"My God!” he croaked, his throat dry. “The story of that expedition was entrancing! Rather fanciful, though, isn’t it? I mean, it can’t be true... can it?”
Winwood’s countenance bore a serious expression. “It can and it is,” he replied, almost regretfully. “The veracity of the story has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt, as far as I’m concerned.”
“But Dr. Winwood,” Jamison protested, “the narrative ended abruptly, unresolved. What happened to Hassan Ze’ez?”
“His fate is more fully described in my book, but to summarize, he died, but not before he had a friend smuggle the notebooks and Kashan’s package out of the country—”
“You mean,” Jamison interjected, "that the package Professor Qualt sent you was the same one that Ze’ez mailed?”
“Yes. Old Qualt was this country’s leading scholar on pre-Islamic antiquities back in the seventies. He had a bad experience with ancient Persian magic once—anyway, he wanted nothing to do with the Plague Jar, so he forwarded the package to me.
“By the way, Kashan’s contribution was nothing less than Professor Ali Yaquud’s personal notebooks and undeveloped film, which Kashan had taken from Yaquud’s tent before the flight from Irem.”
Jamison gasped. “You mean—?”
“Photographic proof!” Winwood exulted. “But,” he continued, more soberly, “only five pictures came out. The rest were blurry or altogether blank, due to exposure to—I don’t know what. Well, only five photos survived.” Winwood maneuvered his rolling chair to the second filing cabinet and pulled a drawer open. He withdrew a thick folder and selected a group of eight-by-ten inch black and white glossies and handed them to his student. “Here they are. You are the first person to see these, other than myself.”
Jamison’s head swam as he accepted the pictures. He was indeed privileged! The top photo showed the City of Pillars from afar, just as Ze’ez described; the second depicted a close-up shot of a pillar lying on its side, capped with a grotesquely squatting eidolon; the third was of a man of medium build, standing before a defaced wall with notebook and pencil in hand; the fourth was of the colossal central edifice, constructed in a manner unsuggestive of earlier Mesopotamian cultures. Where was the fifth photo?
Jamison handed the evidence of Irem’s existence back to Winwood. Noting the puzzled expression of his student, Winwood anticipated the next question.
“Yes, there is a fifth photo, of the jar itself, but it is too disturbing. I never take it out of the file.
“After I got the package I sent letters to Saudi Arabia in an attempt to locate Hassan Ze’ez. Finally, after two months had passed, I received an anonymous letter from that unstable country, informing me that my inquiries of Ze’ez’s whereabouts were not welcomed by the authorities, who did not want further details of the Irem expedition leaked to the media. The writer, however, implied that he was a friend of Ze’ez’s, possibly the very same that smuggled the package through customs, and offered the final piece of information concerning him. Ze’ez had died of the same wasting disease as had his teammates. The ‘official’ cause of death was attributed to AIDS.”
“AIDS!” Jamison exclaimed.
“A flimsy excuse if I’ve ever heard one. My Saudi research appeared to end in a cul-de-sac before it had truly started. Instead, I concentrated on the subject of Irem and jars—and was amazed by the sheer volume of information I obtained, though admittedly, much of it was useless.
“For instance, Jamison, did you know that there was another city, in northern Saudi, the Hejaz, that was found back in the 1930’s and was thought to be Irem?” Without giving Jamison time to respond, Winwood continued, “Yes, a Nabataean site, ‘RM, twenty-five miles east of al-Aqubah’, was thought to be the ever-elusive city but was since proved—by Yaquud’s mentor, Abdalmajid—not to be. And anyway, most old records state that Item is in the southern sector.
"Then, with Professor Qualt’s gracious assistance, I investigated the antique lore of jars. Most references we found, though interesting, were worthless to my purpose. Frazer’s Golden Bough was particularly disappointing.
“In the end, however, I found that, with the foreign notebooks, I had enough material for my book and immediately set forth with it, placing things in their proper order. Just two weeks ago I completed it and submitted it to the university press directors—who had, mind you, published three of my books previously—.” Winwood’s face grew red with returning anger.
“What was so objectionable about it?” Jamison innocently asked. He had heard nothing overly offensive in the account, however bizarre some might deem it.
"In Yaquud’s notebooks there are repeated mentions of certain taboo books. With a great deal of trouble I received photostats of the relevant portions of the Al-Azif. The librarian at Harvard’s Widener Library had to call the FBI to inform them that I had merely inquired about the book! Just standard procedure,’ she assured me. Still, it made me feel like a criminal! I was eventually given clearance for the pages I needed.
“Anyway, I conducted a voluminous amount of research into unbelievably eldritch myth-cycles that supposedly predate man”—Jamison twitched as a shudder abruptly rippled through his body—“and discovered the true nature of the so-called ‘Demon-Sultan’, the Blind Idiot God that is said to exist at the center of infinity: Azathoth, the nuclear chaos!"
The words instantly chilled Jamison. He harbored no doubts concerning the professor’s mental state; Dr. Winwood seemed stable enough. Instead, he asked a question that had been on the tip of his tongue for the past few minutes, an idea that Dr. Winwood had apparently not taken into consideration: “Couldn’t you submit The Plague Jar to another publisher?”
The professor began, “It’s not that simple, my young friend. You don’t yet grasp the politics of academic publishing...” But by this time, Jamison’s mind was already off on a tempting tangent.
Trent Jamison couldn’t sleep that night. He meditated over Dr. Winwood’s story and conversation. It was consuming him! He had to know more about the Plague Jar and this “Source” Winwood had mentioned. Before long he had a definite plan. He waited till Friday, when the university would be unattended during the night...
Breaking into Winwood’s office was easy. The professor himself wasn’t about—hadn’t been for the last couple of days. Campus security was laughable—Jamison knew that the officer in charge of night patrol spent much of his time in the women’s dormitory, partying with girls young enough to be his daughters.
Making sure that the blinds were completely drawn, and after placing his jacket on the floor under the door (which had no window), he turned on the overhead light. Rifling through the second metal cabinet, Jamison quickly found what he was looking for: the folder and notebooks.
He intended to peruse the collection in the office, so as not to be bothered with returning it later. He first flipped through Yaquud’s enigmatic notebooks; Winwood had laboriously translated the Arabic into readable English in the margins of each sheet.
In one notebook was a sketch of what was presumably the Plague Jar. It was unremarkable enough; just an old ceramic jar, Jamison thought. Beside it read: "Must check Al-Hazred on jar. Don’t recall one. In all the annals of pre-history, only one race on this world actively worshipped Azathoth—the reptilian Gnophkehs. It must have been them that crafted the jar. It is a link to Ultimate Chaos—the Source!”
An intricately detailed sketch of a hazy spiral with radiating lightning bolts was next. It was labeled “Sign of Azathoth.”
The next few pages were occupied with Yaquud’s renderings of the Plague Jar’s inscriptions. The dot-groups resembled nothing that Jamison had seen before. On the last page of the enlarged dot-groups, Yaquud had written: “See Ludvig Prinn on Azathoth. Must compare Fission formulas.” Winwood’s own observations were scribbled in the margin: “Markings similar to dot-group formations from the G’harne Fragments and Pnakotic Manuscripts. See Walmsley’s book.”
Yaquud’s
second notebook contained similar citations and related material. Most were hastily written technical information: very complicated, from the look of Winwood’s translations, now typed and placed by the originals. The following paragraphs caught Jamison’s eye.
Yog-Sothoth and Azathoth “twin Old Ones in angled space.” In quotations "Yog-Sothoth IS the Gate by where the spheres meet.” Literally, when a place-gate is made, two spheres, two planets (spheres are planets) meet. The place-gate is a bridge or short-cut.
Yog-Sothoth is the Gate in the matter time references. Azathoth is the Gate in anti-matter time references.
Azathoth WAS the Big Bang—“the nuclear chaos”—but he (?) existed before, in a bivalvular shape, according to Al-Hazred, before the war with the Elder Gods. He (?) led the rebellion against the Elder Gods and was punished, thereby creating this universe and the laws that govern it...
Jamison wasn’t interested in reading more. He skipped over the other notebooks and opened Winwood’s folder.
Within were copies of sections from old Orientalist texts, the same ones that Jamison was already familiar with, such as Al-Hamdani’s Antiques of South Arabia, which spoke of a “treasure” hidden in Irem. Included with the historical material was a photostatic copy of something called Azathoth and Other Horrors, by one Edward Pickman Derby. Flipping through the ink-smudged pages, Jamison saw that it was a collection of macabre poetry. He laid it aside with the intention of returning to it later.
The next group of stapled clippings was evidently from the “taboo” books that Winwood had mentioned. Jamison carefully read the first section, excerpts from the Necronomicon:
... concerning Irem, the City of Pillars, I spake of the Elder Days and of the four nations that had ruled this land of old, Thamood of the north, and Ad of the south, and Tasm, and Jadis; and I spake of many-columned Irem and of Shaddad the Accursed who had raised up its walls around an Elder central obelisk and who did build therein an Thousand pillars to Those better left unnamed.
Jamison read on. It seemed that Al-Hazred claimed to have opened a "gate” with a Red Sacrifice to Yog-Sothoth, causing the pillars to topple. Astounding! Al-Hazred had a near perfect description in his book, written over twelve hundred years ago! Many more quotes from the same book followed, but Jamison skipped past them.
The next xerox was from a book called Cultes des Goules:
There is a Terror lurks in carved stone: not without reason do the children of the wastes shun horrible and thousand-columned Irem, whereof each pillar bears up an eidolon of Those Who Dwell Afar...
The following sheet was devoted to an excerpt from the Mysteries of the Worm, by Ludvig Prinn. Winwood had scrawled “See Yaquud” in the margin.
THE SUMMONING OF AZATHOTH
To Call upon that Sultan an ensorcelled metal needs be devised with utmost caution, which may be found only by the most powerful use of extreme and dangerous thaumaturgies. To raise the Ultimate Chaos would be foolhardy, indeed suicide, and not less so even for the practiced delver into the forbidden of the forbidden Arts. The invocation and its shield are of but temporary duration, for the opening of a Gate to the Blind Idiot God brings only destruction...
On the side, Winwood had written, in small characters:
Of course! Azathoth here in the matter universe would result in an explosion! Like the one that blinded Jafara! Azathoth is nothing but a nuclear explosion—the Big Bang, at the center of infinity, bereft of mind—the “blind idiot god!” The primal Power, Godhead, Chaos! What’s more, the cryptic Prinn formula details the manufacture of an unspecified metal—in actuality a critical mass of extremely fissionable material! And Prinn’s book was printed in 1490!
There was something that Jamison felt he should understand, an elemental connection that he was not making. He considered the situation. Something had happened at Irem; agate to Chaos—Azathoth? —was opened. How? The Plague Jar! He recalled Yaquud’s translation of the inscription from the bronze door: “The jar brings plague, famine and death. The jar is plague, famine and death. The jar is the scourge of doom, the breath of chaos... ”
What contagion was contained in the ancient clay? What timeless plague waited to be released? With dawning comprehension, skin prickled with cold sweat, Jamison began to understand...
The Plague Jar was a link to Chaos—the Source!
The illness that infected Yaquud and the rest of the expedition was —radiation sickness! Radiation was "the breath of chaos”—still active after untold millennia within the jar!
What the hell was this? People didn’t have nuclear energy thousands of years ago! It’s a hoax, he decided, it must be... Then he remembered Von Daniken’s unorthodox theory of Sodom and Gomorrah’s destruction—by nuclear explosion! What untold story lay behind the events related in the Bible?
Mind spinning, he began to believe the account as Dr. Winwood related it, Azathoth and all. Just as he was ready to close the file and replace it in the cabinet, his fingers found the fifth photograph, behind a batch of clippings from archaeological journals.
With shaking hands he moved it before his face. He couldn’t see what was so disturbing about it. It was just a view of the top of the jar, apparently shot through some sort of heavy filtering lens. It was empty, but then radiation would not have been visible. The rim of the jar was pale, the inside deep... the inside... was hazy, the yawning opening beckoned...
Bewildered, Jamison looked closer and saw small flickering lights, swirling in a funnel-shaped vortex. Vertigo instantly seized him—he felt himself being drawn out of his body through his eyes, leaning toward the spinning lights. Spinning? But it was a still photograph... Then, with a glaring magnificence, he passed the weirdly hued lights and was engulfed by folds of blackness.
The darkness of the jar’s interior multiplied, became more dense, the dark beyond the universe, pulling Jamison into a narrow lightless tube of negative energy that writhed sinuously, leading to a black hole that pulsed in the center. A cacophony born in the howling pits of nightmare bellowed in his mind: raging star-winds and discordant pipes and flutes, blaring at once, with no sane rhythm. Jamison was falling, tumbling head over heels toward the mindless Khan of the Ages, the Creator, an amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which bubbles and blasphemes at the center of all infinity!
Trent Jamison was discovered early the following morning by a janitor, sprawled face down in Dr. Henry Winwood’s office, with files scattered around him. He was in a comatose state. After being rushed to a nearby hospital and placed on life-support machines, his family was notified. Similar efforts to contact Dr. Winwood proved fruitless. No one had seen him in days, not since his heated dispute with the directors of the university press.
After staying by their son’s side for two weeks and seeing no improvement in his condition, his parents held a family conference. They discussed the options and tearfully decided to “pull the plug,” to terminate Jamison’s life-support equipment. Sobbing, his mother turned to the doctor in charge and said: “I know he’s not coming back. He’s with God...”
The Dead Man’s Hand
by Jason Andrew
On the steamship voyage from San Francisco to Seattle, Finneas Bagley won three thousand dollars in a poker game while sipping his customary olive martini. He had planned to spend a quiet, leisurely trip on the upper passenger deck. He might have resisted the temptation to gamble if a young lad had not overheard his name mentioned by the concierge. The boy gingerly approached Finneas holding a weathered copy of a dime novel titled Wild West Stories. “Are you Finneas Bagley?” Finneas had not been considered young in several decades, but his eyes still gleamed with boyish charm. He had gained a small pooch in his belly, but he was still an impressive figure clad in velvet. “I have that dubious honor, son.”
“Is it true that you saw Wild Bill draw the Dead Man’s Hand?”
The old man rolled his eyes and then wiped his brow. “I did indeed witness that unfortunately tragedy.”
After th
at, various passengers constantly harangued him to recall the dreadful night. Of course, he told the popularized version of the evening’s events. If he had told them the truth, he would be labeled a madman. It was quite arduous, but then he never had to pay for a single meal or drink. Several men wanted to play poker with one of the men that had been playing poker when Wild Bill Hickok drew the infamous aces and eights in black and was murdered by Jack McCall.
Finneas was careful to avoid winning too much. Professional gamblers sometimes paid scouts to watch opponents for their tells. There was a big game in Seattle, perhaps the biggest of his career. Finneas made a strong effort to keep his winnings low, but several traveling businessmen insisted upon making colossal blunders. He prided himself on being an honest gambler and an occasional scoundrel. Many sharpers were rogues that cheated to win. Still, he could use the extra money to build his stake. He wasn’t entirely certain how much money was required to enter this game. He only knew that this game would be his last chance for immortality.
As soon as the ship reached port, he hailed a carriage and passed along a note with an address. The coachman winked and Finneas suspected he was well acquainted with the destination.
The landscape of the Puget Sound was lush with vibrant colors of green and brown. Seattle was a small camp built in the middle of a series murky mudflats. The trip from the docks was quite bumpy as the driver attempted to dodge several of the potholes in the dirt road. Some of them were several feet deep and filled with foul smelling water. The carriage slid to a stop, jerking Finneas forward and knocking the bowler off his head. He glanced out of the window to see one of the only brick buildings in the camp. He stepped out, over another mud puddle, and was warmly greeted by a short boisterous woman of many curves and charms. “Finneas Bagley! It’s about time you show up, you old scoundrel!”
Finneas kissed her lightly upon the cheek. “Miss Lou Graham, it is my privilege and honor to see you once again; though I am unaware that I had announced my arrival.”
Pyrate Cthulhu: Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Volume 1 (4.0) Page 18