Worlds of Cthulhu

by Robert M. Price

  But despite such contradictions, the dreams appeared to be fitting themselves into a near-diabolical pattern, and I deduced from their gradually cohering nature a hint of returning memory. Therefore I began to keep, with a scholar’s attention to detail, scrupulous records of their content as, descending from heady panoramas of free flight, the oneiric depictions slowly settled into a strange earthbound existence, hemmed in by vast ramparts of shaped masonry that dwarfed even the tallest trees of the surrounding and persistently oppressive jungles. Through sprawling cities of bizarre architecture—towering buildings, broad avenues, immense plazas of odd proportions—I made my way, and with what I at the time assumed was the normal consilience of dreams, I found nothing particularly unusual about my presence among them.

  But from wonder to exhilaration to periodic surges of malignant secrecy the dreams progressed, and eventually, they brought me to outright terror, filled as they were with hints of bodily displacement and deformation, and with furtive glimpses of bulky, vaguely menacing figures which seemed to slip out of sight even as I turned to view them, maintaining nonetheless a cruelly dispassionate observation of my actions. These brief sightings alone were enough to send me up from sleep with the acrid bile of nausea clinging to my throat, for the immense, ridged, semi-vegetable cones were unlike any sane life-form ever thought to have been produced by our world, and perhaps the greatest horror of all was the obvious sentience with which they progressed through their vast cities, applying their crown of clawed tentacles to the business of day-to-day manipulation of tools ranging from prosaic stylus and ink-pot to the most sophisticated of electrical weaponry, and communicating using clicks and scratches produced by the claws in which terminated two of their rubbery appendages.

  It was at the apex of horrified disgust engendered by these increasingly detailed revelations that I discovered the truth from which my unconscious mind had shrunk: for a stray reflection from a treacherous slab of the transparent substance with which those creatures glazed their window apertures at last tore the veils entirely from my unwilling memory and bared it, naked and trembling, before the hideous truth of what had befallen me.

  Dream, yes, but the reality of what I saw was undeniable. I was—had been—established mentally and physically in the distant past of the terrible lizards and their fetid domains. But I was not myself. My consciousness instead dwelt in one of those repugnant, semi-vegetable bodies I now knew to be inhabited by the true masters, technically and intellectually, of our antediluvian past.

  I did not scream my way out of sleep that night. It is true that upon opening my eyes I found myself half in and half out of a bed so soaked with sweat that it resembled more a bundle of sodden rags than a rational man’s place of repose, but I had spent too much time among the dark inferences of the old Sumerian-Leng material to be rendered incoherent by intimations of their veracity. I would be dissembling, however, were I to leave unmentioned the chief psychological buttress to which I clung in the small hours of that fateful morning, for a slow, smoldering fire of vengeance was burning in me, one that had in fact taken its first glint in the course of the very existence I had witnessed in my slumbers.

  I slept no more that night. Rather, first by candlelight and then by the rays of the infinitely welcome sun, I took refuge in my scholastic habits and, feverishly, scrawled notes and an outline of what I had witnessed…nay, what had befallen me as reified experience during those three long years when the modern world of men and women and rational thought had contemplated the thing that had taken up residence within my mortal shell and thought it no more than the manifestation of a broken mind. And when, the following evening, after having wielded a pen without respite for upwards of eighteen hours, I at last collapsed into a mercifully visionless slumber, I had drafted a rough account of the thoroughly disreputable affair.

  The putative owner of the physical being in which my consciousness had dwelt had, by means of the unhallowed technology to which it and its fellows were privy, exchanged its mind for my own, and while I was imprisoned in the distant past, that alien parasite, usurping my identity, moving my limbs, and speaking with my voice, had wreaked utter destruction on my life, uncaringly depriving me of career and family, and putting an irreversible end to my nascent dreams of true love. But my torments were of no concern to the bloodless minds that had captured me, for to them such were but inconsequential side effects of their customary method of gaining knowledge about future ages of the world they had claimed for their own. Their kind had in fact not originated on this planet, but in some far distant region of space and time, and had again and again escaped what in my opinion would have been well-deserved annihilation by means of en masse mental migrations: confronted with imminent destruction, the entire race would resort to out-and-out genocide, forcibly usurping the physical beings of another species and leaving the displaced minds to die in their stead.

  Such was the manner of the creatures that had taken me away from my life and my life away from me. And though I freely grant that I received nothing but the gentlest of treatment from my captors, my trapped mind inwardly scorned their intellectual equivocations. How could it be otherwise? My soul had been abducted. My life had been usurped, and (doubtless, I intuited it even then) was in the process of a methodical demolition. And all by the whims of a race that counted itself ethically and morally superior to my own solely because its piracy had allowed it to strip-mine the intellectual resources of a dozen civilizations.

  For in the course of my durance, I learned that I was not the only mind held captive in the past. Others were there as well, culled from a variety of places, times, and even species, all bereft of families and loves, all imprisoned within alien and repugnant flesh. I met an engineer from ancient Rome, philosophers from Greece’s golden age, a brilliant poet from Japan’s Heian period…as well as, surprisingly, a rather pedestrian economist from my own time. Utilizing the translation machines provided (for our drastically altered vocal apparatus hardly allowed the use of our native languages), we established friendships and did our best to keep up one another’s spirits during those long years of separation. I sincerely pray that my comrades in that distant prison returned to their own times to find their lives brighter and more hope-filled than mine!

  Yes, the possession, complete though it is, is but temporary. A year, three years, five years…whenever the usurping consciousness deems its research complete, it builds a counterpart to the mind-transference device and reverses the exchange. But, before the reversal, the captive mind is yet once again unspeakably violated by a hypnotic purgation of all memories of its time in the past, thus depriving it even of the small consolation it might have derived from its expanded knowledge of the history of the world and from the comforting recollections of a fellowship of strangely caparisoned but supportive colleagues.

  During my incarceration, my captors most earnestly desired that I write an account of my time in my own words and language, using the tablets, styli, and oddly textured purple ink—this last so reminiscent of the dark secretions of sea cucumbers that its utilization by the glorified semi-vegetables would have brought a sardonic smile to my face had I at the time a face to smile with—with which their text records were customarily created. I was understandably reluctant, but the seed of rebellion had by then rooted itself in my heart, and so, feigning resignation, I did indeed write. But with the sullen resistance my lot had engendered in me, I took care to include in my account a number of blatant falsehoods and deceptions in the hope of frustrating the inquiries of the arrogant beings or even perhaps prompting a future usurping mind to err so profoundly that its scheme might be revealed.

  I know not whether my puerile efforts might ever bear fruit. My inhumanly perspicacious captors might well have discerned my lies from the first and ignored my deceptions. Yet I persevered, spurred on by my determination to defy the injustice thrust upon me. And eventually my captivity came to an end. Without ceremony my hideous body was br
ought to the vast, soundproofed hall used for mind transference, I was forcibly stripped of all that had sustained me during my unspeakable imprisonment, and my mind, a tool that had been used, blunted, and thereafter cast aside, was thereupon catapulted back across black, twisting eons and thrust into its proper abode.

  My captors’ mechanisms had been perfected over countless millennia, and in the beginning I had not the slightest memory of my time in the past. But the dreams came, and perhaps due to my determination to resist my captivity, they eventually brought with them first full knowledge, and then, as that knowledge became entrenched and accepted by my incredulous consciousness, a rekindling of the rebelliousness that had prompted my initial efforts at deception. From there it was but a small step—a very small step indeed—to the white heat of anger and a consuming desire for revenge.

  At that time, however, I could not imagine what course I might pursue in order to inflict retribution—or, indeed, what form retribution could possibly take—but prudence, eked out by a scholar’s methodical nature and an intimate knowledge of my adversaries’ phenomenal mental powers and essential mastery of time, counselled me to move slowly and, at all costs, secretly. Thus, my first, uncertain steps lay with my oldest and most dependable of friends: books and research. To these I added the assistance of a clipping service, which began to tug lightly and anonymously at the webs of information that crisscross our planet, searching for stories of sudden amnesia and altered personality. Most of what presented itself was of little interest to me, though some accounts demonstrated startling parallels to my own experience, in particular that of a certain economist in the United States, who had himself recently recovered from a period of radical personality shift. I confess that upon reading of poor “Click-click Scratch” (as we had, with our strangely altered vocal mechanisms, referred to him during our captivity), I laughed mirthlessly for the better part of a minute, wondering as I did whether his slavish cooperation with his masters, the subject of many a wry joke among the other kidnapped minds, would continue now that he had regained his human body.

  But the economist’s story, along with one or two others, removed any lingering doubts I might have had as to the true genesis of my own condition, and I redoubled my scholastic efforts. Nor did I quail when my research slewed away from pedestrian channels and pointed me almost immediately in the direction of the Sumerian-Leng materials that had theoretically precipitated my illness. Precipitated, perhaps, but only indirectly. My graduate research had, it appeared, not unhinged my sanity at all, but rather had acted like a beacon in the dark night of the centuries, a beacon that had led my captors to me in a brutal effort to destroy my credibility and thus discourage my fellow human beings from pursuing such inquiries.

  I was quite determined that I would not repeat my ignorant mistake by allowing my endeavors to become at all conspicuous, and therefore my work progressed slowly. Fortunately, in the course of my post-graduate years, I had collected a large library of reference volumes, historical accounts, photographs of artifacts from around the world, and a not inconsiderable amount of correspondence with well-traveled archaeologists who had favored me with their frank opinions regarding such matters as their distressing finds in the depths of the Sahara Desert and the results of their investigations into the unearthly origins of the deadly Kyrgyz Light. To all this I returned with a feeling of homecoming and of a banished king returning to his throne. This was my domain. By what right had an assembly of sentient celery stalks (As I now derisively viewed them!) kept me from it?

  But, though such at-hand resources were enough to refresh my memory, it was clear that further information could come only from first-hand experience, and the necessity of this alteration in my methods was brutally confirmed by the tragic events of the following Easter holiday, at which time one of my more enthusiastic students made use of a trip to the British Museum to examine and actually photograph several little known stelae, long ago recovered from the Australian desert. Due in no small part to the nature of the carvings that cover their surfaces, these artifacts are, under normal conditions, kept locked up in a basement vault, but highly placed connections within the museum staff allowed my student, who had by then become aware of my graduate researches, to gain access to them.

  He telephoned me upon his return to Cambridge, and his high-spirited account of what he had seen and done filled me with dread. I indeed longed to see his pictures, but I worried greatly about the effects the images might have upon me and wondered that my student had escaped any apparent influence. Yet no trace of anxiety did he exhibit, other than in a passing comment that in the course of his journey from the museum to the London station and then from the Cambridge station to his lodgings, he had felt as though he were being followed. But he gaily informed me that he intended to process his films in his miniscule darkroom that very night and would have the photographs ready for my perusal the next afternoon, at which time he earnestly entreated me to visit him.

  He ended our conversation with the stated intent of beginning his chemical work without delay, but it was with a deep sense of foreboding that I walked to his lodgings the next day; upon seeing the policeman on the landing outside his rooms, my heart sank. My anxiety about the mental well-being of my student was misplaced, however, for it was rather his physical being that had been summarily eradicated.

  I curse myself to this day for not having hit upon the obvious but painful truth in time to avert tragedy, but who would have been willing to surmise that the beings of the past, beings exhibiting again and again such careless brutality toward all things human, would have allies among my own kind? And yet it was—and is—so. For when I at last gained admittance to my student’s rooms, I found evidence that, though mute to the police investigators, spoke eloquently to me. The official report states that my student doubtless abandoned his studies and left the city, but the collection of fine ash streaking the floorboards near the door of the room in which he had conducted his photographic chemistry told me otherwise: for it was identical to that left by the use of one of my captors’ electrical weapons upon organic material.

  There was, of course, no evidence of my student’s films, nor of the existence of any photographs.

  III.

  In such a way did I discover it was to a hidden cult among my fellow men that my captors owed their consistent success. Driven perhaps by a lust for things unknown, attracted perhaps to unclean knowledge, perhaps perceiving in their masters’ immense powers a slave’s craven sense of deity, these miserable creatures have throughout human history lent their aid to the tyrants they call the Great Race, covering their masters’ tracks and machinations, providing machinery and supplies when necessary, burning incriminating papers left behind by visiting minds, and as I discovered in the lodgings of my student, eliminating, with weapons constructed according to their masters’ directions, those individuals deemed to have drawn too close to the terrible truth. With a shiver of near despair, I realized that the seeming madness of the primitive superstitions about which I had, from books and manuscripts, gleaned intellectual knowledge was one and the same with the very real and contemporary madness of human creatures who walked the streets of my own city under the same sun as shone upon me, but who clung to and worshipped as gods the beings who had plucked me from my own time, held me captive, and then flung me back into a life that was no longer worth living.

  It was obvious that the Australian desert stelae were being watched. My student had been watched. I myself was possibly being watched. Whether those doing the surveillance were aware of my lucidity concerning my time spent in the past was impossible to determine, but I decided that it would be foolhardy to risk either myself or any among my other students who might demonstrate a capacity for penetrating research. I therefore decided to leave the country for a time, and arranged with my college for an extended leave of absence.

  Profoundly shaken though I was by the fate of my student, his death only spurred me o
n in my quest for a reckoning with the so-called Great Race. I had no intention of traveling for health or for pleasure, but rather solely for the sake of prosecuting that quest even more effectively, for my need for further information dovetailed neatly with the necessity of removing myself from the observation of those who might find in my investigations cause for alarm.

  The irony that, in undertaking my foreign travels, I was to a large extent following in the footsteps of my usurped body was not lost on me, for before I set out, I consulted the fragmentary remains of my predecessor’s partly burnt diary—retrieved from the stove in my parents’ shed—and I was determined to revisit a number of the locales mentioned in it. But the sardonic laugh with which I contemplated my rucksack and my walking shoes was certainly not my first expression of black humor since I had returned to myself, and it would certainly not be the last.

  Even my first efforts took me to out-of-the-way libraries and private book collections whose proprietors and owners were certainly not the sort of individuals with whom, under normal circumstances, I would have willingly associated. And I was constantly and painfully aware that those squint-eyed, sallow-complexioned, hideously unwashed men who smiled knowingly at my requests to view their rotting manuscripts might themselves be in league with those who would, as casually as they had ended the life of my student, terminate my own. But thoughts of inaction, of wrongs left unredressed, were intolerable to me, and so I persevered; and if the men who laid before me such rotting corpses of intellectual endeavor as the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the violently suppressed “inner” chapters of Honourius’ Sworn Book guessed that I carried, under my coat and ready to hand, a stout revolver, they gave no sign.