The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants

by Ramsey Campbell

  The life of the beings of the grey cities followed no definite pattern, except for certain observances. They would leave their domes as the blinding emerald light of the two suns rose above the horizon, and while a generally avoided group of priests flew to the temple, the rest went about personal business. None needed to eat — they lived by photo-synthesis of the green rays of the double star — and so they visited other planets, seeking new abnormalities which they, in their perversion, could aesthetically enjoy. At the time of birth of my informant, the race, needing to do no work, had sunk to an abysmal state of decadence. While on Shaggai they would torture slave-races from other worlds for pleasure; and when on other planets, they sought the most terribly haunted localities to view their horrors — with which pastime the early memories of the insect-being had been occupied. There was another practice of the insects which was not then fully revealed — but it was connected, it appeared, with what they practised on the witch-cult at their outpost on earth.

  At any rate, the beings had set up outposts and built cities on many of the outer worlds, in case anything should ever make Shaggai uninhabitable; for they had had experience of what might crawl over the rim of the universe and conquer their world before then. So they were to some extent prepared when a catastrophe did indeed devastate their world, many aeons before their advent on earth. Even at the time when I visited their shrine, they had very little idea of what had really destroyed Shaggai; they had seen it happen from the beginning, but could only explain the cause vaguely — and, having viewed a vision of what they saw for myself, I did not wonder at their puzzlement.

  It was at the dawning of one of those emerald-lit days that the object was first seen. Above the double disc on the horizon, and slowly approaching their planet, appeared a strange semi-spherical red globe. The edges were indistinct, while the centre was a sharply-defined point of crimson fire. At that time the approach of the sphere was so unnoticeable that few of the city's inhabitants remarked it; but by the third dawn the object was much nearer, so that the race's scientists began to study it. They decided, after much speculation, that it was not a star or planet, but some species of body which was composed of no recognizable substance; the — spectrum was completely unknown, and the substance must have come from a region where conditions were unlike those anywhere in this universe. Because of this vagueness of its identity they were uncertain of its probable effects on their planet — for the body was heading directly for Shaggai, and should reach it before the suns had set thrice more.

  On the third day the globe was a huge red glow in the sky, blotting out the green suns and lighting everything with a crimson flame; but no heat emanated from it, and no other evidence of its existence met the insects besides the blood-red light. They were uneasy, for the menacing sphere in the heavens was very disturbing, and therefore many of them visited the triangular temple frequently for private worship. The being in my body had been one of those frequent visitors, and owed its life to being in the temple when the cataclysm struck. It had entered under the arched portal, where a portcullis-like sheet of translucent mineral would fall at any external threat, to protect the tenant inside. As the insect made to leave the temple after that act which it must practise before the tenant of the pyramid, it saw a prolonged crimson flash in the sky, speedily approaching the ground, while at the same time the protective shield crashed down in the temple entrance. The forty or so other beings which also were at worship clattered to stare through the shield at what was happening in the city outside.

  As the red glow slowly faded, the buildings became again visible, as did the beings in the streets. The creatures and buildings had changed in some way during the cataclysm — for they glowed with that same crimson light, streaming from inside each. And the light became every moment brighter, changing from red — orange — blinding yellow to white, as the insect-beings writhed and clawed at themselves in helpless agony.

  It was the way in which the temple was fortified that saved those inside. The radiation from the bursting globe was kept from affecting them long enough for them to use certain powers. By some obscure method of teleportation they transported the entire temple, with themselves, to the nearest planet on which they had a colony — the world of the faceless cylindrical beings, called Xiclotl by its inhabitants. As the devastated world of Shaggai faded from outside the shield, the insect-creature saw the buildings reel and the inhabitants burst asunder in momentary incandescence. And its last glimpse was of the globes of light which were now all that remained of the lords of Shaggai, as they sank to fill the ground with crimson radiation.

  Upon their arrival on Xiclotl, the insects called the rest of their race from the other planetary colonies to join them. The faceless horrors of the planet were enslaved by the new ruling race, and because of their great strength and little brain-power, were driven to perform all tasks in building the new city of the insects on Xiclotl. These beings, which were subdued by one of the insects' instruments for focusing mind power to promote unpleasant nerve impulses, were naturally carnivorous and, if not enslaved in this way, might have eaten any slow-moving insect. However, it was relatively easy to force them to labour, and under their strivings the city speedily took shape.

  The insects did not remain on Xiclotl for more than two hundred years, during which my informant had reached maturity. The reason for their leaving was one about which it would rather not have thought in detail, having to do with the faceless slaves and their somewhat primitive theology. They believed in a legendary plant-race which inhabited the bottom of a sheer-sided pit in the outer regions of the country in which the city lay. The religion of the planet's race demanded that periodic sacrifices be chosen from the race and throw themselves as food to the plant-gods in the pit. The insects did not object to this practice, so long as it did not remove so many beings as to draw on their labour force — at least, not until a group of insects followed one of the sacrifices to the pit. After that, however, the tale which the returning party told caused the more superstitious — including my informant — to teleport the temple again, together with a number of the race from Xiclotl as a means of labour, to a planet at the centre of the next galaxy. The insect-being which was pouring its memories into my brain had not actually seen what had occurred in the pit, so was not so explicit as usual; but what it remembered having heard was certainly disturbing. The returning party had seen the faceless creature leap from the edge of the pit and fall towards the abysmal darkness of the lower regions. Then came a splashing in that darkness, and a huge purple moist blossom rose from it, its petals opening and closing hungrily. But the greatest abnormality of the thing which splashed out of the pit was its green tentacles, tipped with many-fingered hands of unholy beauty, which it held yearningly towards the point where the sacrifices threw themselves off.

  The temple was positioned next at the centre of a city on that planet in the next galaxy — an uninhabited planet, it seemed, which the insect colonists named Thuggon. They stayed here less than a year; for before they had been there ten months, they noticed a steady decrease in the number of slaves on the planet, and learned that the beings had been disappearing after dark, though none was ever seen to leave. When two insect-beings disappeared on successive nights, a party left the city next day to search; and some miles beyond the colony they discovered a huge stretch of marshy ground, at the centre of which lay a vast stone tower, from which led suggestively recent-looking footprints to a black object at the edge of the marsh. And when the black object was seen to be a neat pile, composed of the severed heads of the insects together with their bodies, and when they saw that all the flesh had been sucked out through the gaping gash where the heads should have been, the party were not slow in returning to the city and demanding the speedy removal of the temple from Thuggon.

  After the quitting of Thuggon, the insects established themselves on a planet which the inhabitants knew as L'gy'hx, and which is called Uranus here on Earth. This world became the home of the insects
for many centuries, for the native race of cuboid, many-legged metal beings was not openly hostile, but allowed them to build their usual outpost with the labour of the beings from Xiclotl. They built a new temple — the old one having grown dilapidated with so much travelling — and fashioned it in a conical shape, carefully constructing the multi-dimensional gate which must exist in each temple to allow the entry of that which my informant passed off as 'that from Outside.' The city flourished, and the beings native to L'gy'hx gradually came to accept the insects as a race ruling the planet jointly with themselves. The only thing for which the natives did not care was the insects' worshipping the hideous god Azathoth. They themselves were worshippers of the relatively insignificant deity Lrogg, which conferred benefits on its worshippers and demanded only annual sacrifice, in the shape of the removal of the legs of a conscious native. The cuboid beings disliked the vague tales of atrocities practised on still-living victims in the conical temple of Azathoth, and when a rebellious set of natives began to visit the insects' city to worship there the elders of L'gy'hx felt that steps should be taken to prevent such unwelcome infiltrations into their theology. But while they did not fear the weapons of the insect-race, they did not like to incur the wrath of the idiot god, and finally decided to do nothing. Some years passed, during which two major sequences of events happened. While a steady hate grew in the majority of the insects for the obscene rites of Azathoth, and a desire for the easy rituals prescribed for Lrogg's worshippers began to rise, the rebel set among the natives grew steadily more fervid in their prostrations before the new god and their hate for their natural god. At last these two feelings publicised themselves at the same time. This double revelation came when a particularly fervent group of native Azathoth-worshippers violated a temple, smashing all the statues of the two-headed bat-deity Lrogg and killing three of the priests. After acid had been poured into the brains of the offenders, the chief priests of Lrogg declared that the temple of Azathoth must be removed altogether from the planet, together with its insect-worshippers, although the insects who would conform to the planetary religion might remain if they wished. The cuboid natives who had become believers in the creed of Azathoth were all treated in the same way as the original offenders, as an example.

  Only about thirty of the race from Shaggai left in the temple, but teleporting it in unison they managed to bring it down on a nearby planet — Earth. They made an imperfect materialization in the clearing near Goatswood, leaving the best part of the temple underground, and only thirty feet protruding above the surface. In the top of the cone the insects lived, while in the central portion the beings from Xiclotl were stabled; in the lower forty-foot portion was kept that which they worshipped in the temple. During daylight the insects worshipped the tenant of the secret portion of the fane, but after dark they went forth to carry on an insidious campaign to hypnotise selected subjects and lure them to the clearing.

  From these hypnotised subjects was formed that decadent witch-cult which grew up around the temple in the clearing. The members of the coven did not merely visit the clearing to worship and sacrifice persons on the altar there; they went there to experience the obscene pleasure of allowing the insects to inject their memories into their brains, which they enjoyed in the same way a drug addict gains pleasure from his induced delirium. And at that moment, God help me, I was experiencing the same sensations — and doing nothing to shake them off.

  As the witch-cult grew, the insects began to form a plan. Whereas at the beginning they merely lured humans to their haven in order to explore the perversions of their subconscious for pleasure, they gradually came to the conclusion that, if they handled their victims the right way, they would become the new rulers of the planet. First they could overpower the inhabitants of the nearby countryside and then, as they themselves propagated, the whole of the planet. The humans might either be destroyed utterly or retained as a subsidiary labour force, while the newly-revealed insect race would build cities and temples, and finally, perhaps, the huge multi-dimensional gate which alone will let Azathoth into this universe in his original form.

  Thus the final purpose of the cult was shaped. It thus came as a great blow when the local coven was persecuted for witchcraft and all members executed. Worse still, the word got round that the clearing was connected in an unholy manner with this witchcraft, so that those who lived anywhere near it quickly moved to more wholesome surroundings. The insects would have been able to teleport, had it not been for some constituent of the atmosphere which prevented this; the same unallowed-for obstacle made it impossible for the beings to fly any great distance. They therefore declined, using the beings from Xiclotl — which, because of their guarding the clearing in daylight while the insects worshipped, they called the equivalent in their language of the 'Daytime Guardians'—to drive unwary wanderers in the woods into the glade. The few they managed to lure to the cone they attempted to use as the foundation of the new cult which they tentatively planned, but without success. That young man of whose visit to the clearing the legend told had been the first in many years, and had been such an unwilling subject that attempts to force him into submission led only to his complete insanity. After his visit, the only person actually to be taken over by one of the insect-parasites had been myself.

  And so the history of the insects from Shaggai had been brought into the present. For the minute I wondered what memories the being in my cranium would now let flow into my brain, but almost immediately afterwards I knew what I was next to see. The insect had decided to make the supreme revelation — it was going to unveil one of its hidden memories of a visit to the lower regions of the temple.

  Immediately the creature was in the tip of the cone, lying on a grey metal slab in its quarters. It was awakening at that moment, sensing the rise of the sun outside, and it then extended its legs and clattered off the slab, over to the sliding door. It inserted its leg tip into one of the pits in the door and slid it back, turning to look back at the bare semi-circular chamber and the flashing light over the slab, set where it would hyponotize the slab's occupant to immediate sleep.

  The insect joined the ritual procession of its fellows which were preparing to descend into the lower regions. Those at the head carried long pointed rods of that inevitable grey metal, while the rest held portions of the corpse of a native of Xiclotl. The rods, it seemed, were to drive the secret tenant of the temple back when it became too desirous of sacrifice; the only victim to be offered it would be the dismembered faceless being, a member of the labour force which had grown too weak to be of further use.

  Adjusting their weapons, the leaders of the procession moved off down the spiral down-slanting passage. The creature, staring fixedly ahead as prescribed, followed them, carrying a group of severed tentacles as offering. They passed down the grey corridor, not noting the daily-seen bas-reliefs on the walls, representing the denizens of caves and ruins on far worlds. Nor did they turn in passing the cells of the Xiclotl labour force, even when the beings in them crashed themselves against the doors and extended their tentacles in helpless fury upon sensing the portions of their fellow slave. They did not turn when they clattered through the souvenir room, where they kept the preserved eyeless corpse of one specimen from each race subject to them. The first halt in their ritual march was at the carven door of the inner sanctum of the temple, over which certain representations leered down, at which every member of the procession folded its wing-case and prostrated itself for a moment. Then the foremost insect-creature extended its jointed antenna and gripped a projection on the surface of the door — hesitating a ritual instant, while its three mouths spoke three alien words in unison — and then slid the door open.

  The first object which came into view beyond the sliding panel was a squat twenty-foot statue, a hideously detailed figure which resembled nothing remotely humanoid — and the information was immediately injected into my brain that this object represented the god Azathoth — Azathoth as he had been before his exile Ou
tside. But the eyes of my informant speedily swung away from the alien colossus to the vast door behind it — a door bordered with miniature representations of insect-beings, all indicating something beyond that door. And the leaders picked up their pointed weapons and approached the final door, followed by the forward-staring procession.

  One of the leaders now raised his rod in a curious gesture, while the others prostrated themselves in a semicircle before the bordered door, writhing their antennae in concerted and vaguely disturbing rhythms. Then, as the prostrate crescent rose again, the other leader put forth his tendrils and clasped a projection on the door. Unhesitatingly he drew the portal open.

  V: Beyond The Final Door

  I was alone in the glade, lying in the dew-wet grass before the cone. There was no sign of any living being in the clearing besides myself, not even of the being which, I felt certain, had just withdrawn from my brain. The whole glade was exactly as it had been when I entered it, except for one important difference — that the sun had not yet risen. For this meant that the inhabitants of the cone would still be absent from it, searching for victims; and it meant that I could enter the untenanted temple and open that bordered door, on whose opening the insect's memory had ended.

  If I had been able to think without external hindrance, I would immediately have realised that the memory had ended at that point simply as a subtle method of luring me to the underground sanctum. It is less likely that I would have realised that I was being directed to do this by the being which still inhabited my brain. But I still clung to the possibility that I had been dreaming. There was only one way to find out; I must enter the cone and see what lay behind that final door. So I made for the circular entrance in the grey wall of the cone.

  Beyond the foot-long passage inside the trapdoor, a diagonally slanting metal corridor led upward and downward. Upward, I guessed, lay the semicircular quarters of the insect-beings, where I had no wish to go; downward lay the temple proper. I started downward, doing my best to avoid looking at the abnormal bas-reliefs which covered the walls.