Collected Stories

by James Wade

  “Not the famous Miskatonic University?”

  “Yes, in Arkham—where the new napalm plant is going up. Miskatonic U. got a big government contract, so they tore down their library, threw out all those moldy old books on sorcery, and built the biggest Pacification and Incineration Training Center in the country.”

  Suddenly, with a numbing shock, I saw a hideous form emerging from the foaming breakers—a dark, glistening shape, its skin a squamous green—vaguely humanoid in outline, but surmounted by a flat, bestial head with bulging, glassy eyes.

  “Run for your life!” I shouted. "They’ve seen us! The Deep Ones! The monstrous, frog-like minions of—”

  “Calm down,” Nella interrupted in a bored tone. “It’s a frog-man, all right—just part of the underwater demolition school for Special Forces. Why, it’s Elvis Whateley from Dunwich Acres. Hi, there! Dry off and let’s all go downtown and slug back a few beers.”

  So we did.

  Now I have been in Innsmouth over six weeks. More and more I admire the quaint but swinging old town; more and more I enjoy my job packing defoliant from the atomic reactor; more and more I love my new wife, Nella Kodaz, with her soulful staring eyes and intriguing wattled neck. And in just eight months, a little stranger will join us!

  I'm taking a night course in karate at Miskatonic, and angling for a job at the napalm factory when it’s finished. I may even quit the Order of Dagon and join the Green Berets.

  Yes, I’m a happy, fulfilled person. I came to Innsmouth seeking the cosmically evil—looking for sin on a supernatural scale, for horrors beyond the imagination of mere mortal man.

  And I’ve found them. Lovecraft and the Great Old Ones don’t hold a candle. Give me the crusade to protect peace and freedom any day.

  Those Who Wait

  (1971?)

  Fortunate indeed is he whose range of experience never exceeds that tiny segment of Infinity which it is meant that Man should explore and subdue. He who steps beyond these borders walks in dreadful danger of life, sanity, and soul. Even if he escapes the peril, life can never be the same again—for he cannot escape his memories.

  It is now seven months since I came to the archaic Massachusetts town of Arkham, to attend the small but widely-known Miskatonic University. Since then, my knowledge has increased in an unprecedented manner, but not in the ways I had expected. For me, new worlds have been opened—new worlds containing fascinating vistas of wisdom, and also undreamable abysses of horror, in which I learned the fatal weakness of the human mind in dealing with forces beyond its comprehension.

  The first few weeks of my attendance at the university were occupied with settling myself in the new surroundings and becoming accustomed to my classes. My room-mate, Bill Tracy, I instinctively liked. A tall, blonde, self-effacing fellow, he was one of those utterly frank and compatible individuals one meets all too seldom. He was a sophomore, and helped my absorption into the school’s routine by answering my innumerable questions as to the location of rooms, the dispositions of instructors, and the thousand other things about which the beginner at a school is ever curious.

  Almost a month elapsed thus when the event occurred which was to set in motion a train of events unparalleled, so far as we know, in the history of the Earth. It began, however, prosaically enough.

  One evening, rather late, I suddenly remembered some quotations from Shelley I would be expected to know by the next day for my literature class. Apprehensively I asked Bill Tracy, “Do you suppose the campus library is still open?”

  “Probably,” he replied, “but better hurry. They close at ten. You should have gone earlier.” He grinned at my negligence.

  I hurried from the dormitory and took the gravel path across the campus toward the large brick library building. On nearing it, I was relieved to notice that faint lights were still burning on the ground floor. Inside, I procured the needed book, and, passing the busy librarian, I suddenly turned on an impulse and made my way into the rare books room, which was then completely empty, as was the rest of the library. Seating myself at one of the tables, I prepared to delve into Shelley’s odes, when suddenly I saw it—the thing which was to change my very life.

  It was nothing but a sheet of paper lying on the table near me, written part of the way down one side. Out of idle curiosity I picked it up. It seemed but a series of notes, such as students might jot down when sitting together rather than disturb the quiet of the reading-room by speaking aloud. There were short sentences in two alternating hands. I was about to toss the paper aside, when something caught my eye, and I read it with ever-mounting interest and mystification. As nearly as I can remember, this is what the written conversation said:

  “What time is it?”

  “9:15.”

  “I wish they’d leave.”

  “There are only two. They will leave soon.”

  “Hope they hurry. I’d like to let Ithaqua get the—”

  (Here the script was hurriedly broken off, and there had been an only partially successful attempt to cross out the cryptic word. After which:)

  “Fool! I have told you—never write those names!”

  “All right.—Can we finish tonight?”

  “I can copy the chant”

  “We can open the Gate by—”

  (Here again the writing was interrupted)

  “They’re leaving. Bring the key.”

  This completed the contents of the paper. I was baffled. What were these two planning—a robbery? But what about the cryptic reference to a “chant” and “opening the gate”? Who was “Ithaqua” and why shouldn’t that name be written?

  I was interrupted in these speculations by the opening of a nearby door marked “Private,” and the emergence of two men. I caught a momentary glimpse of the rows of books within the room, and then a piercing gaze was directed upon me and the paper before me.

  The gazer was tall, beetle-browed, and excessively dark, and had the appearance of being too adult for a student, but both he and his companion—a shorter, stouter, and younger-looking fellow who carried a brief-case—wore school sweaters. The younger man, apparently quite agitated at seeing me, quickly closed and locked the door, and then stood waiting for his older companion to act, which he immediately did. Striding forward, he addressed me in low, fierce tones with a hint of fear in his voice.

  “Pardon me, sir, this paper is mine.” And without further ado, he snatched it up and turned away.

  “Just a moment!” I exclaimed angrily, “What are you up to? Have you two been stealing rare books from in there? What’s in that brief-case?”

  Seeing he could not get away without an explanation, he stopped and became immediately suavely polite.

  “Pardon my haste,” he said, smiling blandly. “My companion and I are engaged in no untoward activities. It is true: We were using the so rare books within that room, but we were merely copying portions of them, for a—thesis: yes, a thesis on demonolatry.” Something in the inflection and wording suggested that he was a foreigner. “You will excuse us now.” Grasping the arm of his companion, he turned once more.

  “Do you think he understood—?” began the smaller man, but he was hushed by a gesture from the other, who looked guardedly back at me. The two quickly left the library, leaving me to muse on what I had witnessed.

  My work was soon finished, but as 1 walked across the campus, thoughts of the two strange men obsessed me. If they had been engaged in authorized reference work, why had the note hinted that they wished to be left alone before entering the locked room? Too, parts of the dark, moody note seemed curiously irreconcilable to that explanation.

  Over the thickly clustered, shadowy grove to the east hung a waning moon. Stars, those bright specks of light from distances incomprehensible, held dominion over the more subdued hues of darkness at the zenith. Ahead of me stretched the half-lit dormitory. Within was Bill Tracv. Perhaps he could shed some light on this matter.

  I hurried to our room. Bill greeted me with a chee
r)’, “Hi! Get your work done?”

  “Yes,” I answered abstractedly; then: “Have you ever seen a tall, dark, foreign, older-looking fellow in the student body?—Maybe tagged by a stoutish, younger fellow?”

  “I think I know who you mean. His name is Renaunt. He is older. Taking a post-graduate course in Ancient Literature and Folklore.”

  “What do you know about him?”

  “Oh, nothing in particular. Rather reserved chap. You meet him?”

  “In a way.” I told him what had occurred. He seemed peculiarly disturbed when I mentioned the strange name Ithaqua and the locked room.

  “He’s up to no good,” muttered Bill, more to himself than to me.

  “What do you know about it?”

  “It’s more than you can imagine. 1 was bom and raised here. There are legends….”

  He told me then; fantastic tales of ancient books on malignant evil come down from ages immemorial, kept in Miskatonic Library’s locked room. Sane or not, the dark beliefs and rituals contained in these books have been practiced even down to the present. The thick woods bordering the Miskatonic River had seen hideous, illogical rites celebrated within ancient circles of standing stones, and the forgotten hamlet of Dunwich, surrounded by altar-crowned hills, degenerated year by year from more cause than mere isolation. There were those, especially among the oldsters of Arkham, who averred that dark things could be called from the hills or the sky, if one was willing to pay the price. It was universally admitted that at certain seasons the sky lit up disturbingly over the hills, and queer rumbling earth-noises were heard. Scientists mumbled about seismographic shocks and Aurora Borealis, but few dared to investigate. In the old days, it had been quite generally believed that indescribable legions of demons were served there by wicked cults. Strange disappearances of those who lived or ventured too near the woods at night were invariably laid to the cult or its hideous deities, especially when the bodies would be found months later far away, only a few days dead.

  Here my informer paused.

  “Surely,” I prompted, “you don’t believe that!”

  “Believe it? I wouldn’t believe that Renaunt believed it if it wasn’t for that note you told me about. They sound in earnest.”

  “Couple of crackpots!”

  “If you really want to know something about this crazy business, just ask tomorrow to examine some of the books in that room. They’ll let you. But as for copying wholesale from them, there’d be suspicions. That’s why your two playmates made their own key and nosed in on the books secretly.”

  That night I had little rest. Indeed, my loss of sleep was not the result of vague and later definite fears which would soon beset me, but was rather caused by excitement: I thought perhaps I had discovered a new myth-pattern (new to me, at least), as my hobby had for years been the gathering of native legends from my home state, Wisconsin.

  Suddenly in the middle of the night, I remembered where I had heard that cryptic name, Ithaqua. During my explorations of Wisconsin’s north woods in search of lore for my collection, I had met an old Indian who had told me vague legends of the Wendigo, sometimes called “Wind-Walker” or Ithaqua—a titanic and repulsive monster, haunter of the great unfrequented snow-forests—a being who took men with him high and above the woods to the far corners of the Earth, but who never relinquished his victims until they had been frozen to death.

  Such, then, was the thing which these unusual collegians spoke of as a reality, or—?

  The next day passed slowly for me, but at last my classes terminated and 1 went quickly to the great library. Rather timorously I approached the aged librarian, and asked whether I might examine the rare occult books contained in the locked room. He eyed me oddly but assented, and, giving me a key from the ring at his side, bade me lock the door carefully when I finished.

  With queer misgivings I approached the fated door and applied the key. Inside, I was confronted with several rows of books held in wall-shelves. The immense antiquity of the rotting tomes greatly impressed me. Many were incomplete or mutilated; others merely bound manuscripts. I saw such titles as the Necronomicon of Abdul Alhazred, Unaussprechlichen Kulten by Von Junzt, Liber Ivonis, and De Vermis Mysteriis by Ludwig Prinn. I was blissfully ignorant of the hellish evil around me, but was not long to remain so.

  To open the Necronomicon (one of the largest and best preserved of the lot) was the work of the moment. Thumbing through it, I learned for the first time of Great Cthulhu; of Azathoth, the Lord of All Things, of Yog-Sothoth and Shub-Niggurath, of Nyarlathotep and Tsathoggua, and of other horrors the nature of which I could grasp no better. Had I believed what I read then, I should inevitably have gone mad at once, but thinking it merely a particularly malignant myth-pattern or a devilishly clever hoax, I read on with only a curious interest

  There were many hundreds of pages of rambling, disconnected essays in Latin, containing charms, counter-charms, spells and incantations (which latter seemed to be entirely in a laboriously spelled phonetic language). Frequently there was a crude diagram of complicated signs, such as a pattern of intersecting lines and concentric circles, as well as a fire-outlined star designated as “The Elder Sign.”

  From the particularly lucid passages, I gleaned a strange story. It seems, according to the crazed Arab author that, billions of aeons before Man, great cosmic entities “from the stars” had come to Earth.

  These Things (possessing the queer names that had so puzzled me) were extra-dimensional and beyond the ties of Time and Space. They were the personifications of universal Evil and had fled from cosmoses beyond human ken the wrath of the benign Elder Gods, against whom They had rebelled. These evil Great Old Ones built cyclopean cities according to non-Euclidean geometric principles, and from Earth planned to renew their fight against the Elder Gods. But before They were fully prepared, “the stars went wrong” as the author put it, and these Great Old Ones could not live. Neither could They ever die, but being preserved by the black magic of Their high priest Great Cthulhu, slept within Their monster cities to await a coming time. Some were banished into caverns in the bowels of the Earth; others, imprisoned beyond the known universe.

  In the course of an unbelievable passage of time, Man had arrived and the Great Old Ones had communicated with some individuals telepathically, telling them of the great awakening that was to come, and instructing them in the chants and rituals which, together with proper sacrifices and worship, could bring the gigantic Things temporarily to great circles of stone monoliths set up in abandoned places, and further hinting that Man would be instrumental in the permanent release of the Old Ones, as They could not yet move under Their own volition.

  These secrets had been learned and passed on by wicked groups of men even after R’lyeh, the nightmare-city of Cthulhu, had sunk into the sea in the same cataclysm that spelled doom for Atlantis and Mu. The cults would go on until “the stars again became right” and the release of the blasphemous elder monsters would be accomplished as the culmination of its supreme purpose.

  In addition to these wild historical notes, the book held hundreds of stories of various strange happenings, authenticated by long-forgotten witnesses and inexplicable save in the light of the lore the book expounded. Concerning the physical aspect of these extraterrestrials and Their minions, the book was distressingly hazy. Once it alluded to Them as “of no substance”; other times mentioning a hideous plasticity and the capability of becoming invisible.

  Being so completely absorbed in the book, I failed to notice light steps approaching the door, but I dropped the Necronomicon in fright as a menacingly familiar voice sounded behind me.

  “Are you perhaps looking for something?”

  It was Renaunt, of course, not far preceding his pudgy accomplice with the eternal brief-case. In strange agitation I tried to reply lightly.

  “I was just checking up to see what interested you so much last evening.”

  “I thought you perhaps might do so,” he returned narrowly.
“Have you found anything of interest?”

  “Yes, indeed! Here seems to be a myth-pattern of great antiquity upon which I have never before stumbled.”

  “You are interested in the ancient religions?”

  “Very much.”

  “So are we. You must pardon me. I am Jacques Renaunt—that is my so good friend Peterson.”

  We shook hands. I did not enjoy the experience.

  “I have something you might like to see,” said Renaunt in a disarmingly friendly manner. “Perhaps last night you thought us devil-worshippers, to copy from these old books, but this is uncorrect.”

  “Incorrect.” Peterson spoke his first word in the conversation. “You mustn’t forget your English.”

  “Quite right. Thank you. As I was saying, we are merely amateur archaeologists, but we have discovered, not far from here, some very unique ruins, which, if we are not mistaken, were once used in connection with rites given in this books.”

  “These books,” put in Peterson.

  “No matter. The point is, we have been perusing—these books to gain further information. We planned to visit these ruins toni— this afternoon. We would be glad for a—companion.” The two exchanged glances.

  Did I let my instinctive aversion to these men cause me to refuse their bland offer? No; logic conquered instinct, and I made myself see only a new and fascinating experience in a venture against which my ever dormant intuition cried out loud.

  “I would be delighted. First let me tell my room-mate…”

  “Peterson will do that when he gets the car. Hurry, Peterson.”

  The stout man scuttled away, while Renaunt let me rather furtively out a side exit. In a surprisingly short time Peterson drove up in the car. Renaunt opened the back door for me and then climbed in beside Peterson. For a few minutes, silence prevailed as the car swept swiftly across the leaf-strewn campus grounds and through the autumn-tinted, rolling Massachusetts hills. Then Renaunt turned and addressed me politely.