Here, Olcott went silent again for several minutes, seemingly lost in his troubled thoughts. During this time I, too, took a moment to reflect on his story and the utterly insane nature of the things he had told me. Insane, yes, but true, I feared. His had none of the zeal that characterizes a madman’s tale, merely a deep and abiding regret over his actions.
My guest was by this time thoroughly warm and dry and, since he had paused in his recitation, I stood to retrieve some sort of refreshment for the both of us, the time being well past when I normally had my supper, and figuring Olcott could surely do with nourishment. As I did so, I caught the faintest whiff of something unusual in the air. It was nothing definite, however, and I chalked it up as my overactive imagination buying too deeply into Olcott’s story, true or not. As I made to leave, Olcott seemed reluctant to part company even for a few minutes, but I assured him he was quite safe and after some gentle coaxing he consented, though unhappily.
When I returned with bowls of reheated, leftover soup from the day before, Olcott was visibly agitated, having resumed the fidgeting, hyper-vigilant manner he’d possessed upon his arrival that afternoon. It took a fair while before he regained his composure, during which I encouraged him to relax, eat and finish his tale whenever he was ready. When he had put himself together again, Olcott apologized then favored me with a shadow of his old self, flashing a wry grin and complimenting me on my bedside manner. “You should have been a physician. You’ve missed your calling, it seems.”
I dismissed his jest and again asked him to finish his story, if he was able – in response Olcott took a sip of soup, set down his bowl and glared into the fireplace, as if it had somehow offended him. He released a long sigh. “Rather I should show you, I suppose,” and so saying, opened his satchel to draw forth a small ivory tube, such as maps are stored in.
“I don’t blame you for doubting my tale. It is a mad one, and I well know it. You’ve been kinder than I probably deserve but I will impose on you at least this once more, El.” Olcott uncapped the tube, drew from it three sheets of paper and spread them flat on the table nearby, weighing down the corners with our bowls. He beckoned me closer and asked, “What do you make of these?”
I gazed with amazement at the papers – they were charcoal rubbings, as Olcott had described having taken in that noisome corridor in a forgotten temple of an unknown people. I had already been inclined to believe the man, but here was tangible proof! Some might scoff, claiming such “proof” easy to fake, but combined with what I had heard and what I had observed of Olcott’s condition, I chose to believe.
The room was dark and while the fire’s illumination had been sufficient for talking, I needed more for study and brought over the lamp from the corner of the room. Such a thing could hardly shed light on what I saw, however. The rubbings were fainter than I would have liked, obviously made hastily, but I could discern hieroglyphics of a sort in neat, orderly rows of three upon three. They resembled nothing I could think of offhand and said so.
Olcott sagged as though someone had let the wind out of him. “I feared as much. I’m no linguist or paleographer, but I had hoped you might be familiar with whatever this is. Once I was home, I sought out every expert I could find who was willing to speak with me and all were helpless. But every one of them had the same advice– if any man can decipher this, it is Elwood Upton. And decipher it you must, El. I fear you’re my last resort and my only hope of salvation.”
The compliment was appreciated, but I was puzzled. “Why is decipherment so important?” The moment I said it, I suspected, but I allowed Olcott to speak for himself.
“It is my only clue,” here he collapsed back into a chair, and held his head; I knew he was suppressing sobs, though whether of frustration or anguish or fear, I could not tell. After a moment, he again met my gaze and said, “I have awakened something that should not be. Something lying in wait for terrible freedom denied it by better men than myself. I don’t know who built that temple, but they knew how to capture this… thing, whatever it may be. I should never have opened that tomb, but I did and now, I must find a way to contain this horror. I’ll go back to that jungle, if I must, but I hope it won’t come to that. Please, I need to know how it was first trapped and how I can do so again.” At this, Olcott was once more overcome by emotion, and I turned away to allow him a measure of privacy.
When the breathing behind me had resumed a more normal rhythm, I sat down next to Olcott, placed a hand on his shoulder and promised to do my utmost. I cautioned him, however, that it would take time – I was no more familiar with these strange markings than he, and even if I were to decode their message with the aid of the materials I had at hand, there was no guarantee the answer he sought would be there. He nodded in understanding and thanked me more than was necessary.
It had grown very late, and I suggested that Olcott get some rest. He protested, stating that he preferred to help me work in any capacity he was able, but I assured him that while I would begin immediately he was of no use to me in his current state and I did not expect to make much progress that night, anyway. Confronted with logic that he could not refute, Olcott allowed me to show him to the guest bedroom on the second floor and thanked me again.
As I made my way back downstairs towards the den, I passed the coatrack on which my guest’s coat and scarf rested and was struck by a foul odor that seemed almost a tangible thing. I took a hesitant whiff of Olcott’s clothing, not yet dry, and determined that they must be washed first thing in the morning, to be cleansed of the residue Olcott had seemingly carried with him, before heading back to my den and the task before me.
I gathered the most arcane books in my possession, including a copy of the rather badly-translated English edition of d’Erlette’s Cultes de Ghoules, in which I’d thought I may have seen something with a vague kinship to the symbols before me. As I pored over the various tomes, I felt myself drowsing. The mantle clock showed that it was nearly midnight and though my mind raced, my body was fighting to maintain its pace.
I did drop off at some point and was roused later by a peculiar thumping sound from above me, which startled me for a moment until I remembered that I had a guest unfamiliar with the layout of my home, who had probably simply stumbled into a piece of furniture in the darkness. Making no attempt to continue working, I instead settled into my comfortable easy chair, recently occupied by Olcott. As I drifted back to sleep, the foul odor I had detected on the drying coat and scarf seeped into my nostrils, but my drowsy mind associated it with Olcott having rested in the chair for so many hours and I determined to give it a cleaning on the morrow.
The next morning, I awoke tolerably rested, considering I had forgone the use of my bed, and set about making a suitable breakfast for myself and Olcott. The stench I had encountered in the night was absent, even from Olcott’s now-dry outerwear, and I smiled at my own imagination’s conjuring; surely if such an odiousness had existed a few short hours before, it could not have dissipated so thoroughly on its own, and I convinced myself it was merely a figment of the mind.
As the savory aromas of eggs and ham filled the kitchen, I put the coffee pot on the stove and went upstairs to wake my guest and invite him down to eat. Partway up the stairs, though, I encountered again the hideous scent, now a definite reality, and began to worry that Olcott’s visit might irrevocably alter the milieu of my home, as he seemed to carry it on his body. Before I had reached the end of the hallway where the spare bedroom lay, the smell was so bad I had to cover my nose with my sleeve. As I approached, my pace slowed involuntarily and I was suddenly filled with a terror I could not account for, as if the foulness in the air had managed to permeate my very soul.
The door to Olcott’s room was still closed; when he did not answer my knocking, I called out several times, but still received no response. Continuing to protect my nose, my free hand trembled as I reached to turn the knob. The door was not locked, but I hesitated halfway through the turning and listened intently for an
y sounds of stirring within. When the silence remained unbroken, I steeled myself and pushed open the portal.
I was greeted by a foulness so overpowering, I was literally knocked senseless and woke later gasping with nausea, my head aching fiercely. I realized immediately, however, that the stench had mostly-vanished and was now only faintly detectable once again. As I had fallen outside of the room in my faint, I once more gathered my nerves to enter.
When I did, I saw that the place was relatively untouched beyond an open window and what Olcott himself had disturbed in his preparation for sleep. That is, until my eyes were drawn to the bed and the man himself, crushed into the mattress, eyes bulging in horror and covered in a thick, yellow ooze at the sight of which I again fainted dead away.
Seeker in the Dark
Darkness and terror amplified the sounds of my lungs and heart as I pressed myself between musty clothing.
Outside the door, the distinctive shuffle-click-shuffle-click footsteps grew nearer and I became aware of snuffling sounds as if it searched for scent, like a common cur.
Inevitably, it came to my hiding spot and great gusts of fetid breath blasted beneath the closet door. Having no inkling of its form, my imagination conjured up a black, dog-headed monstrosity.
Suddenly, the age-weakened wood jumped… but held. Another moment and the unique tread moved on.
Did I remain undetected? Or did it toy with me…?
Perchance a Dream
The darkest day of my life is painted in the sullen gray of mundane sameness and the swirling blacks of impotent rage. It is the day when the petty miseries that we all endure have grown into dreadful enormities and the truly awful incidents – those that no one should experience – come harder and faster than I know how to manage. By their weight I am broken.
It’s not a sudden thing, not a matter of simply being unable to process one atrocious period or event, but the culmination of a lifetime’s struggle. True, it is not a long lifetime, and perhaps things will still turn out for the best, but in a decisive moment I am determined to leave it all behind in search of something else. Whether that something is better or worse makes no difference at this junction, as long as it is unfamiliar. Surely some would call it a coward’s choice, abandoning what passes for the existence I have built, and that may be, but I am not concerned with the opinions of others; I have never been and now is not the time to start.
Saying no goodbyes and wasting no time, I leave behind the edifice I call home and choose at random a direction in which to travel. I carry nothing, for I need nothing except a desire to find some measure of the freedom that I long for so painfully. I have worried, in the past, about the state of my mind and the structure of my soul, but my body… my body has always been the most reliable aspect of my being. I know that I can trust my own sturdy legs and so I do, allowing them to propel me to whatever terminus for which I am destined and allowing myself to revel in the Zen of motion, to lose conscious thought to the workings of the exquisite machine that is the human form. Even in my abject state, certain wonders are not lost on me.
So I walk and for the duration of a seemingly endless moment, I have captured a portion of the peace I yearn for. It is not to last, however, for something interrupts my journey, ripping me from my fragile tranquility and the irradiate refuge that I have briefly found. Reluctantly, I open eyes I didn’t realize were closed and squint against the tremendous brightness in which I am bathed, the source of which I cannot imagine in my drowsy confusion.
I find that I am stark naked, my skin blistered and cracking under the ferocious gaze of a sun more intense than it has a right to be as it blazes down upon a region utterly foreign to my eyes. Suddenly fully awakened from my strange fugue, I realize that even now my legs have not ceased to propel me forward through this unknown place. I had placed my trust in them, and it seems to be a duty that my body takes seriously. Step after step, I traverse a desert seeming too vast to fully fathom, leaving a trail of footprints in the otherwise-virgin sea of sand, just as I have been doing for as long as I can remember. I think hard, but all I can remember is the sand, stretching off in all directions. I don’t know why this is so and I don’t want to think about it. I think of almost nothing, in fact – neither time nor place, discomfort nor pain – only that I am searching for what I had briefly attained and that the only thing I can trust is to put one foot in front of the other, for as long as it takes to arrive at whatever destination presents itself in this land of dun and heat.
In the distance, just a speck on the horizon so small that I couldn’t hope to see it with mortal eyes, an old man waits. Unbeknownst to me, he has always been there, wrapped in a cloak too heavy for this environment, staring off into the unchanging sands, breathing the scorching vapors of this oppressive air, and waiting. The aged one raises a hand, beckoning, and I, so far away, somehow see it and alter my direction.
There is no time in this place, no way to gauge how long it takes for the old man and I to come face to face, but it doesn’t matter. We are both here now, staring, waiting as if we have all of eternity for the other one to finally break the silence.
He makes a decision – I can tell by the language of his body – but still does not say a word. Instead, he raises his hand once again, lifts a single finger and makes a subtle gesture before turning away. It is enough; I understand I am to follow. With sudden realization, as though once again waking from a walking sleep, I find myself treading an ancient path that I was not aware of until this instant, as if it had appeared out of the sandy ground specifically for my taciturn companion and I. But I saw no such thing take place, so all I can do is accept this for what it is and trust what I know, putting one foot in front of the other.
Silently and tirelessly, my aged guide follows the sand-strewn, but well-defined, corridor through the desert and I, in my turn, follow him. I don’t know where we are going and the old man does not choose to elaborate. I am focused on each step – heel, pad, toe, heel, pad, toe – the only thing I have any control over. As I watch my steps and the impressions they leave in the faintly-swirling sand, I notice that the feet of he who leads me do not leave any trace as my own do; I don’t find this unusual, though it would be impossible to say why.
We travel for a distance before the venerable, cloaked figure stops at a spot seemingly identical to every other in the featureless expanse. He begins to speak, but he does not address me. I listen, but find that I cannot understand the words floating past me on the hot wind. I lose interest almost immediately, and cast my gaze down towards the loosely-packed grit at my feet, the feeling of which vaguely excites my attention. Hadn’t I stood upon a path just a moment ago?
When the old man finishes, I look up again, expecting him to continue on our journey. Instead, I see that where there had been nothing but uniform sand, there is now a wide river, stretching farther than I can see, flowing sluggishly along, but sparkling in the vivid glare from the too-large sun. Something deep in my mind reaches out for the liquid, for the quenching of thirst I was not aware of until now, for the surcease of pain my body had rejected before, but that now tugs at the corners of my mind. The impulses are faint, however, and easy to ignore, so I do nothing but wait for a cue from the creature who has lead me this far.
The old man, for the first time, draws back the hood of his cloak and turns to me. His face is heavily lined and the skin is wrinkled and dry, like paper left too close to a flame, but he possesses a quiet vitality it would be hard not to notice. Despite his obvious antiquity, this man projects a sense of agelessness.
Again we stare in silence, each studying the other – it is not awkward, but rather comforting to be in the presence of another and not feel the need to communicate directly. Perhaps he is waiting for me to decide how to proceed. With this thought, a sort of understanding dawns, and the words creep from my mouth, as if afraid of being out in the open. “Am I supposed to go on alone?” I ask haltingly, pointing towards the river.
My companion takes h
is time responding and when he does, his voice is richly sonorous; a sound well worth the wait. “This is your place. I have no business beyond here.”
Looking out over the listlessly flowing waters, I regard them a moment, then turn back out towards the sandy wastes we’ve already traversed. Like the path I am not sure if I remember, but still want to believe in, my footprints have disappeared, leaving no trace of the journey beyond vague memories. Turning back towards my guide, I say, “Thank you for showing me the way.” Another pause as I am struck by a thought that seems somehow alien. “Do you have a name? So I can thank you properly.”
The wrinkled man nods almost imperceptibly. “More than you can imagine, but you know some of them.” And then he turns and leaves me behind, even more confused than I was before.
Alone again, I face the river, so wide I cannot see the opposite bank; part of me says there must be one and that my destination must be there somewhere. In reinforcement of this belief, a soft and faintly-moist wind rolls in from the waterway, brushing my damaged skin with soft promises I cannot quite decipher but want to see fulfilled. I inhale deeply, and within my chest I can feel the vibrations of a gentle, golden land spread out under a blanket of strange stars, conjured by a dingy imagination eager for change. It is the destination for which my heart has yearned, that my half-broken mind says cannot exist but my body tells me is almost within its grasp. Still, I hesitate, though my choices are simply to go forward or to go back. Even now, one foot in front of the other is all I am sure of and I choose once again to rely on what I know.
I place a foot into the water, unsure of what exactly to expect, and I am rewarded with a coolness that spreads from foot to leg to my entire body, soothing aches and pains I had forgotten I had until they are defined by their absence. My cracked, blistered skin falls away as I take another step, the water up to my calves now. Eagerly, I rush deeper into the slow, palliative fluid, further away from the relative safety of the bank that I am at least passingly familiar with, towards the unknown. Before I realize it, I am so deep that my feet, the only thing I trust in this curious and completely-foreign place, cannot touch the river bottom and I cannot see land in any direction.
The Altar in the Hills and Other Weird Tales Page 7