|
|
Extract from Journey to the Western Continent, by Thor Lundquist, published in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1237; translated into English by Eric Carls, published by the Black Falcon Press in Amoston, Kansas, in 1959.
I continued my travels across the continent by horse. I had now been here for two months and a finer countryside I have never seen, though I already tend to feel homesick for my native land.
I had arrived upon a great expanse of plains covered with tall grasses. The plains were gently rolling, but there were hollows here and there.
At mid-morning on my sixty-fourth day upon the western continent, I was riding through the grasslands heading west. The sky was a brilliant blue without a sign of clouds anywhere. A wind from the south rippled the top of the grass.
I was stopped upon a small rise scanning the horizon from side to side. To the south and west there was nothing but more grassland. To the north, about two miles distant, I could make out a stand of trees. I decided to head in that direction, since the trees would at least provide me some shade when the sun came directly overhead.
I urged my horse in a northwesterly direction and let him pick his own way over the grassy land. The closer I came to the stand of trees, the more I could see of them. I could now tell that there was something odd about them. I could not tell what it was that was wrong with them from this distance - about three-quarters of a mile - but I could now make out dark shapes looming through the trees.
As I neared the stand I could see a lot better. The trees stood about twenty or twenty-five feet in the air, but they seemed stunted. Their branches were gnarled, and what few leaves they bore - this was in the fall - were a sickly green. I still couldn't make out the dark shapes I could just barely see, so I assumed that they were not in the stand of trees, but on the other side of it.
As I entered the stand of trees, the temperature seemed to drop about forty degrees. When my horse whinnied I could see the condensation of his breath. He tossed his head from side to side and fear showed in his eyes. I decided to make my way to the other side of the stand of trees as quickly as possible. Even I could feel the foreboding evil among these strange, gnarled trees.
As I exited from the trees I was confronted with the reality of the dark shapes I had only vaguely seen before. There were twenty or thirty structures looming up before me. The structures were square, constructed of basalt, and towered to heights varying between forty and sixty feet. There were no windows or doorways as I know them, but there was a single, low opening approximately three feet high in the base of each structure.
When I first came upon this group of structures, I had thought that it was a village, but a stranger one I have never seen. I wandered among the towers for what seemed like hours without seeing any signs of habitation. Each structure I came to, I crawled through the low opening into the interior. Fashioning a firebrand from prairie grass, I examined the interior of each tower.
The interiors of each tower I entered were completely barren, though the interiors were circular, as opposed to the square shape evidenced on the outside. Each structure I had entered was completely devoid of anything but a ground-level floor.
As I crawled back out of the final basalt tower, sunset caught me by surprise. I had not realized that I had spent so much time in this particular tower. I decided that I would spend the night in this tower, due to its differing aspect from the other towers.
The final tower stood taller than its brethren - towering sixty feet in the air - and it, too, only consisted of a ground-level floor. The differences from the other towers, disregarding its height, were the convexity of the stone floor and the strange cuneiform writings on the circular walls extending higher than my firebrand would allow me to see.
I brought my horse over to the side of the clearing which was closest to the tower. I brought firewood into the tower which I had gathered outside of the clearing. I then went to where I had tethered my horse and took the saddle off, and took my saddlebags and blanket roll back to the tower.
Soon I was enjoying my evening meal as I sat on my blanket roll before the warming heat of the blazing fire. I was sipping at a cup of rich coffee when the wind came up and brought with it a low whistling sound through the towers, though at times I could swear that the sounds were coming from beneath the convex stones underneath me.
I made up my bedroll and settled down for the night. The whistling of the wind, the crackling of the fire which was still burning, and my exertions of the day all combined to induce a welcoming drowsiness within me.
In the early hours of the morning I was awakened by a murmuring noise. I looked about myself and all was dark. The fire had burned down and even the embers were almost gone. I arose and threw my cloak over my shoulders to help keep out the cold. I then proceeded to crawl through the low opening of the tower and stood up once again.
I strained my ears to see if I could hear the murmuring any clearer, or to ascertain where it was coming from. I could tell, now, that it was definitely not the wind; I could distinguish the murmuring as a chanting, originating from the side of the clearing farthest from my present location.
I moved through and around the basalt towers in the general direction of the chanting. As I rounded the final tower at the edge of the clearing, I came upon an old, gnarled man sitting before a small fire with his legs crossed and his arms stretched out before him. His eyes were closed and his lips barely moved as he continued his chanting, unaware of my presence.
I stood there and listened to him. The words he was mouthing seemed guttural, with no relationship to any of the languages I had heard while traveling across this western continent. I began to notice that at times he was repeating words, which I took to be the names of gods which he worshipped, since surely this was what he was doing. Though these names were alien to my knowledge, they seemed to strike responsive chords within myself in some dark, repressed racial memory.
Suddenly I realized I was still standing there, lost in my own thoughts, and the old man had stopped his chanting. His arms were back down at his sides and his now-open, greenish eyes were boring into my own.
He began to speak in a language that was foreign to me, but due to his contact with other peoples inhabiting the land, I was able to pick out words and phrases that were familiar to me. It was vastly different from the language he had been using in his chanting.
The story he told me was unreal, transgressing the knowledge of this day and age. He told me of his god, Cthulhu, who came from the stars and now slept in his city beneath the waves of some western ocean; of Idh-yaa, whom Cthulhu mated with in the dark vastnesses between the stars; of Ghatanothoa, Ythogtha, and Zoth-Ommog, Cthulhu's sons, who came down to Earth with their dark father; of a war with other alien beings which resulted in their imprisonment. He then told me of Yog-Sothoth, the All-In-One who is the One-In-All, the Guardian of the Gate, the Key to the Gate, and even IS the gate.
It was this last being that the old man had been chanting to, for he said that the "stars are right." Yog-Sothoth would come and open the gate that would release Cthulhu and his spawn, enabling them to once again hold sway over their terrible dominion, which we now claim as our own.
If what the old man was telling me was true, then this knowledge was mind-blasting in its implications. In the back of my mind I hoped that, indeed, the stars were not right. This knowledge violated all that was sane in my world, and created a fear which crawled up my spine and infested my brain.
A scream tore from my throat as I broke eye contact with the old man and raced back to the basalt tower which had provided shelter from the night for me. As I raced through the night-enshrouded towers I could hear the old man chuckling behind me in the darkness. I finally came to "my" tower and leaned upon it, gulping huge amounts of air into my lungs. Once I had myself under control, I looked back over my shoulder, seeing nothing but the darkness, and slipped back through the low opening. I then brought some heat back to my chilled limbs as I stirred up the dying embers of my fire and placed some fresh wood upon it.
As the friendly flames of my fire welcomed me back, I looked around myself at the circular walls of my tower. I looked closer at the cuneiform writing, and the closer I looked at it, the more it seemed that it was familiar and that I could actually read it.
It was then - as I looked at the writings on the walls - that I noticed that I was mumbling under my breath. I tried to stop it, but the words continued to erupt from my throat as if someone else was in control of them. Soon the mumbling became more audible and I could recognize what I was saying - the same blasphemous chanting that I had heard from the old man.
"Yog-Sothoth! Yog-Sothoth!" I screamingly chanted to the darkness huddling beneath the ceiling of the tower, as my eyes were inexorably drawn to the top of the tower. There I could discern a haziness beginning to form, lighter in color than the surrounding blackness. The haziness began to coalesce, as I continued my chanting, into a congery of shining globes. They did not seem to cast any light, though I could perceive behind them a shape darker than the surrounding darkness.
The nervous whinny of my horse brought me back, somewhat, to reality, and I realized what I was doing. I was calling Yog-Sothoth through the spheres to open the gateway for Cthulhu and His spawn.
I grabbed my belongings and rushed through the low opening, unheeding what might still be going on at the top of the tower. I hastily re-saddled my horse, noticing that the sky was beginning to lighten in the east. I sprung into my saddle, forced my horse into a gallop, and headed west.
It was near noon when I finally halted, allowing my lathered horse to rest. I thought back on the events of the night and wondered how I could so unwittingly have been used as a tool by these dark gods that were alive when the Earth was still molten and would probably still be so long after man and his relics have returned to dust. I do not know if my leaving the tower caused a cessation of what was happening - the manifestation of Yog-Sothoth - or not, but I pray so, since the surroundings are still of the sane world that I have always known. For this I will be eternally grateful to my own, true God. Perhaps someday in the far future, some other man won't be as lucky as I have been, and the world will come to know the domination of the Great Old Ones. I pray that this will never occur within my lifetime.
* * *
"The Towers": Reprinted from From the Dark Spaces Feb '76 (2/1, #3) (EODapa Feb 76 mailing) by kind permission of the author
Copyright © 1997 Peter A. Worthy
"The Towers" © 1976 by E. P. Berglund
