened upon my flesh, cutting into me like a vise of knife-blades. In my str
uggles to free myself, I drew the door open, and fell forward on the sill. A moment of awful pain, and then I became aware that I had broken away from my captor. But looking down, I saw that my hand was gone, leaving a strangely withered stump from which little blood issued. Then, gazing behind me into the shrine, I saw the tentacle recoil and shorten till it passed from view behind the rim of the basin, bearing my lost hand to join whatever now remained of Tirouv Ompallios.

  THE MONSTER OF THE PROPHECY

  Foreword

  The disappearance of an unknown and presumably minor poet, no matter how insoluble or obscure the circumstances, would not ordinarily resolve itself into a theme of much popular interest and discussion. But the case whose inner details I am now about to relate, was far from ordinary even in its mundane sequel: the publication of Theophilus Alvor’s “Ode to Antares” in The Contemporary Muse, the praise it elicited from certain influential critics, and the unavailing efforts of the editor and these critics to find Alvor or to learn what had become of him, ended by turning the matter into a seven days’ newspaper sensation, during which the front page head-lines waxed and waned in their typographical proportions, and many divergent theories were advanced by reporters, editorial writers and the police, as well as by Alvor’s new-won admirers and his land-lady. Also, among other results, a publisher was found for the three volumes of hitherto unmarketable verse and the no less unmarketable collection of prose tales which the poet had left in his lodgings; and a modest but growing fame was assured for him even after the newspapers had turned their attention to fresher mysteries.

  Very little was ascertainable by anyone concerning what could have happened to Alvor, and this little afforded room for almost any amount of permissible conjecture. The poet was a new-comer in Brooklyn and had made no friends and few acquaintances there; and his land-lady was the only person who could bring forward anything of the least illuminative value or significance. She testified that Alvor had been unable to pay his room-rent for two weeks prior to his disappearance, and that he was in a state of obvious depression at the time and had looked increasingly pale, dilapidated and ill-fed. She herself, out of a certain motherly kindness aroused by his

  refinement and forlorn aspect, had forborne to press him for her money and had even given him several meals at her own table. The most popular and plausible theory advanced was that of suicide; but none of the divers anonymous bodies found in Brooklyn or dragged from East River at that time could be identified as Alvor; also, it could not be learned that anyone resembling him had purchased a revolver or a bottle of poison. Other theories propounded were, that he had stowed away on some trans-oceanic vessel, had been shanghaied, or had simply walked out of Brooklyn or ridden away on a freight train to try his fortune elsewhere. Rumors sprang up that he had been seen in remote places, in New Orleans, Mobile, Chicago, San Francisco, and even Mexico City; and there were those who purported to have authentic information that he had gone to Peru, with the idea of collecting material for a long narrative poem dealing with the Incas. None of these reports, however, was verifiable, and since the poet himself never returned to enjoy the profits of his spreading fame, and no word came from him, his disappearance remained an unsolvable mystery.

  Indeed, in all the world there was no one who could have thrown the least light on this mystery. The truth of what had happened to Theophilus Alvor was known only to the people of a far-off planet, whose communications with the races of this earth are infrequent and obscure.

  I

  A dismal, fog-dank afternoon was turning into a murky twilight when Theophilus Alvor paused on Brooklyn Bridge to peer down at the dim river with a shudder of sinister surmise. He was wondering how it would feel to cast himself into the chill, turbid waters, and whether he could summon up the necessary courage for an act which, he had persuaded himself, was now becoming inevitable as well as laudable. He felt that he was too weary, sick and disheartened to go on with the evil dream of existence.

  From any human stand-point, there was doubtless abundant reason for Alvor’s depression. Young, and full of unquenched visions and desires, he had come to the city from an up-state village three months before, hoping to find a publisher for his writings; but his old-fashioned classic verses, in spite (or because) of their high imaginative fire, had been unanimously rejected both by magazines and book-firms. His last literary hope, a little volume of fanciful tales in prose, which he had written since his arrival in Brooklyn, had now been returned with disconcerting promptness by a firm which he had deemed the likeliest of all conceivable sponsors. Though Alvor had lived frugally and had chosen lodgings so humble as almost to constitute the proverbial poetic garret, the small sum of his savings was now exhausted. He was not only quite penniless, but his clothes were so worn as to be no longer presentable in editorial offices, and the soles of his shoes were

  becoming rapidly nonexistent from the tramping he had done. He had not eaten for days, and his last meal, like the several preceding ones, had been at the expense of his soft-hearted Irish landlady. After hours of aimless and desolate wandering through the fog-muffled streets, he was at this moment miles from his lodgings; and he had about made up his mind that he would not return to them.

  For more reasons than one, Alvor would have preferred another death than that of drowning. The foul and icy waters were not inviting from an aesthetic view-point; and in spite of all he had heard to the contrary, he did not believe that such a death could be anything but disagreeable and painful. By choice he would have selected a sovereign Oriental opiate, whose insidious slumber would have led through a realm of gorgeous dreams to the gentle night of an ultimate oblivion; or, failing this, a deadly poison of merciful swiftness. But such Lethean media are not readily obtainable by a man with an empty purse.

  Damning his own lack of forethought in not reserving enough money for such an eventuation, Alvor shuddered on the twilight bridge, and looked at the dismal waters, and then at the no less dismal fog through which the troubled lights of the city had begun to break. And then, through the instinctive habit of a country-bred person who is also imaginative and beauty-seeking, he looked at the heavens above the city to see if any stars were visible. He thought of his recent “Ode to Antares,” which, unlike his earlier productions, was written in vers libre and had a strong modernistic irony mingled with its planturous lyricism. He had hoped for its acceptance by The Contemporary Muse, but had heard nothing after many weeks, and surmised with a mordant pessimism that it had long been relegated to the editorial waste-basket. Now, with a sense of irony far more bitter than that which he had put into his ode, he looked for the ruddy spark of Antares itself, but was unable to find it in the sodden sky. His gaze and his thoughts returned to the river.

  “There is no need for that, my young friend,” said a voice at his elbow. Alvor was startled not only by the words and by the clairvoyance they betrayed, but also by something that was unanalyzably strange in the tones of the voice that uttered them. The tones were those of a man of culture, they were well-modulated, they were both refined and authoritative; but in them there was a quality which, for lack of more precise words or imagery, he could think of only as metallic and unhuman. While his mind wrestled with swift-born unseizable fantasies, he turned to look at the stranger who had accosted him.

  The man was neither uncommonly nor disproportionately tall; and he was modishly dressed, with a long overcoat and top hat. His features were not unusual, from what could be seen of them in the dusk, except for his full-lidded and burning eyes, like those of some nyctalopic animal. But from him there emanated a palpable sense of things that were inconceivably strange and outré and remote—a sense that was more patent, more insistent than any impression of mere form and odor and sound could have been, and which

  was well-nigh tactual in its intensity. Even at that meeting in the twilight, Alvor was conscious of wonder and fear and awe before this stranger about whom there was nothing ostensibly remarkable except his metallic voice and his fiery e
yes.

  “I repeat,” continued the man, “that there is no necessity for you to drown yourself in that river. A vastly different fate can be yours, if you choose… In the meanwhile, I shall be honored and delighted if you will accompany me to my house, which is not far away.”

  In a state of astonishment preclusive of all analytical thought, or even of any clear cognizance of where he was going or what was happening, Alvor followed the stranger with a docility that would have surprised even himself if he had not been beyond all comparatively minor elements of surprise. A mutual silence was maintained while they traversed several blocks in the swirling fog. Then the stranger paused before a dark mansion.

  “I live here,” he said, as he mounted the steps and unlocked the door. “Will you deign to enter?” He turned on the lights with the last word, as he mounted the steps and waited for Alvor to precede him. Entering, Alvor saw that he was in the hall of an old house which must in its time have had considerable pretensions to aristocratic dignity, for the paneling, carpet and furniture were all antique and were both rare and luxurious.

  Alvor was conducted by his host to a library with furniture of the same well-nigh fabulous period as the hall. The place was crowded to the very ceiling with numberless books. Motioning the poet to be seated, the stranger poured out a small glassful of golden liquor and gave it to his guest. It was Benedictine, and the mellow warmth of the flavorous drink was truly magical. The poet’s weakness and weariness fell off like a dissolving fog, and the mental confusion in which he had accompanied his benefactor began to clear away.

  “Rest here,” commanded his host, and left the room. Alvor resigned himself to the luxury of an ample arm-chair, while his brain occupied itself with countless conjectures. He could make up his mind to nothing, but the wildest thoughts occurred to him every instant, and he felt that there was an element of unique mystery about the whole proceeding. His first impressions of the stranger were momently intensified, though for no tangible reason.