The Shadow Beyond

by Daniel Reiner

  One example of these, for example, was the amphibious race of creatures I’d read about earlier, reported to live in seas around the globe. Mr. Hunt indicated that they could breed with human beings, and produce viable offspring who can pass as human beings unless examined very closely. He said they worshipped a being known as Cthulhu, asleep in his city of R’lyeh somewhere in the deep oceans. The thing would sleep until the stars are right—thus bringing me back around to the enigmatic equations. The ‘facts’ all continued to reinforce each other in a consistent framework.

  I found other names, such as Tsathoggua, Shub Niggurath, Hastur, Yog Sothoth, Azathoth. Of these, there were no details beyond the conjecture that these Ancient Ones were at the root of a depraved cult of worship, thereby explaining the mutilated animals and people. These god-like beings seemed to be content to accept sacrifices, and from time to time, respond to requests, but never truly interact with humanity—save for one. Nyarlathotep, though described as having a thousand-and-one forms, was reputed to be able to walk as a man among us.

  Near the end of the penultimate notebook, my head aching from the dim lighting, I could not believe my good fortune when I finally found the answer for which I had been searching. The headline stated simply: Man Burns To Death. The story itself was almost a repeat of the first that I had found days before. My heart nearly stopped, however, when I read the two paragraphs of Mr. Hunt’s notes associated with the article:

  Found obscure Egyptian reference to “suit nebtet” or “shadow of fire.” Upon entering through the eyes, victim bursts into flame. No worshipers, from what I can find. Also reasonably sure that this reference from p. 115 of the Necronomicon (Misk Univ.) describes the same thing:

  Of Yog-Sothoth, the Gate, for whom time and space are all and nothing, it is said that the infinite light of the demon-sultan Azathoth had cast a shadow to create Sothoth Pnath. The Shadow echoed the Gate, being part of it, yet different. Dwelling in shadow, it lived, it lives, it will live. Here and there, then and forever.

  My whoop must have been loud enough to penetrate the walls and carry out into the store, for Andrew burst into the room a few seconds later.

  “You found something!”

  “Mr. Hunt found it”—I looked at the date on the article—“eight years ago. Here!”

  He read it over, and then looked at me with evident glee.

  “My grandfather had others,” he said. “Other notebooks with more detailed information. Aside from his diaries and scrapbooks, he took copious notes. We can still search through them and—”

  But he was interrupted by the sound of another customer entering. I watched him through the open door as he hurried back to the middle of the store to greet a pretty young woman with long, blond hair. She stood beside the psychology section, twisting her hair around her finger. Andrew appeared nervous, motioning with his hands, and sporting an excessively wide grin. He directed her toward the front of the store, and just before following her, glanced back at me, smiling comically. I returned the look, silently wished him luck, then closed the door and leaned back against it.

  For the past few days, I had been concentrating on these disturbing collections of events, and trying to come to terms with the theories of Mr. Hunt. Any thoughts of women were fleeting, nebulous. But watching Andrew interacting with his latest customer called to mind memories of my dearest, especially the dimples in her cheeks when she smiled broadly, just like the young woman beyond the door. I remember seeing them often.

  I finished with the last of the scrapbooks shortly before dinnertime. When I emerged from the back room, Andrew was exchanging money with a gentleman at the front counter. I waited until the customer left to announce myself.

  “I’ve finished with the scrapbooks,” I said. “I didn’t find anything else.”

  “That you found anything relevant is astounding.”

  “What I found was nothing, compared with your discovery.” I winked at him.

  “My discovery?”

  He was perplexed for only a moment, until he realized that I was speaking of the young woman.

  “No,” he sighed. “I’m sorry to say that she was in here searching for a gift for her husband.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad.”

  “She was beautiful,” he agreed. “So beautiful, in fact, I didn’t think to look down at her hand.”

  He forced a smile.

  “There will undoubtedly be others,” I said, but my own words unsettled me. I knew that, for myself, it was doubtful. Could there be anyone after Elizabeth?

  “May I start examining the other notebooks that you mentioned?” I asked. “On Monday, perhaps? I need to rest my eyes.”

  “Of course,” he said. “But it’s going to be much tougher from here. The remaining notebooks are written in the language of magic, filled with very specialized terms and symbols. Much is written in Latin, with a smattering of Greek, German, and French. I have a few volumes that you can use as reference, along with the initial notebook that you perused two days ago. But it will likely be very slow going.”

  I nodded. It was discouraging, but there was nothing to be done. I walked back into the backroom to gather my things, Andrew following closely behind me.

  “Tell me,” he said slowly. “Do you have any vengeance in mind?”

  “Vengeance?”

  He cleared his throat.

  “I hadn’t seriously contemplated this option until you located that information an hour ago, but consider this: The Ancient Ones, generally, are scattered across interstellar space. Typically, they do not visit our planet unless summoned. Yog Sothoth falls into that category, so it is reasonably safe to assume that its shadow, Sothoth Pnath, does also.” He paused to make sure that he had my attention. “Whatever can be summoned can also be banished. Not killed, mind you, but sent away. Would you be interested in pursuing this goal?”

  “You can’t be serious,” I said. “Banish this Sothoth Pnath from the Earth?”

  “Yes, so that the fate that befell Elizabeth, as well as those others you came across, could never happen to anyone else again.”

  “Don’t you think that goal is a bit lofty? Not to mention dangerous?” I tried to sound more logical than afraid, but I could not edit the fear out. “Learning about the Ancient Ones is one thing, but this…”

  “I understand your trepidation, believe me, I do,” said Andrew quite seriously. “This isn’t something to attempt tomorrow, or next week, or even six months from now. I’m still learning. It’s a lifelong process. But isn’t it better to have a goal to work toward? Would it not feel good to thwart the devils?”

  The look on his face as he spoke those words was odd, but I interpreted it as equal parts confidence and righteousness. For whatever reason, the net result was simply that I felt I could trust him. Any particle of doubt concerning his abilities or intentions that I may have continued to harbor disappeared.

  “Of course, we still have no proof that this entity is the culprit.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “First we must learn. We confirm that it is, or is not, the source of the spontaneous combustion phenomenon.”

  “And if we have proof that it is indeed the source of my misery…”

  “Then you will seriously consider the option?”

  And despite an unease in my soul, I found myself nodding.

  It was still early enough to make it home in time for Mrs. Bettings’ dinner. When I arrived at the boarding house, Mr. Dunderhill was sitting at the dining table with several of the other boarders and a deck of cards. Mrs. Bettings served a modest dinner of corned beef and cabbage, and yet after my days spent in the back room of Hunt’s Fine Books, it tasted as if it had come straight from the kitchens of Le Bistro Paris. When we were finished eating, we wiled away the hours playing canasta—with Mrs. Bettings soundly trouncing us all. Later that evening, the weather turned foul, and the thunderclaps accompanying the downpour kept me awake long after I lay down to sleep. But I was at least content, be
cause for the first time since I’d lost my Elizabeth, it seemed that maybe there was something worthwhile to be done. It is said that the journey is more worthwhile than the destination, but still, for a journey to occur, a destination is necessary. Now, I had one.

  In the morning I awoke to a grey, rainy day. For perhaps the first time in my life, I had no desire to go to church. I did go, but the words passed right over my ears without being heard. Faced with the existence of such aberrations of nature as I had come to learn about, there were certain things that no longer added up. I created an artificial dividing line in my mind, and tried to sort them to one side or the other. The creed of Do unto others? Yes, that one was kept. The concept of man having been given dominion over every living thing? That one was discarded. Some were completely set aside, with me unable to make decisions about them. In the end, I came to wonder on what day God created Cthulhu. The Bible had made no mention of that.

  I spent the afternoon on the more practical matter of Professor Josephson’s equations, bent over a pad of paper, trying every mathematical trick and transformation at my disposal, wearing my pencil closer and closer to the nub. But I made no progress of any kind—until I realized why I was making no progress. It was very simple: Something was missing—more than one something, actually.

  I found two problems. The first was that, although the transformations applied by the professor were a perfectly valid thing to do in order to reduce complexity, it gave the illusion that the line was truly straight: as he had described it, a line with knots at both ends. Far from it. The line had been forced—or approximated—to be straight via his process. In reality, the line was only nearly straight—very, very nearly—but not. Imagine adding two values: the number one, and one-billionth of one. For all practical, earthly intents and purposes, the fractional part can be discarded and the sum considered to be one. In the vast distances between stars, that extra one-billionth has an effect and needs to be considered. The original line is most straight at the midway point, but fluctuations do occur, and get worse nearest the ends. Lacking that extra one-billionth, the knots seem to be fantastic and unpredictable, when in fact they are not. That extra factor, if considered properly, provides a starting point for the slope of the curve, or knot, at the end.

  Which brings me to the second problem: Information was missing, perhaps accidentally, perhaps not. Considering the sequence of stars making up the line, even the closest one to Earth was far, far away. The equations did not include the sun, our nearest star. Had they, the precision would increase, perhaps tremendously. Would that additional factor be enough to make a calculation accurate enough to untangle the knot? It was impossible to say. The endpoint would always appear knot-like due to it being threaded through the extra dimensions. With some small amount of hope, I tried to join the endpoints to create a circular path, by projecting the line into a higher dimension. A uniform construct, such as a circle, or anything with a predictable path, would allow for a fantastic precision. My nugget of hope grew as I labored. I was sure that was the solution!

  But it failed for the same reason—the lack of a data point for our sun.

  My frustration had grown to the point where I could no longer think, so I abandoned the papers, and went downstairs to sit on the back porch. The air was warm, and the rain was falling gently. I took a seat in a deceptively comfortable rocking chair, the sounds of raindrops relaxing me. I fell asleep. And dreamed.

  I was walking along a beach with Elizabeth, holding her hand in mine. She wore a white wedding dress. It was night, but the full moon, low and large in the sky, provided plenty of light. We did not speak. The only sound—for a time—was of waves crashing on the shoreline. Eventually, I began to hear another sound, a roaring which grew, but she paid no attention to it. I located the source: a singularly massive wave approaching the beach. It towered above us, and I knew that the force of its impact alone might be enough to kill us, never mind drown us. I tore my eyes from the wall of water to look at Elizabeth, but she was gone. In her place stood a large stone, glossy black and polished to a mirror finish. I saw with horror that a very sturdy chain was set into the stone and that the other end of it terminated in a manacle locked to my wrist. The wave grew closer, but struggle as I might, I could not free my wrist. The crest of the wave reared up high enough to blot out the moon, and the night sky came alive, full of stars. The more I stared, the larger they grew, as if they were moving nearer. Some also jogged left or right, then back again; some undulated, their light blinking off and on; and still others swelled beyond their bounds, changing shape, some seeming even to grow limbs with claws, mouths with teeth. They took on unimaginable, sinister forms, their heavenly fire burning hot and bright. The stars! I opened my mouth to scream for Elizabeth, and the wave broke down upon me.

  Suddenly, I was awake, and soaked to the skin. The drizzle had become a downpour, the winds steadily blowing the rain sideways, far enough to catch me. The rain, though—it did not wash the terrible residue of the dream from my mind. And one especially dreadful thought remained.

  I bounded up the stairs. The papers were still sitting on the bed. I shuffled through them until I found it. There, at the bottom of the translated page, that too-short list of Ancient Ones with their corresponding stars:

  Hastur ~ Aldebaran

  What we needed was a complete list, with each entity matched to their star, though I was truly only concerned with the one. With those starting points, we could eliminate the confounding variable—we could know immediately what it was that had caused the event, where it had struck, whether it was the thing that had killed Elizabeth. But the only one who could possibly provide that data was the author of the ancient parchment himself. All we had to do was ask him. He being dead, this was normally an impossible task.

  But this was the loathsome inspiration that had occurred to me: We could! The original parchment, likely still in the office safe of Professor Josephson, could be burned, and the spirit summoned. Of course, that was out of the question. Destroying a valuable archaeological artifact was lunacy. I had to stop this. I put away the papers and tried my best to distract myself with other thoughts for the remainder of the day. After supper, I talked with the other boarders for a while, then tried reading my favorite, dog-eared volume of Poe. Still, as I lay down to sleep, the idea clung in my mind, polluting it like excrement.

  The following morning, the rain had stopped, but a dense fog hung over the town of Arkham. The thick mist and cool temperature combined to produce a most unwelcome atmosphere. My journey to the bookstore, ordinarily a mindless and simple venture, became confusing and frightening. The fact that I could not see through the mist more than fifteen feet in any direction was unnerving. Familiar landmarks dissolved into formless blobs, and the fog seemed to magnify and blur common noises into unwholesome, alien resonances. Twice I stopped, sure that I was being followed, but each time was unable to either confirm or deny my suspicions. My imagination amplified the smallest mouse steps into monstrous stomps. I quickened my pace to a trot, then a run. Andrew must have opened up a few minutes early, for the door was unlocked when I arrived. I darted in, and slammed the door shut behind me. Through the store’s windowed front door, I studied the thick fog as it rolled past the store. But nothing emerged—no people, no animals, no creature of any sort.

  “I assume that’s you, Robert,” called Andrew’s voice from somewhere I couldn’t see.

  “Yes,” I shouted back. The store was seemingly empty.

  “Good,” he called. As I walked towards the middle of the store, I could see that the door to the back room was open. “I have something to show you.”

  I took off my coat, and sat down at the front table. In a few moments, he emerged from the back room carrying a notebook, presumably one of his grandfather’s.

  “I did some research last night and discovered this passage,” he said, placing the open notebook on the table in front of me. He pointed out a specific paragraph, his finger repeatedly tapping the p
age. It was written in German, in a scrawl that was by now familiar to me.

  “My knowledge of German is adequate, but rudimentary,” I said. “You’ll have to translate it for me.”

  Taking a seat opposite me, he cleared his throat and read aloud:

  This is one method for dealing with those who have sinned against us. The enemy will have his eyelids cut off or sewn open. He shall sit in a chair and be restrained such that his head shall not be free to move, neither side to side, nor up and down. A fire shall burn behind him always, casting his shadow before him. The fire shall heat water to create steam enough to prevent blindness. He shall be fed and watered and cared for, for his life is not ours. He shall sit there, for days and weeks and months, contemplating his shadow, until the darkness of Sothoth Pnath emerges to consume his soul.

  “My grandfather was fluent in German and French, so he usually did not take the time to translate anything that he copied in those languages. He was also very good with Latin and Greek as well, but there are some translations of those passages.”

  I nodded mindlessly, my head reeling with the graphic description of such awful torture. That, combined with my experiences in the fog, left me speechless.

  “This one is from another of those volumes that may also be in the university’s library,” he said. “Unaussprechlichen Kulten, by Von Juntzt.”

  When I didn’t respond, he looked almost disappointed.

  “Robert, snap out of it,” he said sharply. “Don’t lose your nerve already. We’ve hardly just begun.”

  “No, not that,” I said. “Not just that, anyway. On my way over here, I…I imagined I was being followed. I just scared myself.”