The Year's Best Horror Stories 1

by Richard Davis (Ed. )

  It told nothing of the beings who once lived in Ib, nor anything of the long-dead inhabitants of Sarnath. It spoke only of the destruction which the men of Sarnath had brought to the beings of Ib—and of the resulting DOOM that came to Sarnath. This doom was wrought by the Gods of the beings of Ib, but of those Gods I could learn not a thing. I only knew that reading that stone and being in Ib had stirred long-hidden memories, perhaps even ancestral memories, in my mind. Again that feeling of closeness to home, that feeling I always felt so strongly on the moors in Yorkshire, flooded over me. Then, as I idly moved the rushes at the base of the pillar with my foot, yet more chiselled inscriptions appeared. I cleared away the slime and read on. There remained only a few lines—but those lines contained my clue:

  "Ib is gone but the Gods live on. Across the world is the Sister City, hidden in the earth, in the barbarous lands of Zimmeria. There The People flourish yet, and there will the Gods ever be worshipped; even unto the coming of Cthulhu . . ."

  Many months later in Cairo, I sought out a man steeped in elder-lore, a widely acknowledged authority on forbidden antiquities and prehistoric lands and legends. This sage had never heard of Zimmeria, but he did know of a land which had once had a name much similar. "And where did this Cimmeria lie?" I asked.

  "Unfortunately," my erudite advisor answered, consulting a chart, "most of Cimmeria now lies beneath the sea, but originally it lay between Vanaheim and Nemedia in ancient Hyborea."

  "You say most of it is sunken?" I queried. "But what of the land which lies above the sea?" Perhaps it was the eagerness in my voice that caused him to glance at me the way he did. Again, perhaps it was my queer aspect; for the hot suns of many lands had hardened my hairless skin most peculiarly and a strong web now showed between my fingers.

  "Why do you wish to know?" he asked. "What is it you are seeking?"

  "Home—" I answered instinctively, not knowing what prompted me to say it.

  "Yes . . ." He said, studying me closely. "That might well be . . ." He smiled strangely. "You are an Englishman, are you not? May I enquire from which part?"

  "From the North-East," I answered, reminded suddenly of my moors. "Why do you want to know?"

  "My friend, you have searched in vain," he smiled. "For Cimmeria, or that which remains of it, encompasses all of that north-eastern part of England which is your homeland. Is it not ironic? In order to find your home . . . you have left it . . .!"

  That night fate dealt me a card which I could not ignore. In the lobby of my hotel was a table devoted solely to the reading habits of the English-speaking residents. Upon it was a wide variety of books, paperbacks, newspapers and journals, ranging from The Reader's Digest to The News of the World, and to pass a few hours in relative coolness I sat beneath a soothing fan with a glass of iced water and idly glanced through one of the newspapers.

  Abruptly, on turning a page, I came upon a picture and an article which, when I had scanned the thing through, caused me to book a seat on the next flight to London.

  The picture was poorly reproduced but was still clear enough for me to see that it depicted a small, green figurine—the duplicate of that which I had salvaged from the ruins of Sarnath beneath the still pool . . .

  The article, as best I can remember, read like this:

  "Mr. Samuel Davies, of 17 Heddington Crescent, Radcar, found the beautiful relic of bygone ages pictured above in a stream whose only known source is the cliff-face at Sarby-on-the-Moors. The figurine is now in Radcar Museum, having been donated by Mr. Davies, and is being studied by the curator, Prof. Gordon Walmsley of Goole. So far Prof. Walmsley has been unable to throw any light on the figurine's origin but the Wendy-Smith Test, a scientific means of checking the age of archaeological fragments, has shown it to be over ten thousand years old. The green figurine does not appear to have any connection with any of the better known civilizations of ancient England and is thought to be a find of rare importance. Unfortunately, expert pot-holers have given unanimous opinions that the stream where it springs from the cliff at Sarby, is totally untraversable."

  The next day, during the flight, I slept for an hour or so and again, in my dreams, I saw my parents. As before they appeared to me in a mist—but their beckonings were stronger than in that previous dream and in the blanketing vapours around them were strange figures, bowed in seeming obeisance, while a chant of teasing familiarity rang from hidden and nameless throats . . .

  I had wired my housekeeper from Cairo, informing her of my returning, and when I arrived at my house in Marske I found a solicitor waiting for me. This gentleman introduced himself as being Mr. Harvey, of the Radcar firm of Harvey, Johnson and Harvey, and presented me with a large sealed envelope. It was addressed to me in my father's hand, and Mr. Harvey informed me his instructions had been to deliver the envelope into my hands on the attainment of my twenty-first birthday. Unfortunately I had been out of the country at the time, almost a year earlier, but the firm had kept in touch with my housekeeper so that on my return the agreement made nearly seven years earlier between my father and Mr. Harvey's firm might be kept.

  After Mr. Harvey left I dismissed my woman and opened the envelope. The manuscript within was not in any script I had ever learned at school. This was the language I had seen written on that aeon-old pillar in ancient Ib; nonetheless I knew instinctively that it had been my father's hand which had written the thing. And of course, I could read it as easily as if it were in English. The many and diverse contents of the letter made it, as I have said, more akin to a manuscript in its length and it is not my purpose to completely reproduce it. That would take too long and the speed with which The First Change is taking place does not permit it. I will merely set down the specially significant points which the letter brought to my attention.

  In disbelief I read the first paragraph—but, as I read on, that initial disbelief became a weird amazement which in turn became a savage joy at the fantastic disclosures revealed by those timeless hieroglyphs of Ib.

  My parents were not dead! They had merely . . . gone away . . . gone home . . .

  That time nearly seven years ago, when I had returned home from a school reduced to ruins by the bombing, our London home had been purposely sabotaged by my father. A powerful explosive had been rigged, primed to be set off by the first air-raid siren, and then my parents had gone off in secrecy back to the moors. They had not known, I realized, that I was on my way home from the ruined school where I boarded. Even now they were unaware that I had arrived at the house just as the radar defences of England's military services had picked out those hostile dots in the sky. That plan which had been so carefully laid to fool men into believing that my parents were dead had worked well; but it had also nearly destroyed me. And all this time I, too, had believed them killed. But why had they gone to such extremes? What was that secret which it was so necessary to hide from our fellow men—and where were my parents now? I read on . . .

  Slowly all was revealed. We were not—indigenous—to England, my parents and I, and they had brought me here as an infant from our homeland, a land quite near yet paradoxically far away. The letter went on to explain how all the children of our race are brought here as infants, for the atmosphere of our homeland is not conducive to health in the young and unformed. The difference in my case had been that my mother was unable to part with me. That was the awful thing! Though all the children of our race must wax and grow up away from their homeland, the elders can only rarely depart from their native clime. This fact is determined by their physical appearance throughout the greater period of their life-spans. For they are not, for the better part of their lives, either the physical or mental counterparts of ordinary men!

  This means that children have to be left on doorsteps, at the entrances of orphanages, in churches and in other places where they will be found and cared for; for in extreme youth there is little difference between my race and the race of men. As I read I was reminded of those tales of fantasy I had once loved; of ghouls a
nd fairies and other creatures who left their young to be reared by human beings and who stole human children to be brought up in their own likenesses.

  Was that then my destiny? Was I to be a ghoul? I read on. I learned that the people of my race can only leave our native country twice in their lives; once in youth—when, as I have explained, they are brought here of necessity to be left until they attain the approximate age of twenty-one years—and once in later life, when changes in their appearances make them compatible to outside conditions. My parents had just reached this latter stage of their—development—when I was born. Because of my mother's devotion they had forsaken their duties in our own land and had brought me personally to England where, ignoring The Laws, they stayed with me. My father had brought certain treasures with him to ensure an easy life for himself and my mother until that time should come when they would be forced to leave me, the Time of The Second Change, when to stay would be to alert Mankind to our existence.

  That time had eventually arrived and they had covered up their departure back to our own, secret land by blowing up our London home; letting the authorities and I (though it must have broken my mother's heart) believe them dead of a German bomb raid.

  And how could they have done otherwise? They dared not take the chance of telling me what I really was; for who can say what effect such a disclosure would have had on me, I who had barely begun to show my difference? They had to hope I would discover the secret myself, or at least the greater part of it, which I have done! But to be doubly sure my father left his letter.

  The letter also told how not many foundlings find their way back to their own land. Accidents claim some and others go mad. At this point I was reminded of something I had read somewhere of two inmates of Oakdeene Sanatorium near Glasgow who are horribly mad and so unnatural in aspect that they are not even allowed to be seen and even their nurses cannot abide to stay near them for long. Yet others become hermits in wild and inaccessible places and, worst of all, still others suffer more hideous fates—and I shuddered as I read what those fates were.

  But there were those few who did manage to get back. These were the lucky ones, those who returned to claim their rights; and while some of them were guided back—by adults of the race during second visits—others made it by instinct or luck. Yet horrible though this overall plan of existence seemed to be, the letter explained its logic. For my homeland could not support many of my kind and those perils of lunacy brought on by inexplicable physical changes, of accidents, and of those other fates I have mentioned acted as a system of selection whereby only the fittest in mind and body returned to the land of their birth.

  But there; I have just finished reading the letter through a second time—and already I begin to feel a stiffening of my limbs. The receipt of my father's manuscript came barely in time. I have long been worried by my growing differences. The webbing on my hands now extends almost to the small, first knuckles and my skin is fantastically thick, rough and ichthyic. The short tail which protrudes from the base of my spine is now not so much an oddity as an addition; an extra limb which, in the light of what I now know, is not an oddity at all but the most natural thing in the world! My hairlessness, with the discovery of my destiny, has also ceased to be an embarrassment to me. I am different to men, true, but is that not as it should be? For I am not a man . . .

  Ah, the lucky fates which caused me to pick up that newspaper in Cairo! Had I not seen that picture or read that article I might not have returned so soon to my moors and I shudder to think what might have become of me then! What would I have done after The First Change had altered me? Would I have hurried, disguised and wrapped in smothering clothes, to some distant land—there to live the life of a hermit? Perhaps I would have returned to Ib or the Nameless City, to dwell in ruins and solitude until my appearance was again capable of sustaining my existence among men. And what after that—after The Second Change?

  Perhaps I would have gone mad at such inexplicable alterations in my person. Who knows but there might have been another inmate at Oakdeene? On the other hand my fate might have been worse than all these; for I may have been drawn to dwell in the depths, to be one with the Deep Ones in the worship of Dagon and Great Cthulhu, as have others before me.

  But no! By good fortune, by the learning gained on my far journeys and by the help given me by my father's document, I have been spared all those terrors which others of my kind have known. I will return to Ib's Sister City, to Lh-yib, in that land of my birth beneath these Yorkshire Moors; that land from which was washed the green figurine which is the duplicate of the one I raised from beneath the pool at Sarnath. I will return to be worshipped by those whose ancestral brothers died at Ib on the spears of the men of Sarnath; those who are so aptly described on the Brick Cylinders of Kadatheron; those who chant voicelessly in the abyss. I will return to Lh-yib!

  For even now I hear my mother's voice, calling me as she did when I was a child and used to wander these very moors: "Bob! Little Bo! Where are you?"

  Bo, she used to call me, and would only laugh when I asked her why. But why not? Was Bo not a fitting name? Robert—Bob—Bo? What odds? Blind fool that I have been! I never really pondered the fact that my parents were never quite like other people; not even towards the end . . .

  Were not my ancestors worshipped in grey stone Ib before the coming of men, in the earliest days of Earth's evolution? I should have guessed my identity when first I brought that figurine up out of the slime; for the features of the thing were as my own features will be after The First Change, and engraved upon its base in the ancient letters of Ib—letters I could read because they were part of my native language, the precursor of all languages—was my own name!

  . . . Bokrug: Water-Lizard God of the people of Ib and Lh-yib, the Sister City!

  Note:

  Sir,

  Attached to this manuscript, "Annex 'A' " to my report, was a brief note of explanation addressed to the NECB in Newcastle and reproduced as follows:

  Robert Krug,

  Marske,

  Yorks.,

  Evening—19 July '52.

  Secretary and Members,

  NECB, Newcastle-on-Tyne.

  Gentlemen of the North-East Coal-Board:

  My discovery lately, in the pages of a popular science magazine, of your Yorkshire Moors Project, scheduled to commence next summer, determined me, upon the culmination of some recent travels of mine, to write you this letter. You will see that my letter is a protest against your proposals to drill deep into the moors in order to set off underground explosions in the hope of creating pockets of gas to be tapped as part of the country's natural resources. It is quite possible that the undertaking envisioned by your scientific advisors would mean the destruction of two ancient races of sentient life! The prevention of such destruction is that which causes me to break the laws of my race and thus announce the existence of them and their servitors. In order to explain my protest more fully I think it necessary that I tell my whole story. Perhaps upon reading the enclosed manuscript you will suspend indefinitely your projected operations . . .

  Robert Krug . . .

  POLICE REPORT M-Y-127/52

  Alleged Suicide

  Sir,

  I have to report that at Dilham, on the 20th July 1952, at about four-thirty p.m., I was on duty at the Police Station when three children (statements attached at Annex 'B') reported to the Desk Sgt. that they had seen a "funny man" climb the fence at Devil's Pool, ignoring the warning notices, and throw himself into the stream where it vanishes into the hillside. Accompanied by the eldest of the children I went to the scene of the alleged occurrence, about three-quarters of a mile over the moors from Dilham, where the spot that the "funny man" allegedly climbed the fence was pointed out to me. There were signs that someone had recently gone over the fence; trampled grass and grass-stains on the timbers. With slight difficulty I climbed the fence myself but was unable to decide whether or not the children had told the truth. There was no
evidence in or around the pool to suggest that anyone had thrown himself in—but this is hardly surprising as at that point, where the stream enters the hillside, the water rushes steeply downwards into the earth. Once in the water only an extremely strong swimmer would be able to get back out. Three experienced pot-holers were lost at this same spot in August last year when they attempted a partial reconnoitre of the stream's underground course.

  When I further questioned the boy I had taken with me, I was told that a second man had been on the scene prior to the incident. This other man had been seen to limp as though he was hurt, and he had gone into a nearby cave. This had occurred shortly before the "funny man"—described as being green and having a short, flexible tail—came out of the same cave, went over the fence and threw himself into the pool.

  On inspecting the said cave I found what appeared to be an animal-hide of some sort, split down the arms and legs and up the belly, in the manner of the trophies of big-game hunters. This object was rolled up neatly in one corner of the cave and is now in the Found-Property Room at the Police Station in Dilham. Near this hide was a hat and a complete set of good-quality gent's clothing, neatly folded and laid down. In the inside pocket of the jacket I found a wallet containing, along with fourteen pounds in one-pound notes, a card bearing the address of a house in Marske; namely, 11 Sunderland Crescent. These articles of clothing, plus the wallet, are also now in the Found-Property Room.

  At about six-thirty p.m., I went to the above address in Marske and interviewed the housekeeper, one Mrs. White, who provided me with a statement (attached at Annex 'C') in respect of her partial employer, Robert Krug. Mrs. White also gave me two envelopes, one of which contained the manuscript attached to this report at Annex 'A'. Mrs. White had found this envelope, sealed, with a note asking her to deliver it, when she went to the house on the afternoon of the 20th about half an hour before I arrived. In view of the enquiries I was making and because of their nature, i.e—an investigation into the possible suicide of Mr. Krug, Mrs. White thought it was best that the envelope be given to the police. Apart from this she was at a loss what to do with it because Krug had forgotten to address it. As there was the possibility of the envelope containing a suicide note or dying declaration I accepted it.