The Taint and Other Novellas (5 page)

“Nurse Spellman—at last, it’s you! Did you…did you…?” Eagerly he peered out through the bars.

“Did I what, Larner?”

“I asked you to copy down the Sixth Sathlatta—from the
Cthaat Aquadingen.
Did you forget?”

“No, I didn’t forget, Larner,”—though in fact, he had—“but tell me—what do you intend to do with…with the, er, Sixth Sathlatta?”

“Do with it? Why!—it’s—it’s an
experiment!
Yes, that’s it, an experiment. In fact, Nurse Spellman, you might like to help us out with it?”

“Us,
Larner?”

“Me—I meant me—you might like to help
me
with it!”

“In what way?” Spellman found himself interested, and despite the circumstances he was impressed with the lunatic’s apparent lucidity.

“I’ll let you know later—but you’ll have to let me have the Sixth Sathlatta soon—and a few sheets of paper and a pencil….”

“A pencil, Larner?” Spellman frowned suspiciously. “You know I can’t give you a pencil.”

“A crayon, then,” the man in the cell begged in seeming desperation. “Surely I can’t do any harm with a crayon?”

“No, I don’t suppose so. A crayon would be all right, I should think.”

“Good! Then you will—” The madman let the question hang.

“I can’t promise, Larner—but I’ll think about it.” It would be interesting, though, Spellman told himself, his hideous dream of a fortnight gone dim now in his memory, to see just what Larner would do with the Sixth Sathlatta.

“Well, all right—but think quickly!” the man’s voice cut into his thoughts. “I’ll have to have the things I need well before the end of the month. If I don’t—well, the experiment would be no good—not for another year, at any rate.”

Then Larner’s eyes quickly went wide and vacant, his positive expression altering until his features seemed vague and weak. He turned and walked slowly over to his bed with his hands behind his back.

“I’ll see what I can do for you, Larner,” Spellman spoke to the man’s back. “Probably tonight.” But Larner had apparently lost all interest in their conversation.

It was the same later, when Spellman returned to the basement ward after a quick visit to his room. He spoke to Larner, passing through the bars a crayon, blank paper, and that sheet with the Sixth Sathlatta copied from Larner’s book, but the lunatic sat on his bed and made no attempt to answer. Spellman had to let the articles the man had requested fall to the floor within the cell, and even then Larner showed not the slightest flicker of interest.

Toward morning, however, when the stain of approaching dawn was already making itself known through the snow-laden clouds to the east, the young nurse noticed that Larner was busy writing; working furiously with his crayon and paper, but as before he ignored all of Spellman’s efforts at communication.

• • •

It happened two days later that after his mid-morning break Spellman went down to his room for one of his rare cigarettes before beginning his afternoon duties. As he pulled at the cigarette he peered contemplatively out through the bars of his window (Harold Moody had once jovially explained that the bars were not to keep him in—no one doubted
his
sanity—but to keep exercising madmen
out!)
at the dozen inmates of Hell as they walked or shambled up and down the high-walled yard. The worst of them were shackled at the feet, so that their movements were restricted and much slowed down, but at least half of them knew no physical restrictions whatever—except the watchful vigilance of their half-dozen white-clad warders.

The latter seemed especially lethargic that day, or so it appeared to the curious observer, for from his vantage point it was plain to him that Larner was up to something. Spellman saw that every time Larner came within speaking distance of another inmate he would say something, and that then his hand would stray suspiciously close to that of the other. It looked for all the world as though he was passing something around. But what? Spellman believed he knew.

He also realized that it was his duty to warn the warders in the yard that something was up—and yet he did not do so. It was quite possible that, should he bring Larner’s activities to the attention of the others, he would in the end be causing trouble for himself; for he believed Larner to be passing around copies of the Sixth Sathlatta! Spellman smiled. No doubt the madman intended making an attempt at raising Yibb-Tstll. How the lunatic mind contradicts itself, he thought, turning away from the window. Why! You could hardy call the twelve creatures in the the exercise-yard “adepts,” now could you? And in any case, Larner was one man short!

At 4:00 P.M. Spellman was required to go down to the yard with five other warders to stand guard over Hell’s inmates as they took their second and last exercise of the day. One of the other five was Barstowe, looking extremely nervous and uncomfortable, but he kept well away from the younger man. Spellman had noticed before how when Barstowe was in the exercise-yard the madmen were always exceptionally subdued—and yet now, for the first time, there seemed to be an indefinable attitude of quiet defiance about them—quite as though they had an “ace,” as it were, up their collective sleeve. Barstowe had noticed it too, and his interest picked up when Larner went over to Spellman to talk to him.

“Not long now, Nurse Spellman,” Larner quietly said after exchanging reasonable greetings.

“Oh?” Spellman smiled. “Is that right, Larner? I saw you today, you know, passing round those copies you made.”

Larner’s face fell immediately. “You didn’t tell anyone, did you?”

“No, I didn’t tell anyone. When are you going to tell me what it’s all about?”

“Soon, soon—but isn’t it a pity I don’t know the Naach-Tith formula?”

“Er—a pity, yes,” Spellman agreed, wondering what on Earth the fellow was rambling on about now. Then he remembered seeing that mention of a so-called “Naach-Tith Barrier” in Larner’s notes in the
Cthaat Aquadingen.
“Will it spoil the experiment?”

“No, but…but it’s
you
I’m really sorry for….”

“Me?” Spellman frowned. “How do you mean, Larner?”

“It’s not for myself, you understand,” the madman quickly went on, “what happens to me can’t much matter in a place like this—and the others are as badly off. Not much hope for them here. Why! Some of them might even benefit from the reversals! But it’s you, Spellman, it’s
you—
and I’m really sorry for that….”

Spellman considered his next question carefully. “Is the—
formula—
is it so important then?” If only he could get through to the man, discover the twisted circles in which his mind moved.

But Larner was suddenly frowning. “You haven’t read the
Cthaat Aquadingen,
have you?” He made the question an accusation.

“Yes, yes of course I have—but it’s very difficult, and I’m no—” Spellman searched for the word: “I’m no
adept!”

Larner nodded his head, the frown vanishing from his face: “That’s it exactly: you’re no adept. There should be seven but I’m the only one. The Naach-Tith Formula would help, of course, but even then—” Suddenly Larner caught sight of Barstowe edging closer.
“Lethiktros Themiel, phitrith-te klep-thos!”
he instantly muttered under his breath, then turned back to Spellman: “But I don’t know the rest of it, you see, Spellman? And even if I did—it’s not designed to keep
his
sort of evil away….”

The next day, on the one occasion Spellman snatched to watch the inmates of Hell through his barred window, he again noticed the odd camaraderie between them. He also noticed a thin red welt, absent the previous day, on Larner’s face, and wondered how the madman had come by such an injury. On a whim, not knowing exactly just why he did so, he checked the roster to find out who had been on duty the night before. And then he knew it had been no whim at all but a horrible suspicion—for Barstowe had been on duty the previous night, and in his mind’s eye Spellman pictured the squat, ugly nurse with his stick! And the old unease welled up in his heart as he thought again of the welt on Larner’s face, and of that other inmate who had somehow contrived to gouge out one of his own eyes in “a fatal lunatic fit….”

• • •

That night, late on New Year’s Eve—after a day of very limited festivities, marred for Spellman by his growing unease—he received what should have been his first definite warning of the horror soon to come. As it happened he paid little attention: he was off duty and working on his book, but after all the shouting had died down in the ward beneath, Harold Moody, on duty, came to his room to tell him about it.

“Never saw anything like
that
before!” he told Spellman after settling himself nervously on the younger man’s bed. “Did you hear it?”

“I heard some shouting, yes. What was it all about?” Spellman was not really interested; his book was coming well and he wanted to get on with it.

“Eh?” Moody cocked his good ear in his friend’s direction. “Shouting, did you say?
Chanting,
more like it—all of ’em together, at the top of their voices, so loud as to almost deafen me completely. Not words, mind you, Martin—at least not recognizable words—but gibberish! Utter gibberish!”

“Gibberish?” Spellman got up immediately, crossing his small room to be closer to the shaken Moody. “What sort of—gibberish?”

“Well, I really don’t know. I mean—”

“Was it like this—” Spellman cut him off, taking out the
Cthaat Aquadingen
from his bedside locker and flipping its pages until he found the one he wanted.

“Ghe ‘phnglui, mglw’ngh ghee’yh, Yibb-Tstll,

Fbtagn mglw y’tlette ngh’wgah, Yibb-Tstll,

Ghe’phnglui….”

He stopped abruptly, realizing that he did not
need
to read the thing from the book, that of a sudden it was imprinted indelibly on his mind! “Did it—did what they were chanting go like—like that?”

“Eh? No, no it was different from that—harsher syllables—not so guttural. And that Larner chap—my God, he’s a real case, that one! Kept ranting on about ‘not knowing the ending’!”

Moody got up to go. “Anyhow, it’s all over now—”

As Moody reached the door Spellman’s alarm clock began to clamor. The young nurse had set the mechanism to go off at midnight, simply so that he would know when to welcome in the New Year. Now he remembered and said “Happy New Year, Harold!” Then, as his friend answered in kind and closed the door behind him, he again took up the
Cthaat Aquadingen.

New Year’s Eve—the night before the First Day of the year! So, Spellman silently mused, Larner had attempted to build the “Barrier of Naach-Tith”—but of course, he had not known all of the words. Spellman pondered, too, the odd fact that he was able to remember, without any effort worth mentioning, the Sixth Sathlatta; and that the weird consonants of those diseased lines seemed somehow clearer in his mind and on his tongue.

Well, all right—given that he had allowed himself a folly or two with Larner, that was over now—it was time the madman’s weird experiment came to an end. But for his foolish pandering to the lunatic’s crazed fancies the disturbance in the ward known as Hell would not have happened. And what of tomorrow night? In another twenty-four hours, would the inmates of Hell use the thrice-repeated Sixth Sathlatta in an attempt to call forth the dread Yibb-Tstll? Spellman thought so, and (damn the cunning of the lunatic mind), Larner had attempted to draw him into the—coven?

Not that Spellman believed for a single moment that any sort of harm, supernatural or other, could come from the concerted mouthings of madmen; but a repeat performance of this night’s disturbance might well alert the sanatorium’s hierarchy to his decidedly illegal dealings with Larner. He would then certainly find himself in some sort of trouble, if not actual hot water, and he did not want to damage the atmosphere between himself, Dr. Welford, and one or two others of his superiors. He was on duty in the upper wards in the morning, finishing at 4:00 P.M., but before he finished he would find a way to get down to see Larner. Perhaps a gentle word with the lunatic would do the trick.

In his bed before sleeping, Spellman thought again on his puzzling ability to recall in detail the chaotic Sixth Sathlatta, and no sooner had he pictured the thing in his mind than it was on his lips. Amazed at his unsuspected fluency he whispered the words through in the darkness of his room, and almost immediately fell into a deep sleep.

—He was back in the alien forest beneath dark green, weirdly populated skies. Again, far stronger than before, his dream-spirit felt the pull of The Thing in the scabrous clearing: Yibb-Tstll, huge and potent, turning inexorably, almost stupidly about His own axis, with His cloak billowing monstrously as the night-gaunts beneath its folds flapped and clung in blind horror to the black and writhing multiple breasts.

This time, as soon as Spellman drifted (his dream-motion was as eerie as the drift of weeds in some outré Sargasso morass) into the crumble-earthed clearing, the vast obscenity at its center stopped Its turning, and as he wafted closer he saw Its eyes full upon him….

The utter horror of the occurrence which followed as he drew closer to the loathsome Ancient One shocked Martin Spellman from his sleep, and if anything its simplicity only went toward heightening that horror. The wonder was that Spellman had been able to recognize the—
writhings
—of those hellish features for what they were!

“It smiled—
the Thing smiled at me!”
he screamed, sitting bolt upright and flinging the bedclothes from him. For a long moment he simply sat, staring about wide-eyed in the darkness of his room; then, limbs trembling and with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, he got up and shakily brewed coffee.

Two hours later, at about 4:00 A.M., with dawn still some way off, he managed with some trepidation to get back to sleep. For the remainder of the night his slumbers were mercifully undisturbed….