Return of the Deep Ones: And Other Mythos Tales

by Brian Lumley

  Even about these visits I had my own ideas: was the lizard-being in fact a doctor, a psychiatrist, taking me back purposely along the paths of my past in a medically acceptable attempt to correct the malfunctions of my psyche?

  During one session with Bokrug, I asked him to explain in greater detail the origin of the underworld’s strange lighting—system.

  “As I have said,” he began, “the tiny, living motes that comprise these nimbuses above our heads and part of the atmosphere in the great cave, are what you call polypous. They are in fact basic life-tissues, from which, under the right conditions, all sorts of species and forms of life might spring.” He paused to peer closely at me. “You are learned—do you know anything of the Ubbo-Sathla Cycle?”

  “It rings a bell,” I answered, “and yet I can’t say I specifically remember having heard or read anything of it. What is this cycle—a mythological contemporary of the Cthulhu Cult or something of that nature?”

  “Ah! Then you have heard of Loathly Lord Cthulhu? Yes, probably you have come across Ubbo-Sathla in the same connection. Well, Ubbo-Sathla is reputed in myth to have been the source of all Earthly life; according to certain books I know to exist in the surface world, Ubbo-Sathla ‘spawned the grey, formless efts of the prime, and the grisly prototypes of terrene life.’ The story goes on to explain: ‘And all Earthly life shall go back at last through the great circle of time to Ubbo-Sathla.’ Well, it is my own opinion that this—” he passed his flat hand through the halo over my head, “and Ubbo-Sathla are one and the same; and that you, therefore, are a son of Shoggoth.”

  “Shoggoth!” I started, recalling those hideous dreams of old, in the nights following my glance into the pages of the Necronomicon. “Did you say Shoggoth?”

  “Yes, for that is the name given their creation by its original makers—those Great Old Ones, here even before the Earth was fully formed, hundreds of millions of years ago. They called their protoplasmic creation ‘Shoggoth-tissue’, and from it carved themselves beasts of burden—to build their cities and perform their heavier duties—beasts that eventually evolved powers which made them extremely dangerous to the Old Ones. The Shoggoths grew ever more clever, more imitative, more ambitious and ever the more sullen, until a time some one hundred and fifty million years ago when they turned in a great uprising on their masters. That the Old Ones managed to subdue them was a mercy …

  “When we and the Thuun’ha settled here in these caves, we discovered—well, a cache of primal Shoggoth-tissue, still living, but in a form harmless as a shoal of lowly amoebas. We created many strains of simple life from this source—the light-clouds are but one form—but as with the Old Ones, so with us. Our slave-cultures quickly developed powers of their own, until we were forced to destroy them. Now, save for this “lighting-system”, as you call it, and for one other form, Lh-yib and its precincts are completely free of Shoggoths.”

  “One other form?” I repeated him, making it a question.

  “Yes, more truly a Shoggoth, as pictured in tortured nightmares by certain sensitive dreamers in the surface world. It serves a purpose here—a necessary function—and it is in no position to threaten our existence. In the perpetual, barren environment in which we keep it, there exists no opportunity for … learning! It has reached its peak.”

  “But where is this thing?” I demanded to know. “Is it possible I might be allowed to … to see it?”

  The lizard-creature studied me gravely for a moment before answering: “If you keep my ordinances, you will never have reason to see it—that I promise you—and I pray you never shall see it, for that would be your end …”

  After this conversation, in my next five or six ‘sleep’ periods, I had recurrent nightmares involving Shoggoths; iridescent blackness, the living excreta of nameless, alien super-creatures; viscous agglutinations of bubbling cells, churning and surging through subterrene tunnels like sentient mucus in a cosmic sinus.

  The worst of these nightmares saw me in a great pit with a twenty-foot statue of a water-lizard god. The floor of the place was littered with bones, many of them covered with an evil-smelling black slime—a slime that I somehow knew to be the ‘snail-trail’ of a Shoggoth—and even as I shrieked and frantically tried to climb out of that awful pit, I could hear the rumble of an approaching something; a something that sent before it a smell so noxious and alien as to make my senses reel from the incredible assault. A jagged hole led into the pit from somewhere down below, and it was from this hole that the smell belched, ever thicker, ever stronger; and it was from this hole that I knew the horror must soon burst in all its monstrous unreality …

  After dreams such as this it was good to ‘wake’ and find myself still in my now friendly, comfortable cave. But in a little while these terrible nightmares ceased and eventually there came a time when for all the lizard—thing’s visits, and for all my ponderings and ‘rationalizations’, I grew heartily sick of the cave and its appointments. Why, the place was no less than a prison, a cage evolved of my own diseased imaginings! And yet, having created the barriers, might I not as easily tear them down?

  That was how my wanderings in the subterranean world first began, and soon they became regular excursions, so that after every three or four resting-periods (those times when I ‘slept’ on my heather bed) I would be taken by the urge to get out of the cave and explore a little further along the unknown tunnels.

  At first I used to worry about what would happen if my firefly familiars should ever leave me, but after a while, when I saw just how faithfully that luminous cloud kept its place above my head, I lost this fear; and then my wanderings became extensive, and in spite of the warning of the lizard-being I took to exploring those passages down which he had specifically ordered me never to venture.

  I could only believe later that the ‘warning’ of Bokrug had been my own subconscious reluctance to let myself delve any further down those channels of my mind where Aberration had its strongest hold. Certainly there were far more fearsome places in this dream—world than my comparatively comfortable cave. Just how fearsome I was yet to discover …

  XII: Singers of Strange Songs

  Dream-Phase Six

  [The Masters Case: From the Recordings of Dr Eugene T. Thappon]

  Throughout all my dream-adventures ‘underground’ from that time on, within the cave appointed me by the lizard-being or in … other places … periodically I would hear—sometimes quite clearly as if from near at hand, at other times distantly, a mere murmur in my inner ear—strange songs of ululant praise from somewhere in this subterranean complex of my mind. I spent quite a lot of time during the earlier ‘days’ of my entombment wondering about the real source of those sounds; for of course I knew they did not issue (as my Bokrug archetype had had it) from the worshipful minions of the water-lizard gods: Bokrug and the like being non-existent except in my own chaotic brain. The sounds were purely imaginary, as was everything else, and no end of puzzling could do me any good; but in any case, they provided me an interesting point of contemplation and conjecture.

  I would rouse from fretful dreams or rare hallucinations to their soulful, often elf-like timbre, and at other times I would start from the desolate byways of sprawling Hypochondria on hearing the commencement of a new phase of those throbbing—hymns?

  With the passage of some time it grew on me that whatever the sounds were they never heralded any change in my environment (I used to fear at first that they were the harbingers of more hideous things to come or even deeper depths of mental degeneration), and with that realization came a stronger urge to rationalize and at least seek some scientific, if incorrect, theory as to their origin.

  I had in fact ‘rationalized’ on many things—Bokrug I had seen first as an archetype, as in C. G. Jung, then as a doctor; my presence in this cthonian dream had obviously come about through my deep interest in the possibility that the figurine at Radcar had originated in just such a place; the fever-inducing ‘mushrooms’ represented an atte
mpt by some subconscious Me to explain away my decidedly opiatic condition, etc., etc! But these sounds were something else.

  It could only be, I told myself, that my mind had started to dig out all sorts of obscure bits of information on subterranean subjects from things I had read long ago (and long ago thought forgotten), and that to make my dream-state more complete was inserting these bits and pieces into the greater hallucination.

  And this theory fitted in well in respect of certain things I could actually remember having read or heard about caverns. For example: those sounds—

  Yes, I had read how strange noises or echoes sometimes issue, even to the surface, from deep underground. Miners in England's north-east coal mines—probably in other regions—quite religiously record and act upon supposed indications of the conditions of their pits coming to them in the form of underground grumblings and groanings, and sometimes even throbbings and whistles. Certain noises convey to them especially bad omens, and it is not unknown for them to refuse to work a shaft which does not behave itself in this respect. In antiquity cavern oracles were frequently consulted, usually by sibyls, and the Cumaean sibyl was most celebrated for her trance—interpretations of ‘noises’ from the bottom of her cave. Other oracular springs, grottoes and potholes existed everywhere in the Old World, and in Morocco there are still caves where people sleep in the hope of seeing visions believed to be indicative of their futures; visions influenced by the ‘spirit voices’ echoing from unknown vaults beneath. In fact there is a legend in Morocco, in regard of one particularly active cavern, wherein it is told a marriage procession once took refuge from a storm. There the members of the procession became transformed into stone, but today people swear they can still hear the songs, chattering and general gaiety of that long-gone entourage.

  Norbert Casteret, perhaps the greatest of all speleologists, has written of a certain ‘Magic Flute’ phenomenon, when he has heard strange, melodious music underground; and has explained the mystery away in observing its origin: drops of water, falling from a height into hollow, flute-like channels and tubes—tubes formed by the very droplets themselves!

  So then, with all these odd facts and bits of knowledge floating about in my delirious head, was it really so strange that having ‘dreamt’ myself underground in the first place I should now imagine myself to be hearing those queerly disturbing ‘songs’?

  No, it was not so strange; indeed, in my state, it was acceptable—had to be acceptable!—provided that my mind did not carry its fancies too far! But suppose I should conjure up for myself the Thuun’ha “in the flesh”, as it were? I dreaded the thought of finding myself confronted by creatures the like of those described on the Brick Cylinders of Kadatheron—for any singers of songs such as those I had heard must be very strange singers indeed …!

  XIII: The Calcium Labyrinth

  Dream-Phase Seven

  [The Masters Case: From the Recordings of Dr Eugene T. Thappon]

  On one occasion (I am reduced to the use of this term by the fact that without any means of measuring time—and immersed as I was constantly in this long, fantastic dream—I was left completely disorientated regards the hour, the day, the week, even the month at any specific dream-moment) I wandered in a direction which I had never taken before. I branched off down strange tunnels, ever leaving my mark on entrance and exit walls, until I came to an area of that underground world literally honeycombed with caves, holes and burrows of sizes varying from the merest rat-hole, through many intermediary grades, to great yawning orifices of about fifteen feet in diameter.

  Closer inspection of the walls in this place brought me to a startling and awe-inspiring conclusion. At some time in the remote past there had existed here an unthinkably vast cavern of comparatively low ceiling but tremendous width and length—perhaps a titanic ‘split’ between layers of primeval bedrock—and water seepage over countless aeons had formed stalactites and stalagmites, which depending and ascending projections of rock-hard calcium carbonate had eventually joined up to form the walls and pillars of the great maze through which I now wandered. Perhaps those very formations themselves had finally stemmed the flow of their own genesis; or had some other cause stopped the mineral-rich seepage from completely filling in the tremendous cavity? I could not say, but certainly the place had seen no moisture for many, many centuries. A fine dust lay between the columns, though where this substance had its origin I was likewise unable to guess, and its surface was so even that my footprints made quite clear tracks behind me. It was this fact that caused me to put away my lump of chalky rock. It seemed pointless to mark my route when each step I took left a clear ‘spoor’ by which to make an eventual return …

  How far I wandered through that weird calcium labyrinth must remain purely a thing of conjecture. If my time-sense—even dreaming—had been disorganized before, why, now it suffered devastation in those white-walled centuried caves! The silence was so complete (for some reason the magnificent maze was void of echoes) and the lure of unseen caves ahead and seemingly interminable powder—floored passages lulled my mind into an uneasy dullness of thought ignoring time completely.

  I was shaken from this stupefaction, this phase of mindless wandering, by suddenly feeling on my face and arms the coolness of a slight draught; a breeze which grew rapidly by leaps and bounds to a wind, a gale forcing my tattered shirt and raggy trousers against me, pushing me irresistibly along the calcium corridors against all my efforts to resist. In a matter of seconds I was stumbling, then running, lurching wildly from wall to wall, blinded and choking in the clouds of dust swirling up from the floor into my eyes and nostrils. Once, in Cyprus, I had been caught in a dust-devil, and now I knew something of that experience again; but this time, rather than a phenomenon of scientific interest, the thing was horrifying, indeed, a threat to my life! Now I knew whence came those passage-refreshing winds at the Time of the Mist, when, as Bokrug had had it, “the tunnels are made to breathe outwardly …”

  Then, when it seemed there was no air left in the whole of that hideous underworld, as I clawed at my tortured throat and eyes in an agony of suffocation, the wind dropped as quickly as it had risen and the dust again settled toward the floor.

  As rapidly as that it was over. I could breathe again. My nimbus of living light re-formed itself above my head and, as my breath came more easily, so my position was more clearly illumined. For as I gathered my buffeted senses, crouching there against the calcium wall for support, I began to realize the horror of my situation. Not a single footprint remained in the freshly settling dust to hint of my whereabouts or of the path I must take to regain the cavern I had made my home. I who had been so vastly amazed by the variety of form and size of the myriad openings around me, now feared them in a like degree.

  Which one?—which of these hundreds of aeon—formed doorways offered a safe return to sanctuary? And beyond that first as yet unknown gate, how many more possible combinations of routes must lie within the incredibly complex maze between me and the comparative friendliness of my secluded chamber?

  Terror and panic soon defeated logic. After a pause of only a minute or so I began to walk the dusty, silent corridors, then to run, until I left my guardian cloud of St Elmo’s fire behind, stumbling blindly along in a gloom which might well have existed undisturbed from a time predating the mammoth; and in so doing I came as close and closer than ever before to subterranean disaster!

  Seconds after the last dancing motes of living light had receded behind me, leaving me lurching along in a midnight panic—flight, I bumped roughly into an unseen wall, careened over a projection jutting up from the floor and fell sprawling, with all the remaining wind knocked from me, full length in the dark. As my reeling senses steadied I found that my right arm, which I had flung protectively before me, and my head, hung limply, unsupported in empty space. As I have told before, I have never been much of a one for heights, so that the sight that slowly unfolded as my cloud of fireflies gathered ranks once more above me caused
me to cringe in fear and wriggle desperately backwards away from the yawning chasm into which I had almost plunged.

  I had emerged from the calcium labyrinth on to a vast ledge extending to right and left as far as the light from my fiery familiars reached, and beyond which descended with stark, sheer sides, a great black hole going down to unguessed depths.

  Curious despite my fear, I edged slowly forward on my stomach until my eyes again peeped over the lip of the chasm; and then, for the first time, I remembered and attempted to use an ability that Bokrug had once told me would be mine to command, which I had not yet had occasion to experiment with. I simply squeezed my mind, concentrating, ordering the brightly glowing halo to desert me and descend into the abyss.

  And it worked!

  So! This told me something at least—that my mind was fully capable of supporting its own fictions!

  I forced the glowing cloud down, down into the unknown pit, and the solid dark of the cave-world settled like a shroud about me, so that but for the feel of the hard rock beneath my body I might well have imagined myself a spirit floating free in the vacuous voids of space. Equally ultimate was the silence, with the only sound to disturb that singular stillness being the unsteady beating of my own heart—or was that, too, merely my imagination? Often I was to ponder that possibility; that I was in fact dead, a troubled soul wandering alone in a personal and private Phlegethon …

  After what seemed a long while, when the light from the cloud still receding into the depths had become nothing more than a dim glow far, far down, I was on the point of calling a mental halt to my experiment when I was taken by an idea. I held the cloud stationary, where it was, while I groped with my hands around the lip of the chasm until I found a sharply projecting knob of stone. I managed to prise the stone free, letting it fall vertically from my fingers into the abysmal shaft. I began to count, but stopped to hold my breath in astonishment when I reached a score; yet it was not until some seconds after I stopped counting that the glowing speck below suddenly flew apart as the falling stone hurtled through its members!