Mythos and Horror Stories

by Frank Belknap Long

  “You are still very young,” I gasped. “You can’t be more than twenty-four.” “I am twenty-three,” he said. “It was precisely three years ago that I published my brochure on etheric vibrations. For six months I lived in a blaze of glory. I was the marvelous boy of the scientific world, and then that

  Frenchman advanced his theory ”

  “I suppose you mean Monsieur Paul Rondoli,” I interrupted. “I recall the sensation his startling refutation made at the time. He Completely eclipsed you in the popular mind, and later the scientific world declared you a fraud. Your star set very suddenly.”

  “But it will rise again,” exclaimed my young visitor. “The world will discuss me again, and this time I shall not be forgotten. I shall prove my theory. I shall demonstrate that the effect of etheric vibration on single cells is to change'—to change—.” He hesitated and then suddenly shouted, “But no, I shall not tell you. I shall tell no one. I came here tonight to unburden my mind to you. At first I thought of going to a priest. It is necessary that I should confess to someone.

  “When my thoughts are driven in upon themselves they become monstrous. I have an active and terrible brain, and I must speak out occasionally. I chose you because you are a man of intelligence and discrimination and you have heard many confessions. But I shall not discuss etheric vibrations with you. When you see it you will understand.”

  He turned abruptly and walked out of the room and out of my house without once looking back. I never saw him again.

  2.Diary of Thomas Shiel, Novelist and Short-Story Writer

  ]uly 21. This is my fourth day at the beach. I’ve already gained three pounds, and I’m so sunbaked that I frightened a little girl when I went swimming this morning. She was building sand castles and when she saw me she dropped her shovel and ran shrieking t6 her mother. “Horrible black man!” she shouted. I’suppose she thought I was a genie out of the Arabian Nights. It’s pleasant here—I’ve almost got the evil taste of New York out of my mouth. Elsie’s coming down for the week-end.

  July 22. The little girl I frightened yesterday has disappeared. The police are searching for her and it is generally believed that she has been kidnaped. The unfortunate occurrence has depressed everyone at the beach. All bathing parties have been abandoned, and even the children sit about sad-eyed and dejected. No footprints were found on the sands near the spot where the child was last seen...

  July 23. Another child has disappeared, and this time the abductor left a clue. A young man’s walking stick and hat were found near the scene of a violent struggle. The sand for yards around was stained with blood. Several mothers left the New Beach Hotel this morning with their children.

  July 24. Elsie came this morning. A new crime occurred at the very moment of her arrival, and I scarcely had the heart to explain the situation to her. My paleness evidently frightened her. “What is the matter?” she asked "you look ill.’ “I am ill,” I replied. “I saw something dreadful on the beach this morning.” “Good heavens!” she exclaimed; “have they found one of the children?” It was a great relief to me that she had read about the children in the New York papers. “No,” I said. “They didn’t find the children, but they found the body of a man and he- didn’t have a drop of blood in him. He had been drained dry. And all about his body the investigators found curious little mounds of yellowish slime—of ooze. When the sunlight struck this substance it glittered.” “Has it been examined under a microscope?” asked Elsie. “They are examining it now,” I explained. “We shall know the results by this evening.” “God pity us all,” said Elsie, and she staggered and nearly fell. I was obliged to support her as we entered the hotel.

  July 25. Two curious developments. The chemist who examined the jellyfish substance found near the body on the beach declares that it is living protoplasm, and he has sent it to the Department of Health for classification by one of their expert-biologists. And a deep pool some eight yards in diameter has been discovered in a rock fissure about a mile from the New Beach Hotel, which evidently harbors some queer denizens. The water in this pool is as black as ink and strongly saline. The pool is eight or ten feet from the ocean, but it is affected by the tides and descends a foot every night and morning. This morning one of the guests of the hotel, a young lady named Clara Phillips, had come upon the pool quite by accident, and being fascinated by its sinister appearance had decided to sketch it. She had seated herself on the rim of the rock fissure and was in the act of sketching in several large boulders and a strip of beach when something made a curious noise beneath her. “Gulp,” it said. “Gulp!” She gave a little cry and jumped up just in time to escape a long golden tentacle which slithered toward her over the rocks. The tentacle protruded from the very center of the pool, out of the black water, and it filled her with unutterable loathing. She stepped quickly forward and stamped upon it, and her attack was so sudden that the thing was unable to flip away from her and escape back into the water. And Miss Phillips was an amazingly strong young woman. She ground the end of the tentacle into a bloody pulp with her heel. Then she turned and ran. She ran as she had not run since her “prep” school days. But as she raced across the soft beach she fancied she could hear a monstrous, lumbering something pursuing her. It is to her credit that she did not look back.

  And this is the story of little Harry Doty. I offered him a beautiful new dime, but he told it to me gratis. I give it in his own words.

  “Yes sir, I’ve always knowed about that pool. I used to fish for crabs and sea-cucumbers and big, purple anemones in it, sir. But up until last week I allus knowed what I’d bring up. Onct or twice I used to get somethin’ a bit out o’ the ordinary, such as a bleedin'-tooth shell or a headless worm with green suckers in its tail and lookin’ like the devil on a Sunday outin’ or a knowin’-lookin’ skate what ud glare and glare at me, sir. But never nothin’ like this thing, sir. I caught it on the top o’ its head and it had the most human-lookin’ eyes I ever saw. They were blue and soulless, sir. It spat at me, and I throws down my line and beats it. I beats it, sir. Then I hears it come lumbering after me over the beach. It made a funny gulpin’ noise as if it was a-lickin’ its chops.”

  July 26. Elsie and I are leaving tomorrow. I’m on the verge of a lethal collapse. Elsie stutters whenever she tries to talk. I don’t blame her for stuttering but I can’t understand why she wants to talk at all after what we’ve seen... There are some things that can only be expressed by silence.

  The local chemist got a report -this morning from the Board of Health. The stuff found on the beach consisted of hundreds of cells very much like the cells that compose the human body. And yet they weren’t human cells. The biologists were completely mystified by ' them, and a small culture is now on its way to Washington, and another is being sent to the American Museum of Natural History.

  This morning the local authorities investigated the curious black pool in the rocks. Elsie and I and most of the other vacationists were on hand to watch operations. Thomas Wilshire, a member of the New Jersey constabulary, threw a plummet line into the pool and we all watched it eagerly as it paid out. “A hundred feet,” murmured Elsie as the police looked at one another in amazement. “It probably went into the sea,” someone exclaimed. “I don’t think the pool itself is that deep.” Thomas Wilshire shook his head. “There’s queer things in that pool,” he said. “I don’t like the looks of it.” The diver was a bristling, brave little man with some obscure nervous affliction that made him tremble violently. “You’ll have to go down at once,” said Wilshire. The diver shook his head and shuffled his feet.

  “Get him into his suit, boys!” ordered Wilshire, and the poor wretch was lifted bodily upon strong shoulders and transformed into a loathsome, goggle- eyed monster.

  In a moment he had advanced to the pool and vanished into its sinister black depths. Two men worked valiantly at the pumps, while Wilshire nodded sleepily and scratched his chin. “I wonder what he’ll find,” he mused. “Personally, I don’t think he�
��s got much chance of ever coming up. I wouldn’t be in his shoes for all the money in the United States mint.”

  After several minutes the rubber tubing began to jerk violently. “The poor lad!” muttered Wilshire. “I knew he didn’t have a chance. Pull, boys, pull!” The tubing was rapidly pulled in. There was nothing attached to it, but the lower portion was covered with glittering golden slime. Wilshire picked up the severed end and examined it casually. “Neatly clipped,” he said. “The poor devil!”

  The rest of us looked at one another in horror. Elsie grew so pale that I thought she was about to faint. Wilshire was speaking again: “We’ve made one momentous discovery,” he said. We crammed eagerly forward. Wilshire paused for the fraction of a second, and a faint smile of triumph curled his lips. “There’s something in that pool,” he finished. “Our friend’s life has not been given in vain.”

  I had an absurd desire to punch his fat, triumphant face, and might have done so, but a scream from the others quelled the impulse.

  “Look,” cried Elsie. She was pointing at the black surface of the pool. It was changing color. Slowly it was assuming a reddish hue; and then a hellish something shot up and bobbed for a moment on its surface. “A human arm!” groaned Elsie and hid her face in her hands. Wilshire whistled softly. Two more objects joined the first and then something round which made Elsie stare ,and stare through the spaces between her fingers.

  “Come away!” I commanded. “Come away at once.” I seized her by the arm and was in the act of forcefully leading her from the edge of that dreadful charnel, for charnel it had become, when I was arrested by a shout from Wilshire.

  “Look at it! Look at it!” he yelled. “That’s the horrid thing. God, it isn’t human!”

  We both turned back and stared. There are blasphemies of creation that can not be' described, and the thing which rose up to claim the escaping fragments of its dismantled prey was of that order. I remember vaguely, as in a nightmare of Tartarus, that it had long golden arms which shone and sparkled in the sunlight, and a monstrous curved beak below two piercing black eyes in which I saw nothing but unutterable malice.

  The idea of standing there and watching it munch the fragmentary remains of the poor little diver was intolerable to me, and in spite of the loud protests of Wilshire, who wanted us, I suppose, to try and do something about it, I turned and ran, literally dragging Elsie with me. This was, as it turned out, the wisest thing that I could have done, because the thing later emerged from the pool and nearly got several of the vacationists. Wilshire fired at it twice with a pistol, but the thing flopped back into the water apparently unharmed and submerged triumphantly.

  3.Statement of Henry Greb, Prescription Druggist

  I usually shut up shop at 10 o’clock, but at closing time, that evening I was leaning over the counter reading a ghost story, and it was so extremely interesting that I couldn’t walk out on it. My nose was very close to the page and I didn’t notice anything that was going on about me when suddenly I happened to look up and there he was standing and watching me.

  I’ve seen some pale people in my time (most people that come with prescriptions are pale) and I've seen some skinny people, but I never have seen anyone as thin and pale as the young man that stood before me.

  “Good heavens!” I said, and shut the book.

  The young man’s lips were twisted into a sickly smile. “Sorry to bother you,” he says. “But I’m in a bad way. I’m in desperate need of medical attention!”

  “What can I do to. help you?” I says.

  He looks at me very solemnly, as if he were making up his mind whether he could trust me. “This is really a case for a physician,” he says.

  “It’s against the law for us to handle such cases,” I told him.

  Suddenly he held out his hand. I gasped. The fingers were smashed into a bloody pulp, and blood was running down his wrist. “Do something to stop the bleeding,” he says. “I’ll see a physician later.”

  Well, I got out some gauze and bound the hand up as best I could. “See a doctor at once,” I told him. “Blood-poisoning will set in if you’re not careful. Luckily, none of the-bones are fractured.”

  He nodded, and for a moment his eyes flashed. “Damn that woman!” he muttered. “Damn her!”

  “What’s that?” I asked, but he had got himself together again and merely smiled. “I’m all upset,” he said. “Didn’t know just what I was saying—you must pardon me. By the way, I’ve got a little gash on my scalp which you might look at.”

  He removed his cap and I noticed that his hair was dripping wet. He parted it with his hand and revealed a nasty abrasion about an inch wide. I examined it carefully.

  “Your friend wasn’t very careful when he cast that plug,” I says at length. “I never believe in fly-fishing when there’s two in the boat. A friend of mine lost an eye that way.”

  “It was made by a fish-hook,” he confessed. “You’re something of a Sherlock Holmes, aren’t you?”

  I brushed aside his compliment with a careless gesture and turned for the bottle of carbolic acid which rested on the shelf behind me. It was then that I heard something between a growl and a gulp from the young man.

  I wheeled abruptly, and .caught him in the act of springing upon me. He was foaming at the mouth and his eyes bulged. I reached forward and seized him by the shoulders and in a moment we were engaged in a desperate struggle upon the floor. He bit and scratched and kicked at me; and I was obliged to silence him by pummeling his face. It was at that moment that I noticed a peculiar fishy odor in the room, as if a breeze from the sea hSTd entered through the open door.

  For several moments I struggled and fought and strained and then something seemed to give suddenly beneath me. The young man slipped from my grasp and made for the door. I endeavored to follow, but I stumbled over something slippery and fell flat upon my face.

  When I got up, the young man was gone, and in my hand I held something so weird that I could scarcely believe that it was real, and later I flung it from me with a cry of disgust. It was a reddish, rubbery substance about five inches long, and its under edge was lined with little golden suckers that opened and closed while I stared at them.

  I was still laboring under a fearful strain when Harry Morton entered the shop. He was trembling violently, and I noticed that he gazed fearfully behind him as he approached the counter.

  “What’s the best thing you have for highfalutin-acting nerves?” he asks.

  “Bromides,” I says. “I can mix you some. But what’s the trouble with your nerves, Harry?”

  “Hallucinations,” he groans. “Them, and other things.”

  “Tell me about it,” I says.

  “I was leanin’ ’gainst a lamppost,” he says, “and-1 sees a big lumbering yellowish thing walkin’ along the street like a man. It wasn’t natural, Henry. I’m not superstitious, but that there thing wasn’t natural. And then it flops into the gutter and runs like a streak of lightnin’. It made a funny noise, too. It said ‘Gulp.’ ”

  I mixed the bromides and handed him the glass over the counter. “I understand, Harry,” I says. “But don’t go about blowing your head off. No one would believe you.”

  4.Statement of Helen Bowan

  I was sitting on the porch knitting when a young man with a bag stops in front of the house and looks up at me. “Good morning, madam,” he says, “have you a room with bath?”

  “Look at the sign, young man,” I says to him. “I’ve a nice light room on the second floor that should just suit you.”

  Up he comes and smiles at me. But as soon as I saw him close I didn’t like him. He was so terribly thin, and his hand was bandaged, and he looked as if he had been in a fight.

  “How much do you want for the room?” he asks.

  “Twelve dollars,” I told him. I wanted to get rid of him and I thought the .high rate would scare him off, but his hand goes suddenly into his pocket and he brings out a roll of bills, and begins counting them. I
gets up very quickly and bows politely to him and takes his grip away from him, and rushes into the hall with it. I didn’t want to lose a prospect like that. Cousin Hiram has a game which he plays with shells, and I knew that the young man would be Cousin Hiram’s oyster.

  I takes him upstairs and shows him the room and he; seems quite pleased with it. But when he sees the bathtub he begins jumping up and down like a schoolboy, and clapping his hands and acting so odd that I begins to suspect that he is going out of his mind. “It’s just the right size!” he shouts. “I hope you won’t mind my keeping it filled all day. I bathe quite often. But I must have some salt to put into it. I can’t bathe in fresh water!”

  “He’s certainly a queer one,” I thought, “but I ain’t complaining. It isn’t often, Hiram and I land a fish as rich as this one.”

  Finally he calms down and pushes me out of the room. “Everything’s all right,” he says. “But I don’t want to be disturbed. When you get the salt, put it down in the hall and knock on the door. Under no circumstances must anyone enter this room.”

  He closed the door in my face and I heard the key grate in the lock. I didn’t like it, and I didn’t like the sounds that began to come from behind that door. First I heard a great sigh as if somehow he had got something disagreeable of? his chest, and then I heard a funny gulping sound that I didn’t like. He didn’t waste any time in turning on the water either. I heard a great splashing and wallowing, and then, after about fifteen minutes, everything became as quiet as death.

  We didn’t hear anything more from him until that evening, when I sent Lizzie up with the salt. At first she tried the door, but it was locked, and she was obliged to put the bag down in the hall. But she didn’t go away. She squeezed up close against the wall and waited. After about ten minutes the door opened slowly and a long, thin arm shot out and took in the bag. Lizzie said that the arm was yellow and dripping wet, and the thinnest arm she had ever seen. “But he’s a thin young man, Lizzie,” I explains to her. “That may be,” she says, “but I never saw a human being with an arm like that before!”