The Mask of Cthulhu Read online

  Tuttle turned to me almost eagerly and lowered his voice as if in fear of being overheard. “As a matter of fact, Haddon, it’s colossal—a gigantic feat of the imagination; only for this: I’m no longer certain that it is imaginative, indeed, I’m not. I wondered about that clause in my uncle’s will; I couldn’t understand why he should want this house destroyed, and rightly surmised that the reason must lie somewhere in the pages of those books he so carefully condemned.” He waved a hand at the incunabula before him. “So I examined them, and I can tell you that I have discovered things of such incredible strangeness, such bizarre horror, that I hesitate sometimes to dig deeper into the mystery. Frankly, Haddon, it is the most outré matter I’ve ever come upon, and I must say it involved considerable research, quite apart from these books Uncle Amos collected.”

  “Indeed,” I said dryly. “And I dare say you’ve had to do considerable travelling?”

  He shook his head. “None at all, apart from one trip to Miskatonic University Library. The fact is, I found I could be served just as well by mail. You’ll remember those papers of my uncle’s? Well, I discovered among them that Uncle Amos paid a hundred thousand for a certain bound manuscript—bound in human skin, incidentally— together with a cryptic line: in addition to the promise. I began to ask myself what promise Uncle Amos could have made, and to whom; whether to the man or woman who had sold him this R’lyeh Text or to some other. I proceeded forthwith to search out the name of the man who had sold him the book, and presently found it with his address: some Chinese priest from inner Tibet: and wrote to him. His reply reached me a week ago.”

  He bent away and rummaged briefly among the papers on his desk, until he found what he sought and handed it to me.

  “I wrote in my uncle’s name not trusting entirely in the transaction, and wrote, moreover, as if I had forgotten or had a hope to avoid the promise,” he continued. “His reply is fully as cryptic as my uncle’s notation.”

  Indeed, it was so, for the crumpled paper that was handed to me bore, in a strange, stilted script, byt one line, without signature or date: To afford a haven for Him Who is not to be Named.

  I dare say I looked up at Tuttle with my wonderment clearly mirrored in my eyes, for he smiled before he replied.

  “Means nothing to you, eh? No more did it to me, when I first saw it. But not for long. In order to understand what follows, you should know at least a brief outline of the mythology—if indeed it is only mythology—in which this mystery is rooted. My Uncle Amos apparently knew and believed all about it, for the various notes scattered in the margins of his proscribed books bespeak a knowledge far beyond mine. Apparently the mythology springs from a common source with our own legendary Genesis, but only by a very thin resemblance; sometimes I am tempted to say that this mythology is far older than any other—certainly in its implications it goes far beyond, being cosmic and ageless, for its beings are of two natures, and two only: the Old or Ancient Ones, the Elder Gods, of cosmic good, and those of cosmic evil, bearing many names, and themselves of different groups, as if associated with the elements and yet transcending them: for there are the Water Beings, hidden in the depths; those of Air that are the primal lurkers beyond time; those of Earth, horrible animate survivals of distant eons. Incredible time ago, the Old Ones banished from the cosmic places all the Evil Ones, imprisoning them in many places; but in time these Evil Ones spawned hellish minions who set about preparing for their return to greatness. The Old Ones are nameless, but their power is and will apparently always be great enough to check that of the others.

  “Now, among the Evil Ones there is apparently often conflict, as among lesser beings. The Water Beings oppose those of Air; the Fire Beings oppose Earth Beings, but nevertheless, they together hate and fear the Elder Gods and hope always to defeat them in some future time. Among my Uncle Amos’s papers there are many fearsome names written in his crabbed script: Great Cthulhu, the Lake of Hali, Tsathoggua, Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlathotep, Azathoth, Hastur the Unspeakable, Yuggoth, Aldones, Thale, Aldebaran, the Hyades, Carcosa and others; and it is possible to divide some of these names into vaguely suggestive classes from those notes which are explicable to me—though many present insoluble mysteries I cannot hope as yet to penetrate; and many, too, are written in a language I do not know, together with cryptic and oddly frightening symbols and signs. But through what I have learned, it is possible to know that Great Cthulhu is one of the Water Beings, even as Hastur is of the Beings that stalk the star-spaces; and it is possible to gather from vague hints in these forbidden books where some of these beings are. So I can believe that in this mythology, Great Cthulhu was banished to a place beneath the seas of Earth, while Hastur was hurled into outer space, into that place where the black stars hang, which is indicated as Aldebaran of the Hyades, which is the place mentioned by Chambers, even as he repeats the Carcosa of Bierce.

  “Coming upon this communication from the priest in Tibet in the light of these things, surely one fact must come clearly forth: Haddon, surely, beyond the shadow of a doubt, He Who is not to be Named can be none other than Hastur the Unspeakable!”

  The sudden cessation of his voice startled me; there was something hypnotic about his eager whisper, and something too that filled me with a conviction far beyond the power of Paul Tuttle’s words. Somewhere deep within the recesses of my mind, a chord had been struck, a mnemonic connection I could not dismiss or trace and which left me with a feeling as of limitless age, a cosmic bridge into another place and time.

  “That seems logical,” I said at last, cautiously.

  “Logical, Haddon, it is; it must be!” he exclaimed.

  “Granting it,” I said, “what then?”

  “Why, granting,” he went on quickly, “we have conceded that my Uncle Amos promised to make ready a haven in preparation for the return of Hastur from whatever region of outer space now imprisons him. Where that have is, or what manner of place it may be, has not thus far been my concern, though I can guess, perhaps. This is not the time for guessing, and yet it would seem, from certain other evidence at hand, that there may be some permissible deductions made. The first and most important of these is of a double nature—ergo, something unforeseen prevented the return of Hastur within my uncle’s lifetime, and yet some other being has made itself manifest.” Here he looked at me with unusual frankness and not a little nervousness. “As for the evidence of this manifestation, I would rather not at this time go into it. Suffice it to say that I believe I have such evidence at hand. I return to my original premise, then.

  “Among the few marginal notations made by my uncle, there are two or three especially remarkable ones in the R’lyeh Text; indeed, in the light of what is known or can justifiably be guessed, they are sinister and ominous notes.”

  So speaking, he opened the ancient manuscript and turned to a place quite close to the beginning of the narrative.

  “Now attend me, Haddon,” he said, and I rose and bent over him to look at the spidery, almost illegible script that I knew for Amos Tuttle’s. “Observe the underscored line of text: Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’ nagl fhtagn, and what follows it in my uncle’s unmistakable hand: His minions preparing the way, and he longer dreaming? (WT: 2/28) and at a more recent date, to judge by the shakiness of his hand, the single abbreviation: Inns! Obviously, this means nothing without a translation of the text. Failing this at the moment I first saw the note, I turned my attention to the parenthetical notation, and within a short while solved its meaning as a reference to a popular magazine, Weird Tales, for February, 1928. I have it here.”

  He opened the magazine against the meaningless text, partially concealing the lines which had begun to take on an uncanny atmosphere of eldritch age beneath my eyes, and there beneath Paul Tuttle’s hand lay the first page of a story so obviously belonging to this unbelievable mythology that I could not repress a start of astonishment. The title, only partly covered by his hand, was The Call of Cthulhu, by H. P. Lovecraft. But Tut
tle did not linger over the first page; he turned well into the heart of the story before he paused and presented to my gaze the identical unreadable line that lay beside the crabbed script of Amos Tuttle in the incredibly rare R’lyeh Text upon which the magazine reposed. And there, only a paragraph below, appeared what purported to be a translation of the utterly unknown language of the Text: In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.

  “There you have it,” resumed Tuttle with some satisfaction. “Cthulhu, too, waited for the time of his resurgence—how many eons, no one may know; but my uncle has questioned whether Cthulhu still lies dreaming, and following this, has written and doubly underscored an abbreviations which can only stand for Innsmouth! This, together with the ghastly things half hinted in this revealing story purporting to be only fiction, opens up a vista of undreamed horror, of age-old evil.”

  “Good Heaven!” I exclaimed involuntarily. “Surely you can’t think this fantasy has come to life?”

  Tuttle turned and gave me a strangely distant look. “What I think doesn’t matter, Haddon,” he replied gravely. “But there is one thing I would like very much to know— what happened at Innsmouth? What has happened there for decades past that people have shunned it so? Why has this once prosperous port sunk into oblivion, half its houses empty, its property practically worthless? And why was it necessary for Government men to blow up row after row of the waterfront dwellings and warehouses? Lastly, for what earthly reason did they send a submarine to torpedo the marine spaces beyond Devil Reef just out of Innsmouth?”

  “I know nothing of that,” I replied.

  But he paid no heed; his voice rose a little, uncertain and trembling, and he said, “I can tell you, Haddon. It is even as my Uncle Amos has written: Great Cthulhu has risen again!”

  For a moment I was shaken; then I said, “But it is Hastur for whom he waited.”

  “Precisely,” agreed Tuttle in a clipped, professional voice. “Then I should like to know who or what it is that walks the earth in the dark hours when Fomalhaut has risen and the Hyades are in the east!”

  III

  With this, he abruptly changed the subject; he began to ask me questions about myself and my practice, and presently, when I rose to go, he asked me to stay the night. This I consented finally, and with some reluctance, to do, whereupon he departed at once to make a room ready for me. I took the opportunity thus afforded to examine his desk more closely for the Necronomicon missing from the library of Miskatonic University. It was not on his desk, but, crossing to the shelves, I found it there. I had just taken it down and was examining it to make certain of its identity, when Tuttle reentered the room. His quick eyes darted to the book in my hands, and he half smiled.

  “I wish you’d take that back to Doctor Llanfer when you go in the morning, Haddon,” he said casually. “Now that I’ve copied the text, I have no further use for it.”

  “I’ll do that gladly,” I said, relieved that the matter could so easily be settled.

  Shortly after, I retired to the room on the second floor which he had prepared for me. He accompanied me as far as the door, and there paused briefly, uncertain of speech ready for his tongue and yet not permitted to pass his lips; for he turned once or twice, bade me goodnight before he spoke what weighed upon his thoughts: “By the way—if you hear anything in the night, don’t be alarmed, Haddon. Whatever it is, it’s harmless—as yet.”

  It was not until he had gone and I was alone in my room that the significance of what he had said and the way he had said it dawned upon me. It grew upon me then that this was confirmation of the wild rumors that had penetrated Arkham, and that Tuttle spoke not entirely without fear. I undressed slowly and thoughtfully, and got into the pajamas Tuttle had laid out for me, without deviating for an instant from the preoccupation with the weird mythology of Amos Tuttle’s ancient books that held my mind. Never quick to pass judgment, I was not prone to do so now; despite the apparent absurdity of the structure, it was still sufficiently well erected to merit more than a casual scrutiny. And it was clear to me that Tuttle was more than half convinced of its truth. This in itself was more than enough to give me pause, for Paul Tuttle had distinguished himself time and again for the thoroughness of his researches, and his published papers had not been challenged for even their most minor detail. As a result of facing these facts, I was prepared to admit at least that there was some basis for the mythology-structure outlined to me by Tuttle, but as to its truth or error, of course I was in position at that time to commit myself even within the confines of my own mind; for once a man concedes or condemns a thing within his mind, it is doubly, nay triply, difficult to rid himself of his own conclusion, however ill-advised it may subsequently prove to be.

  Thinking thus, I got into bed, and lay there awaiting sleep. The night had deepened and darkened, though I could see through the flimsy curtain at the window that the stars were out, Andromeda high in the east, and the constellations of autumn beginning to mount the sky.

  I was on the edge of sleep when I was startled awake again by a sound which had been present for some time, but which had only just then been borne in upon me with all its significance: the faintly trembling step of some gigantic creature vibrating all through the house, though the sound of it came not from within the house, but from the east, and for a confused moment I thought of something risen from the sea and walking along the shore in the wet sand.

  But this illusion passed when I raised myself on one elbow and listened more intently. For a moment there was no sound whatever; then it came again, irregularly, broken—a step, a pause, two steps in fairly quick succession, an odd sucking noise. Disturbed, I got up and went to the open window. The night was warm, and the still air almost sultry; far to the northeast a beacon cut an arc upon the sky, and from the distant north came the faint drone of a night plane. It was already past midnight; low in the east shone red Aldebaran and the Pleiades, but I did not at that time, as I did later, connect the disturbances I heard to the appearance of the Hyades above the horizon.

  The odd sounds, meanwhile, continued unabated, and it was borne in upon me presently that they were indeed approaching the house, however slow their progress. And that they came from the direction of the sea I could not doubt, for in this place there was no configurations of the earth that might have thrown any sound out of directional focus. I began to think again of those similar sounds we had heard while Amos Tuttle’s body lay in the house, though I did not then remember that even as the Hyades lay now low in the east, so they were then setting in the west. If there was any difference in the manner of their approach, I was not able to ascertain it, unless it was that the present disturbances seemed somehow closer, but it was not a physical closeness as much as a psychic closeness. The conviction of this was so strong that I began to feel a growing uneasiness not untinged with fear; I began to experience a wild restlessness, a desire for company; and I went quickly to the door of my room, opened it, and stepped quietly into the hall in search of my host.

  But now at once a new discovery made itself known. As long as I had been in my room, the sounds I had heard seemed unquestionably to come from the east, notwithstanding the faint, almost intangible tremors that seemed to shudder through the old house; but here in the darkness of the hall, whither I had gone without a light of any kind, I became aware that the sounds and tremblings alike emanated from below—not, indeed, from any place in the house, but below that—rising as if from subterranean places. My nervous tension increased, and I stood uneasily to get my bearings in the dark, when I perceived from the direction of the stairway a faint radiance mounting from below. I moved toward it at once, noiselessly, and, looking over the banister, saw that the light came from an electric candle held in Paul Tuttle’s hand. He was standing in the lower hall, clad in his dressing-gown, though it was clear to me even from where I stood that he had not removed his clothes. The light that fell upon his face revealed the intensity of his attention; his head was cocked a little to o
ne side in an attitude of listening, and he stood motionless the while I looked down upon him.

  “Paul!” I called in a harsh whisper.

  He looked up instantly and saw my face doubtless caught in the light from the candle in his hand. “Do you hear?” he asked.

  “Yes—what in God’s name is it?”

  “I’ve heard it before,” he said. “Come down.”

  I went down to the lower hall, where I stood for a moment under his penetrating and questioning gaze.

  “You aren’t afraid Haddon?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then come with me.”

  He turned and led the way toward the back of the house, where he descended into the cellars below. All this time the sounds were rising in volume; it was as if they had approached closer to the house, indeed, almost as if they were directly below, and now there was obvious a definite trembling in the building, not alone of the walls and supports, but one with the shuddering and shaking of the earth all around: it was as if some deep subterranean disturbance had chosen this spot in the earth’s surface to make itself manifest. But Tuttle was unmoved by this, doubtless for the reason that he had experienced it before. He went directly through the first and second cellars to a third, set somewhat lower than the others, and apparently of more recent construction, but, like the first two, built of limestone blocks set in cement.

  In the center of this sub-cellar he paused and stood quietly listening. The sounds had by this time risen to such intensity that it seemed as if the house were caught in a vortex of volcanic upheaval without actually suffering the destruction of its supports; for the trembling and shuddering, the creaking and groaning of the rafters above us gave evidence of the tremendous pressure exerted within the earth beneath us, and even the stone floor of the cellar seemed alive under my bare feet. But presently these sounds appeared to recede into the background, though actually they lessened not at all, and only presented this illusion because of our growing familiarity with them and because our ears were becoming attuned to other sounds in more major keys, these, too, rising from below as from a great distance, but carrying with them an insidious hellishness in the implications that grew upon us.