Message #3481

[Zodiac]

Fainting and gasping, I looked at that unhallowed Erebus of titan
toadstools, leprous fire and slimy water, and saw the cloaked throngs
forming a semicircle around the blazing pillar. It was the Yule-rite,
older than man and fated to survive him; the primal rite of the
solstice and of spring's promise beyond the snows; the rite of fire and
evergreen, light and music. And in the stygian grotto I saw them do the
rite, and adore the sick pillar of flame, and throw into the water
handfuls gouged out of the viscous vegetation which glittered green in
the chlorotic glare. I saw this, and I saw something amorphously
squatted far away from the light, piping noisomely on a flute; and as
the thing piped I thought I heard noxious muffled flutterings in the
foetid darkness where I could not see. But what frightened me most was
that flaming column; spouting volcanically from depths profound and
inconceivable, casting no shadows as healthy flame should, and coating
the nitrous stone with a nasty, venomous verdigris. For in all that
seething combustion no warmth lay, but only the clamminess of death and
corruption.

The man who had brought me now squirmed to a point directly beside
the hideous flame, and made stiff ceremonial motions to the semi-circle
he faced. At certain stages of the ritual they did grovelling
obeisance, especially when he held above his head that abhorrent
Necronomicon he had taken with him; and I shared all the obeisances
because I had been summoned to this festival by the writings of my
forefathers. Then the old man made a sigual to the half-seen
flute-player in the darkness, which player thereupon changed its feeble
drone to a scarce louder drone in another key; precipitating as it did
so a horror unthinkable and unexpected. At this horror I sank nearly to
the lichened earth, transfixed with a dread not of this or any world,
but only of the mad spaces between the stars.

Out of the unimaginable blackness beyond the gangrenous glare of
that cold flame, out of the tartarean leagues through which that oily
river rolled uncanny, unheard, and unsuspected, there flopped
rhythmically a horde of tame, trained, hybrid winged things that no
sound eye could ever wholly grasp, or sound brain ever wholly remember.
They were not altogether crows, nor moles, nor buzzards, nor ants, nor
vampire bats, nor decomposed human beings; but something I cannot and
must not recall. They flopped limply along, half with their webbed feet
and half with their membranous wings; and as they reached the throng of
celebrants the cowled figures seized and mounted them, and rode off one
by one along the reaches of that unlighted river, into pits and
galleries of panic where poison springs feed frightful and
undiscoverable cataracts.

The old spinning woman had gone with the throng, and the old man
remained only because I had refused when he motioned me to seize an
animal and ride like the rest. I saw when I staggered to my feet that
the amorphous flute-player had rolled out of sight, but that two of the
beasts were patiently standing by. As I hung back, the old man produced
his stylus and tablet and wrote that he was the true deputy of my
fathers who had founded the Yule worship in this ancient place; that it
had been decreed I should come back, and that the most secret mysteries
were yet to be performed. He wrote this in a very ancient hand, and
when I still hesitated he pulled from his loose robe a seal ring and a
watch, both with my family arms, to prove that he was what he said. But
it was a hideous proof, because I knew from old papers that that watch
had been buried with my great-great-great-great-grandfather in 1698.

Presently the old man drew back his hood and pointed to the family
resemblance in his face, but I only shuddered, because I was sure that
the face was merely a devilish waxen mask. The flopping animals were
now scratching restlessly at the lichens, and I saw that the old man
was nearly as restless himself. When one of the things began to waddle
and edge away, he turned quickly to stop it; so that the suddenness of
his motion dislodged the waxen mask from what should have been his
head. And then, because that nightmare's position barred me from the
stone staircase down which we had come, I flung myself into the oily
underground river that bubbled somewhere to the caves of the sea; flung
myself into that putrescent juice of earth's inner horrors before the
madness of my screams could bring down upon me all the charnel legions
these pest-gulfs might conceal.

At the hospital they told me I had been found half-frozen in
Kingsport Harbour at dawn, clinging to the drifting spar that accident
sent to save me. They told me I had taken the wrong fork of the hill
road the night before, and fallen over the cliffs at Orange Point; a
thing they deduced from prints found in the snow. There was nothing I
could say, because everything was wrong. Everything was wrong, with the
broad windows showing a sea of roofs in which only about one in five
was ancient, and the sound of trolleys and motors in the streets below.
They insisted that this was Kingsport, and I could not deny it. When I
went delirious at hearing that the hospital stood near the old
churchyard on Central Hill, they sent me to St Mary's Hospital in
Arkham, where I could have better care. I liked it there, for the
doctors were broad-minded, and even lent me their influence in
obtaining the carefully sheltered copy of Alhazred's objectionable
Necronomicon from the library of Miskatonic University. They said
something about a "psychosis" and agreed I had better get any harassing
obsessions off my mind.

So I read that hideous chapter, and shuddered doubly because it was
indeed not new to me. I had seen it before, let footprints tell what
they might; and where it was I had seen it were best forgotten. There
was no one--in waking hours--who could remind me of it; but my dreams
are filled with terror, because of phrases I dare not quote. I dare
quote only one paragraph, put into such English as I can make from the
awkward Low Latin.

"The nethermost caverns," wrote the mad Arab, "are not for the
fathoming of eyes that see; for their marvels are strange and terrific.
Cursed the ground where dead thoughts live new and oddly bodied, and
evil the mind that is held by no head. Wisely did Ibn Schacabao say,
that happy is the tomb where no wizard hath lain, and happy the town at
night whose wizards are all ashes. For it is of old rumour that the
soul of the devil-bought hastes not from his charnel clay, but fats and
instructs the very worm that gnaws; till out of corruption horrid life
springs, and the dull scavengers of earth wax crafty to vex it and
swell monstrous to plague it. Great holes secretly are digged where
earth's pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that
ought to crawl."