Vastarien

Thomas Ligotti

Within the blackness of his sleep a few lights began to glow like candles in a cloistered cell. Their illumination was unsteady and dim, issuing from no definite source. Nonetheless, he now discovered many shapes beneath the shadows: tall buildings whose rooftops nodded groundward, wide buildings whose facades seemed to follow the curve of a street, dark buildings whose windows and doorways tilted like badly hung paintings. And even if he found himself unable to fix his own location in this scene, he knew where his dreams had delivered him once more.

Even as the warped structures multiplied in his vision, crowding the lost distance, he possessed a sense of intimacy with each of them, a peculiar knowledge of the spaces within them and of the streets which coiled themselves around their mass. Once again he knew the depths of their foundations, where an obscure life seemed to establish itself, a secret civilization of echoes flourishing among groaning walls. Yet upon his probing more extensively into such interiors, certain difficulties presented themselves: stairways that wandered off-course into useless places; caged elevators that urged unwanted stops on their passengers; thin ladders ascending into a maze of shafts and conduits, the dark valves and arteries of a petrified and monstrous organism.

And he knew that every corner of this corroded world was prolific with choices, even if they had to be made blindly in a place where clear consequences and a hierarchy of possibilities were lacking. For there might be a room whose shabby and soundless decor exudes a desolate serenity which at first attracts the visitor, who then discovers certain figures enveloped in plush furniture, figures that do not move or speak but only stare; and, concluding that these weary mannikins have exercised a bizarre indulgence in repose, the visitor must ponder the alternatives: to linger or to leave?

Eluding the claustral enchantments of such rooms, his gaze now roamed the streets of this dream. He scanned the altitudes beyond the high sloping roofs: there the stars seemed to be no more than silvery cinders which showered up from the mouths of great chimneys and clung to something dark and dense looming above, something that closed in upon each black horizon. It appeared to him that certain high towers nearly breached this sagging blackness, stretching themselves nightward to attain the farthest possible remove from the world below. And toward the peak of one of the highest towers he spied vague silhouettes that moved hectically in a bright window, twisting and leaning upon the glass like shadow-puppets in the fever of some mad dispute.

Through the mazy streets his vision slowly glided, as if carried along by a sluggish draft. Darkened windows reflected the beams of stars and streetlamps; lighted windows, however dim their glow, betrayed strange scenes which were left behind long before their full mystery could overwhelm the dreaming traveller. He wandered into thoroughfares more remote, soaring past cluttered gardens and crooked gates, drifting alongside an expansive wall that seemed to border an abyss, and floating over bridges that arched above the black purling waters of canals.

Near a certain street corner, a place of supernatural clarity and stillness, he saw two figures standing beneath the crystalline glaze of a lamp ensconced high upon a wall of carved stone. Their shadows were perfect columns of blackness upon the livid pavement; their faces were a pair of faded masks concealing profound schemes. And they seemed to have lives of their own, with no awareness of their dreaming observer, who wished only to live with these specters and know their dreams, to remain in this place where everything was transfixed in the order of the unreal.

Never again, it seemed, could he be forced to abandon this realm of beautiful shadows.

         

Victor Keirion awoke with a brief convulsion of his limbs, as if he had been chaotically scrambling to break his fall from an imaginary height. For a moment he held his eyes closed, hoping to preserve the dissipating euphoria of the dream. Finally he blinked once or twice. Moonlight through a curtainless window allowed him the image of his outstretched arms and his somewhat twisted hands. Releasing his awkward hold on the edge of the sheeted mattress, he rolled onto his back. Then he groped around until his fingers found the cord dangling from the light above the bed. A small, barely furnished room appeared.

He pushed himself up and reached toward the painted metal nightstand. Through the spaces between his fingers he saw the pale gray binding of a book and some of the dark letters tooled upon its cover: V, S, R, N. Suddenly he withdrew his hand without touching the book, for the magical intoxication of the dream had died, and he feared that he would not be able to revive it.

Freeing himself from the coarse bedcovers, he sat at the edge of the mattress, elbows resting on his legs and hands loosely folded. His hair and eyes were pale, his complexion rather grayish, suggesting the color of certain clouds or that of long confinement. The single window in the room was only a few steps away, but he kept himself from approaching it, from even glancing in its direction. He knew exactly what he would see at that time of night: tall buildings, wide buildings, dark buildings, a scattering of stars and lights, and some lethargic movement in the streets below.

In so many ways the city outside the window was a semblance of that other place, which now seemed impossibly far off and inaccessible. But the likeness was evident only to his inner vision, only in the recollected images he formed when his eyes were closed or out of focus. It would be difficult to conceive of a creature for whom this world—its bare form seen with open eyes—represented a coveted paradise.

Now standing before the window, his hands tearing into the pockets of a papery bathrobe, he saw that something was missing from the view, some crucial property that was denied to the stars above and the streets below, some unearthly essence needed to save them. The word unearthly reverberated in the room. In that place and at that hour, the paradoxical absence, the missing quality, became clear to him: it was the element of the unreal.

For Victor Keirion belonged to that wretched sect of souls who believe that the only value of this world lies in its power—at certain times—to suggest another world. Nevertheless, the place he now surveyed through the high window could never be anything but the most gauzy phantom of that other place, nothing save a shadowy mimic of the anatomy of that great dream. And although there were indeed times when one might be deceived, isolated moments when a gift for disguise triumphs, the impersonation could never be perfect or lasting. No true challenge to the rich unreality of Vastarien, where every shape suggested a thousand others, every sound disseminated everlasting echoes, every word founded a world. No horror, no joy was the equal of the abysmally vibrant sensations known in this place that was elsewhere, this spellbinding retreat where all experiences were interwoven to compose fantastic textures of feeling, a fine and dark tracery of limitless patterns. For everything in the unreal points to the infinite, and everything in Vastarien was unreal, unbounded by the tangible lie of existing. Even its most humble aspects proclaimed this truth: what door, he wondered, in any other world could imply the abundant and strange possibilities that belonged to the entrancing doors in the dream?

Then, as he focused his eyes upon a distant part of the city, he recalled a particular door, one of the least suggestive objects he had ever confronted, intimating little of what lay beyond.

         

It was a rectangle of smudged glass within another rectangle of scuffed wood, a battered thing lodged within a brick wall at the bottom of a stairway leading down from a crumbling street. And it pushed easily inward, merely a delicate formality between the underground shop and the outside world. Inside was an open room vaguely circular in shape, unusual in seeming more like the lobby of an old hotel than a bookstore. The circumference of the room was composed of crowded bookshelves whose separate sections were joined to one another to create an irregular polygon of eleven sides, with a long desk standing where a twelfth would have been. Beyond the desk stood a few more bookshelves arranged in aisles, their monotonous length leading into shadows. At the furthest point from this end of the shop, he began his circuit of the shelves, which appeared so promising in their array of old and ruddy bindings, like remnants of some fabulous autumn.

Very soon, however, the promise was betrayed and the mystique of the Librairie de Grimoires, in accord with his expectations, was stripped away to reveal, in his eyes, a side-show of charlatanry. For this disillusionment he had only himself to blame. Moreover, he could barely articulate the nature of the discrepancy between what he had hoped to find and what he actually found in such places. Aside from this hope, there was little basis for his belief that there existed some other arcana, one of a different kind altogether from that proffered by the books before him, all of which were sodden with an obscene reality, falsely hermetic ventures which consisted of circling the same absurd landscape. The other worlds portrayed in these books inevitably served as annexes of this one; they were impostors of the authentic unreality which was the only realm of redemption, however gruesome it might appear. And it was this terminal landscape that he sought, not those rituals of the “way” that never arrives, heavens or hells that are mere pretexts for circumnavigating the real and revelling in it. For he dreamed of strange volumes that turned away from all earthly light to become lost in their own nightmares, pages that preached a nocturnal salvation, a liturgy of shadows, a catechism of phantoms. His absolute: to dwell among the ruins of reality.

And it seemed to surpass all probability that there existed no precedent for this dream, no elaboration of this vision into a word, a delirious bible that would be the blight of all others—a scripture that would begin in apocalypse and lead its disciple to the wreck of all creation.

He had, in fact, come upon passages in certain books that approached this ideal, hinting to the reader—almost admonishing him—that the page before his eyes was about to offer a view from the abyss and cast a wavering light on desolate hallucinations. To become the wind in the dead of winter, so might begin an enticing verse of dreams. But soon the bemazed visionary would falter, retracting the promised scene of a shadow kingdom at the end of all entity, perhaps offering an apologetics for this lapse into the unreal. The work would then once more take up the universal theme, disclosing its true purpose in belaboring the most futile and profane of all ambitions: power, with knowledge as its drudge. The vision of a disastrous enlightenment, of a catastrophic illumination, was conjured up in passing and then cast aside. What remained was invariably a metaphysics as systematically trivial and debased as the physical laws it purported to transcend, a manual outlining the path to some hypothetical state of absolute glory. What remained lost was the revelation that nothing ever known has ended in glory; that all which ends does so in exhaustion, in confusion, and debris.

Nevertheless, a book that contained even a false gesture toward his truly eccentric absolute might indeed serve his purpose. Directing the attention of a bookseller to selected contents of such books, he would say: “I have an interest in a certain subject area, perhaps you will see . . . that is, I wonder, do you know of other, what should I say, sources that you would be able to recommend for my . . .”

Occasionally he was referred to another bookseller or to the owner of a private collection. And ultimately he would be forced to realize that he had been grotesquely misunderstood when he found himself on the fringe of a society devoted to some strictly demonic enterprise.

         

The very bookshop in which he was now browsing represented only the most recent digression in a search without progress. But he had learned to be cautious and would try to waste as little time as possible in discovering if there was anything hidden for him here. Certainly not on the shelves which presently surrounded him.

“Have you seen our friend?” asked a nearby voice, startling him somewhat. Victor Keirion turned to face the stranger. The man was rather small and wore a black overcoat; his hair was also black and fell loosely across his forehead. Besides his general appearance, there was also something about his presence that made one think of a crow, a scavenging creature in wait. “Has he come out of his hole?” the man asked, gesturing toward the empty desk and the dark area behind it.

“I’m sorry, I haven’t seen anyone,” Keirion replied. “I only now noticed you.”

“I can’t help being quiet. Look at these little feet,” the man said, pointing to a highly polished pair of black shoes. Without thinking, Keirion looked down; then, feeling duped, he looked up again at the smiling stranger.

“You look very bored,” said the human crow.

“I’m sorry?”

“Never mind. I can see that I’m bothering you.” Then the man walked away, his coat flapping slightly, and began browsing some distant bookshelves. “I’ve never seen you in here before,” he said from across the room.

“I’ve never been in here before,” Keirion answered.

“Have you ever read this?” the stranger asked, pulling down a book and holding up its wordless black cover.

“Never,” Keirion replied without so much as glancing at the book. Somehow this seemed the best action to take with this character, who appeared to be foreign in some indefinable way, intangibly alien.

“Well, you must be looking for something special,” continued the other man, replacing the black book on its shelf. “And I know what that’s like, when you’re looking for something very special. Have you ever heard of a book, an extremely special book, that is not . . . yes, that is not about something, but actually is that something?”

For the first time the obnoxious stranger had managed to intrigue Keirion rather than annoy him. “That sounds . . .” he started to say, but then the other man exclaimed:

“There he is, there he is. Excuse me.”

It seemed that the proprietor—that mutual friend—had finally made his appearance and was now standing behind the desk, looking toward his two customers. “My friend,” said the crow-man as he stepped with outstretched hand over to the smoothly bald and softly fat gentleman. The two of them briefly shook hands; they whispered for a few moments. Then the crow-man was invited behind the desk, and—led by the heavy, unsmiling bookseller—made his way into the darkness at the back of the shop. In a distant corner of that darkness the brilliant rectangle of a doorway suddenly flashed into outline, admitting through its frame a large, twoheaded shadow.

Left alone among the worthless volumes of that shop, Victor Keirion felt the sad frustration of the uninvited, the abandoned. More than ever he had become infected with hopes and curiosities of an indeterminable kind. And he soon found it impossible to remain outside that radiant little room the other two had entered, and on whose threshold he presently stood in silence.

The room was a cramped bibliographic cubicle within which stood another cubicle formed by free-standing bookcases, creating four very narrow aisleways in the space between them. From the doorway he could not see how the inner cubicle might be entered, but he heard the voices of the others whispering within. Stepping quietly, he began making his way along the perimeter of the room, his eyes voraciously scanning a wealth of odd-looking volumes.

Immediately he sensed that something of a special nature awaited his discovery, and the evidence for this intuition began to build. Each book that he examined served as a clue in this delirious investigation, a cryptic sign which engaged his powers of interpretation and imparted the faith to proceed. Many of the works were written in foreign languages he did not read; some appeared to be composed in ciphers based on familiar characters and others seemed to be transcribed in a wholly artificial cryptography. But in every one of these books he found an oblique guidance, some feature of more or less indirect significance: a strangeness in the typeface, pages and bindings of uncommon texture, abstract diagrams suggesting no orthodox ritual or occult system. Even greater anticipation was inspired by certain illustrated plates, mysterious drawings and engravings that depicted scenes and situations unlike anything he could name. And such works as Cynothoglys or The Noctuary of Tine conveyed schemes so bizarre, so remote from known texts and treatises of the esoteric tradition, that he felt assured of the sense of his quest.

The whispering grew louder, though no more distinct, as he edged around a corner of that inner cubicle and anxiously noted the opening at its far end. At the same time he was distracted, for no apparent reason, by a small grayish volume leaning within a gap between larger and more garish tomes. The little book had been set upon the highest shelf, making it necessary for him to stretch himself, as if on an upright torture rack, to reach it. Trying not to give away his presence by the sounds of his pain, he finally secured the ashen-colored object—as pale as his own coloring—between the tips of his first two fingers. Mutely he strained to slide it quietly from its place; this act accomplished, he slowly shrunk down to his original stature and looked into the book’s brittle pages.

It seemed to be a chronicle of strange dreams. Yet somehow the passages he examined were less a recollection of unruled visions than a tangible incarnation of them, not mere rhetoric but the thing itself. The use of language in the book was arrantly unnatural and the book’s author unknown. Indeed, the text conveyed the impression of speaking for itself and speaking only to itself, the words flowing together like shadows that were cast by no forms outside the book. But although this volume appeared to be composed in a vernacular of mysteries, its words did inspire a sure understanding and created in their reader a visceral apprehension of the world they described, existing inseparable from it. Could this truly be the invocation of Vastarien, that improbable world to which those gnarled letters on the front of the book alluded? And was it a world at all? Rather the unreal essence of one, all natural elements purged by an occult process of extraction, all days distilled into dreams and nights into nightmares. Each passage he entered in the book both enchanted and appalled him with images and incidents so freakish and chaotic that his usual sense of these terms disintegrated along with everything else. Rampant oddity seemed to be the rule of the realm; imperfection became the source of the miraculous—wonders of deformity and marvels of miscreation. There was horror, undoubtedly. But it was a horror uncompromised by any feeling of lost joy or thwarted redemption; rather, it was a deliverance by damnation. And if Vastarien was a nightmare, it was a nightmare transformed in spirit by the utter absence of refuge: nightmare made normal.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t see that you had drifted in here,” said the bookseller in a high thin voice. He had just emerged from the inner chamber of the room and was standing with arms folded across his wide chest. “Please don’t touch anything. And may I take that from you?” The right arm of the bookseller reached out, then returned to its former place when the man with the pale eyes did not relinquish the merchandise.

“I think I would like to purchase it,” said Keirion. “I’m sure I would, if . . .”

“Of course, if the price is reasonable,” finished the bookseller. “But who knows, you might not be able to understand how valuable these books can be. That one . . .” he said, removing a little pad and pencil from inside his jacket and scribbling briefly. He ripped off the top sheet and held it up for the would-be buyer to see, then confidently put away all writing materials, as if that would be the end of it.

“But there must be some latitude for bargaining,” Keirion protested.

“I’m afraid not,” answered the bookseller. “Not with something that is the only one of its kind, as are many of these volumes. Yet that one book you are holding, that single copy . . .”

A hand touched the bookseller’s shoulder and seemed to switch off his voice. Then the crow-man stepped into the aisleway, his eyes fixed upon the object under discussion, and asked: “Don’t you find that the book is somewhat . . . difficult?”

“Difficult,” repeated Keirion. “I’m not sure. . . . If you mean that the language is strange, I would have to agree, but—”

“No,” interjected the bookseller, “that’s not what he means at all.”

“Excuse us for a moment,” said the crow-man.

Then both men went back into the inner room, where they whispered for some time. When the whispering ceased, the bookseller came forth and announced that there had been a mistake. The book, while something of a curiosity, was worth a good deal less than the price earlier quoted. The revised evaluation, while still costly, was nevertheless within the means of this particular buyer, who agreed at once to pay.

         

Thus began Victor Keirion’s preoccupation with a certain book and a certain hallucinated world, though to make a distinction between these two phenomena ultimately seemed an error: the book, indeed, did not merely describe that strange world but, in some obscure fashion, was a true composition of the thing itself, its very form incarnate.

Each day thereafter he studied the hypnotic episodes of the little book; each night, as he dreamed, he carried out shapeless expeditions into its fantastic topography. To all appearances it seemed he had discovered the summit or abyss of the unreal, that paradise of exhaustion, confusion, and debris where reality ends and where one may dwell among its ruins. And it was not long before he found it necessary to revisit that twelve-sided shop, intending to question the obese bookseller on the subject of the book and unintentionally learning the truth of how it came to be sold.

When he arrived at the bookstore, sometime in the middle of a grayish afternoon, Victor Keirion was surprised to find that the door, which had opened so freely on his previous visit, was now firmly locked. It would not even rattle in its frame when he nervously pushed and pulled on the handle. Since the interior of the store was lighted, he took a coin from his pocket and began tapping on the glass. Finally, someone came forward from the shadows of the back room.

“Closed,” the bookseller pantomimed on the other side of the glass.

“But . . .” Keirion argued, pointing to his wristwatch.

“Nevertheless,” the wide man shouted. Then, after scrutinizing the disappointed patron, the bookseller unlocked the door and opened it far enough to carry on a brief conversation. “And what is it I can do for you? I’m closed, so you’ll have to come some other time if—”

“I only wanted to ask you something. Do you remember the book that I bought from you not long ago, the one—”

“Yes, I remember,” replied the bookseller, as if quite prepared for the question. “And let me say that I was quite impressed, as of course was . . . the other man.”

“Impressed?” Keirion repeated.

“Flabbergasted is more the word in his case,” continued the bookseller. “He said to me, ‘The book has found its reader,’ and what could I do but agree with him?”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” said Keirion.

The bookseller blinked and said nothing. After a few moments he reluctantly explained: “I was hoping that by now you would understand. He hasn’t contacted you? The man who was in here that day?”

“No, why should he?”

The bookseller blinked again and said: “Well, I suppose there’s no reason you need to stand out there. It’s getting very cold, don’t you feel it?” Then he closed the door and pulled Keirion a little to one side of it, whispering: “There’s just one thing I would like to tell you. I made no mistake that day about the price of that book. And it was the price—in full—which was paid by the other man, don’t ask me anything else about him. That price, of course, minus the small amount that you yourself contributed. I didn’t cheat anyone, least of all him. He would have been happy to pay even more to get that book into your hands. And although I’m not exactly sure of his reasons, I think you should know that.”

“But why didn’t he simply purchase the book for himself?” asked Keirion.

The bookseller seemed confused. “It was of no use to him. Perhaps it would have been better if you hadn’t given yourself away when he asked you about the book. How much you knew.”

“But I don’t know anything, apart from what I’ve read in the book itself. I came here to find—”

“—Nothing, I’m afraid. You’re the one who should be telling me, very impressive. But I’m not asking, don’t misunderstand. And there’s nothing more I can tell you, since I’ve already violated every precept of discretion. This is such an exceptional case, though. Very impressive, if in fact you are the reader of that book.”

Realizing that, at best, he had been led into a dialogue of mystification, and possibly one of lies, Victor Keirion had no regrets when the bookseller held the door open for him to leave.

But before very many days, and especially nights, had passed he learned why the bookseller had been so impressed with him, and why the crowlike stranger had been so generous: the bestower of the book who was blind to its mysteries. In the course of those days, those nights, he learned that the stranger had given only so that he might possess the thing he could gain in no other way, that he was reading the book with borrowed eyes and stealing its secrets from the soul of its rightful reader. At last it became clear what was happening to him throughout those strange nights of dreaming.

On each of those nights the shapes of Vastarien slowly pushed through the obscurity of his sleep, a vast landscape emerging from its own profound slumber and drifting forth from a place without name or dimension. And as the crooked monuments became manifest once again, they seemed to expand and soar high above him, drawing his vision toward them. Progressively the scene acquired nuance and articulation; steadily the creation became dense and intricate within its black womb: the streets were sinuous entrails winding through that dark body, and each edifice was the jutting bone of a skeleton hung with a thin musculature of shadows.

But just as his vision reached out to embrace fully the mysterious and jagged form of the dream, it all appeared to pull away, abandoning him on the edge of a dreamless void. The landscape was receding, shrinking into the distance. Now all he could see was a single street bordered by two converging rows of buildings. And at the opposite end of that street, rising up taller than the buildings themselves, stood a great figure in silhouette. This looming colossus made no movement or sound but firmly dominated the horizon where the single remaining street seemed to end. From this position the towering shadow was absorbing all other shapes into its own, which gradually was gaining in stature as the landscape withdrew and diminished. And the outline of this titanic figure appeared to be that of a man, yet it was also that of a dark and devouring bird.

Although for several nights Victor Keirion managed to awake before the scavenger had thoroughly consumed what was not its own, there was no assurance that he would always be able to do so and that the dream would not pass into the hands of another. Ultimately, he conceived and executed the act that was necessary to keep possession of the dream he had coveted for so long.

         

Vastarien, he whispered as he stood in the shadows and moonlight of that bare little room, where a massive metal door prevented his escape. Within that door a small square of thick glass was implanted so that he might be watched by day and by night. And there was an unbending web of heavy wire covering the window which overlooked the city that was not Vastarien. Never, chanted a voice which might have been his own. Then more insistently: never, never, never. . . .

When the door was opened and some men in uniforms entered the room, they found Victor Keirion screaming to the raucous limits of his voice and trying to scale the thick metal mesh veiling the window, as if he were dragging himself along some unlikely route of liberation. Of course, they pulled him to the floor; they stretched him out upon the bed, where his wrists and ankles were tightly strapped. Then through the doorway strode a nurse who carried a slender syringe crowned with a silvery needle.

During the injection he continued to scream words which everyone in the room had heard before, each outburst developing the theme of his unjust confinement: how the man he had murdered was using him in a horrible way, a way impossible to explain or make credible. The man could not read the book—there, that book—and was stealing the dreams which the book had spawned. Stealing my dreams, he mumbled softly as the drug began to take effect. Stealing my . . .

The group remained around the bed for a few moments, silently staring at its restrained occupant. Then one of them pointed to the book and initiated a conversation now familiar to them all.

“What should we do with it? It’s been taken away enough times already, but then there’s always another that appears.”

“And there’s no point to it. Look at these pages—nothing, nothing written anywhere.”

“So why does he sit reading them for hours? He does nothing else.”

“I think it’s time we told someone in authority.”

“Of course, we could do that, but what exactly would we say? That a certain inmate should be forbidden from reading a certain book? That he becomes violent?”

“And then they’ll ask why we can’t keep the book away from him or him from the book? What should we say to that?”

“There would be nothing we could say. Can you imagine what lunatics we would seem? As soon as we opened our mouths, that would be it for all of us.”

“And when someone asks what the book means to him, or even what its name is . . . what would be our answer?”

As if in response to this question, a few shapeless groans arose from the criminally insane creature who was bound to the bed. But no one could understand the meaning of the word or words that he uttered, least of all himself. For he was now far from his own words, buried deep within the dreams of a place where everything was transfixed in the order of the unreal; and whence, it truly seemed, he would never return.

The Madness out of Space

Peter H. Cannon

I

Friends and family have wondered at my abrupt return from college a full week before the beginning of the Easter vacation. Explanations of an unforeseen, early termination of school work I hope have satisfied them; for I dare not hint as yet as to the real cause. Eventually, I realize, I must tell them—and the world—of the fate of my roommate and closest friend, Howard Wentworth Anable, who disappeared in the early morning of March 15, 1929, into the densely forested, still winter-frozen hills that extended west of the university town of Arkham, Massachusetts—or so people believe. How much of the “truth” I will reveal remains for me to decide, as I run the risk of being declared mad as that singular individual whose bizarre and lamentable history I am here about to disclose. I admit that relations between us had been strained in those final months, an unhappy consequence of his physical and mental deterioration; but this in no way affected the underlying fondness and respect I had always held for him.

I fear that I have seen the last of my comrade; for certain evidence—certain damnably conclusive evidence, which for the sake of mankind’s collective sanity I hesitate to reveal—indicates that he has ventured into terrible cosmic realms from which no mortal can ever return.

Duty required that I inform Anable’s mother and grandmother, who live near the center of the old colonial town, of my gravest suspicions; but without giving away anything of the specific horror I had observed. The Anables had half-anticipated a climax of this sort, and bore their grief with admirable Yankee stoicism. There ensued a discreet investigation, which received no publicity other than a short notice in the Arkham Advertiser.

The police theorize that Anable was forcibly abducted, the broken window and the disordered furniture and books in his bedroom supporting this conclusion. Anable’s relatives had known of his association with an undesirable band of cultists, who, camped out in the Arkham hills, may have taken revenge on the youth for some imagined transgression of their laws. Search parties discovered no trace of Anable or his suspected abductors (who, in any event, may have left the area months before), and after several days they abandoned their trampings through the woods.

Naturally the authorities questioned me closely, but I was able to demonstrate to their satisfaction that I knew little of Anable’s dealings with any queer characters living in the hills. Through an extreme effort of will I managed to suppress my feelings of awful horror and show only normal shock and dismay. Indeed, until the last mind-shattering revelation I had dismissed Anable’s ravings as nothing more than a lot of theosophical hocus-pocus. A rational man could easily have taken his strange pronouncement toward the end as the phantasies of a psychotic. But now I know otherwise; and because I do I may myself fall a victim to those same dread forces that claimed my friend. Therefore, for the written record, I am presently setting down, during these days of early New England spring, while events are still fresh and there is still time for me, an account of this frightful matter—of the madness out of space.

II

I met Howard Anable our freshman year at Miskatonic University, which is not Harvard, nor is it even Ivy League, but whose unparalleled reputation as a freewheeling, “progressive,” co-ed institution attracts unconventional and original minds who care little for prestige. It is located in the glamorous old, gambrel-roofed town of Arkham, renowned along the North Shore as a place especially sensitive to adumbrations of the paranormal. Both he and I enrolled in an advanced course in Colonial American literature. (Miskatonic’s Pickman collection of early American documents is justly famous for its size and completeness—second only to that of the John Carter Hay Library at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.) I was immediately impressed, as were the other students and Professor Waggoner, by his profound and encyclopedic knowledge of the subject. Anable boasted that he had read Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana in its entirety, and would quote lengthy passages from memory to illustrate all sorts of nice points in class discussion. It appeared that he had done extensive research from his earliest years into the history, folklore, culture, and architecture of New England.

Physically unobtrusive on first sight, Anable really cut a remarkable figure the more one studied him. He had a frame so excessively spare that, although he stood an inch or two above average height, people usually took him to be much taller. A spectrally pale complexion, set off by strikingly deep, intelligent brown eyes and short-cropped, mousy brown hair, combined to give his face a perpetually startled expression. (That he was fair-haired and blue-eyed as a child Anable never tired of repeating when I knew him better.) He wore conservative clothing, a dark suit with a plain, dark knit tie being his preferred dress.

Although I frequently engaged in academic debate with Anable, I knew practically nothing about him outside the classroom, other than that he lived at his family’s home on Valley Street. Fellow students remarked that they never noticed him at any of the usual campus haunts; rumor had it that he spent his free hours taking long, solitary walks beyond the town. His rapid stooping gait soon became his distinctive hallmark.

An independent figure, Anable ignored the voguish crowd of campus “sophisticates,” who courted him as someone whose eccentricities and tastes would have made him immediately welcome among their select circles. Instead, his high-handed disdain of their “immature indulgences,” as he put it, won only their resentment. I myself, being by nature more gregarious and eager to be accepted by the elite, was at first given to mixing with the “wild set” but by the Christmas holidays I had grown weary of their superficial pseudo-decadent thrill-seeking, and ceased associating with them altogether with the start of the second term in January.

I think Anable observed this shift in my social preferences. He began speaking to me on his own initiative after the honors American literature class, devoted to a thorough study of those classic if largely neglected authors—Cooper, Irving, and Charles Brockden Brown—of the early Republic, that we shared in the new term. A casual friendship developed between us that I was pleased to cultivate; for I appreciated in Anable his genuine erudition and sobriety of manner—indicative, I sensed, of a special understanding of things outside the ordinary in life.

We soon discovered that we held a good many common interests, as Anable’s outward reticence gave way to a voluble stream of talk about himself and his ideas. I already knew him to be an enthusiastic student of the New England scene; now I learned the personal side.

Howard Wentworth Anable was descended from a line of well-to-do Arkham merchants who had flourished during the days of clipper ships and the China trade; the family since the turn of the century, however, having been reduced to the state politely known as “genteel poverty.” As a boy of nine, soon after the death of his father, he had moved with his mother from his family’s Anawan Avenue mansion, built in the 1820s by his great-grandfather, Captain Adoniram Anable, celebrated in Arkham history for his daring exploits in the South Seas, to the less than grand neighborhood of Valley Street. (The log of the Miskatonic, the vessel in which Captain Anable made his most successful voyages, is preserved in the archives of the Arkham Institute.) His first American ancestor, of Northumberland stock, had sailed on the Arbella in 1636, Anable proudly told me once; adding that his people were among the very earliest settlers of Cape Cod. Of his father Anable rarely spoke—and then merely to say that he had worked for the ’phone company.

I visited Anable at his home, a privilege granted to few, and was much impressed by the Chinese plates and vases, Polynesian wood-carvings, and scrimshaw still in the family’s possession—surviving relics of a more prosperous age that seemed so sadly out of place in the undistinguished, Victorian frame house, divided into apartments, that now formed the Anable abode. With no brothers or sisters or congenial playmates to divert him with the usual childhood activities, Anable had grown up with only the memories and dust of the past to occupy his imagination. A voracious reader, he had mastered the family library with its shelves of mouldy Essex County histories and other quaint, antique volumes. Anable sometimes spoke wistfully to me of someday recovering the family mansion and restoring it to a semblance of that departed glory of his forebears. Alas, that shall never be!

Anable detested cats, and in his youth used to throw rocks at any feline so foolish as to prowl into the Anable backyard and wander within range. He also hated ice cream, amazing as it may seem that anyone could become nauseous at even the slightest taste of this universally loved treat. On the other hand, staunch New Englander that he was, Anable adored seafood—lobster, clams, fried or steamed, mussels with butter, cod, scrod, sole, flounder or haddock, chowder of the Boston variety, he relished them all.

In his devotion to this vision of a purer, happier past, he had, with the advent of his teens and less parental supervision, become increasingly drawn to the countryside beyond Arkham—to the pine, maple, and birch forest that covers the undulant, ravine-intersected hills as far as the sparsely populated regions of the upper Miskatonic valley. It had been on extended walks through the woods that Anable had felt his most exquisite and poignant sensations of wonder and adventurous expectancy—caught especially at sunset in the vista of golden roofs of the town laid out below.

That spring Anable took me to his favorite spot for viewing Arkham and its sunset effects—Satan’s Ledge, an outcropping of sedimentary rock on one of the higher hillsides (part of a vast tract of public land), well-nigh inaccessible from the Arkham direction save for a difficult ascent up its steep slope through uncommonly thick vegetation. Believing me not up to the strenuous climb, Anable suggested that we ride the Bolton bus which drops off passengers during warm months at a roadside picnic area on the westward fringe of the hill, where the slope is considerably gentler. From this picnic area the ledge was but a walk of a half mile along a well-marked path.

Indeed a scenic viewpoint, Satan’s Ledge formed a level surface of moderate extent, upon which rested granite boulders arranged in a disturbingly symmetrical pattern—one that no retreating ice sheet was likely to have left, in my opinion. Peculiar ideographs, most badly eroded, were graven on these imposing rocks—no doubt the work of the vanished Indians. Ethnographers had conjectured them to be of cabalistic or magical significance, Anable informed me, but who could say for sure with so few discernible details. Analogues are to be found on rocks in the remote mountain regions of Vermont and Maine and in the decadent hill country around Dunwich.

At the end of the school year in June, our friendship firmly fixed, Anable asked me if I cared to share lodgings with him for sophomore year.

“I’ve noticed, Winsor,” he began, as we sat in the Ratty, the undergraduate refectory, over coffee (his heavily laden with sugar as was his custom), “that you’re a fairly sensitive fellow. I think you’re someone who understands, who sympathizes. Living with my mother and feeble old grandmother while going to college I’ve found ‘restrictive,’ to say the least. It’s time I got out on my own, and I don’t mean into one of the hideous dormitories with the herd. I’d like a companion—partly for financial reasons I admit—who’d be willing to go halves with me on a place.

“You see, Winsor, I feel I’m on the verge of making a ‘rift in the horizon’s wall,’ so to speak—but just where or how I cannot begin to tell, let alone explain to you. It has something to do with the sense of adventurous expectancy that hits me on occasion whenever I view scenes of particular aesthetic appeal, such as old gardens, antique harbors, or Georgian steeples topped with gilded vanes.” Anable’s great brown eyes glowed, as if he were gazing at a Bullfinch cupola and not at a student cafeteria.

“I’m afraid that if I become too absorbed in my search I may lose all sense of proper proportion, act rashly. I may well need a friend close at hand, someone stable whose good judgement I can rely on—a pal such as you to point out to me when I’m going astray.”

Flattered by his proposal, I was nonetheless taken aback by his last cryptic remarks. My uneasiness must have been obvious to Anable, for he suddenly shifted back to the main point.

“I’ve found decent furnished rooms at 973 Hale Street near the end of the trolley line at the north end of town. The location may be far from campus, but the trolley stop is just two blocks away. I’ve been there once, when I answered the ad in the Advertiser. The landlady, Mrs. Delisio, would provide meals. If you’re free we can go take a look right now.”

I could not help but be intrigued by Anable’s offer; here was a unique opportunity to increase our intimacy. His baffling comments forgotten, I readily assented to examine the place. We drained our cups and headed out for the trolley stop in front of Miskatonic Hall.

The building at 973 Hale Street proved to be a small, eighteenth-century clapboard house, which retained much of its antique charm despite its overall dilapidation. I was particularly struck by the isolation of the address, right at the outskirts of Arkham proper. A stretch of dreary marsh land bordered the modest backyard.

The “upstairs suite”—two bedrooms separated by a common sitting room—was clean if bare and severe, containing the basic minimum of furniture. From the windows, which faced the rear, one could look out over the acres of marsh to where the wooded hillsides rose, brilliant with spring green—and to Satan’s Ledge, which Anable pointed out to me, just visible as a gray protuberance.

The price Mrs. Delisio cited was only too reasonable, and we signed a year’s lease on the spot. Mrs. Delisio, an elderly widow, seemed glad to have engaged two Yankee boys as lodgers. Anable announced his intention of taking up residence for the summer, agreeing to pay the whole rent until I joined him in the fall. He said that his mother would probably disapprove, but there was nothing she could do. Her policy had never been to oppose him when he was adamant enough in his wishes—within certain limits. Besides, he had recently secured a job stamping and addressing envelopes and doing other petty tasks for a local bookseller, and thus he figured he could almost cover this new expense with his summer earnings.

III

After transferring my few belongings to our new quarters on Hale Street and helping Anable move his possessions there, I rode the B. & M. home to Boston, not expecting to return to Arkham until September. I lingered briefly at our residence on narrow, cobbled Acorn Street, before repairing with my family to our house in West Chop, on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, for the summer. After the academic rigors of the past year at Miskatonic, I looked forward to the idle months of sailboat racing, tennis playing, and sun bathing. A part-time volunteer job at the Dukes County Historical Society, conducting tours at the venerable Richard C. Norton “Reading Room,” would form my excuse for useful employment. My father’s harpsichord factory in Cambridge had thrived mightily in recent years, and he was in a position to spend the entire summer on the island, much to the delight of the rest of us, leaving his business to the care of junior partners.

As I settled into the pleasant routine of healthy athletic activities by day (when not at the museum) and gala social events by night (in particular the weekly dances at the Casino), I began sending Anable cheery postcards, urging him to come pay me a visit. His staying in that stuffy apartment all summer, pursuing his esoteric researches in the university library (in between stuffing envelopes and his usual rambles in the countryside), struck me in my agreeable environment as more and more dubious. A change of scene, a little “fun,” would be good for my scholarly friend.

These accounts of my idyllic existence elicited a response from Anable that plainly revealed to what an advanced degree he had already become immersed in the offbeat historical lore he had made his special province. (Puzzled at first by the “1728” at the head of the letter, I eventually realized that Anable—antiquarian that he was—affected to date his correspondence two hundred years earlier.) Here is the complete text.

26 June 1728

My dear Winsor:—

How infinitely gratifying to hear from you of your tennis and dancing, and I do appreciate your invitation to come join you in said frivolous diversions. Quite frankly, however, in light of an exciting development here, I am afraid I haven’t the time to indulge in such things. I think you’ll understand when you absorb what I say below.

While you’ve been burning in the sun (by the way, I don’t care to tan), I’ve made an important discovery. You may remember I told you that I intended to read all the material available at the library on those queer Indian ideographs at Satan’s Ledge? (Of course, I already knew the general background—but, I must confess, I was rather weak on the more recent history of the formation. Post-Civil War history has never really interested me.) Well, in the course of digging through the stacks, I came across a very curious monograph, “Satan and His Works in Latter-Day New England,” printed privately in 1879 by one Thomas Hazard Clarke of Arkham, concerning an odd religious sect that had a settlement near Satan’s Ledge in the latter part of the last century. Originally a Shaker splinter group, which Clarke belonged to, this motley assortment of pious fanatics came gradually to fall away from orthodox Christian practices. It seems the more lunatic of them began to assimilate elements of the pagan myths surrounding Satan’s Ledge from the few surviving Indians in the region, and took to holding ceremonies at the ledge surreptitiously—“in which the Christian deity had no part.” Many of the members, several dozen men of all ages, were dim, stupid folk, degenerate from generations of inbreeding. Clarke and others who continued in the pure faith were naturally alarmed by this ominous conversion among a sizeable portion of the community. The apostates grew in number, as it devolved that somehow their gods or “Old Ones,” which they called by the exotic names of “Azathoth,” “Nyarlathotep,” “Yog-Sothoth,” and “Cthulhu” (“agents of the devil” to Clarke), were more receptive to their worship than the aloof-from-the-petty-affairs-of-men traditional God. At last, with the defection of the chief minister, John G. Hartnett, to the new “Cthulhu cult,” as it became known, they began to practice the blasphemous faith more openly, using the ideographs apparently to aid in “calling down from the sky” some mysterious entity which Clarke guardedly refers to as “the madness out of space.” During certain times of secret worship at night among the degenerates, Clarke could detect a horribly foul odour emanating from the direction of the ledge, along with a muted white glow in the atmosphere above it—but he never tried to witness these repulsive ceremonies for himself. When finally the situation became intolerable, Clarke, as leader of the few members remaining true to the original faith, organized his followers into a campaign to suppress the heresy. Unfortunately, at this point in his hitherto detailed narrative, he becomes vague, hinting merely that after a “great trial,” in which he and his men had to resort to means derived from the unclean rituals of the Cthulhuists—and with the assistance of selected Arkham town officials—they succeeded in eradicating the evil. He is specific about a “cataclysm of God” occurring on October 31, 1878, which utterly destroyed the Cthulhu cult—a fire that swept the settlement and burned to the ground every dwelling (tents and flimsy shacks). Most perished in the conflagration, including Hartnett, the few survivors scattering into oblivion. Clarke retired to Arkham, a badly shaken man, but his solid faith along with the help of an alienist, as he candidly admits, sustained him. He warns others of the dangers of deviation from Christianity, closing with a long, pedantic section extolling the virtues of the Congregational Church to which in the end he converted.

Clarke is reasonably precise about the location of the community, and I’m confident that I can find it somewhere to the west of Satan’s Ledge when I go look for it tomorrow after work. That fire he speaks of must have thoroughly effaced the site, since undoubtedly I’ve passed over it in my exploration and not noticed any remains. In fifty years the forest can wholly reclaim a cleared area.

I’ll let you know what my search turns up. Until we meet again, and wishing you luck in the forthcoming holiday races, I am

Yr. Humble Servt. HWA

My reaction to this incredible missive can scarcely be imagined. As I studied its substance the initial indignation I had felt at Anable’s cavalier dismissal of my invitation and aspersions on my summer lifestyle gave way to an ambivalent sense of skepticism and wonder. This Cthulhu cult business was indeed an intriguing mystery, but evidently this Thomas Clarke was some kind of half-baked religious crank who had made up most—if not all—of this wild story. (Funny that Anable seemed to accept the narrative almost at face value.) Yet, even if the element of truth was small, here was a peculiar historical footnote of the sort to satisfy Anable’s longing for the outré.

I did not have to wait a week before hearing the sequel.

1 July 1728

Winsor:—

Eureka! Success! Forgive this uncharacteristic outburst of elation, but truly marvel grows upon marvel. I’ve discovered what I believe is the former cult site. I’ll concede my conclusion isn’t based on any direct evidence, for I found no charred relics—rather in a part of the woods a quarter-mile northwest of Satan’s Ledge, where the trees are relatively sparse, there stands a makeshift hovel, which could only have been erected within the last couple of weeks. I can tell someone is living in it from the rough mat and store of supplies inside. No, I haven’t met its inhabitant. But I’ve caught glimpses of him, an elderly man in tattered, nondescript garments, in its vicinity and at Satan’s Ledge—where I nearly surprised him in the act of carving fresh ideographs into the rocks, in an apparent effort to restore those obliterated by weather and time. These, when I examined them, proved, crude as they were, not to be mere copies or tourist graffiti—but new designs consistent with legible existing ones. I’d evidently interrupted him in the midst of his work, because when I returned the next day there were several more carved into the brittle granite. I’ve not come close to catching this individual since our near encounter at the ledge, try as I might—and lately I’ve been thinking that maybe it’s a bit unwise for me to attempt it alone.

To speak plainly, would you mind coming up to Arkham to help me run this fellow to ground? If we could only talk to him I suspect he could tell us a fascinating story or two about the ledge and the ideographs and, who knows, perhaps the cult. Surely after the 4th celebrations Wednesday you could take some time off. Possibly this coming weekend? Anxiously awaiting your reply, I am

Yr. Servt. H.

I reacted to this second letter from Anable, received on the 3rd, with a great deal of confusion. Where before he had simply outlined a fanciful if disquieting story from a pamphlet in a library, now he had ventured into the physical reality of the Arkham woods and found a real mystery—an innocuous one on the surface to my mind and yet a touch sinister, if one could credit the Clarke monograph at all. Reluctant to miss the Fireman’s Ball in Edgartown on Saturday night but eager to assist my friend, I wired him to say that he could expect me Thursday, with the condition that I had to be back on the island by the evening of the 7th. I departed the morning of the 5th, a successful Fourth of July race series behind me.

Upon my arrival Anable impatiently rushed through the civilities and described his plan to me. We would get up before dawn, the idea being that our chances of catching the inhabitant of the hovel were better the earlier we reached the site. An inveterate night owl whose natural tendency was to stay up to three or four in the morning and then sleep well past noon, Anable was grateful for my presence if only to ensure his waking up at the appointed hour. Accordingly, we set the alarm for 5 a.m. and retired. Anable was glad I had been exercising regularly, since we would be approaching the ledge by the steep route. As I was weary from traveling much of the day—by ferry, by motorcoach, and by train—I fell asleep instantly on the bed my chum had thoughtfully made up for me.

The next morning after a breakfast of coffee and crackers and cheese (standard fare for Anable), we stole silently from the house in the half-light of an already warmish day and going a block east hit Route 127, the main north-south road that follows the coast of the North Shore. At this point in its sinuous course, just north of Arkham, 127 swings to the west and runs through an unpopulated stretch of woods, bordered by salt marshes on its eastern fringes. (Though Satan’s Ledge was only about a mile-and-a-half away as the crow flies from 973 Hale Street, these marshes prevented us from reaching it directly.)

Farms had prospered in this region as late as the early nineteenth century, but had gone into rapid decline during the War of 1812 and the succeeding period of economic stagnation. One could hardly believe that where white pine and birch now stood once waved fields of corn, beans, tomatoes, and carrots, acre after acre in the rocky New England soil. Stone walls, in want of mending or in places simply heaps of rubble, ran nowhere through the trees and brush, mute testimony to the old property lines.

We did not keep for long to this main thoroughfare, however, but shortly took a left turn onto one of the occasional dirt roads leading into the forest interior. We must have followed this for a couple of hundred yards before coming to a fork, where Anable selected the more overgrown path (for it no longer could be properly called a road). Though the branches of the trees we passed under blocked much of the little light there was, Anable never faltered and showed no hesitation in his choice of direction when we encountered other forks in the course of our journey. Midges and other flying insects pestered us, and we swatted at these without much effect. As the ground rose perceptibly, I started to perspire.

Finally we were picking our way along what was at best a faint animal trail in the thick of the woods. All at once a steep slope, more nearly accurately a cliff, emerged before us and we began the precipitous climb Anable had warned me about. Above loomed the gray eminence of Satan’s Ledge.

After many minutes of toil we stood, panting on the flat surface of the ledge. The sun was above the horizon by this time, and we admired the view of Arkham below and the sea beyond shimmering in the dawn. A lovely sight, but nothing, averred Anable, like its appearance at sunset.

Before showing me the new ideographs and checking for any more recent carving, Anable pointed out in disgust the “signs” that other, undesirable types (certainly not our man) had left to advertise their visits. Debris littered the rock floor; cigarette butts, paper wrappers, a beer bottle or two, and—upon part of the ledge covered by a smooth layer of soft earth or humus—several flattened, translucent balloons with wide mouths, resembling the hydra or some other primitive marine animal. (I had noticed this same peculiar detritus washed in great numbers on Martin’s Beach near Gloucester, where my family used to summer in the days prior to our acquiring the Vineyard house.)

We surveyed this sorry spectacle but for a moment before Anable directed my attention to what was of prime importance. On the great, most easterly boulder stood out four rows of bizarre figures—a sequence of alien hieroglyphics whose outlines vaguely suggested odd animal forms rather than abstract characters. These incised figures, each six inches or so in height, proved on closer inspection to be highlighted by a dullish red pigment ground into the contours. They ran roughly in horizontal lines, about a dozen to each line, as regularly as the irregular surface of the granite allowed. Anable calculated that they had been created over a period of two weeks, at the rate of three or four a day. Original, worn figures had been carved over to form a kind of palimpsest. Other boulders had many fewer inscribed markings, we noted.

Once I had satisfied myself with my first view of these astonishing glyphs, Anable led me deeper into the trees in a northwesterly direction. Nature was very much evident at this hour—a rabbit scampered out of sight ahead, squirrels and chipmunks chattered at us as they scurried along branches, and above the pine tops I spotted the distinctive, “flying cigar” forms of chimney swifts gliding soundlessly, along with a stray green heron aimed for the marshes behind and below us. Fallen tree trunks white with fungi oozed the odor of decay—a not unpleasant scent.

After a fifteen-minute trek the woods and undergrowth thinned and we came out into a clearing. Wild flowers grew in spectacular clumps here, covering any sign of former human habitation—for this, conjectured Anable, was where the religious colony had been planted almost fifty years ago.

We crossed the expanse of clearing to where the trees began to grow thick again by a stream, and there beneath a great pine bough was a lean-to, or more accurately perhaps, tee-pee about five feet high. Peering cautiously inside, we saw a tarpaulin and blankets, a small cupboard, an ax, and other camping gear. A pile of ashes and blackened wood circled by stones in front bespoke the remains of a fire. Nearby on the ground rested a chisel and mallet, plus a stick of red chalk.

“Hello, young fellers,” cried a hearty voice. “Up kind of early, ain’t you, for a nature walk?”

We both turned around at once to observe, coming out of a pine copse about fifteen yards to our right, a short, thickly built, elderly man—smiling at us and tugging at his pants. He wore what amounted to a suit of earth-colored rags, and more than a touch of redness rimmed his eyes, the only part of his face visible in the great, gray mass of hair and whiskers that covered his head. He reminded me of the sort of slovenly rustic one tried to avoid noticing loafing around the Arkham Trailways station. Despite his decrepit clothing, he appeared to have a robust physique, and showed none of the faltering slowness of the aged as he advanced a few steps toward us, then halted. If not for his cheerful tone of voice and ingratiating manner, I would have thought him a very threatening fellow.

“What business have you boys in this stretch of the woods?” he asked. Anable answered that he often took walks in the Arkham hills, and had done so most of his life. Shifting to the offensive, my friend asked in turn what he was doing camping in these parts, and whether he had a permit.

“Well, my lad, I must tell you I’m no newcomer to this beautiful country,” said he, looking appreciatively about, “though it’s been a good many years since I set foot here—long before you youngsters were toddling around nosing into your elder’s affairs. I was camped on this land when a person didn’t need a permit to set up a house. Least we didn’t bother with one . . . Maybe that’s why we had to leave all of a sudden.” He chuckled, enjoying his private joke.

Anable asked if he had had anything to do with the “Shaker” community that used to be located at this site—and was he around at the time of the “cataclysm of God” that had destroyed it.

“Oh, you’ve heard of that, have you? Thought folks had hushed that up ages ago. Not something people in polite circles in Arkham would talk about, even at the time.”

Anable said that he had studied the Clarke monograph, “Satan and His Works in Latter-Day New England,” and persisted in his questioning.

“So you’ve read that packet of lies that parsimonious prig slandered our memory with. . . . Yeh, I guess I was a part of it. But before I say more, who be you? And who be your quiet friend?”

My comrade introduced himself as Howard Wentworth Anable of Arkham, Massachusetts, and me as his fellow Miskatonic student, E. Phillips Winsor. Did I detect a happy gleam in the old man’s eye, an abrupt perking up, at the mention of Anable’s name?

“Glad to meet you, Mr. Anable, Mr. Winsor,” he said, nodding to each of us, with a certain mock deference. With an enthusiasm lacking before he said, “Harper is my name. Jay Harper.” I was grateful to be at a distance, as I had no desire to shake the paw of this unkempt vagabond.

“Yeh, I did belong to the sect. I was a youth then, not much older than you boys. In ’76 it was. My people, they come from far up the valley—of good sound stock, mind you. My governor practiced law when he wasn’t running the general store—sent me to Yale College for a spell, but Yale and me didn’t hit it off and so we parted company.

“I had a hankering to wander, and came to Arkham since I heard the mills needed strong, healthy chaps like me. But I guess I was too late, ’cause I couldn’t find a job right away. In the meantime, I became friendly with some of the members of this religious community in the hills who said it was okay for me to make my home with them—not that I was ever a devout churchgoer but it was a lot cheaper than staying in lodgings in town. Later when I got a mill job I kept where I was. I had a wild streak then, and I came to see that what those folks were up to was kind of exciting . . . If that self-righteous blockhead Tim Clarke hadn’t meddled in business he had no understanding of . . .” Harper glowered. “Satan’s Ledge, huh! Clarke with all his Bible learning could only figure things in Christian terms. We called it by a more suitable name, of course.”

Harper smiled wistfully, adding sadly, “Well, if you’ve read that stupid ‘treatise’ of his you know the upshot. Poor Hartnett, he meant no harm. I was lucky to get away from that burning mess alive. I went back to Dunwich, where I’ve worked ever since for Whateley’s Tree Service. Never been back to Arkham till now.”

Harper paused, casting his eyes down on the chisel and mallet waiting for use. Anable asked why he had returned—and why he was carving new ideographs—and what was their significance.

“Now, son, don’t be overinquisitive—one question at a time. Let’s just say that I’m indulging myself in a show of sentimental reminiscence. Preparing the stage the way we used to before performing the rituals. I’m carving them from memory for old time’s sake, you understand. There’s no harm in it—we weren’t bothering anyone outside the cult. As for their meaning, I might tell you another time . . .” His throaty chuckle after this remark made me flinch.

“See here, lads, maybe . . . maybe you can help me out. If you do, I’ll tell you some secrets about the old cult that few persons alive today could begin to guess at . . . I’m running low on supplies, and would be obliged to you if you would buy me some groceries. In my state I’m afraid I’d draw too much unkindly attention if I was to go into town myself.” He pulled out an oily sheet from his jacket, along with some dollar bills more brown than green. “Here’s my list of what I need, and to show you how much I trust you boys”—he was looking straight at Anable—“I’m giving you the money now, no collateral. Do this for me and come back here in a few days and I promise I’ll tell you some tales I think you’d like to hear. . . .” So saying, he passed the bills to Anable, who nodded in apparent assent.

Jay Harper retrieved his chisel and mallet, along with his red chalk stick, and escorted us back to the ledge, explaining that he could only get his work done there at odd hours—when snoops like ourselves were not around to disturb him.

“Our mysterious character-carver should reveal a thing or two of real interest, I think,” declared Anable as we clambered gingerly down the slope. “Doesn’t seem to be a dangerous sort either—though I was glad to have you standing by, Winsor. My impulse is to help out the old geezer, buy him his groceries. Too bad you can’t stay around to see for yourself what happens.”

My reaction to our meeting with this queer hill person was somewhat less enthusiastic than my companion’s. When I told him so, he simply laughed and dismissed me as an old maid.

At my departure for Arkham the next morning, Anable renewed his vow to apprise me of further developments. Making the right connections, I was back on the island in sufficient time to attend the Fireman’s Ball.

IV

A month passed before I heard from Anable again, a longer interval than I might have expected in view of his eager anticipation of revelations to come when I left him. Had the old ruffian disappeared on him? Or had Harper’s tales turned out to be so disappointing that Anable was ashamed to report on them to me? In any event, this Harper character was clearly a demented fool who was not to be relied upon as far as I was concerned.

Anable’s letter (dated normally for once) read as follows:

August 8, 1928

My dear W:—

Pardon the delay, but I’ve been so absorbed in matters here that I’ve not been able to concentrate long enough to write even the briefest note. Between the necessary drudgery of licking envelopes at Dawber & Pyne and my conferences with Harper, I’ve hardly had a moment to eat or sleep! Let me begin by assuring you that our forest friend has proved informative beyond my wildest imaginings.

I returned with the groceries two days after our initial encounter, taking the more roundabout but easier route from the picnic grounds in light of my load. A bottle of bootleg whiskey I’d included as a surprise did much to encourage Harper’s natural garrulousness, and he spoke to me for hours about the cult while I listened in wonder. Gad, what this man knows! What he has experienced! Harper informed me that he had had vivid dreams, growing in persistency, that drove him back to the settlement site—and in those dreams a cultivated young man figured prominently. When I’d said my name that first meeting he’d known instantly that it was I he’d seen in his dreams! He interprets this as a sign that I can be of invaluable service to him. When he asked for my help (and not just in supplying him with groceries), I readily agreed. Forgive me for not being specific on the nature of his purposes—even I’m not really sure—but Harper has made it a condition of our “pact” that I confide in no one, not even you, dear fellow. Already I say too much. The potential reward for me is tremendous, and I trust you’ll understand when I tell you I don’t want to jeopardize my chances to earn it.

Suffice to say that now that Harper has finished engraving the glyphs (the ones he hadn’t remembered from his youth came to him in visions), he requires the consultation of certain arcane books available in the locked stacks of the Miskatonic library. In particular he wishes me to transcribe passages from Abdul Alhazred’s Necronomicon, perhaps the rarest and most marvelous tome in the collection. As a Miskatonic student, I of course would be granted access to this volume more readily than he. I applied to the head librarian, Dr. Henry Armitage, who permitted me—albeit reluctantly—to copy from it. Harper could only provide me from memory with approximate locations of the pertinent passages, with a vague outline of their content. (The cult’s copy was lost in the flames of ’78.) My Latin proved fair enough, however, for me to determine from the context which lines were relevant.

Harper was pleased with the material I collected, and wanted me to make a second trip to the library for further transcription. Unfortunately, the next time I went to continue my research, on the 3rd, I was disappointed. Dr. Armitage, who has gone into seclusion at his house and refuses to see a soul, has left instructions forbidding anyone to be shown the Necronomicon. Harper greeted this ill turn of fortune with dismay, but thinks what I managed to get copied down before may be sufficient. Our progress is delayed, yet other resources do exist.

Looking forward to catching up in person fall term, I remain

Yr. Servt. HWA

So, Anable had taken to humoring the old half-wit in his crazy pursuits. I was beginning to grow alarmed, recalling that the Necronomicon had been furtively discussed among the decadent circles I had spurned as a book of colossal, cosmic evil. For the first time it struck me that Anable might be losing sight of reality. His account of his servility to Harper served to confirm my distrust of that scruffy creature. When I wrote Anable back, I told him as politely as possible that I disapproved of Harper and that he ought to keep away from him. In reply I got a short note from Anable, pervaded by a wounded, defensive tone, saying that I was regarding the situation in the wrong way and would understand better when he could explain things to me face to face in the fall.

The remainder of the summer passed pleasantly for me. It culminated spectacularly in an all-night Labor Day weekend aboard our yawl, Arethusa, anchored off the West Chop light. With this fete fresh in my memory, I anticipated the return to Miskatonic and reunion with Anable in a gay, trouble-free mood, the very opposite of the one I had sunk into at the time of receiving his unsettling letter.

V

To say that Anable had subtly changed by the time I arrived back in Arkham in mid-September would be an understatement. As I stepped off the B. & M. coach at the station, he greeted me with an energy and effusiveness that I was wholly unaccustomed to. His usually languid brown eyes were animated, almost mirthful. He exhibited none of the somber demeanor so characteristic of him, and his pace was quicker than ever.

“Great and wonderful things are in the offing, Winsor,” exclaimed my buoyant buddy as we settled ourselves on the trolley. “I’ve gotten to know our friend Harper pretty well in a couple of months. He’s really quite a respectable fellow—a decent, middle-class Yankee, and a college man to boot (at least he was for a while). A pity he’s had hard luck. But with a few changes of clothing I’ve provided him—well, it’s made a big difference, as you’ll see. . . .”

Anable paused a moment slightly embarrassed. “I have to warn you, Winsor, that I’ve allowed Harper to use your room, to stay overnight from time to time during damp weather. But of course now that you’re back, he’ll return to the woods for good. Besides, he now has company.”

I looked quizzical.

“Yes, others have joined our survivor. There’re presently several of his former cult members living on the old site. They, too, have heard the call—in their dreams just as Harper did—and have gathered from disparate parts of the country. They’ve set up a regular small camp—nothing like on the scale of the original of course.”

I watched the houses become sparser as we approached the end of the line, and for the first time regretted my decision to move out of the comparative civilization of the university dorms. I was not at ease as we tramped the short length of the front walk and marched up the stairs to the second floor of 973 Hale Street.

As we entered the sitting room, a gentleman arose from the sofa whom I did not immediately recognize as the bedraggled individual I had met in the woods in the summer. His shock of hair was combed, and his sturdy frame was decked out in a clean checked shirt, denim trousers, and brand new work boots. This time I shook hands with Jay Harper. Apparently he had been reading, for next to him on the end table and on the sofa itself were scattered a number of battered, dirty-looking books.

“Well, Howard, I thank you again for letting me read at your place. Fine titles these books are. It’d be a shame if I had to store them in the tee-pee where the moisture’d get at them. Good day to you both,” said the old man, picking up his jacket and striding out the door.

I glanced down at one of the more modern volumes on the sofa and saw that it was the shocking Goblin Tower by Frank Belknap Long. A quick survey revealed that the rest were just as dismal—among them Melmoth the Wanderer, R. W. Chamber’s The King in Yellow, Bierce’s In the Midst of Life, and Lord Dunsany’s A Dreamer’s Tales in the Modern Library pocket edition.

Noting my look of distaste, Anable made a half-hearted effort to allay my worries.

“While working at Dawber & Pyne this summer,” he began, “I had the chance to search through their stock of secondhand books. Amazing what they kept lying around in dusty cartons in the attic. Because of their poor condition I was able to pick them up for a steal. Harper made a few suggestions on what to keep my eye out for and choose. His knowledge of the literature in the field is truly profound. I discovered more interesting works than I thought existed. They’ve been a great help in filling in the gaps in the data we culled from the Necronomicon. Just because an author writes ‘fiction’ doesn’t mean he doesn’t put some important truths into his books, whether intentionally or not.

“Don’t be alarmed—we’re not out to destroy the world,” he said, smiling. “It’s all simply a personal concern that doesn’t affect anybody else.”

I was not persuaded by these arguments to disarm me. I said nothing, and went into my bedroom to arrange my effects that had been shipped in advance of my arrival.

Despite his initial show of friendliness, Anable displayed little interest in me or my affairs in succeeding weeks. I resented this behavior, and now and then told him he was involved in a lot of rubbish—but he continued to ignore me. Harper came to the apartment twice in the next month for conferences with Anable, held in his room with the door shut. (Had there been a lock on it I have no doubt he would have used it.) My roommate made frequent trips to the vicinity of Satan’s Ledge—or so I assumed, for he rarely bothered to tell me of his plans before going out. He never asked me to join him. When I ventured to mention my feelings of exclusion, Anable assured me that he would reveal what he and Harper were up to at the appropriate time. I must remain patient.

In any event, I had my course work to absorb me. “Eighteenth Century Gothick Taste in England,” “Literature of the Restoration” (with an emphasis on Shadwell), “Differential Equations,” and “American Transcendentalism” (taught by Professor Albert N. Wilmarth who started the class a week late owing, rumor had it, to an upsetting, overnight visit to Vermont shortly before the term began) kept me immersed in my books for long hours. Anable, on the other hand, scarcely opened a text, his dubious collection of the weird forming his chief reading material. He often cut classes, an evening course in “Medieval Metaphysics” being the only one he attended faithfully. In sum, he was no longer the conscientious student of the previous year. I feared for his scholarship status.

At the apartment Anable alternated between extremes of moods. Either he would shuffle about in a state of suppressed agitation, or else would lounge around the sitting room in his dressing gown, sunk in lassitude. In this latter condition he seemed to be daydreaming, utterly oblivious of me or his surroundings.

I felt compassion for him just once when he announced to me that his mother had had to sell two ornately carved, Jacobean chairs that had been in the family for generations in order to buy a new refrigerator. He moped for a week, and I was genuinely sorry for him.

VI

When, out of kindness, I asked Anable if he cared to accompany me to a Halloween party the 31st, he shook his head.

“I appreciate your concern for my social life, Winsor,” he answered, “but I’m afraid I’m going to be busy with Harper and his friends that night. You might say we have a party of our own to attend in observance of the Hallowmas. If it turns out as I have every expectation it will, I can assure you—at long last, my dear fellow—of a complete and satisfactory explanation.”

Of what Anable did not specify—and I did not inquire further. The truth is, I had become intimidated by Anable’s actions. I faced the painful fact that by now he was not in his right mind—he was already far gone in his involvement in these outlandish pursuits, and it would do no good to confront him head on. Recalling his injunction to me to help him retain his “sense of proportion,” I resolved at that moment to go on Halloween to Satan’s Ledge, where surely he and his unsavory companions would be congregating, and observe their goings-on in secret. This would be a risky business to be certain, but I felt given Anable’s evasiveness that I had to obtain information firsthand, assess how dangerous this evidently revived cult was to him. I no longer had confidence in his promise of revelation.

During the week prior to the 31st, Anable spent more and more time away from 973 Hale Street, presumably with his comrades in the forest hills. When I returned to the apartment after classes, he would be gone. I would be in bed asleep before he came back, his closed door in the morning the only indication he had done so. I saw him once or twice, and then fleetingly.

The day before Halloween I noticed a brown bag on the sitting room desk. Anable must have brought it in earlier that afternoon. Thinking it contained groceries, I casually looked inside. To my surprise I found a curious assortment of chemicals in glass jars as might belong to a boy’s chemistry set: uniodized salt, sulphur, iron filings, compounds of cobalt, magnesium, nickel, zinc, and mercury. Among his other solitary childhood pastimes, I remembered Anable once saying that he had been passionately devoted to chemistry. Was this evidence of a resurgence of interest in that hobby? Again, I hesitated to ask.

That Wednesday around 3 when I got back from Miskatonic, Anable was pacing about the sitting room, as intensely agitated as I had ever seen him. He scarcely acknowledged my entry. “The dreams, Winsor, the magnificent dreams,” he exclaimed and rushed into his room.

An hour later Anable emerged dressed in his worn winter coat and carrying his sack of chemicals. “Please bear with me,” he pleaded, his brown eyes begging my understanding, as he ran out. For a second I softened and forgot my annoyance with him, overcome by a surge of pity for the fellow. I should not really blame Anable for his deplorable state—Harper and his disreputable cultists were the ones responsible. They had taken in my unworldly friend with their elaborate Cthulhu mumbo-jumbo. If I could catch them this night causing him any harm, psychological or otherwise, I would blow the whistle on them in a minute and call in the Arkham authorities. I had already confided my fears to Mrs. Anable, who agreed that her son was under bad influences.

Leaving at dusk for my party, I drove the model J Duesenberg my father had given me for my birthday earlier in the month into Arkham center. A paper bag with cut-out eyes would serve me as a simple costume. I spent several agreeable hours drinking cider and bobbing for apples at the Zeta Psi house, then set out on the serious mission of my Halloween night.

Since it would be hopeless for me to try in the dark to follow the forest trail Anable had led me on in the summer, let alone scale the steep slope to the ledge, I decided to take the more roundabout route of my original visit there. Besides, now that I was in possession of a motorcar, distance was no obstacle. I headed inland out Miskatonic Avenue, which runs along the river, to where it hits the Bolton Road. The moon had risen, and the beams of my headlamps illuminated the autumn leaves swirling and eddying in the cold breeze. An exhilarating and magical air suffused the landscape. In high spirits from the quantity of cider I had imbibed, I approached this uncertain rendezvous free of any apprehension. It was almost a lark.

My watch showed a little past 11 by the time I parked at the picnic area. In the moonlight with foliage above thinner than in warmer months, I had no trouble locating the path to Satan’s Ledge. I kept to this at first, but not wishing to encounter possible sentinels, I strayed to the left and began a cautious circling movement through the woods, which were dense enough to afford adequate concealment. I was able to make my way with a minimum of stumbling as I worked up to gradually higher ground.

I was acutely aware of the noises in the brush and trees—the rustle of swaying boughs, the trickle of a distant stream, an owl hoot, a jay’s cry. But soon I heard another sound, an unfamiliar one, a soft, rhythmic moaning, as if the forest itself was breathing. Ahead of me I began to catch glimpses through the branches and undergrowth of flickering, bobbing points of light—but it was too late in the season for fireflies. They seemed to be receding at the same rate as I advanced. As I continued my slow, upward progress, I realized that these were flames—candle flames. As I approached nearer still, I could perceive that each candle was held by a dim human form. A half-dozen men were walking in Indian file towards Satan’s Ledge—for now at last in the faint light of the moon and candles I could make out the rough, Cyclopean boulders on the ledge’s inner rim. I lay down behind a fallen birch trunk about thirty yards away, not daring to go closer.

The group proceeded across the rock floor of the ledge and arranged itself very deliberately in a semi-circle in front of and facing the great easterly boulder with its graven ideographs. From my low vantage point I had an unobstructed view of this scene. All of those in this strange procession (though I could only see their backs) appeared to be elderly folk, except for one—from his hurried, stooping gait I could not mistake Anable. The air was curiously still on the ledge, the flames stirring hardly at all—and the surrounding woods now seemed unnaturally quiet, the continuous, monotonous chanting the only sound.

Abruptly the cultists crouched down, bowed before the rock. One figure remained standing—the mass of hair and beard marked him as Harper. He moved to the center of the semi-circle, set down his candle by the boulder’s base, and drew from his jacket an object that I thought at first was the mallet—but it was a pipe, for he raised it to his mouth and blew three, low loathsome notes. The others ceased the moronic chanting instantly in response. Harper next pulled from his jacket a small, glittering container, and started methodically to march around behind the huddled group and scatter a powdery substance from it with his fingertips. Soon emptying its contents, he withdrew another and repeated the process, and so for several jars until he had covered the length of the semi-circle and enclosed the band from one edge of the great boulder to the other. Thus were the chemicals Anable had purchased put to use.

Done with this seemingly pointless ritual, Harper rejoined the congregants, squatting down with them at one end of their semi-circle. They then raised their heads in unison to the rock and commenced to pour out, as if reading the blasphemous glyphs, an uncouth string of syllables in a language that not only bore no relation to English but to no sane human tongue on this planet.

“Cthulhu fhtagn,” they recited over and over.

With the cry of “Iä, Iä, Shub-Niggurath,” an indescribably foetid odor swept down upon me from the direction of the ledge. I almost swooned as I closed my eyes in disgust. My nausea stemmed not only from the ghastly stench itself, but from the sudden remembrance of Anable’s description of certain events outlined in Clarke’s monograph. Here these crazed cultists—and my brash friend—were reenacting an unholy ceremony of the sort practiced fifty years ago on this spot! I trembled, no longer the bold spy of a short time before.

I had barely mastered my nausea, the vile odor having passed within moments, when I opened my eyes to see, atop the graven boulder, a shrouded human figure—who must have scaled the rock from behind and emerged in the instant I had them shut. A great wind had sprung up and whistled and howled around this apparition, blowing his immaculate white robe in billows and nearly extinguishing the flames of the candles of the worshippers clustered below him. Emanating a brilliant glow of purest white, this luminous, lithe-limbed being glided down the nearly vertical granite face to the ledge floor, while the hideous glyphs burned a dark red as if reflecting his radiance. I could clearly discern his dazzling features—he was smooth-faced, delicately boned, and boyish, with the almond eyes of an antique pharaoh. From his crown luxuriant, silken, gold hair flowed as if electrically charged. I was more in awe than frightened—indeed overcome by the unearthly beauty of this personage. I was transfixed.

One of the crouched celebrants rose—it was Anable—and approached this exquisite, god-like creature. Harper and the rest remained prostrate. Anable knelt before him and raised his face and clasped his hands in supplication. The gorgeous youth began to speak, to murmur to Anable, but the wind had built to such a frantic pitch that I could catch nothing, though I believe he was using English. After communing with Anable for what seemed like aeons, he bent over and embraced and enveloped my friend in his wavering folds. They blended into one writhing, amorphous mass, Anable invisible in the voluminous robe—then they almost poured back to the graven rock and began effortlessly to ascend its steep face.

At this point I could endure it no longer. I lurched forward from my hiding place and ran screaming, “Anable! Oh, Howard! Watch out!” Perhaps emboldened by my liquor, perhaps driven by some mad, selfless instinct, I hastened to try to save my chum. Damn the risk! What had I to fear after all from a half-dozen old people, whom I could fast outrun if need be? As for the fragile fellow who had swallowed up my friend, I was suddenly overwhelmed with rage and hatred for him. I didn’t know whether to kiss it or kill it! All that mattered was rescuing my companion from his willowy clutches.

Incredibly, I succeeded in my immediate attempt to cause disruption. The celebrants turned around in bewilderment, then hurried to their feet, extinguishing their tapers, and raced off in panic into the woods as I charged them, brandishing a stout birch limb and wearing my paper bag mask for added effect. The white-robed youth hesitated, then lowered the inert form of my friend gently to the rock floor, finally mounting the boulder again and swiftly disappearing over its top edge—he would have a difficult climb down the steep slope beyond.

Only Harper of the fleeing cultists paused. “Curse you, boy,” he bellowed. “You’ve spoiled his initiation. Woe be to you, my lad!” Then he slipped with the rest into the darkness.

Guided by the moonlight, I rushed to where Anable lay prone on the rock. He was stunned and babbling: “The Great Old Ones . . . Cthulhu’s Ledge . . . I was so close . . . Azathoth.” Sheer nonsense, of course.

Frightened that the Cthulhuists might regroup and come after us once recovering from their surprise, I hoisted Anable to his feet, first ascertaining that he was in no pain. To my relief I found him ambulatory and was able to lead him by the path quickly back to the picnic grounds and the safety of my Model J.

During the frenzied drive back to Arkham, Anable continued his wild mutterings. At first incoherent, he abruptly began to speak in lucid sentences, albeit rapidly and with a terrific intensity, his brown eyes glazed.

“Yes, Winsor, I have met the Old Ones’ avatar . . . who told me of marvels beyond the galling limitations of time and space as we conceive of them. I learned where Henri Rousseau had obtained his models for the jungle creatures in that curious and unsettling painting of his, ‘The Children of the Kingdom.’ And the primitive tribes of Guatemala and the Dutch East Indies archipelago are not the only repositories of secrets that would drive the mass of mankind mad if they were known. The woods of New Jersey, just a few miles from the Pest Zone euphemistically called New York City, contain creeping, insidious, eldritch horror, which threatens at any moment to erupt and spew over the land (a result I wouldn’t mind seeing if it meant the destruction of that hateful burg). Nor even are the Connecticut suburbs safe . . .

“I learned, too, of those dark and dangerous forces that flop and flounder at the galaxy’s rim . . . This goes infinitely beyond man’s feeble morality. We’re no more significant than the least bacterial scum in the larger scheme of the universe. The Old Ones have spared us worthless wretches so far because we count for so little. They may appear ‘malign’ to certain self-blinded earth-gazers, but are in fact indifferent—except to the occasional exceptional individual, to whom They may give the opportunity for the realization of and participation in the awesome secrets of time and space. There is a chance for human transcendence. Many hear the call, but few will heed it and be chosen. Iä! Iä! Shub-Niggurath, the Goat with a Thousand Young!”

At this last burst of insanity Anable trailed off again into gibberish, only to cry a minute later: “Oh but, Winsor, you fool! So much more could I have found out, unimaginable wonders, if you hadn’t interrupted. Damn you!” With this imprecation he lapsed into permanent silence, slumped down in the seat beside me. His lack of gratitude stung, but I could hardly judge him harshly in the circumstances. Surely now it was essential that he sever all ties with Harper and company, who had brought him to this woeful condition.

Barely conscious or able to walk, Anable with my help staggered up the stairs and into his room where I eased him onto his bed. Thank God our dreadful Halloween night was over.

VII

Anable spent the next several weeks in a state of utter collapse. Naturally, the morning after our harrowing misadventure at Satan’s Ledge, I notified Mrs. Anable that her son had taken seriously ill, sparing her the worst of the details. She arranged for the family doctor to come to examine him at the apartment as soon as possible. Dr. MacDonald could find no signs of physical injury, but in light of my guarded account concluded that Anable must have suffered some kind of severe nervous shock that had rendered him powerless. When after two days Anable did regain consciousness, he was too weak to speak or get about on his own. It was clear that he could no longer remain at 973 Hale Street. With the aid of stalwart Dr. MacDonald, I succeed in transferring Anable in my vehicle to his family’s Valley Street home. Mrs. Delisio, tearfully watching the doctor and me carry the patient outside, remarked what a pity that such a polite, mannerly young man should be so grievously afflicted.

Mrs. Anable was reluctant to call in the authorities, but she worried about the cultists who had harmed her son lurking still in the woods, and requested that I and some friends scout around the Satan’s Ledge area. A week after Halloween, I persuaded three classmates—Messrs. Hailblum, Sullivan, and Klein—to accompany me on a “bird walk” (such was my excuse) during the day to see if Harper and company were around or not. In the course of our bird sighting, I discovered no trace of human habitation other than the discarded garbage. Perhaps with the onset of colder weather they had dispersed, returning to their places of origin. Nevertheless, a clever woodsman like Harper could easily evade detection and survive the winter outdoors if he had to. Mrs. Anable was relieved to hear my report that they had apparently pulled up stakes and departed.

I visited Anable at least once a week during his confinement at home. Sitting by his bedside, I filled him in on campus news and the progress of my courses—careful not to mention the cult or Satan’s Ledge or the disturbing doings Halloween night. Though capable of speaking for brief intervals (according to his mother), Anable chose to keep silent at these interviews. Indeed, he often closed his eyes, as if overcome by weariness, and turned his head to the wall away from me. When his luminous brown eyes were open, they seemed to stare at me, as if with—could it be?—resentment. I was generous not to take this as a personal slight, but rather attributed it to the grave mental strain he had undergone, perhaps coupled with a resumption of that natural reserve that shut out even his best friend.

Anable’s physical health did improve steadily, however, and he regained sufficient strength to walk unassisted by the end of November. By early December he could leave the house on short trips. But, having a constitutional aversion to cold weather, aggravated by his present weakened condition, Anable could not remain outside for very long. This was one fortunate complication, for he had begun to express a desire to revisit the ledge, so Mrs. Anable confided to me. She did not wish him to return to the scene of his traumatic experience, and made me promise to do everything in my power to prevent him from doing so.

His mental state, alas, did not change much for the better. Anable continued to be withdrawn and apathetic—as if he had expended all the tremendous energy that had been building within him since summer in one shot that Halloween night, with none left to sustain him for the rest of the year. The dean of the university showed his understanding when he allowed Anable to take incompletes in his fall subjects, at no penalty to his scholarship status.

When I returned to Arkham following the Christmas vacation, I was pleased to find Anable had resumed residence in our Hale Street apartment. His greeting was effusive, yet somehow perfunctory, lacking the warmth of the previous reunions. At least he was displaying more liveliness.

“Ah, Winsor,” he exclaimed, “trust you enjoyed the holidays. Happy 1929! Dr. MacDonald has judged me well enough to get back to my studies at Miskatonic—which I can tell you I’m eager to do. An invalid’s existence is a terrific bore.

“As for the cult business, let me put your mind to rest on all that. You needn’t feel anxious for me any more. I realize now I was fooling with forces that no person with his wits about him should ever get mixed up in. I’d become so immersed in arcane lore, shall we say, that I’d lost all perspective—just as I warned you I might. I have to admit you were correct to be suspicious of Harper. He was luring me into the midst of a sinister ‘cosmic conspiracy’—but you showed up out of the blue and saved me in the nick of time. I’m through with it now for good, believe me. I’ll not bring up the subject again—and I’ll appreciate it if you won’t say anything about it either. Let’s forget about it. It’s in the past.”

So, instead of a truthful explanation of what he had been involved in, Anable gave me this assurance of his reform. Well, by this point I knew more than I cared to about this Cthulhu cult and was satisfied that it was all a lot of mysterious, mystical claptrap that had dazzled and misguided my friend. I was content to let the matter drop, hopeful that this was indeed the end of it.

Unsteady on his feet as he still was, Anable was nonetheless able to get to and from classes on his own via the trolley. He applied himself more dutifully to his studies than in the first term, yet I sensed his heart was not really in his work. On more than one occasion I caught him gazing out the sitting room window toward Satan’s Ledge. And more than once, I suspect, he attempted to walk to the ledge by the direct, steep route—but the ice and snow must have thwarted him. When he asked me to drive him to the picnic area off the Bolton Road, I refused. He glared at me for a second, then subsided into a disappointed sulk. Unwilling, I suppose, to appear too keen on the idea of a return journey, he never brought it up again.

As the bleak winter term wore on, Anable made less and less of an effort to be sociable. Listless for long stretches, he also displayed at times a certain restlessness. He gave up all pretense of making conversation, except on the most mundane, essential topics. “Pass the salt” was about the most he would say to Mrs. Delisio or me. I forbore, more sorrowed than angered by his rude behavior. Obviously he had far to go mentally before complete recovery. Despite my protests, he continued to read those trashy, evil books by Chambers, Bierce, and others.

Then in February the dreams came. I began to hear him crying out unintelligibly in his sleep. After one particularly bad night he appeared looking extremely haggard—and yet oddly exhilarated, his eyes flashing with a light I had not seen since before his collapse. When I probed him, he admitted that “distressing” dreams had caused him to sleep fitfully, but his elated expression seemed to belie the notion that they had been in any way disturbing. He would not comment on the content of these dreams.

One night late in the month, after returning from a rush party at the Kappa Sig house, I could hear Anable through his bedroom door talking in his sleep. Pressing my ear to the door, I could make out the following snatches. “He promises to come again . . . Satan’s Ledge too far . . . must try one more time . . . I cannot fail Him . . . He shall not fail me . . . chant the Dhol formula . . . Nyarlathotep. . . .”

I was profoundly alarmed to recognize the sorts of words and phrases he had not mouthed since our delirious ride back to Arkham on that Halloween night. At last I had to face the fact that Anable’s derangement was more serious and lasting than I had guessed. A doctor who specialized in mental disorders would probably have to be consulted soon. But events moved too swiftly for me to act—and, in retrospect, I doubt if it would have affected the ultimate tragic outcome.

The unfortunate climax, when it came, did not catch me entirely off guard. Since Anable had abandoned even an outward show of normality, I was prepared to act forcefully if I had to.

It was a chilly winter evening, a Thursday, with no sign in the air of the forthcoming spring, that I sat on the sofa checking over my notes for a paper on Shadwell’s use of irony. Vacation was only a week away. I was feeling quite relaxed after Mrs. Delisio’s delicious spaghetti dinner. Anable had retired to his room from which shortly he emerged wearing his heavy overcoat.

“I’m going out, Winsor—into town, to my mother’s,” he announced.

I offered him a lift in my motor. He declined. I insisted on leaving with him, seeing him to the trolley stop. Grudgingly, he allowed me to accompany him outside. When we reached the street he turned the wrong way—north toward 127 and the woods. I hurried after him as he broke into a run on the slippery pavement. I easily overtook him in his semi-debilitated condition. When he ignored my command to halt, I had no recourse but to seize him and wrestle him gently into a drift at the side of the road.

“I must get out tonight . . . I must break through the Gate . . . I must merge with Him . . . leave me alone,” he panted as we struggled.

When Anable realized the futility of further resistance, I let him up and he reluctantly returned with me to the house. We were both soaked from rolling around in the wet snow—it was lunacy to stay out any longer with the temperature falling sharply. Anable was wheezing, gasping for breath.

Ignoring his imprecations against me, I assured him that it was in his best interest not to go to the ledge considering his poor health in this weather at this time of night. Anable, furious, stormed into his room and slammed the door. I kept vigil in the sitting room to near midnight, then went to bed myself.

I did not know what time it was when I awoke (I could not see my alarm in the dark), but I soon realized what the cause of my waking up had been—a high wind that rattled the panes had blown over the trash cans in the yard beneath my window. The wind sounded louder than it should—as if its source were from within the building. I stumbled out into the sitting room to investigate. Judging by the great whistling noise coming from Anable’s room I concluded that he had to have his window wide open.

Above the whine, which was like no natural wind I had ever heard, I could distinguish a high-pitched but forceful voice behind Anable’s door that I knew could not be my roommate’s.

“You know, Howard Anable, that the New England world you have loved and cherished from birth is only the sum of the marvelous sunset cities you have gazed upon (from a height) in your dreams. These have you yearned for with such keen frustration all your years. Ancient Arkham, insular Innsmouth, rumour-shadowed Kingsport, Boston and its ghoul-infested North End, Providence and its jeweller’s conventions, these are but ephemeral transcriptions of the real places you have so far only dimly glimpsed—basalt-towered Dylath-Leen, Kled with its perfumed jungles, The Plateau of Leng, Yith, Cyclopean and many-columned Y’ha-nthlei. Your longing for your great-great-grandfather’s Greek Revival mansion with its widow’s walk and Ionic pilasters is really a longing for a certain windowless, onyx pharos on nighted Yuggoth. When you wish to don small clothes and periwig you are in truth desiring to wear the unhuman trappings, the extravagant golden tiaras and armlets of the Deep Ones . . . Soon, Howard Anable, soon you can wander in the Vaults of Zin, and consort with ghasts and Gugs.”

Someone—some madman—had plainly clambered up from the yard below into Anable’s window! Had Harper or one of his cult cohorts returned? I switched on the lamp on the end table. Looking out the sitting room window I could see that Mrs. Delisio had turned on the light illuminating the back-yard.

“I am the Gate,” continued the wailing voice. “The Gate that stands open, ready to receive you. Dare you enter? Come, come now. . . .”

I had had enough of listening to this mad drivel. I knocked on Anable’s door, then tried to open it and found that some heavy object—possibly the bed—blocked it. I threw my shoulder repeatedly against the door, but it budged not an inch. The wind had increased its daemonic scream—I could no longer make out that piping voice whose youthful owner I now knew, only the thuds of books and furniture striking the floor.

With a strength born of frantic frenzy, I burst through, dislodging whatever was behind the door. I was immediately overwhelmed by a loathsome stench, which caused me to reel back in nausea—but not before I saw a large, white, flowing, viscous mass leap through and shatter the upper panes of the sash window. The flying shards of glass miraculously missed me, as I dashed forward into Anable’s empty, suddenly odor-free room—to the damaged window. I looked down, expecting to see Anable and his abductor in a heap in the yard below. But the only person visible was Mrs. Delisio in her dressing gown and shawl, rushing out the back door at the sound of that final crash of glass and wood. Below the window, other than the toppled trash cans and debris, there was nothing on the ground! In the next moment I looked up—looked up toward Satan’s Ledge—looked up into a winter’s sky that was alive with motion in unimagined space filled with transcendent whiteness. In utter stillness.

VIII

Understandably, I did not linger in that house of horror. I spent the rest of that night and the next at Miskatonic in the dorm suite of Messrs. Hailblum, Sullivan, and Klein. I remained in Arkham only for as long as I had to, to calm Mrs. Delisio (who had apparently not witnessed that last, soul-blasting vision in the sky), to speak with Mrs. Anable and to the police suggesting the theory that Anable had been spirited off by the cult members into the hills and possibly beyond. There was no keeping the authorities out of the matter this time. As already stated, I withdrew to Boston for the remainder of the term, arranging to take my exams after vacation. I spent the bulk of my vacation time composing the above narrative.

There is one more thing. In April when I returned to Arkham, I visited Mrs. Delisio to settle my affairs with her. She had already agreed to terminating my lease short of the appointed year, and I wished to pay her some fair compensation. (Insurance had covered the damaged window.) After negotiations had been concluded as affably as possible under the solemn circumstances, she gave me a sealed envelope that she had found among Anable’s effects before their removal. It had my name on it, and contained a hastily scribbled note.

3/15/29

Winsor [it began]:

By the time you read this I’ll be far beyond your meddling reach. Despite your best efforts to interfere I should soon be riding through the intergalactic void on the back of a hypoencephalic centipede, frolicking with the night-gaunts and ghouls—or some such. I regret you won’t be joining me here, as in fact you aren’t worthy to transcend the mundane human world—the mundane human world whose economy within a few months, it’s been my privilege to learn from Him, is in for a difficult period. You and your kind are going to suffer, and I can’t say I feel very sorry for you. Enjoy what will probably prove to be your last summer on the island. Be forewarned that hard times lie ahead.

Yrs.—HWA

Thus read Howard Wentworth Anable’s last—and certainly most unfathomable—communication to me and to the world; the final testament of a once noble mind stolen away from its rightful place among men by a cosmic evil that surely deserves, as I trust my pitiful account has demonstrated, the epithet, “the madness out of space.”

Aliah Warden

Roger Johnson

Witchcraft is an ever-present theme in the history of the county of Essex. It is like a sinister drum-beat below the even tenor of life, often unheard but always felt. I was aware, of course, of the great witchcraft trials held in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and of the infamous career of Matthew Hopkins, the soi-disant “Witchfinder-General,” but I little suspected that behind these painted devils there lurked something deeper, darker, and infinitely more terrible.

Late in the year of 1902 I was invited to call upon a Mr. Giles Chater, a Chelmsford solicitor, on a matter which has no relevance to my story. What is relevant is the fact that I accepted the invitation, for it was at Mr. Chater’s office that I met for the first time Aliah Warden. My business was soon concluded, and Mr. Chater had just poured for me a glass of excellent Madeira wine—of which I was very fond—when his clerk entered the office and diffidently announced that there was a gentleman to see him, a Mr. Warden. “Aliah Warden?” cried my host. “Then show him in, by all means. He may care to join us in a glass of wine.”

The elderly man who followed the clerk into the office was a very singular personage. To begin with, he was not, in fact, as old as he first appeared, though his hair was quite white above a wide face that was lined with wrinkles. He and Mr. Chater greeted each other cordially, and when I was introduced to him I took careful, but, I trust, unobtrusive, note of his curious appearance. His legs were thin, very thin, and gave the impression of being longer than they actually were, in sharp contrast to his squat, round torso. They were markedly bowed, however, and he carried his trunk bent forward at a sharp angle from his hips. This strange bodily configuration of curves and angles amounted quite to a deformity, and was largely responsible for the impression of age that hung about him. His hands and feet were large, flat and square—the hands in particular having one remarkable singularity: there were small but distinct flanges of loose skin between the bases of the fingers. The large, round head was placed directly upon the stocky torso, without any sign of a neck, and seemed to be almost split in two by the wide, flat-lipped mouth. The eyes bulged uncomfortably beneath the lashless lids, and the low forehead, the small ears and the back of the very large stiff collar were almost completely covered by the shock of white hair. This hair was in itself rather peculiar, for it was worn long, in the style of thirty or forty years ago; I perceived that it was of a rather coarse, thick texture and of a quite lifeless shade of white. Physically, at least, Mr. Warden was hardly a prepossessing figure.

Mr. Chater’s voice interrupted my thoughts: “I am sure you will excuse us for a few minutes,” he said. “Mr. Warden is shortly to retire from his practice over in Wrabley, and we have arranged that most of his business will be transferred to me. There are just a few papers to be signed now, and then the thing is done. Don’t go, however, for I understand that you have certain interests in common, and I should like you to know each other better.”

Mr. Warden pursed his wide lips and then smiled. “My practice is very small these days,” he remarked. “The Law and the inhabitants of Wrabley have little to do with each other.”

The interests that were shared by this strange little man and me centered upon the study of that misty region of learning where psychology, anthropology and comparative religion overlap. Before the cheerful fire in our good host’s office, we drank Madeira wine and talked a good deal about witchcraft, devil worship and magic, while Mr. Chater smiled and puffed stolidly at his pipe. I recall Aliah Warden remarking at one stage, “Matthew Hopkins was a fraud, sir—a charlatan. In, that is to say, his capacity as a witch-finder. Ah, he was a cunning devil. What better mask could a fox assume than that of a hunter?”

I had barely time to consider this provocative question before the clock struck five, and I realized that I must be off to the railway station, and thence back to London, where I was to dine with some friends that evening. Before I left the solicitor’s office, however, Mr. Warden extended to me an invitation to call upon him at some future time at his house in Wrabley, and made a remark—flattering, I fear—to the effect that he was always pleased to converse upon his favorite subject with one who was both intelligent and knowledgeable. I gladly accepted the invitation, for the strange old man had proved to be both charming and eloquent, and I suspected that his curious exterior masked a whimsical, if grim, sense of humor, which appealed to me. It was arranged that I should spend a weekend with him towards the end of January. “I have treasures in my house,” he said as we shook hands. “Things that will surprise you.” I did not doubt it.

         

When the appointed day arrived I packed my suitcase and set off for Liverpool Street Station. My feelings, as I boarded the train for Maldon, were distinctly cheerful, for my work of late had been prosaic to the extent of being boring, and I welcomed the thought of leaving the thronged and dirty streets of London for a few days. In Wrabley, the air would be clean, and miles of marshland would separate me from the metropolis. I looked forward, too, to the erudite conversation of Aliah Warden.

Long before my train reached Maldon, however, I began to feel that I had seen enough of the Essex Marshes. I had forgotten how very bleak and how very flat is this region which is not quite land and not quite sea. The glistening mud-flats seemed somehow sinister in their isolation, and the few lonely farms and decrepit clapboard houses only seemed to emphasize the loneliness. It was hard to realize that I was little more than thirty miles from the greatest city in the world.

Maldon is an enchanting little town, a small but busy port. There was a cheerfulness about the place that day that raised my spirits, and I felt that, after all, I had made no mistake in leaving London. Until, that is, I hailed a cab and instructed the driver to take me to Wrabley. His answer was not encouraging.

“I’ll take you, sir,” he said, “but I can’t think why you would want to go there. ’Tis the most desolate hole.”

I explained that I was visiting a friend there. At that, his manner brightened a little.

“Would that be Mr. Warden, sir? Ah, he’s a nice gentleman—if a bit odd. But I won’t hear a word against him. He always asks for me when he wants a cab from Maldon.” The cabbie was silent for a moment, brooding, while the horses pawed irritably at the cobbles. “Still and all,” he said, “I don’t take back what I said about Wrabley. The place is run down something rotten, and so are the people. Huh. Rotten! Yes, I reckon that’s the right word. Still—” (he gave a half-smile) “if you’re visiting there I musn’t put you off. Get in, sir, and I’ll drive you there.”

As we travelled along the north bank of the estuary, skirting the jagged reed-filled inlets, it seemed that the landscape became more desolate. The mere flatness of the land made it difficult to judge distances, and I was surprised when suddenly the driver pointed ahead with his whip at a low, jagged prominence and said, “There’s Murrell Hill, sir. We’ll be in the village shortly.” I soon realized that the hill was covered in buildings—indeed, it was here that Aliah Warden had his house—and that it was this that gave it that curious rugged appearance.

The village, or rather town, had hardly spread at all on the landward side, but rather seemed to huddle about the little creek, where the weatherboarded buildings leaned precariously upon each other. We approached from the west, however, entering directly into the cobbled road that ran over the low hill. The houses were very large, suggesting considerable wealth, but it soon became evident that this wealth must have been spent long ago, for most of the buildings were in sadly poor repair. Only two or three houses survived in good condition—these and a solitary public building, a hall of some kind, whose doric portico bore the single word “Dagon,” in discrete Roman letters.

The cab pulled up before one of the better houses, and the driver climbed down and opened the door for me. “This is the place, sir,” he said. “Mr. Warden’s house.” As I paid him the agreed fare, I could not help observing that even here three windows of the eight in the not unhandsome frontage lacked curtains. With some misgivings, I lifted the heavy brass door-knocker.

My welcome, however, was as cordial as I could have wished. Aliah Warden greeted me effusively, almost hopping along the hallway in his eagerness. This curious movement unlocked a door in my mind, and I realized with a start what I had unconsciously recognized at our first meeting—that Aliah Warden, physically, bore a remarkable resemblance to a frog. I was strongly reminded of Tenniel’s depiction of the frog-gardner in Through the Looking Glass, and I was unable to restrain a smile, which, fortunately, my host misinterpreted. “Ah,” he said, “you are looking forward to seeing my treasures? All in good time, my dear fellow. First, I think, a glass of wine, and then something to eat.”

It appeared that Mr. Warden was his own cook and housekeeper, and he suggested that while he prepared a meal for me I might care to inspect his collection of books and various objects d’art which he had accumulated during his delvings into what he called “the world’s most fascinating pastime.”

Here were treasures indeed. One large room was almost entirely taken up by his library, and I soon realized that the man must be possessed of learning far beyond anything I had suspected. I saw Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft, Stearne’s Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft, Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana, and others—numerous others—with which I was familiar, but many of the books were quite unknown to me, while others I had long believed to be fabulous, having no existence outside the imaginations of certain perverse cultists. There were handwritten volumes, bearing such titles as Cultes des Goules, Unaussprechlichen Kulten and De Vermis Mysteriis. Ah! And here was a title that I recognized, though I had never thought that book actually existed. The volume was bound in scarred and stained leather, and printed in tiny blackletter characters, and on its spine was the one word Necronomicon. The title page gave the information that this “treatise” was the work of one Abdul El-Hazred, translated into English by John Dee, Doctor, in the Year of Grace 1605. My host, it seemed, was a very surprising man indeed, and one very learned in dark and mysterious matters. One particular name printed in fine gold characters on black leather, caught my attention. I knew from my history lessons at school that Sir Geoffrey de Lacy had fought beside the Conqueror at Hastings, and that in the year 1067 he had been granted the manor and the earldom of Ashton in Derbyshire, which manor became the city of Ashton de Lacy. I knew nothing of any interest on the old warrior’s part in matters of demonology, and yet here was his name above the Latin title: De Potentiae Deorum Antiquorum. Curious, I took the book from its shelf and glanced at the title page. This edition, it appeared, was revised and translated from the Latin in the year 1763 by one Thomas Dashwood Morley, who called himself Frater Medramae—a Brother of Medmenham. I began to peruse its contents.

I was gazing with some awe at one of the diabolical engravings which illustrated the book, when I became suddenly aware of Aliah Warden, standing behind me and peering over my shoulder. “Interesting, sir, is it not?” he said. There was a peculiar tone to his voice. “That is a rather fanciful representation of one of the Deep Ones, a creature that de Lacy claimed to have met and conversed with. The Deep Ones, you know, are the legendary servants of Dagon, the fish-god of the Philistines.”

He paused, but before I could compose myself and put the question that was in my mind about the pillared Hall of Dagon that stood upon this very hill, he had turned over a few pages, and was speaking again. “This set of characters, sir, is a paean to the transcendental Kingdom of Voor. It is written in the letters of the Aklo, which are said to be a revelation from certain dark forces to their chosen apostles. Not many uninitiated have seen those letters. You are a privileged man, sir. Privileged.” With that, he closed the book and motioned me into the next room where my meal awaited me. As I had half-suspected, it consisted principally of fish.

The picture of the Deep One had impressed me considerably, for the creature it depicted appeared some half-way between a man and a frog, having distinctly batrachian characteristics, but standing almost erect, like a man. Despite the fact that it was clad in a long, diaphanous robe, and was adorned with various primitive, if rich, accoutrements, the thing, in its overall appearance, reminded me more than anything of Aliah Warden.

         

“The marshlands,” said my host, as I reclined comfortably in an armchair, with a post-prandial cigarette, “have long been the haunt of witches. They are so isolated, you see, and their people are accustomed to uncover the secrets both of the land and of the sea. They are, one might say, amphibious.” He stopped short for a moment, and I half fancied that I saw a faint blush beneath the gray pallor of his wrinkled face.

“What of Wrabley, itself?” I asked. “The place seems so desolate, so decrepit.”

“Hah! You may well ask! Half the houses are deserted—you have only to go down to the waterfront to see what I mean. The timbers are rotten, the walls are cracked, the windows are broken. And yet, people live here, though you would not see many of them, for they will have nothing to do with foreigners. Oh, yes, Wrabley is in England, but do not delude yourself that it is of England. The allegiance here is to something much older and far more powerful. Let me tell you of Dagon, for he is the true master here.”

Again, the old man paused, and seemed somehow to be ill at ease. Then, bracing himself, he continued: “His minions, the Deep Ones, are mentioned in many texts, some of which may be found on these shelves. It becomes plainer the more one reads that it is the supreme test of these creatures, the duty for which they are born and bred, to do nothing less than precipitate the final Armageddon. And that, sir, is fact. Fact!” His voice was low and husky, and his expression arresting. I began to fear for the man’s sanity. “When the stars are in their appointed places, then shall Dagon lead his servants to the living tomb of the One before whom even he is as nothing and less than nothing, and there they shall remove the seal that binds him, and he shall rise in all his majesty and terror, and open the cosmic gate to the unspeakable and unknowable things that lurk outside. Cthulhu! Great Cthulhu! See here, here! The words of Dashwood Morley, as he writes of the return of the terrible Priest-God.”

I stared at the passage to which he pointed, one of Morley’s “revisions” to old de Lacy’s book. So startled was I that it was several seconds before I could comprehend the insane words.

He knows Them but dimly, yet His is the most urgent task of all, for when the stars shall be in their set places, and the times between be as the times that were, and are, and shall be, then shall He be awoken, and the prisoning Seal be lifted. Then the Deep Ones shall be as one with their Masters, and They outside shall be freed once more to possess Their especial Realm. After day comes night, and after night, day. Ia! Their day shall be your night. They sleep now, but where you are, They were, and where you are now, They shall be.

“For many untold aeons,” said Warden, breathlessly, “Cthulhu has lain beneath the Seal of the Old Ones, far under the ocean, sleeping and dreaming foully, but the stars are approaching their proper positions, and the god is restless. The Deep Ones have not been idle in preparing his way. I give you warning!”

The old man gulped, and peered around him nervously. Then he steadied himself, but I could see that there was a twitch or tic affecting the lid of his protuberant left eye.

“Witchcraft, I said, and witches they are, but in Wrabley they worship a darker devil than ever that fool James could have imagined! The Deep Ones may, perhaps, be considered as a parallel development to mammalian life. For centuries, our sailors have told tales of intelligent life in the sea. Nonsense! said some. Mermaids, said others. Mermaids! Hah! If only they knew. . . .

“The Deep Ones, you see, have interbred with human beings.”

“My dear sir!” I protested. “This is outlandish! Quite absurd. Mere superstition.”

“No, no!” he replied, warmly. “It is truth, sir. Truth! Oh, it has happened in many places—in islands of the warm southern seas, and in the civilized world, too. In England, at Gate’s Quay, and at Wyvern, and here. Hah! Yes, here, at Wrabley! Here!”

He was working himself up now, sweating profusely, and the twitch was more marked. Now that it was wet, his crusty skin seemed somehow curiously scaly, and his eyes bulged horribly. I was too taken aback to interrupt him, and he continued, stammering rather.

“Back—oh, hundreds of years back—in the early seventeenth century, the books say . . . The people here don’t remember when, you see, but they remember what! The thing that Jabez Martyr brought back with him from beyond the Indies—the thing that he called his wife. Why were the sailor’s children not seen again when they reached maturity? It was then, I tell you, then that the decline set in . . . Oh, yes, this town had been an important maritime centre; it was a borough, but where is its glory now? Gone with the coming of the outsiders! Fish, fish became the support of the people of the town. Fish, that the men of Maldon and Lowestoft could never match. But they didn’t sell it, you see; they ate it. And they kept themselves to themselves. Hah! Do you know why the men of the marshes shun Wrabley, as they have done for centuries? And what goes on in that Hall of Dagon, while the church is empty? I know. And why do the townsfolk look only half-human?” The old man seemed near to collapsing with his insane exhaustion. I was alone with a madman in the darkness of a winter night, and I shuddered at the thought. He noticed, and smiled grimly. “Look at me!” he commanded. “Look at me! Am I not living proof of hell here on earth? Oh, Dagon! Why have you delayed so long? Why torment me, when whether I will or not I must soon go to join my brothers beneath the waters and prepare for the triumph that is to come?” He was racked suddenly by uncontrollable sobs; tears filled his huge eyes, and his narrow shoulders shuddered. The man was mad! Utterly, incurably mad!

Then he saw the expression on my face, and his own showed anger. “You don’t believe!” he cried. “Hah! I’ll show you! I had my pride once, and why do you think I have so much hair on this venerable head, when I could not grow a beard ever? See, see, unbeliever!”

Shockingly, inexorably, he demonstrated the very truth of the insanity of this world. We live our lives in a mist, and when it is lifted, be it only for a second, stark horror is revealed. When I saw what I saw, I fled in awe and disgust from that haunted house in that haunted town. I ran, stumbling and tottering from Wrabley, until I reached the outskirts of Maldon, and there I collapsed, exhausted, and lay under a hedge until daybreak, when I might catch the first train home to London, safety, and sanity. Even now, I can feel only fear and horror for the creature that I left, collapsed, twitching and moaning, as in a fit, in that house on Murrell Hill, for what I saw was this:

Aliah Warden put his hand, his webbed hand, to his head, and lifted off his benevolent mop of white hair. I hardly heard him as he muttered, “I had my pride, and I was human, once. . . .” For I saw, and realized horribly, that the grey, bald skin of his head was closely covered with coarse, icthyic scales, while behind and below his little ears were two rudimentary growths that might or might not be gills.

The Last Supper

Donald R. Burleson

The place had a hellish appearance on a night like this. My heart was quickened both by the phantasmal landscape and by the prospect of the awesomely significant and darkly appropriate deed which lay ahead. This was Prescott Village Burial Ground—one of those ancient and obscure New England graveyards of which no aesthetically sensitive ghoul could fail to be fond, lying as it did on a rutted and little-travelled road, with a weed-banked and sombre-looking river flowing sluggishly behind the backmost stone fence, and with nothing on either side save untenanted and dreary stretches of rocky terrain.

The graveyard itself was a ghoul’s delight, extending a considerable distance back from the gate by the road, and from the rickety wooden shack used by the night watchman—back over sable undulations of sparsely grass-covered ground spotted at close intervals by tombstones which were at first the markers of relatively recent interments, but which became, as one progressed toward the back, older and more ill-preserved, until in a dark corner farthest removed from the road the stones became those black slate relics which marked, with their archaic inscriptions and ponderous carvings, the slumbering places of the town’s early settlers.

This most ancient corner was to me artistically the most pleasing, especially with a hazy sky above the mound-hovering willows, and especially with a faintly soughing wind which stirred the trees into a slight but charming animation. But, quite apart from such aesthetic considerations, I must confess that the newer portions of this quaint necropolis were of more direct and practical meaning to me, because in the immemorial backmost graves whose slate markers bore inscriptions belonging to the eighteenth century, there was now nothing of which a questing ghoul could make a morsel. The nearer and more recent graves had indeed known defilement not only by me but by a number of my companions of kindred appetite.

It was because of the untimely death of one of those nocturnal practitioners of profanation, in fact, that my surviving friends and I had come here on this special night, had come for uncommon feastings. Ghouls we all were, with such an unholy kinship of sympathetic understanding that we had never even discussed the particular night on which we must gather in solemn conclave—we had simply known, and had come. We were unseen, but we were present.

The only visible motion in all this gloomy scene was the bobbing of the light as the venerable night watchman made his rounds, shuffling phlegmatically along the paths among the graves and taking copious pulls at the bottle which he kept, we well knew, close at hand. We watched in morbid and quiet amusement from our various dark hiding places—here behind a large gnarled oak, there behind an especially broad slab, there again in the shadow of a mound, everywhere concealment was offered. Drawing occasionally into deeper shadow as the light swung near, we watched the perambulating figure, watched even as he stepped past the very grave whose compelling interest had drawn us together.

This was the grave of Rowley Ames, whom we had all known and revered over many years of forbidden pleasure-taking: Rowley Ames, whose virtuosic command of the art of ghoulery my companions and I could only regard with profound respect and, in truth, genuine awe. He had been the Master, and a young person of necrophagous inclination could do no better than to study at the side of this inspiring and inspired nocturnal lurker, observing and imitating him as he deliberated upon the time and place of his conquest, exhumed some carefully chosen subject from the charnel earth, and spent the next hour immersed in unhallowed rending and chewing, as only a truly gifted artist might.

I had learned much from him myself, and I was here tonight, as were my colleagues, to pay grateful last respects—not the insipid memorials of his idiotically conventional funeral weeks before, but the one single, special tribute that we could best lavish upon him. We had all understood from the outset, naturally, that the unique tribute to be paid Rowley Ames must consist of our gathering at his grave for one wholly remarkable feast: the eating of his own long monstrously-nourished carcass.

Of course it would be a symbolic act; there were fully twelve of us, the remainder of a corpse-devouring coven minus its erstwhile leader, and for each of us his body, especially wasted as it was by his final illness, would provide only a token ingestion—but it would be enough, and it would be, we felt, the one way he would have wanted to be remembered. We had waited, by common tacit understanding, several weeks for a proper putrescence, and now it was time. “Only the man of intellect and judgment,” the gastronomer Brillat-Savarin has reminded us, “knows how to eat.”

I watched with some impatience from my point of concealment, as I knew the others were watching, while the shuffling lantern-bearer completed his rounds and returned to the decrepit shack near the front gate. Before long he had collapsed into the usual alcoholic stupor, and we emerged from the shadows to get on with our affair.

Under a pallid moon we gathered at the grave of Rowley Ames and exchanged silent but knowing glances. The grave was situated not, of course, in the backmost archaic corner which had so appealed to his sense of aesthetic charm, but rather in the newer section amidst actual former recipients of his nocturnal attentions. Indeed, it was ironic that the two graves flanking his own were graves which, as it happened, his hands and teeth had once defiled. And now it was his turn—we had come to pay him the ultimate tribute.

Words can scarcely convey the eagerness, the titillation, the sense of reverential awe with which we delved into the foul earth, turning an occasional furtive eye over the shoulder to see that we were unobserved, or indulging in an occasional appreciative glance at the wan moonlit sky forming, with the phantasmal willows overhanging mossy stones, so ghastly a setting for our anticipated deed. We fairly drooled in that anticipation, our mouths working and moving as if already busy at delectable subterraneous pleasures. As we worked feverishly to uncover his coffin, my uppermost thought was sometimes my respect for my old Master and sometimes simply the gustatory ecstasy that was to come with the devouring of one who himself had fed upon countless upheaved boxes of carrion delight. And in the midst of such musings I felt my hand reach a hard surface through the clammy soil, and knew that the feast was to commence forthwith.

Wheezing and panting with the exertion, we lifted the coffin up onto level ground and gathered about it in a circle of anxious faces. There in that charnel scene of spectral, sickly moon, morbid landscape, and sighing night wind, we were gathered, his faithful students in unspeakable arts, ready to behold his miasmal remains, to admire, to partake. We mouthed certain blasphemous litanies appropriate to the ceremoniousness of the occasion, and pried open the casket.

It took us a few seconds to understand what we were seeing. By what unthinkable process I do not know—but by some inconceivable organic process, he lived! He lived! Rowley Ames was animate, stirring—though flaggingly, as if he were now dying anew.

But it was not this fact, in itself, that sent us precipitately scattering in revulsion and dismay—not the mere fact of his odd reanimation or the hollow, sardonic laugh with which he greeted us as the coffin lid was raised. We might have been glad, on the contrary, to experience such unanticipated, unimaginable reunion with our Master—certainly our reaction would not normally have been to disperse headlong into the night and leave that scene at the grave site which a reporter would describe with so much disgust in the newspaper the following day.

No—what seemed insupportable to us, rather, was the fact that the consummate ghoul Rowley Ames lay there in his coffin with a hideously bloated belly but with most of the rest of the sinewy, wormy mass of his body loathsomely gnawed away. The wretch had waited, too, though not quite so long as we, and, writhing into queer animation in his coffin, had eaten his own putrid flesh.

The Church at Garlock’s Bend

David Kaufman

Above Scranton, the Susquehanna is narrower and more winding, and it is far more interesting as it switchbacks its way from the northwest out of New York than is the slower and more stately part of the river to the south. It flows through land that for a highly populated state is sometimes surprisingly primitive, and it is not too difficult, were you to travel its length through the hills of north central Pennsylvania, to come to one of a dozen or more small towns, towns with sometimes only twenty or so houses, with perhaps a store and a church—towns that time and progress seem to have ignored or forgotten. And the people who live in them or around them, while never overtly unfriendly, for reasons of their own keep to themselves and do not seem to care much for the rest of the world.

Above Skinner’s Eddy, Garlock’s Bend was such a town. I grew up on a farm just a few miles downstream, and my first memories of it are as lazy and slow as the summer heat in the green hills. It is a ghost town now, just a bunch of tired and worn out buildings, some of them leaning precariously—rotted wood on rotten foundations. But when I was young it was vital and as prosperous as such a small town so out of the way could possibly be.

It was the river that did it. It was the river and the thing that happened in the river that took the spirit out of the town and caused its people to, I don’t know, to just move away—one family, sometimes two families at a time. And then they were all gone. The town was abandoned.

Garlock’s Bend was right on the river, or on a swell of it (we locals with typical Pennsylvania Dutch enthusiasm actually called it a lake, although it was only just a very wide, slow spot where the river came thrashing out of the tight hills, calming quickly, deepening, and widening), and the church was tight down against the water, shaded and cooled by a stand of large sycamore. They were things to look at from a piece downstream—the trees, the town, the church, and the high hills behind the whole of it. They were things that could make you love Garlock’s Bend.

We were one of the first families to move away, and although I am sure we fussed about it, we children were never told why we left. There was some vague talk about my father getting a job down in Harrisburg, but I thought without ever saying it that there was some other reason. In the week or ten days before our departure my parents seemed quite agitated, especially so my father. Often they would stop talking if we came near them, or they would change the subject, talking a little too fast and a little too loudly. And we were in those last few days sternly forbidden to go anywhere near the river.

There was something so urgent in that command that we never questioned it.

Anyway, we left. I would have much preferred to stay in those familiar hills near the friends of all my youth, but I had the fickle inattentive mind of a youngster, and soon I had some new playmates down in Harrisburg. Bit by bit I came to realize that Garlock’s Bend was not the only place in the world. Bit by bit I put it out of my mind.

Now I am a mathematician by profession. In certain narrow circles I am quite well known. And so it was not at all unusual for me to find myself invited to lecture this past summer session at Staunton, a small liberal arts college just a dozen or so miles down river from Garlock’s Bend. I would once again, by lucky chance, visit the land of my youth. And while I might never have returned solely to visit my home town, I was happy to avail myself of the chance, now that it seemed so convenient.

Curiously, after I accepted the position, and starting almost at the moment I accepted, I began to feel a much stronger urge to return. I quickly came to the point that I could not get Garlock’s Bend out of my mind. And as I remembered things long ago childishly dismissed, as I remembered the river, I had strange, concomitant feelings of uneasiness, of unbalance, of distaste even, begin to grow within me. It was, the whole of it, a curious mix of pleasure and displeasure, of delight and dread, and had I known what was in store for me, I would have yielded to these sudden mixed and mostly unhappy feelings and stayed away.

I wish I had.

When you visit Garlock’s Bend you drive down out of extremely high hills to the valley below. As the descent begins, you come suddenly out of the thick green forest, and the whole of the valley then seems to open up. And you catch glimpses of the town now and again at overlooks as the narrow road curls downward, vaguely following the churning and thrashing of the rapidly falling river, into the valley far below.

I stopped at several of these overlooks the day I arrived, for pleasure at first because I had not even seen the town in some forty years, and never from that vantage point, and then I stopped because I felt myself drawn to the overlooks. It was as if I wanted to take in the whole of the town before I came to it. As if I wanted to revisit at once all of my lost past.

But nothing that I could see from the high hills told me anything but that the town was indeed deserted, decrepit, downfallen. I was overcome with sudden feelings of hopelessness, of sadness, of a strange kind of loneliness. And I was astonished at the intensity of these feelings.

When I had come down out of the hills, I dropped off the main highway onto the old dirt road that crawled along the river, past thick stands of hemlock and thin scraggly brush, until it came to Garlock’s Bend, and then I made my way carefully down the only street of the silent little town. It was like driving backwards into time. I eased my car around the debris that was strewn about haphazardly. It looked as if no one had even been on Main Street for years. I parked just opposite the remains of Miller’s, Garlock’s Bend’s only hardware store. The Saturday mornings I had spent there with my father! And now the roof of the front porch had fallen down, and the large picture window was broken. I could hardly see into the building, but it seemed probable to me that looters had taken all they possibly could, and then time and the dust had gotten the better of what was left.

I spent an hour or more just walking the length of that desolate town, peering into any window, any nook or cranny that I might, sudden little insights, like memories pricking at my consciousness, like long forgotten melodies. It was a bittersweet pastime.

Suddenly, there it was. Off ahead of me in the distance, down tight to the edge of the water, the church of all my youth. In every one of my fantasies concerning Garlock’s Bend I always came again to the church. It had been the center of so much that I remembered with pleasure.

Soon I was standing down by the water, looking up through the trees at the double doors and the wooden cross just above them. The church somehow seemed new and clean. I remember noting how curious that was, and how small and timid the whole of it made me feel. The only notion I had of sound was the gentle lapping of the river. No other sound. Long years before I had climbed the few steps before the church dozens of times and more. Hundreds of times. And now circumstances had changed me so completely that I marveled at how like an interloper I felt myself to be.

Also, I had a curious sense of whimsy because of the poor condition of the steps. Odd, I thought, that I might go crashing through and break an arm or a leg. The thought made me doubly cautious because had such a thing happened it would have been dreadful—from all that I had seen I was certain there was no one around in all that desolation to rescue me.

I moved carefully through the old building, conscious of the dust, the ubiquitous dust, and the mordant smells of the past. It is curious how smells alone can pull lost memories back into our consciousness with a swiftness that astonishes. The smells of that old church took me quickly and completely.

I soon found myself sitting in the dusty pew that our family had used long ago, and I admit to being almost overcome with nostalgia. I do not know how long I sat there, lost in those memories of my youth. Some tens of minutes at least.

It was then so quiet I could hear the stillness of the place ringing in my ears. And it seemed to me, lost as I was in all that stillness, that if I really listened, if I really tried to hear, just vaguely and faraway I could hear, with pristine clarity, the voices of my folks and my friends of long ago, singing all the old songs. I wanted to weep, as do we all at such times I suspect, for my lost innocence.

How temporal life suddenly seemed to me.

I was brought round rather quickly. I had thought myself to be totally alone—in that silent church and in that forgotten town. I never would have dreamed it could be otherwise. But suddenly, from somewhere in the cellar of the church, just beneath me, I distinctly heard a low heavy thud, as if something of extreme weight had just fallen.

A few seconds of utter silence and then I heard the thing slam again, more clearly still. And then once more.

To say that I was startled by that knocking would be something of an understatement. But I remember that at the time I was only slightly frightened.

There are times in our lives when without reason we act foolishly, even irrationally. We do things we could not possibly later explain. Now I know how irrational was my next act; then it seemed to me to be the most natural thing in the world to do.

At the time my immediate and only thought was that I should go down into the cellar and find the source of the noise. Never mind the fact that I was alone and in a totally isolated place—a place where there could be no strange sounds, a place where there could not possibly be anything to make such noises.

I quickly found the door to the cellar. It was stuck from disuse, but with a series of impatient little jerks I managed to get it open just wide enough to squeak through. I could only imagine how foolish I must look, pulling and fretting at that crepitating door, flustering the dry dust that swirled in the little shafts of sunlight that came through the simple stained glass windows.

There was only silence now from below. Silence so loud as to almost ring in my ears.

The little wooden steps down into the cellar were narrow and badly rotted. I thought again of crashing through steps and there being no one who would ever know, no one who could ascribe an end to me. But the thought did not stay with me for long, so determined was I.

“Hello?” I called. “Hello? Is anyone down there?”

How that could be was something that did not occur to me to wonder about in my excitement. The floor above was covered with a thin layer of dry gray dust which only I had disturbed. All tracks were mine. I was indeed alone.

Now on the steps I noticed that the dust, which above was powdery and dry, was almost black and was oily or even waxy in texture, from the dampness and decay below the ground level, and the air was musty and stale, as if it had been bottled in for years.

I moved down the stairs carefully. The black dust was everywhere. It almost seemed slippery, and I had no wish to fall.

“Hello?” I called again, and then, as I began to realize how foolish the thought was that I might not be alone, sounds or no sounds, I smiled at my ingenuousness.

The only light in the cellar came from the two small windows at ground level. They were wretchedly dirty, but there was certainly light enough to see by, and quickly I was standing at the bottom of the wooden steps, in a state of excitement now about what I might find, and not a little impressed by my own daring.

The walls of the cellar were everywhere made of cut sandstone. Massive those walls, at least a foot thick (judging from the depth at the windows), and everywhere gray-red and covered with that same oily black patina. And sweating moisture and dankness and mildew until the whole of the cellar seemed a dismal wet dungeon.

The smell was awful. It was not the healthy acrid smell of age in the room above—this was the musty odor of rottenness and decay. And it seemed to me that the stench got worse and worse as I clambered down the fragile little steps, almost as if it were layered like thicknesses of slate and were denser at the bottom.

I looked carefully around the room, for what I did not know. I began to feel more than a bit uneasy now because of the stench and because I could see nothing that might have caused such knocking as I had heard.

I knew, as clearly as I know I am one day to die, that I had heard those noises. But there was nothing very unusual down there, nothing that was not covered with the dust of almost a half a century. Nor was there a sign of any disturbance. All was as time and neglect should have made it.

Across the room was just one little table that I could see. It was the only furniture in the whole of the cellar. But it was at least something, so I moved closer.

The table was ordinary and of little note, but beneath it, curiously, rested a wooden box that seemed half full of set mortar. A few small hand tools—a sledge, a trowel, a small claw hammer—lay carelessly strewn beside the box, everything long covered with the distasteful dust.

It was on the next wall, and it was the cause of everything.

It was the river wall, actually, fairly close to the table. On this was a clumsy bricked-in patch some four feet high by three feet in width. The sandstone blocks were patched in with a facing of ordinary red brick. The thing was quite visible, in spite of its coating of the loathsome dust, and so unusual that I felt a very real slash of fear. I flushed coldly when I saw it.

By this time I was sufficiently off balance from the horrible knocks and nauseated by the pungent smells that I was trembling. I stared at the patch for some time before deciding that I could bring myself to examine it.

I moved closer.

There were some loose bricks and a half empty bag of cement on the floor just to one side, and although the whole area was obscured by the heavy layer of oppressive dust, the patch gave every indication of being a jerry-built job. I could tell easily that the mortar between the bricks was not struck, the floor in the vicinity had apparently not been cleaned after the job was finished, and spilled little piles of mortar and the general cluttered look of the area suggested at best a slipshod piece of work, at worst a job frantically undertaken and frantically finished.

The bricks were recently bulged, as if the patch had almost been burst through, and where the bricks were loosened, the greasy dust was now darker, even more greasy looking, wet looking, and it was apparent to me that water was leaking through the bricks.

And then the thing happened that I shall never forget.

At first it was no more than an awareness that came to me, a feeling that something was amiss, that something was not right. I remember it caused me to stop all movement and listen. And then a slight whisper of a noise that grew and grew and became more real—a heavy gurgling sound it was, a kind of grinding or rushing, from behind the wall. It increased and increased in intensity until in terror I tumbled backwards, and then the next thing I knew I was frantically crayfishing away from the wall.

There was a deafening crash against the patch.

The patch seemed to give, several inches at least, in a sudden frightening bulge, the result of the awful smash it endured, and water spurted out from one side as if the whole of it was about to yield to the heavy force in the water. I lurched backwards crazily, convulsing, arching for air to breathe, until I slammed into the steps. I could not take my eyes from that hideous spurting water. In these few seconds enough had come through the wall to cover the floor. All I could think of was that it was about to burst its way completely through the weakened patch and engulf me. I was convinced in that second that I really was about to die.

I turned and scrambled up the oily black steps, thrust myself violently at the door and strained to be through it. My lungs and legs ached with pain. I raced the length of the church, almost vaulted the few little steps outside, and stopped, exhausted and nauseated, just short of the river. I grabbed at one of the trees and literally hugged it to keep from falling. I wept from relief. My clothing was covered with black slimy filth from the dust and water. My head was pounding, my flesh crawling.

For some long moments all I could manage was to cling to that tree and just gulp in deep delicious lungfuls of clean, fresh air. How good that was!

With benign indifference, a gust of wind made a deep swirl of a wave on the lake, and then was gone.

Still I clung to the tree. As I came round and began to breathe a bit more easily, I knew that somehow I was free of whatever it was that had made the great and terrible knocking I had heard, that I had heard and even felt the power of. I was outside the church, and I was free.

Essentially that is what happened to me the day I went into the church at Garlock’s Bend. I have not shortened or embellished the details. All of it is truth. I saw nothing. There were no ghosties or ghoulies, no hairy antlered monstrosities from God alone knows where, trying to swallow me up or wrench away my immortal soul. I never saw anything.

But all the same I heard the noises. I endured that awful stench. And I saw the wall give.

Something was down there. Something.

Still holding onto the tree I began to calm. I grew less frightened. I looked up at the doors to the church, the cross above them, the motionless branches. All of it appeared so serene and so wholesome. And with the setting sun at the end of the valley and the absolute stillness of the lake, the ghost town of Garlock’s Bend seemed to me to be almost innocent.

But I could never again believe that. I knew. I knew for certain.

Aching almost as if I had been physically beaten, I limped wearily up Main Street past all the abandoned businesses and homes, this time all but oblivious to the utter and complete desolation of the town. I sat for some minutes in my car, still in something of a daze. Now that I no longer needed adrenaline, it left me and I was suddenly completely exhausted.

And then, in awe of all that had happened, feeling very alone and very old, I eased the car into gear, pulled out onto the pathetic little debris-cluttered street, and left Garlock’s Bend forever.

I did go to Staunton. I taught the summer seminar as I had intended. I saw no point in doing otherwise. When I was not teaching I thought a great deal about what had happened to me, about what had caused the awesome noises, about the terrors I felt so thoroughly. Those terrors were replaced with anger, and then in time with a kind of sad acceptance.

I decided to keep my story to myself. I was afraid, I suppose, that no one would believe me. And in the end I had no proof of anything.

Then one day, just a few days short of the end of the classes and my proposed return to Pittsburgh, I was sitting in the Oak Grove, enjoying my usual lunch of hard cheese and good bread.

Staunton is a fairly wealthy school, and so the gardens of the Oak Grove are well kept. It is not unusual to see a whole group of workers—pruning, weeding, planting—keeping to their tasks, laughing among themselves, but all the while inevitably working. It is the Pennsylvania Dutch ethic, and it is still typical of the area.

One of the oldest of the crew, however, I had been feeling for several noontimes, had been doing his best to keep his eyes off me, but with little success. Once or twice I caught him in a downright stare, and while he quickly looked away and avoided my glance, it was apparent that he had a deep interest in me. I was more intrigued than irritated.

On this present day he seemed as if he could avoid my company no longer, and at the lunch break he came and sat on the bench just opposite mine, unpacked his bucket very slowly and precisely, and stared at me while he chewed resolutely on what appeared to be a sandwich of Lebanon bologna.

I sensed his exquisite shyness and knew that the first move had to come from me. “Fine afternoon,” I tried.

He nodded. And then, with a wry smile, “I think I know you,” he said. “I think you must be Eugene Leventry’s oldest boy.”

I was stunned. “How in the world did you know that?” I cried. “And who are you anyhow?”

“Aach, you wouldn’t remember me,” he said, his voice thick Pennsylvania Dutch. He shook his head slowly. “You were just a little fella when you left here. You wouldn’t know me at all. I’m Amos Myers. I knew your daddy.”

“Of course,” I cried. “Of course I remember you.”

“I knew you was his boy,” he said. He smiled broadly and came and sat by my side. His big paw of a hand almost crushed mine with enthusiasm as we greeted each other.

Then began a conversation that lasted for over an hour. The Pennsylvania Dutch are very orderly and very polite, and so we began by dealing with all the usual pleasantries. I asked of his history and he asked of mine. I learned that his nephew, Aaron Myers, had just frightened the whole family by having a heart attack. He was related by marriage to my second cousin on my father’s side, over to Skinner’s Eddy, and did I know that he had gone all through college and was an animal doctor? He was coming around, though, and going to live, thank the Good Lord. For my part I revealed to Amos, because he genuinely seemed to want to know, that my parents were both dead, that I was alone, that I had never married.

During all of that I was deciding to abandon my reticence and bring up the subject of Garlock’s Bend. Somehow I came to feel as if I had to. Maybe because he knew my father.

“I’ve been teaching here all summer,” I began. “I, uh, I went to Garlock’s Bend when I first arrived.” I hesitated for just a few moments and then added, “I visited the church.”

He stopped working on the sandwich.

“There is something in that church,” I said carefully, “that does not like people.”

He was quiet for some moments. The muscles in his face seemed to tighten. He put down the sandwich. “You should not have gone there,” he said quietly. “That place is shunned.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “There is no way I could have known that. I’ve been away from Garlock’s Bend for so many years.”

And then it all came out. The whole of it. Soon I could not stop and did not want to stop. I told him about the awesome heavy knocking, about the hideous odors in that cellar, and I tried to describe for him the terror I felt when I was convinced I was about to die.

“But I never saw anything,” I concluded, embarrassed, almost as if apologizing. “I never saw a thing.”

The whole of Amos’s body came round as he turned stiff-necked to stare at me for at least a minute. He looked very grave. “Never saw anything? No one ever saw anything,” he said finally. “No one ever saw nothing.”

He sat quietly. I could tell that he was deciding whether it was proper. I was essentially a stranger, and that made confiding in me a very large venture for him.

When he began, I thought at first that he sounded unconcerned, as if he were describing something that had affected him only from a distance. As if over the years it had become a sort of fairy tale. Something he took pleasure in telling to worthy strangers, like a soldier might rehearse a battle of little ultimate importance.

I was wrong.

When he had finished retelling it for me, he was weeping, weeping for his lost town and his lost friends, and for much more than that, and I knew that I had someone who understood, far better than I ever could, what was happening and what had happened so many years before at Garlock’s Bend.

“We knew something was there, though,” he began. “We knew it, right enough. Something unreal. We knew it when Joe Michaels was trapped in the lake just a little ways from Miller’s Hardware. Suspended out there like something down under the water had him by the legs and wouldn’t let go. He was waist deep in the water, out maybe fifteen feet from the shore, and just held there.”

Amos was getting into the story now, easing into it as he might put on a glove, and telling it slowly and completely.

“And him yelling out crazy at first and then later babbling like a baby about how he was going to die. About what the thing was doing to him under the water. And why didn’t we help him. Whatever it was kept a hold on him for a night and a morning. A Sunday morning.” He turned his body again so that he could see me.

“It was mocking us, holding him like that. It was an unholy thing, and I’ll never forget it. Old Joe was stuck out in the water, right in the floodlights we had put on him that night and all. He was just held there, like I said. All the men on shore, watching, feeling helpless because we couldn’t do nothing. We couldn’t save Joe. We tried, hard. We got nowhere. Then we got to just sitting there, waiting, not even moving hardly. Just staring at him in the water. And him motionless now. And off to the church the women had gone, and they were singing hymns. Singing hymns peaceful like. For Joe, you see. That was a lot of years ago, and I remember it just as clear.”

It seemed to me that he was breathing heavier now, and sighing a lot. “Well,” he said, and then stopped. He strained around to look at me again, “I don’t suppose that your daddy told you any of this.”

I shook my head.

“No, I didn’t think so,” he said. He was quiet for a long time. “Late in the morning the thing, whatever it was, started to pull him down, and one of the men killed old Joe. Just as it took him under.”

His eyes were glistening now with the memory of it, his hands going in hopeless little circles, and I could not help but wonder how his life had been changed, to remember so deeply and mourn so deeply after so many years.

“With a shotgun.”

“My God,” I said.

“What could we do? Let it take him? It was his best friend that killed him. But any of us would of done it. None of us would of let it get him under the water alive.” Amos shrugged. “And then there wasn’t even nothing to show that old Joe was ever out there. The water was quiet, and he was gone.”

“That’s a horrible story,” I managed, and somehow I felt more concern for Joe Michaels, gone nearly fifteen years, than for myself and my own tale. “It seems so unfair.”

“It’s true,” he said. “It’s a true story.”

He was quiet for a few moments. “Well, that just sort of took the heart out of the town. Some people did leave, like I said.” He paused.

“Your daddy took his family.” He managed a smile and reached over and patted my leg gently. “Those who stayed shunned the river. Completely. And no one told anyone outside Garlock’s Bend. That may seem foolish now, but it’s the truth. It was sort of like a sickness or a disease we all shared, and didn’t want anyone to hear of.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Well, that ain’t the whole of the story. Not for me anyway. Not by a long shot. Other things started to happen. And nobody can be sure, but it seemed like there were some, some tunnels sort of, and the . . . hell, I don’t know, the thing. . . .”

“Ah, look,” I said. “You . . .”

“No,” he said. “No. I want to tell you. It just sounds so . . .” He took a long breath. Some minutes passed.

I had the curious feeling of being high in the air looking down at the two of us, sitting on that little bench in the sunlight, for all the world like two people in casual conversation. All round us in the Oak Grove students and teachers were walking, talking, full of their own pleasures and problems, oblivious to what we were saying.

“One of the tunnels was in that house up there,” he said pointing, “up on Cedar Hill, and another was downstream in the valley. Bad things happened in those houses.”

He pulled out a huge red handkerchief and wiped his eyes.

“Then . . . Then my wife and son Harold.” He began to shake violently. “Ah-h, God,” he wailed, “he was only four!” He wept for a few moments.

“Well,” he said finally, “they come up missing, see, and I couldn’t find them for a couple of days and I was just crazy over it.” He was heaving now, heaving with the anguish of his story, and weeping openly, and wiping his eyes with those great gnarled hands.

“Bill Miller and Luther Ameigh, about three days after that even, found them.”

I wanted so badly to say the right thing, but I could find no words.

“Found them by accident,” he said, “down in the cellar of the church. By a big busted out place in the wall.”

He paused once more.

Somehow when he began to speak again it was almost matter-of-factly, almost as if he were denying that any of it had actually ever happened.

“They had gone down there for some reason, I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Why wouldn’t they? And they were . . . They . . .” He shook his head again in that stiff way he had. “The men, they wouldn’t let me down there.”

Suddenly he was wringing his hands.

“I wanted to get them, I swear I did. They were my family. But they wouldn’t let me.” He had to stop again for a few moments.

“Aach, mister, listen,” he said turning towards me. “I wanted to. I really . . . They was my . . . It was so . . . It . . .”

He was sobbing freely now. I found myself holding the hand of this stranger, weeping also. Weeping for him, weeping for his kin, weeping for the tears of things.

“Well,” he said, summoning himself, “they got some guys to go down there, don’t ask me how. They was just white with fear. But they went. And then they just pushed everything into the hole, the big blocks, some big rocks they brought down, the mud. Everything. Just pushed it all in. They put the sandstone blocks back. And then they bricked it all up. Fast.”

He wiped his eyes again and stuffed his handkerchief back into his overall pocket. “Some grave,” he said bitterly. He sat quietly for a few moments, and I did not speak.

“I really did try to go down there,” he said coldly.

“I’m sure you did,” I said.

I was stunned by what I had heard, hardly able to comprehend how he felt as he finished talking or must have felt so many years before. There was nothing I could say to him. I looked up, startled at the idle whistling of a passerby.

“Well,” he said finally, “we figured to dam up the narrows down below town enough to flood at least the church tunnel. And I can’t even say why. We spent most of one day doing that. Seems foolish now. It was something to do, I guess. You know how you get.” Again he turned his body to face me. “More of it got out then. And people really up and left after that. I guess they figured enough was enough.”

I listened to his story, hardly able to believe it and yet not able to disbelieve it. I heard him say something about locking doors to homes no one would ever enter again. And the town emptying forever without a word to anyone outside Garlock’s Bend about the thing that was out in the lake.

But now I only vaguely heard what he was saying through his final tears. I was trying to deal, one last sad time, with all the memories that his story of so long ago brought back to me. I relived once again the awesome thumps, the crumpled patch, and the filthy smells of rot. Once again I clung in desperation to that tree outside the church, heaving for fresh air, awed by the bitter irony of the quiet lake and the green summer hills.

And I remembered that sudden deep swirl in the water. How innocent and how like a gust of air it had seemed to be.

The Spheres Beyond Sound

(Threnody)

Mark Rainey

Inever knew my father’s father. My parents had been city dwellers since long before I was born, though before them, all our generations since the early eighteenth century were native to the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. Grandfather lived in the old house atop Copper Peak, which my father’s family had inhabited since its inception in this land. I had never been to the place before, though over the course of my life, the stories birthed there, the pictures, and my Dad’s related memories had combined to create a mental image that I came to find was not far off the mark in reality.

Grandfather was dead and buried now. His house and property were destined to be sold, a fact that somehow did not settle to my liking. My parents’ attitude that the place had outlasted any practical value seemed peculiar, as my Dad had lived there through his adolescence and generally reflected on those days with some degree of affection. Yet, even so, his reluctance to talk much about his family hinted at what I sometimes took to be shame. The reasons for this I never questioned; but I now found myself pondering what life in the mountains must have been like and what secrets the ancient dwelling must hide. Over two centuries of history had been seen from its windows.

Few people, even those that live among them, consider the Appalachian Mountains mysterious or oppressive. Unlike the Rockies, or the wilds of Canada, the Appalachians do not harbor many grave threats to man—there are few dangerous animals, the weather is usually moderate, and pockets of population are generally not too few or far between. However, as with all wild terrain, there are corners left that men seldom travel. Copper Peak lies in the western arm of Virginia, amid a range of treacherously steep, densely wooded ridges. The nearest town to our family place is twelve miles away, a little hamlet called Barren Creek that nestles in the valley between Copper Peak, Thunder Knob and Mount Signal. There is only one road on Copper Peak, which leads from the house to the highway into town; in the last ten years, it has fallen into disuse as my Grandfather’s health precluded him traveling even those miles into Barren Creek. I have never quite understood how he existed; he did hire a man to deliver food and other necessities once a week, and to bring his mail from the Barren Creek Post Office, but I cannot imagine a man of his years and failing health subsisting in such an isolated environment. Nonetheless, he seemed to thrive there, and my father was never compelled to suggest his relocating.

After Grandfather’s death, I took it to heart to visit the old house, knowing that if my parents sold it, my chance would probably be gone forever. I was due for a week’s vacation from my business, so after minimal consideration, I decided that Copper Peak was where I would spend it.

I drove alone from my Washington, DC residence, with a set of maps and written directions provided by my father. The mountainous countryside along Interstate 81 filled my view through the better part of the trip; southwest of Roanoke, the road rose and the green mountains turned to steeper, rock-walled towers. When I turned off the Interstate onto the single lane highway into Barren Creek, I found myself entering a picturesque, quaint world of pastures and woods, occasional farmhouses, and rare drivers passing in the opposite direction. Barren Creek lay a few miles west of a small community called Aiken Mill, which I judged to be very wealthy by the size and style of most of the houses I passed. After the town, the road narrowed, and I found myself alone in a thickly wooded, rapidly rising countryside through which the road snaked and curled. Between Aiken Mill and Barren Creek, I did not encounter a single car going in either direction.

Barren Creek has a population of about two hundred people. The “town” consists of several small buildings on either side of the road, including a bank, a post office (a mobile home painted red, white and blue), a tiny grocery store, and a greasy-spoon diner. A few of the townsfolk were about, most of them old timers with missing teeth, wearing T-shirts and faded overalls. Several of them waved as I passed, to which I responded in kind. Then, a mile or so beyond this strip of urbanization, a gravel road turned to the right and disappeared into the woods high above me. Checking my directions to be sure, I slowed and turned in, realizing I had at last arrived at my destination.

The road was little more than an eroded rut down the mountainside that had been poured over with gravel. At places, the hill grew so steep that my tires spun and spat rock, and I began to think that I might not be able to take the car all the way to the top. But my Japanese coupe proved itself a sturdy little animal, and at last my ascent grew more shallow and less bumpy. Ahead of me, a patch of daylight marked a break in foliage. I passed over a rickety wooden bridge beneath which ran a spidery, shallow stream, identified by my father’s directions as Barren Creek, whose source lay on this very mountain. And then, just beyond, I caught my first sight of the Asberry House, seat of my paternal lineage, home of my father’s father’s fathers.

At first I was surprised by how small it seemed. The few photographs I’d seen made it appear larger, or perhaps seeing it amid the rearing trees created a different sense of scale than did the tiny proportions of a picture. But the atmosphere of the place was much as I imagined it: somewhat dark beneath the sheltering branches, with an undefined but prominent smell of age about the place, carried on an early spring breeze. The weedy, unkempt grass that passed for a lawn disappeared into thick wiry brambles a few feet from the house in each direction, as if being consumed by an inevitable, creeping vegetation. The house’s wooden siding was stained and speckled with lichen.

Still, the building appeared sound, and seemed like a natural part of the tranquil environment. I could imagine my Dad as a boy, playing in what would have been a well-trimmed yard, with smoke curling from the chimney and the aroma of some splendid meal being cooked drifting across the clearing. Again, I felt a pang of dismay that such a fundamental relic of our past would soon be either in the hands of others yet unknown, or more likely, demolished and replaced by some sterile piece of architecture as somebody’s idea of a summer home. For a vain moment, I entertained the idea that I might buy the place; my profession as a graphic artist supported me adequately, but I could barely afford my single apartment in DC, much less an additional piece of property I would visit only infrequently. I would never be able to live here, for nowhere nearby could I secure employment suitable to my talents.

During that first afternoon, I began to familiarize myself not only with the house but with the surrounding land. After unpacking, I immediately set out walking, hoping to make the most of the remaining sunlight. I soon discovered several overgrown trails that must have been struck by my forefathers over the past two centuries. Following one of them, I came to find the small spring from which Barren Creek spouted, a short distance above the house. The stream wound down the mountainside, mostly parallel to the gravel road; I followed it for a time until I came to a sheer dropoff of at least a hundred feet, where the water leapt into space and plummeted into the valley below. In the summer, this stream all but dried up, hence its name which had been coined by some family member in the late 1700’s. The scene was so quietly impressive, so stimulating to my city-numbed nerves, that I knew I somehow had to persuade my parents to retain the rights to this wonderful tract of land.

Upon returning to the house, I decided to begin a brief examination before I started thinking about dinner. My Dad had given me the keys, as he and Mom had been here shortly after Grandfather’s death to remove a few valuables and generally straighten the place up. I had no idea what they had taken that might have been of interest to me, but happily, I found a wealth of interesting paraphernalia remaining, from old furniture, to books, to photographs, to a number of stringed musical instruments that appeared hand-made. Hanging in the little back room was a mandolin, a classical guitar, two violins and a dulcimer, all beautifully finished and in fine condition. I took this room to be a workshop, where my grandfather must have made these instruments himself. In the tiny den, I found some exceptionally old books, an antique radio, and a reel-to-reel audio tape machine that looked to be of early 1960’s stock—apparently the most modern piece of electronics in the whole house. Fortunately, I did have electricity, running water (both hot and cold), and an indoor toilet, so life over the coming week would not prove a particular hardship.

Darkness fell early, and soon the woods came alive with the sounds of insects and nightbirds, something to which I was entirely unaccustomed. I sat down at about seven o’clock to a dinner that consisted of some sandwiches I had packed and a thermos of iced tea. The kitchen had been more or less cleaned out, and I figured that tomorrow I would visit the little store in Barren Creek and pick up a few necessary items. While I ate, I paged through some of the books I had found that looked interesting, including a couple of volumes on local history (courtesy the Aiken Mill Public Library—someone in my family had not been above stealing), an original l9th century copy of The Abolitionist by John Brown, which was probably worth a few dollars, and a book of music by one Maurice Zann entitled The Spheres Beyond Sound. I was not well-versed in musical theory, but this volume contained some oddly fabulous illustrations that immediately caught my interest.

I ate and read to a chorus of chirping and yowling from the darkness outside, which at first was distracting, but after a time faded to the background of my awareness. The pictures in the Zann book completely absorbed me, for they consisted of prints and drawings of imaginatively stylized subjects: lizards, birds, fish, skeletons (animal and human), and strange, monstrous-looking things one might expect from a science-fiction movie. But when I began skimming the text, I discovered that this book was by no means a “normal” guide to music theory. Upon finding lines that read, “. . . vibrations of this exact frequency and volume are required to complete the summoning process . . .” and, “. . . by assimilating the perfect pitches and tones, the very essence of primal power may be achieved . . .” I decided to start reading the book from the beginning.

I soon found that the strange illustrations were perfectly complementary to the written contents. The author’s basic premise was that music could open up gateways to other existences—not just in the mind, but in the physical world. Now for me, music is indeed a spiritual experience. It may be hypnotizing or violently stimulating. I listen to and appreciate all kinds of music, from folk, to jazz, to classical, to hard core rock. When I was younger, nothing delighted me more than to sit for hours wearing my headphones, carried away by the power of music. Zann’s contention was that certain combinations of tones could actually alter space—that the correct modulation of frequency could even reach into the realm of death . . . and beyond. Needless to say, my first reaction was that I was reading pure fantasy, but as I read further, the details became increasingly technical and beyond my grasp, leading me to believe that these ideas were meant to be regarded as factual. This book kept me occupied well into the late hours of the evening. Even though there was much that I simply could not comprehend, there was a certain sense of sobriety in the writing that held my interest. I found myself almost shaking with excitement as I read this passage:

. . . I have seen the power which the following strains will summon. The rhythm and cadence are extremely vital. The switch from 3/4 to 7/8 time signature followed by the 5/3 line illustrated below must be instantaneous, without hesitation or pause. The standard tuning E-A-D-G-B-E in perfect A must be changed to D flat-A sharp-E-B sharp-C-E flat to facilitate the playing of the proper notes. The range of volume produced by each instrument must fall between 32 and 35 decibels for the summons to be effected. Depending upon atmospheric conditions, results may be seen, if the process is completed flawlessly, from within three minutes to one hour.

Further in the text, there were passages relating to other types of musical power, from hypnotizing human subjects to communicating with the dead. But to me, the most astounding aspect of all was the theory that certain musical arrangements could transcend the limits of time and space to be heard by things existing in other universes. The concepts of parallel or alternate dimensions have been explored by both scientists and fantasists for years, I suppose, but never had I seen such a lucid and calculated thesis on the subject as this. After a time, I began to wonder why my grandfather would have owned such a book and if he had given its contents any credence. I supposed the subject might have merely intrigued him, as it did me, especially given his apparent interest in music. Upon checking the front of the book, I learned it had been published by an independent firm in Providence, Rhode Island, copyright 1929 in a limited edition. Putting the book aside, I found that my imagination had been thrust into high gear, and being alone in this old house suddenly seemed a chilling prospect.

When I at last began to prepare myself for bed, I found my hearing to be unnaturally sensitive, such as instinctively happens when danger is present. My chair legs scraped the bare wooden floor with shocking volume, sending a harsh shiver up my spine. I stopped and held my breath for a moment, half expecting to hear . . . something . . . other than the cacophony of the night creatures in the woods. When I heard nothing further, I softly went to the bedroom, made the huge, oak-framed bed with fresh linens from the closet, slipped out of my clothes, and buried myself deep in the covers, leaving the living room light on and the door cracked so I wouldn’t be engulfed by the total darkness of the mountain night.

I awoke early, to an absolutely brilliant morning, unable to remember when I had drifted off to sleep. I had slept heavily and peacefully, so it seemed, and I now felt refreshed, free of the odd anxiety which had gripped me during the evening. Morning birds chirped outside my window, in happy contrast to the eerie wails of the night creatures. In the daylight, the house took on a fresh new perspective, and some of my previous enthusiasm for the locale returned. I was hungry, and realizing I had next to nothing in the house to eat, left immediately for the general store in Barren Creek. The town was practically deserted at this hour, but the store was open. The proprietor, a Mr. Avery, greeted me cheerfully enough, asking me from whereabouts I came. When I told him I was the grandson of Timothy Asberry, he merely shrugged, and offered his condolences. Apparently, Grandfather wasn’t a part of any close-knit group of locals; my family, like many of the back country dwellers, had valued its privacy and seldom gathered with neighbors.

When I returned to the house, I fixed a large breakfast of bacon, eggs and toast; after eating, I let my attention return to the weird volume of Maurice Zann. In the golden daylight, it no longer seemed a warped, dreadful recording of factual data, but a fanciful representation of some writer’s bizarre imagination. I decided that, for the morning, I would forget it, explore some more of the mountain, and conduct a more thorough search of the house. There would still be a host of relics from my grandfather’s day, and before, that would help me put together a more complete picture of my heritage.

About ten o’clock, I set out walking, heading north, in the direction opposite yesterday’s expedition. I discovered a worn trail that led along the crest of Copper Peak, and I followed it, taking in the exhilarating view of the surrounding valleys and slopes. Off to the east, far below me, I could see a few tiny buildings, which I took to be Barren Creek. Further beyond lay Aiken Mill, a larger community, but still separated from “civilization” by a tall, knobby ridge.

About half a mile from the house, I came upon a flattened area beneath a canopy of limbs, and to my surprise, found it to be a small graveyard. There were maybe two dozen markers of varying shapes and sizes, all of them weathered with age, most of them nearly obscured by creeping flora. I strolled into their midst, noting the engraved names that were still legible: Nicholas Asberry, 1761–1834; Stuart Asberry (my namesake), 1820–1914; Suzette Asberry Washington, 1823–1902; James Druid Asberry, 1895–1938; Sarah Collins Asberry, 1811–1899. I found myself mildly excited, for here lay my direct ancestors, those whose names I might have heard only in passing over the years. Here, the past surrounded me, in the very earth which contained the blood of my progenitors.

My parents had not told me specifically where my grandfather was buried. “In our family plot, in the mountains,” Dad merely had said. Now I wondered . . . I let my eyes rove among the stones, seeking. Then, in a far corner, standing alone . . . yes, a fresh marker above a patch of newly turned earth. I approached it, positive of what I would find.

I was correct. Timothy Cadden Asberry, my father’s father, born in 1910. The remains of some flowers drooped next to the obelisk-like stone, probably those which my parents had placed here upon Grandfather’s burial. Thin shoots of grass were just beginning to burst from the mound of earth, and brown spots of mold had broken out on the granite. I stood there for a time, not quite sure if I should grieve, or offer a prayer. Finally I murmured a low, “Rest in peace,” finding nothing within myself worth conveying to the dead. Then I turned and left the graveyard, feeling vaguely disconcerted and a little confused. I didn’t know why.

For a time, I wandered aimlessly, at last finding myself back at the waterfall I’d discovered the previous day. The air was quiet and still, and gazing at the tiny houses and green slopes in the distance, I came to realize that some odd strain of music seemed to be running through my head. It was low, harmonious and pleasant, but altogether unfamiliar. I am not a competent songwriter, and it seemed strange that something I was sure I’d never heard before would weave its way from my unconscious.

For a while longer, I stood musing, then started back for the house. I decided I would make a light snack and then sift through a couple of the closets I had seen. I had to admit to myself that suddenly I had become fascinated by the past; until recently, I had always been ambivalent about life before my time. Occasionally, when Dad would speak about his past, my curiosity would be slightly aroused, but immediately forgotten when I returned to my ordinary affairs. Here, I supposed, with little else to occupy my mind, the past loomed larger and more tantalizing.

By the time I reached the house, my enthusiasm for delving into its closets and cupboards had peaked. I built a substantial ham and cheese sandwich for lunch, chased it with a glass of iced tea, and then went to the bedroom to begin my foraging.

My parents had packed away most of the clothes and incidental personal items. But I soon came upon many neat little artifacts, such as an ancient shaving kit complete with brush and straight razor, a slightly rusted pocket watch, and a few bottles of age-old cologne, mostly still full. There were some more books stacked in a corner, including a Bible, a dictionary, something called The Encyclopaedia for Boys, and a world atlas, all at least forty years old. And then I spied some cartons that immediately caught my interest—a number of six-inch reel tapes for the machine I had seen in the other room. I pulled these from their corner, finding four in all, each labeled with faded black ink in crabbed script, which I assumed to be Grandfather’s. Two of them were sermons recorded at a local church, which Grandfather must have attended, one was a radio show from 1964, and the last was labelled “Zann,” recorded in 1966.

I immediately took this one into the living room, found the tape machine in the corner, and proceeded to set it up for listening. I prayed the machine would work after however many years of disuse. Upon plugging it in, I found that everything seemed to work well enough. The reels began turning, and I stood anxiously waiting as hissing and crackling sounded over the small speaker. Then, a voice began, which I knew immediately was my grandfather’s: a slow, deep drawl with a pronounced southern Virginia accent, not unlike my Dad’s. The voice sounded tentative and somewhat nervous, perhaps due to inexperience with talking to a machine. What he said was this:

I am making this recording to test a few of the passages from the Zann text, on pages 121 through 128 of The Spheres Beyond Sound. I am Tim Asberry, I live on Copper Peak outside of Barren Creek, Virginia, I am making this recording with the help of my neighbors, John Eubanks, Fred Wharton, Ray Philippe and Bill Miller. I am making this recording from my backyard, facing the crest of the mountain. Uh, we have practiced select verses, or uh, lines out of the book, but this will be the first complete performance of what Zann calls, uh, the summons. My neighbors and myself have all read the text, and we believe that if we follow the directions, as set down by the writer, we will actually experience the, uh, revelations he has foreseen.

I have decided to record this activity on my recorder . . . we don’t honestly know what to expect, but if we should be successful, then it is possible there may be some danger. Zann’s text indicates that the, uh, existences, uh, on the other side are not necessarily malevolent, but they are destructive in nature, like a shark in the ocean. The means to send back the, uh, results of a summoning are printed on pages 135 through 137 of the text, and this part we have played in full at several practice meetings.

As I have said, I believe the writer of this book is sincere, for the simple reason that I have had proof. Two months ago, I took my fiddle up to the graveyard and played the piece on pages 39 and 40—the prelude to opening the barrier of death. As I played, as surely as I’m sitting here now, I saw the corrupted bodies of my relatives appear and stand around me, as solid as the earth under my feet. As I was so frightened, I quit playing, and they vanished, but on two occasions, I have gone back to the graveyard and heard weird music, though there was no one there to be playing it. I believe it was an answer of a kind to the invitation I played. But I haven’t responded. And I don’t go back to the graveyard anymore.

Now I felt a tremendous surge in my heart, a complete disbelief of what I was hearing. But I continued to listen, hypnotized by the fear in the low voice on the tape, not sure now if my grandfather were wholly of sound mind. I could sense that he was terrified of proceeding with this plan of his . . . yet the longing to unveil the mysteries of Maurice Zann’s book so outweighed his fear that he was willing to risk unknowable consequences. There came a series of tonal pluckings and whinings as the group tuned their instruments—probably the very same ones that hung in the small workshop next to the living room. A couple of unfamiliar voices said something incomprehensible, and my grandfather spoke again:

It’s getting dark now, and we’re about to start. I will admit that all of us are pretty afraid, but we believe that the things we might learn are so incredible and so important that they warrant whatever risk. I think from what we’ve learned so far, we will be safe.

There was a pause and more background voices. Then, my grandfather’s voice said, “So, you ready?” and after a moment, a sudden discordant jangle rattled from the speaker. Harsh plucking and flat strumming echoed through what must have been a still mountain night more than twenty-five years ago. The noise seemed to have no rhythm or melody. Insect-like chirps arpeggioed up and down unknown scales, bass thumps jumped from one time signature to another, without any pattern or structure . . . so it seemed. What I was hearing sounded more like a random banging of instruments by inexperienced hands than a complex latticework of music holding some deep-hidden power. But as I listened further, I caught strains of some unearthly harmony occasionally breaking through the chaotic dissonance. I began to hear tones that were not of stringed instruments, but of deep woodwinds or brassy pipes. The harmonic overtones of the mandolin, guitar, violin and dulcimer were producing sounds unlike any I had ever heard, even in the most radical of electronic fusion.

Beyond this cacophony, a definite melody seemed to come together, but at such distance as to be drowned by the brash orchestration. I turned the volume up on the machine, straining to catch the sequence of the evasive notes. I began to get distortion over the speaker, but I shut my ears to the pain, concentrating only on what lurked beneath. Yes . . . some sort of melody was forming, combining in arias of thin, reed-like whistles and lower, rich tones that could only be blown from a French horn.

And then, beyond that, another distinct tune, but so faint as to be lost in the crashing of insane strings. I sat there for a time, separated from my surroundings by a spell of mesmerizing power. My thoughts seemed to dissolve, and I allowed myself to be absorbed amid raw energy that explored every realm of ecstasy, tranquility, horror, and agony.

Suddenly, it was over. I sat facing the rear window of my Grandfather’s house, peering toward the depths of the forest. There was a clatter from the speaker as the musicians lowered their instruments and simultaneously breathed exhausted sighs. For a full two minutes, nothing further issued except a soft sigh of breeze and a few crickets beginning their chorus for the evening. At last one of the background voices said, “What is it? Anything?”

My grandfather mumbled something low. Then, “No. Nothing.” I waited again as silence returned, picturing the group of men looking about expectantly, probably with fear-widened eyes, their sweaty palms trembling. Then, Grandfather said, “Wind’s picking up.”

Sure enough, the drone of the breeze was growing stronger. It rose and fell several times, whistling by the microphone that probably sat unprotected somewhere near the players. But still, nothing more could be heard except for the increasing chatter from the forest. Almost five minutes went by without a word from any of the men.

Then, Grandfather abruptly said:

Well, looks like nothing is happening . . . so far. Guess we’ll have to wait and see. The book said it could take a little while, I guess, if the weather is not conducive to picking up the message. I’d think these are optimum conditions . . . sky’s clear, it’s pretty cold . . . sound really carries. Wind’s holding, I’d say between five and ten miles per hour. I suppose we could have done something incorrectly . . . damned piece of music ain’t meant to be played by human hands . . . but it sure seemed like we did it.

Outside, here in my own time, the afternoon sun was well on its way into the west. It would be dark within the hour. I felt a shiver run up my spine. A gust of chill wind had swirled through the house.

To save tape, I’ll shut off for the moment and come back at the first sign of anything happening. Still damned peculiar . . . absolutely nothing. Nothing at all.

There was a click as the tape was shut off all those years ago. Another click followed as it was turned back on some indeterminate time later.

It’s been thirty minutes now. No sign of anything unusual. The crickets are going nuts, as you can hear, but apart from that, everything seems normal. Pretty disappointing, but also kind of a relief. Maybe it’s better if nothing happens. I guess it ain’t right for Christian men to fool around with powers that only the Lord should know about. ’Course, I suppose there’s a lot this family’s done that ain’t considered right and true. (Grandfather chuckled.) It’s common knowledge that the Asberrys make the best whiskey outside Franklin County . . . but I reckon in the eyes of God that’s a small sin compared to messing around with the powers that be.

I frowned. I wondered if the Asberrys’ “shady” side—moonshining—had been the source of my Dad’s discomfort in sharing his family’s past with me. My father was a decent and proud man, and I guess it would be like him to feel a sense of guilt coming from a background of less than upright standing. Having broken from his rural mold and successfully established himself in an urban environment, I could see how the simple—and illicit—life his family led might have developed into a sore point with him.

Now, though, I wondered if there might be other secrets my family had kept hidden . . . darker things . . . occult things. Perhaps the music of Maurice Zann was only one such example. Might this old family have been delving into unknown, forbidden lore since before they settled here from the Old World?

I have always considered myself rational and well-educated, reasonably wise in the ways of the world. Still, the purely intuitive side of my nature felt the stirrings of some primal dread; instinct had overridden reason, leaving me confused and uncomfortable. The woods and wilderness which I had found so charming and restful now seemed fraught with mysteries less than inviting.

Another couple of clicks came from the player. Then, my Grandfather’s voice said:

Forty-five minutes now. Still nothing. The boys and me are starting to breathe a little easier now. John’s gone inside to make coffee. We can sure use it after this. I guess it’s better this way. Maybe we messed up, or maybe the Lord just said it ain’t to be. Anyway, if nothing happens in the next few minutes, I think we’ll all sleep much better tonight. After this, I reckon I’ll be forgetting all about what happened before. I’ll put that book away and never bother with it again. I should never have taken it from Daddy in the first place.

So, the book had been in the family even before my grandfather. Interesting.

Well, unless something happens tonight, I might as well give up on this recording. I’m pretty tired . . . all of us are right worn out, matter of fact. It’s been hard work. So for now, I’ll be ending all this up . . . uh, unless the need arises sometime later. So . . . signing off.

Grandfather ended on that uncertain note. There was nothing else on the tape, which disappointed me, as I had hoped for at least some explanation or commentary on the night’s activities. Their attempt had surely been a failure, and I found nothing in the house to suggest any future effort to reproduce the experiment. And nothing mysterious seemed to have befallen my grandfather in the intervening years.

And what of this whole premise, I wondered to myself. Could I place any stock in the concepts my grandfather had sought—and failed—to prove? Surely not, I thought. There had indeed been some unusual, elusive depth to the music on the tape, but surely, nothing that could convince me of its mystical power.

My grandfather sounded like an intelligent man, with a modicum of formal education. I wondered just what his experience in the graveyard had been that encouraged him to seek the greater power revealed in Zann’s text. Had he merely suffered some frightening manifestation of his own imagination? Frustration began to tear at me, for it seemed that this mystery was destined to die with no promise of resolve. Deciphering the technical concepts in The Spheres Beyond Sound was completely beyond my ability.

There had to be some other way of gathering information. Possibly, the neighbors that had aided my grandfather’s performance—they could be of assistance if they were still alive and of sound memory.

Then I remembered the strange tune that had entered my head while I was walking from the graveyard. Had not Grandfather spoken of hearing supernatural music when he had gone there? Could I have shared such an experience here, more than twenty-five years after the fact? Suddenly, I realized I had to return to the woods to see if the same thing might happen again.

Late afternoon was creeping over the mountain, but I calculated I could easily get to the cemetery and back before dark; and perhaps tomorrow, I could search for the men that had accompanied my grandfather on the tape. Maybe there was yet hope for this venture.

I disconnected the tape machine and returned the reel to its carton. Then I set out walking, carrying a flashlight just in case darkness fell upon me sooner than expected. The worst hazard would be the steep dropoff near the trail. Yet, it seemed that something about nature had been stirred up by the music on the tape. Since I was a child, I have seldom felt the thrill of fear, the sense of foreboding cast by the unknown. That feeling was upon me now, and though I was skeptical of it, I also held for it a certain amount of respect.

It didn’t take me long to reach my destination. The graveyard was immersed in a pool of shadow as the sun dropped beyond the wall of trees; but I sensed something different, an atmosphere I had never felt before. Small whirlpools of wind were flitting among the gravestones, lifting earth and dead foliage into writhing dances in midair. Strange dark patches grew here and there that were not shadows. A low rumble issued from the ground, as if something huge were stirring from sleep. And from the air, my ears detected the faintest of tonal wails mixed with the whistle of the breeze. I listened carefully, finally managing to pick out a distinct, harmonious blending of tones from the background jumble of sounds.

None of these elements was spectacular or even blatant. They each combined to create a sense of awry atmosphere, a subtle wrongness. But my conscious mind now perceived that unnatural influences were at work here, for these phenomena could not possibly be ordinary acts of nature. I knew now that the music of Maurice Zann was, in fact, the source.

How? Why? The original attempt by my grandfather had failed. What conditions could have changed that allowed my thoughtless playing of the tape to summon whatever thing—or things—appeared to be struggling into existence? I had been so curious that I had never considered the possibility of the music having some mystical effect.

What the hell was going to happen?

I left the graveyard, running down the path that led to the waterfall. All I could think of now was getting away from this place.

Behind me, a weird, wild shriek suddenly tore into the forest; something animalistic, sub-human. It was joined by another, then another, like a ghastly choir of agonized voices. Something beneath my feet boomed deeply; then the ground shook so violently I was sure the surface had been rent and that now the denizens of the underworld would be crawling out of their blazing pits. More chilling cries from the graveyard sent me running even faster, down toward the house which I considered my only retreat.

Suddenly, before I realized it, I had reached the precipice where the stream pitched into space. I caught the trunk of a small tree just in time to save me hurtling over the edge, but nearly dislocating my shoulder in the process. A stab of pain halted me in my tracks.

Then, my eyes caught something moving in the valley below. The sun had just reached the horizon, and on this side of the mountain, facing east, only shadow filled the depths below. But in that darkness, something even darker, something gigantic, seemed to be crawling across the floor of the valley. My eyes riveted on that mass of blackness, its immensity mesmerizing me. My lungs stopped working, and for a moment, I felt I was falling; somehow, I was able to keep holding onto that tree. It was the only thing that saved me.

From the woods behind me, there now came a multitude of shufflings and scrapings, as of many bodies moving through the foliage. Gutteral groans and hoarse cries drifted through the dark woods toward me. A surge of panic sent me flying back from the edge and down the trail again, my way guided only by an instinctive urge to escape.

The woods had grown nearly pitch black, and I could not see the trail. Twice I slammed into hidden trees, luckily avoiding being impaled on broken branches. Reeling from the force of the impacts, I reached out to find support . . . and gripped a moist, muddy limb that seemed to hang too limply from something unseen. Then, to my horror, that limb moved of its own accord, and I felt something hard and firm take hold of my wrist. I jerked my arm back purely by reflex; and as I did, a shrill wail exploded from the shadowy form in front of me. I launched myself past it and began my flight anew down the treacherous path, blindly hoping to reach the house without killing myself.

Many times in nightmares I have found myself fleeing from some terrible threat. As often as not, my car is my refuge, for in mobility there is hope of safety. I was now living one of my nightmares, and my one goal was to get to my car and escape from this terrible mountain. And like in so many dreams, the darkness engulfed me, slowing me down, obscuring my path. I cannot count how many times I lost my footing or was snagged by grasping branches. Somehow, I at last reached the house, the kitchen light glowing invitingly. With profound but temporary relief, I pushed my way in through the back door, slamming it behind me, and leaning heavily against it.

I didn’t care about the few belongings I had brought with me. My only concern now was to find my keys and get away from here with all possible haste. From outside, I could hear the restless chatter of the night creatures, more urgent than usual, and their chirps and buzzings spurred me on. I ran into the bedroom, found my keys on the bedside table. Grabbing them up, I turned and ran out the front door, not bothering to turn off the lights or lock the house.

The moment I shakily inserted the key into the car door, I heard a grating rumble from the woods just above the house. Looking up, I could see the tops of the dark trees shaking and pitching back and forth. The wailing sounds returned, drifting down from the darkness, drawing steadily nearer. A lump of terror rose in my throat, for it now seemed there was no way I could get down the mountain in time to escape whatever was coming.

I jerked the car door open with a burst of frenzied strength, slid into the seat and willed my hand to carefully insert the key into the ignition. I somehow accomplished this on the first attempt, fired up the engine, and flipped on the headlights.

The car faced the side of the house, and caught in the beams of the headlights stood a figure whose appearance nearly stopped my heart. It was a parody of a man, or had once been a man. It stood facing me on two spindly legs, its body a mass of dark, moss-covered earth. Two blackened eye pits gaped from its mud-encrusted skull, empty, but seemingly possessed of sight. For a long moment, it did not move, only stood there apparently regarding me. Then, at either corner of the house, two similar figures appeared, both facing me, but making no move in my direction.

Then, out of the empty air, I heard the mad strains of that mystical music, and to my shock and bewilderment, those corrupted bodies began to whirl and leap, spinning and pirouetting in a grotesque, fiery dance. And at that moment, above the roof of the house, a great mass of blackness rose into the night sky, blocking the glittering stars that had just begun to appear. The night fell utterly still; no wind cut across the mountaintop, no insect chirped. Only the notes of the supernatural music floated into the sky. The whirling figures ceased their dancing and dropped to their bony knees, prostrating themselves before the black shape that hovered over the house. I began to perceive at the far reaches of my senses the wistful notes of my grandfather’s stringed cacophony.

As I sat there, the features of the huge thing before me gradually came into focus. I could see what appeared to be thick, arthropodic legs, dozens of meters long, and in the midst of the solid central mass, a myriad of tiny, flickering lights grouped in dense bunches. It was a gigantic spider-like thing with a thousand eyes which glared down at me as if ready to pounce. The worshipping corpses began a new wailing chorus.

As the glare of those thousand eyes bore down on me, I realized why my grandfather’s original performance had failed to summon this entity, whereas the playing of the tape had succeeded: I had turned the volume on the machine up to catch the subtle undertones of the music. The lower, most subtle elements of the “live” performance on acoustic instruments had failed to reach the volume prescribed in the Zann text. Yet the very same music, played at a higher decibel level had been in the exact range to complete the summoning process.

Then another cold fear seized me—due to the failure of his attempt, Grandfather had not recorded the passage with which to return the extra-dimensional terror to its rightful place. There was no way to send the thing back!

Now, strange whispers, voices from somewhere beyond this plane of time and space began to swirl through the air around me like buzzing bees. Panic motivated my hand, and I slammed the gear lever into reverse and spun the steering wheel, turning my car down the road away from the house. In mad fury, the car screamed and bucked over the pot-holed road, several times nearly skidding into the woods on either side. I did not slow down though, for the fear of smashing myself into a tree was not nearly so real as the other-worldly threat I was leaving behind.

At last, I reached the bottom of the mountain and sent my car hurtling down the winding highway toward Barren Creek, not looking into the rearview mirror to see what might be following.

The music and whispering faded from my hearing, though my terror did not subside. Once, while speeding down a long, curving decline that allowed me a brief view of Copper Peak, I swore I saw a portion of the sky blocked out by a gigantic, spider-like shape resting on top of the mountain. But the road curved again, and Copper Peak slipped once and for all beyond my line of sight.

In Aiken Mill, I stopped to fill my gas tank, which had fallen dangerously close to empty. As I nervously pumped the gasoline into my car, my eyes darted repeatedly down the road whence I came, half-expecting to see some crawling, pitch-black silhouette advancing from the distance. But nothing appeared, and I paid the nervous-looking attendant who must have thought I had escaped from the nearby Catawba Sanatorium. By the time I reached Interstate 81 to head back home, I had seen nothing more, and the terror that consumed me slowly began to abate.

And yet for me, the real fear lies ahead. Whatever the music of Maurice Zann summoned must still lurk on the fringes of this world, somewhere in the mountains around Barren Creek. The only way to send it back is by playing the proper musical arrangements from The Spheres Beyond Sound, and the only copy of that book in existence seems to be at my old family house. Even if I could find the right passage, someone who could read music would have to play the piece. As it is, I have been unable to find that book, or any record of such a book at any library or bookstore, even those that I called in Providence. And I will never, never return to that place in the mountains, at any time, for any reason. I have urged my parents to sell the house, but to avoid going there at all costs. Of course, I discussed nothing about the events that had transpired there with my father, yet as irrational as I must have sounded, he seemed to accept my words without question—and with a strange appearance of understanding.

As I said, however, the real terror for me has yet to manifest itself. For surely, those animated corpses were those of my own relatives, their eternal souls somehow drawn back to their wasted bodies. Even now, they must dance and worship that black overlord of death which Zann’s music called from beyond. Thus I have sealed my fate, for my own bloodline calls to me: at times, I can hear those demonic notes pounding in my ears, as if the long-dead Asberrys beckon me to join them. Whatever paradise might await others in the life after this, I know it is never meant for me; for as long as that black spider remains free in this world, the gate to the other side is blocked and guarded. Eventually, my time will come; I will then become one of those damned, dancing parodies that bewail their fate and bow to the demon master from the dimension beyond death.