Haggopian and Other Stories (9 page)

Thus, being uncertain as to how he would
react
to questions about his expedition, I was loath to ask him of it. However, on those rare occasions when he saw fit to talk of it without prompting I listened avidly for I, as much as if not more so than others, was eager to have the mystery cleared up.

He had been back only a few months when he suddenly left London and invited me up to his cottage, isolated here on the Yorkshire moors, to keep him company. This invitation was a thing strange in itself as he was one who had spent months in absolute solitude in various far-flung desolate places and liked to think of himself as something of a hermit. I accepted, for I saw the perfect chance to get a little of that solitude which I find particularly helpful to my writing.

II

One day, shortly after I had settled in, Sir Amery showed me a pair of strangely beautiful pearly spheres. They measured about four inches in diameter and though he had been unable to positively identify the material from which they were made, he was able to tell me that it appeared to be some unknown combination of calcium, chrysolite and diamond-dust.
How
the things had been made was, as he put it, “anybody’s guess.” The spheres, he told me, had been found at the site of dead G’harne—the first intimation he had offered that he had actually
found
the place—buried beneath the earth in a lidless, stone box which had borne upon its queerly angled sides certain utterly alien engravings. Sir Amery was anything but explicit with regard to those
designs
, merely stating that they were so loathsome in what they suggested that it would not do to describe them too closely. Finally, in answer to my probing questions, he told me they depicted monstrous sacrifices to some unnameable, cthonian deity. More he refused to say but directed me, as I seemed so “damnably eager,” to the works of Commodus and the hag-ridden Caracalla. He mentioned that also upon the box, along with the pictures, were many lines of sharply cut characters much similar to the cuneiform etchings of the
G’harne Fragments
and, in certain aspects, having a disturbing likeness to the almost unfathomable
Pnakotic Manuscripts.
Quite possibly, he went on, the container had been a toy-box of sorts and the spheres, in all probability, were once the baubles of a child of the ancient city; certainly children—or young ones—were mentioned in what he had managed to decipher of the odd writing on the box.

It was during this stage of his narrative that I noticed Sir Amery’s eyes were beginning to glaze over and his speech was starting to falter—almost as though some strange, psychic block were affecting his memory. Without warning, like a man suddenly gone into a hypnotic trance, he began muttering of Shudde-M’ell and Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth and Yibb-Tstll— “alien
Gods
defying description” and of mythological places with equally fantastic names; Sarnath and Hyperborea, R’lyeh and Ephiroth and many more…

Eager though I was to learn more of that tragic expedition I fear it was I who stopped Sir Amery from saying on. Try as I might, on hearing him babbling so, I could not keep a look of pity and concern from showing on my face which, when he saw it, caused him to hurriedly excuse himself and flee to the privacy of his room. Later, when I looked in at his door, he was engrossed with his seismograph and appeared to be relating the markings on its graph to an atlas of the world which he had taken from his library. I was concerned to note that he was quietly arguing with himself.

Naturally, being what he was and having such a great interest in peculiar, anthropoligical problems, my uncle had always possessed—along with his historical and archaeological source books—a smattering of works concerning elder-lore and primitive and doubtful religions. I mean such works as the
Golden Bough
and Miss Murray’s
Witch Cult.
But what was I to make of those
other
books which I found in his library within a few days of my arrival? On his shelves were at least nine works which I know are so outrageous in what they suggest that they have been mentioned by widely differing authorities over a period of many years as being damnable, blasphemous, abhorrent, unspeakable and literary lunacy. These included the
Cthaat Aquadingen
by an unknown author, Feery’s
Notes on the Necronomicon
, the
Liber Miraculorem,
Eliphas Lévi’s
History of Magic
and a faded, leather-bound copy of the hideous
Cultes des Goules.
Perhaps the worst thing I saw was a slim volume by Commodus which that “Blood Maniac” had written in AD 183 and which was protected from further fragmentation by lamination.

And moreover, as if these books were not puzzling enough, there was that
other
thing!! What of the indescribable, droning
chant
which I often heard issuing from Sir Amery’s room in the dead of night? This first occurred on the sixth night I spent with him and I was roused from my own uneasy slumbers by the morbid accents of a language it seemed impossible for the vocal chords of Man to emulate. Yet my uncle was weirdly fluent with it and I scribbled down an oft-repeated sentence-sequence in what I considered the nearest written approximation of the spoken words I could find. These words—
or sounds—
were:

Ce’haiie ep-ngh fl’hur G’harne fhtagn,

Ce’haiie fhtagn ngh Shudde-M’ell.

Hai G’harne orr’e ep fl’hur,

Shudde-M’ell ican-icanicas fl’hur orr’e G’harne…

Though at the time I found the thing impossible to pronounce as I heard it, I have since found that with each passing day, oddly, the pronunciation of those lines comes easier
—
as if with the approach of some obscene horror I grow more capable of expressing myself in that horror’s terms. Perhaps it is just that lately in my dreams, I have found occasion to speak those very words and, as all things are far simpler in dreams, my fluency has passed over into my waking hours. But that does not explain the tremors—the same inexplicable tremors which so terrorized my uncle. Are the shocks which cause the ever-present quiverings of the seismograph stylus merely the traces of some vast, subterrene cataclysm a thousand miles deep and five thousand miles away—
or are they caused by something else?
Something so outré and fearsome that my mind freezes when I am tempted to study the problem too closely…

III

There came a time, after I had been with him for a number of weeks, when it seemed plain that Sir Amery was rapidly recovering. True, he still retained his stoop,
—
though to me it seemed no longer so pronounced
—
, and his so-called eccentricities, but he was more his old self in other ways. The nervous tic had left his face completely and his cheeks had regained something of their former colour. His improvement, I conjectured, had much to do with his never-ending studies of the seismograph: for I had established. by that time that there was a definite connection between the measurements of that machine and my uncle’s illness. Nevertheless, I was at a loss to understand why the internal movements of the Earth should so determine the state of his nerves. It was after a trip to his room, to look at that instrument, that he told me more of dead G’harne. It was a subject I should have attempted to steer him away from…

“The fragments,” he said, “told the location of a city the name of which, G’harne, is only known in legend and which has in the past been spoken of on a par with Atlantis, Mu and R’lyeh. A myth and nothing more. But if you give a legend a location you strengthen it somewhat—and if that location yields up relics of the past, of a civilization lost for aeons, then the legend becomes history. You’d be surprised how much of the world’s history has in fact been built up that way.

“It was my hope, a hunch you might call it, that G’harne had been real—and with the deciphering of the fragments I found it within my power to
prove
,
one way or the other, G’harne’s elder existence. I have been in some strange places, Paul, and have listened to even stranger stories. I once lived with an African tribe who declared they knew the secrets of the lost city and their story-tellers told me of a land where the sun never shines; where Shudde-M’ell, hiding deep in the honeycombed ground, plots the dissemination of evil and madness throughout the world and plans the resurrection of other, even worse abominations!

“He hides there in the earth and awaits the time when the stars will be
right
,
when his horrible hordes will be
sufficient
in number, and when he can infest the entire world with his loathsomeness and cause the
return
of others more loathsome yet! I was told stories of fabulous star-born creatures who inhabited the Earth millions of years before Man appeared and who were still here, in certain dark places, when he eventually evolved. I tell you, Paul,” his voice rose, “
that they are here even now—in places undreamed of!
I was told of sacrifices to Yog-Sothoth and Yibb-Tstll that would make your blood run cold and of weird rites practiced beneath prehistoric skies before old Egypt was born. These things I’ve heard make the works of Albertus Magnus and Grobert seem tame and De Sade himself would have paled at the hearing.”

My uncle’s voice had been speeding up progressively with each sentence, but now he paused for breath and in a more normal tone and at a reduced rate he continued:

“My first thought on deciphering the fragments was of an expedition. I may tell you I had learned of certain things I could have dug for here in England—you’d be surprised what lurks beneath the surface of some of those peaceful Cotswold hills—but that would have alerted a host of so called ‘experts’ and amateurs alike so I decided on G’harne. When I first mentioned an expedition to Kyle and Gordon and the others I must have produced quite a convincing argument for they all insisted on coming along. Some of them though, I’m sure, must have considered themselves upon a wild goose chase for, as I’ve explained, G’harne lies in the same realm as Mu or Ephiroth—or at least it did—and they must have seen themselves as questing after a veritable lamp of Aladdin; but despite all that they came. They could hardly afford not to come, for if G’harne
was
real…why! Think of the lost glory… They would never have forgiven themselves. And that’s why I can’t forgive
myself
; but for my meddling with the fragments they’d all be here now, God help them…”

Again, Sir Amery’s voice had become full of some dread excitement and feverishly he continued.

“Heavens, but this place sickens me! I can’t stand it much longer. It’s all this grass and soil. Makes me shudder! Cement surroundings are what I need—and the thicker the cement the better… Yet even the cities have their drawbacks… Undergrounds and things… Did you ever see Pickman’s
Subway Accident
, Paul? By God, what a picture… And that night… That
night
! If you could have
seen
them—coming up out of the diggings? If you could have felt the tremors… Why! The very ground rocked and danced as they rose… We’d disturbed them, d’you see? They may have even thought they were under
attack
and up they came… My God! What could have been the reason for such
ferocity
? Only a few hours before I had been congratulating myself on finding the spheres, and then… And then…”

Now he was panting and his eyes, as before, had partly glazed over. His voice had undergone a strange change of
timbre
and his accents were slurred and alien.

“
Ce’haiie, Ce’haiie
… The city may be buried but whoever named the place
dead
G’harne didn’t know the half of it.
They were alive!
They’ve been alive for millions of years; perhaps they
can’t
die… And why shouldn’t that be? They’re Gods aren’t they, of a sort?… Up they come in the night…”

“Uncle, please!” I said.

“You needn’t look at me so, Paul, or think what you’re thinking either… There’s stranger things happened, believe me. Wilmarth of Miskatonic could crack a few yarns, I’ll be bound! You haven’t read what Johansen wrote! Dear Lord,
read the Johansen narrative
!
Hai ep fl’hur
… Wilmarth… The old babbler… What is it he knows which he won’t tell? Why was that which was found at those Mountains of Madness so hushed up, eh? What did Pabodie’s equipment draw up out of the earth?
Tell me those things, if you can?
Ha, ha, ha!
Ce’haiie, Ce’haiie—G’harne icanica…
”

Shrieking now, and glassy-eyed he stood, with his hands gesticulating wildly in the air. I do not think he saw me at all, or anything, except—in his mind’s eye—a horrible recurrence of what he imagined had been. I took hold of his arm to calm him but he brushed my hand away, seemingly without knowing what he was doing.

“Up they come, the rubbery things… Goodbye Gordon… Don’t scream so—the shrieking turns my mind… Thank heavens it’s only a dream!… A nightmare just like all the others I’ve been having lately… It
is
a dream, isn’t it? Goodbye Scott, Kyle, Leslie…”

Suddenly, eyes bugging, he spun wildly round.

“
The ground is breaking up! So many of them…I’m falling
…it’s not a dream!
Dear God!
IT’S NOT A DREAM! No! Keep off, d’you hear! Aghhh!
The slime
… Got to run!… Run! Away from those—voices?—away from the sucking sounds and the chanting…”

Without warning he broke into a chant himself and the awful
sound
of it, no longer distorted by distance or the thickness of a stout door, would have sent a more timid listener into a faint. It was similar to what I had heard before in the night and the words do not seem so evil on paper, almost ludicrous in fact, but to hear them issuing from the mouth of my own flesh and blood—and with such unnatural
fluency…