Worlds of Cthulhu

by Robert M. Price

  The story as told by Mazurewicz chilled Gilman and me beyond reason, and neither of us slept well that night, our minds racing with what Deborah Zellaby had come to believe about her own grandson, and the implications thereof. I now felt driven to begin my own research into the life and legends surrounding Keziah Mason. Something terrible, I felt, had thus far eluded us. November came and went, and December brought us to winter break. Gilman went to visit family in Haverhill, and then to see a new mill in Maine, near Gates Falls. Given my meager finances, I took the bus for the short journey to Kingsport. There among my friends and in my family home I set about initiating my own study of Keziah’s dark legacy.

  In January our return to Miskatonic University brought to us the first hint of the supernatural. The event was so simple and yet in retrospect must be recognized as the first in a series of preternatural events that would in due course lead Gilman first to madness and then to his singularly horrid death. Gilman and I had made our way to the great library, wary of the masses that had cluttered the university grounds. It was not merely the student body that milled about the commons, but strangers as well, some of whom wore military uniforms and bore with them firearms. Ostensibly, these men had come into town to round up possible refugees from a secretive government action that had sealed off the aged port town of Innsmouth. Rumor had it that nearly the entire village had been arrested, charged with the smuggling of liquor and other contraband.

  In the library Gilman and I marched defiantly through the halls on a mission to persuade Doctor Armitage to restore Gilman’s access to the rare book room in general, and the Necronomicon in specific. Unfortunately, both Armitage and the Necronomicon were already occupied. For the better part of an hour the old librarian stood watching as the most curious of characters sat hunched over the ancient grimoire, all the time making seemingly endless notations in an old leather journal. Gilman fumed over what he viewed as an invasion of his personal area of research, and, when the stranger finally made to leave, speaking to Armitage in a rough and uncouth manner, Gilman rose to intercept the aged librarian.

  It was at this moment that Gilman had his first preternatural encounter, for as the stranger rose it was to reveal a countenance and stature that brought to mind the ogres and trolls of legend. The man easily stood over seven feet tall, and his bulk was barely contained by his thread-worn suit and broken shoes. The thin black tie and aged hat framing his face served only to draw attention to the man’s huge and goatish head which was covered by a thick beard and eyebrows that created the illusion of fur. The same fine, black hair peeked out at the cuffs of his sleeves and between the buttons of his shirt.

  As Gilman crossed his path, the lumbering giant paused and stared down at the diminutive man blocking his way. His gaze wandered in my direction and then back to Gilman. A massive hand reached out and came to rest on Gilman’s shoulder. With little effort, the man-mountain gently moved Gilman to the side and grunted in a deep and curious way that reminded me of the bellowing of frogs or whales. What he actually said was, “Yew should know better than to stand in my way, sir.” And then he turned to look at me, “as should yew, little cousin.” Was there an inexplicable hint of hate in his deep, violet eyes, some contagion in his heavy touch? I cannot say. But it was on that very night that Gilman’s bout of brain-fever and strange dreams began.

  Of the events that followed, of Gilman’s dreams, of his encounters with a still living Keziah Mason and Brown Jenkin, of his involvement in the death of Ladislas Wolejko, and his own tragic death, I have little to add. Some have questioned me concerning my whereabouts on certain evenings, and in response to these inquiries I must admit that I was pursuing the research that I had begun so many months before in Kingsport. Likewise, I must confess that my investigation had yielded nothing more than rumor, innuendo and circumstantial evidence. I had, much like Deborah Zellaby, grown to suspect certain things about those early days of Arkham. But it was not until that chance encounter in the library that my suspicions began to coalesce and provide direction for my own delving into the past.

  Come April I borrowed a car and drove madly back to Kingsport. My brother had sorted through piles of old family holdings, and there, hidden among things long forgotten, he had found a portrait of the patriarch of the Elwood family, a man who came to the village in 1691 as a pauper. That I and indeed most of my family bore no little resemblance to Thaddeus Elwood was never in doubt. This was not the revelation that my months of research had unveiled. For it was the second painting, the one Roger Mason had commissioned to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of his business venture, that provided true revelations and confirmed my worst fears. For though the painting was more than two hundred and fifty years old, I could see the fine, dark hair and dark, violet eyes, the turn of the nose and chin and the high-ridged cheeks that were the most notable features of the young Keziah Mason, her secret child Thaddeus, and her far-scattered descendents. These features I knew well, for had I not recently seen them in the face of the monstrous thing we had seen in the library? I saw them again, I swear, in the face of Brown Jenkin as it burrowed out of Walter Gilman’s chest and madly chattered at me. You will call me mad, but I see them now in every face around me. I fear there is little choice but to accept the mathematical certainty: those dozens of children that Keziah brought into the world, that fled Arkham like rats in the night, have had more than two centuries to establish themselves, to marry, and to propagate in their turn, children, with fine black hair and violet eyes. I suppose I am only one of thousands. “For the Black Goat Mother doth favor her servants with such fruitfulness as would shame even the most fertile of pestilent flies, breeding in the secret wounds of man’s misery and pain, like maggots in a slaughter yard.”

  Here is another story that goes back to a Lovecraft original and fills in some implicit gaps. Surely what happened to the protagonist of “The Shadow out of Time” had happened to others in his position, mind-time voyagers kidnapped by the Great Race, remembering far more than they were supposed to. But not everyone would react the same way. Here is a tale of someone with very different reactions to the exploitations of the Yithites. A word about the style: you may wonder if author Tonso has not switched minds with Lovecraft or with one of the antique writers who so influenced his style. You and I might not decide to write with such out-of-style flourish, but then again we might not invoke the same remarkable Lovecraftian mood either.

  You will shortly be reading about a mysterious link between the Plateau of Leng and ancient Sumerian civilizations. This may sound arbitrary and outlandish, but in fact there is such a connection, as attested in the name of the towering cosmic mountain in the mythology of Tibetan Buddhism (“Leng” standing for Tibet), Mount Meru. It appears to be a shorter form of “Sumeru,” itself a longer version of “Sumer.” You will no doubt recognize “Sumeru” from Sax Rohmer, who uses it as the name of the daughter of Dr. Fu Manchu.

  THE TESTAMENT OF ALEXANDER FLETCHER

  K. M. Tonso

  To flee from the unspeakable, as some of lesser mettle have from time to time suggested, and take refuge in the craven surrender of madness or the complacent ignorance of a new Dark Age may be acceptable behavior for those who lack the strength of will to take up arms against what at first might seem a sea of insurmountable troubles; but even should his defiance prove in the end to be in vain, a man of fortitude can, at the very least, demonstrate to those who insist upon troubling such as he that they had best be prepared to deal with the inevitable consequences.

  My name is Alexander Fletcher, and to outward eyes, I lived until quite recently a placid, scholarly existence devoted to research and knowledge, one that but continued a fascination with the arcane and the ancient that had preoccupied me even from my earliest years, when during many a boyhood ramble throughout the countryside surrounding my birthplace in Dorset, I came upon the occasional flint arrowhead or enigmatic bone tool left behind by that land’s prehistoric inhabita
nts and found my imagination fired by thoughts of past depths of history, hidden knowledge, and primal legend.

  From such humble beginnings did my vocation grow, and when at last I entered college, I directed my studies toward the field of archaeology. Nor did my particular interests, which by then lay with tantalizing hints of earthly but pre-human intelligences discernable among the pronouncements of certain old cuneiform tablets of ancient Sumer, pass without some notice (and a certain clucking of tongues) by my professors. Nevertheless, when I had completed my studies, it was without hesitation that my academic superiors put aside their doubts and certified me for my Bachelor’s degree.

  My graduate work, which built upon and extended my prior research, I pursued at a small but most reputable college in the north of Scotland, the establishment of which stemmed from the generous bequest of a wealthy “Wee-Free” who saw in his not inconsiderable fortune the hand of God, and who therefore wished to found an institution that would prove once and for all the factual existence of Divine Providence. Alas, his wealth went solely for the prosecution of an infinitely more human wisdom, and I fear that in the end my research went so far as to make a mockery of all his pious hopes and beliefs. His generosity, however, provided well for me, and it was with vigor that I pursued my studies, focusing primarily on the influences upon the ancient Sumerian city-states of the half-mythic, half-legendary civilization that lurked in the shadows of the fabled plateau of Leng.

  It was doubtless those particular investigations that attracted the attention of the hidden minds of the universe, for in contemplating myself I have yet to perceive any particular virtue that might have made me a desirable candidate for their meddling save perhaps a strength of will only a little beyond the average. Regardless, on the eve of my presentation, at the yearly Fellows Banquet, of my lengthy paper on the Sumerian-Leng connections, and a week before my scheduled matriculation and my planned wedding to Florence, my beloved fiancée of several years, I was overtaken by several bouts of vertigo accompanied by such curious visions that I was afraid my researches had become the stuff of hallucination. I rang for old Jones, the porter, but before he could reach me, I had fallen into a swoon from which I did not awaken for several hours.

  And when I did awaken, what a terrible change had come over me! I myself, of course, have no recollection of the events which followed, but those who treated me and who witnessed my actions report that I was lame in my movements, halt in my speech, and the light in my eye, previously bright and forward-looking, had taken on a shadowed, reptilian cast.

  Within an hour or two I could move and speak with some fluidity, but the profound change in my demeanor persisted, and from that day do I date the destruction of my life and soul, for my fiancée, brought to me in an attempt to restore my senses, shrieked hysterically and insisted that the man she had known no longer dwelt within my flesh. Florence then departed my room and my life in fright and tears, and I have never seen her since. I am told, though, that at the time I remained entirely unmoved by her rejection, focusing instead upon the presentation of my Sumerian-Leng paper.

  That presentation I did indeed give, but into my previously well-researched and thoughtfully reasoned text had crept the most outrageous claims and horrendous suppositions, claims and suppositions which made my listeners’ blood alternately run cold with chaotic visions of material reality and spiritual existence and hot with contempt for such an outrageous burst of undisciplined speculation. In their opinion, my previously pristine work had become more than fatally flawed, and my paper was therefore rejected, my work was disgraced, my degree was denied. In such a fashion was I in a matter of days stripped of love, of family (their reaction was much in keeping with my fiancée’s), and finally, even of the beneficent foster parentage of academic tradition. Alone I was in the world, but this rootless state seemed in fact much to my taste, for having dispensed with my old life, the being into which I had been so terribly transmogrified set about creating one anew: with passport in hand and rucksack on my back, I began a spate of world traveling at which even now I cannot but marvel.

  I will not burden my readers with details of my physical peripatetics. Much can be gained from the surviving fragments of a curious diary from that time. Written in a foreign, crabbed hand, as though the use of a pen seemed as outlandish to the author as a pair of chopsticks to the Piltdown Man, the remnants recount much intercourse with unsavory occult groups not only in England, but in a wide range of cities, towns, and crumbling hamlets from Dublin to Bombay, and go on to hint unpleasantly at extended visits to the few libraries in the world possessing copies of several ancient tomes that present the barbaric and quintessentially dreadful beliefs of, and lingering beliefs in, the more ancient and terrible of the civilizations that have existed on our planet.

  Three years after the onset of my strange illness, I returned to the home of my family in Dorset and imperiously demanded admittance and shelter. My frightened father and mother, torn between relief despite my alterations and horror because of them, allowed me the use of a shed behind the main house. There I lived for some three weeks, during which time I constructed, with the aid of several artisans and engineers in the area, a strange contrivance of mirrors, rods, and clockwork. Its potential use was baffling to all who saw it, but its final assembly and operation apparently took place sometime during the pre-dawn hours of the first of May, for that evening I withdrew to my hovel and barred the door. The night passed in a deep and, so my parents insist, sinister silence, but in the gray dawn of the following morning, a strange man of foreign mien was seen in the byway behind my family’s house, and he subsequently broke a window of my shed and entered. Before the alarm could be raised, however, there came a tremendous crashing and banging from within the shed, followed by the man’s hasty departure and an ominous plume of smoke from the stovepipe set in the roof.

  The door was shortly thereafter forced open, and my rescuers were confronted with the curious sight of young Alexander Fletcher stretched out comfortably on a ratty mattress, the shattered remains of the strange mechanism lying beside him and a large bundle of notes and records from the previous three years sullenly smoldering in the cast-iron stove.

  At the sudden burst of light and noise from the opening door, I am told that I opened my eyes, waved my arms drunkenly as though I had not the faintest idea of how to use them, and called faintly: “Florence? Are you there, Florence?”

  II.

  After three years, I had at last returned to my senses. But into what a terrible world I awakened! Florence was gone, married now to another and unwilling so much as to pen a single word to me; my academic record was soundly besmirched; my sanity, in fact, was still doubted by many. And yet, thanks to my family’s unswerving devotion, I scraped together what pieces of normal existence I could find and continued my life. It was a lonely life to be sure—my parents died shortly thereafter, leaving me their house and their assets—but it was not without unlooked-for demonstrations of kindness, for as word of my recovery spread throughout academic circles, my old college contacted me and offered me a chance to complete my degree, the sole (and very understandable) condition being that I should refrain from any further research into a Sumerian-Leng connection.

  Grateful for such unexpected support, and reluctant myself to pursue a subject that might have contributed to my illness, I accepted the offer, and within a year was granted my advanced degree and recommended to Magdalene College at Cambridge as a reader in archaeology. There I applied myself single-mindedly to my duties in hope of putting the past behind me. But a certain dissatisfaction had crept into my nature, and as the weeks went on and the months passed, I found myself increasingly frustrated with my academic work, viewing it, in spite of all rationalizations, as a relatively trivial matter that was interfering with a far greater and more important enterprise…of which I unfortunately remained ignorant.

  It was at much the same time that the dreams began. At first, so l
ike the hallucinations that presaged my breakdown were they that I was terrified my derangement might be returning. But the dreams continued, eventually becoming almost nightly occurrences, and throughout two years of uneasy and at times tortured sleep, the damnably suggestive visions returned again and again. In the beginning, they were replete with images of flight, as though I were a passenger in an immense aeroplane, traversing endless landscapes at a great height. But the vistas thereby opened to my dreamer’s eyes were such as defied credulity. Surely no such overgrown and poisonously verdant jungles existed anywhere save in the mad phantasms of the opium addict, and as for the animal life: why would the dreams of a scholar devoted to ancient tokens of human endeavor take him to a period of remote geologic antiquity when immense reptiles were the sole monarchs of a rank and alien kingdom?