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James Ambuehl & Robert M. Price
I. The Survivor
Revenge is a dish best served cold, or so the Spanish say and nowhere is the truth of this maxim better borne out than in the formerly-unreported story of Professor Jonah Winslow, late of Royceton University here in Braving, Minnesota. And it is altogether fitting, even a gross understatement, to call it a chilling tale.
My name is James Joseph "J.J." Hanley, reporter for the Braving Bulletin. It all began innocently enough for me when I received an assignment from my editor for a human interest column . . . Routine . . . or so I thought then! I was to interview an ex-Royceton University professor, now retired and living in the nearby farming community of Laren. Like the shunned hamlet itself, which seems to have more than her fair share of strange secrets, the man, Jonah Winslow, was reclusive indeed. Or, at least, he had been. But now it seemed that he had a story to tell, for it was Winslow's idea rather than my editor's to do the interview. Not one to look a gifthorse in the mouth (and, truthfully, the news business was a bit slow in Braving those days), I prepared for the interview by boning up on my subject and doing some spadework of my own before setting out on the lonely drive to desolate, legend-haunted Laren. I gathered from my preliminary research that Winslow's forbears had been longtime farmers of good-standing in the town, local land barons, really, who valued the privilege of education which their hard-striven life had denied them, and so they made sure their young scion Jonah would not be similarly deprived. No mere farmer would he be, and so to this end, his well-provided educational pursuits had had taken him to some of the finest seats in Europe and other parts abroad, and had instilled in him a love for archaeology as well as a wanderlust to pursue it.
I arrived at the old recluse's home, a rambling but ill-kept farmhouse and its attendant buildings on the edge of Laren proper. As the gaunt and wizened figure of Professor Winslow greeted me in the foyer, I noticed how well his appearance matched that of his old house-a matched set of shabby genteel relics. I noticed as well-but it took no particular investigative acumen, for so marvelous and out-of-place were they here in this rustic farmhouse rather than in a museum or similar scholarly institution that how could I help but to notice! -- a large number of exotic souvenirs from many a strange research trek, and though I could hardly begin to place them I felt they surely bespoke of many a wondrous adventure undertaken by my aged host. As my earlier ferreting had indicated, Winslow was then 70 years old, and yet to have acquired even half of these incredible mementos in his lifetime and then to have kept them mostly to himself-well, needless to say, it boggled my mind to no end. Here before me, I knew, stood a man of potential greatness, and I resolved myself not to underestimate the incredible accomplishments of such a man!
So impressed was I with my host's curios and objects d'art literally festooning the place, that it took me a moment longer to notice another strange and hardly less impressive fact. And though it may sound ludicrous for it to be remarkable in what some characterize as the Minnesota tundra, but it was to such a degree that it must be mentioned, was how cold the place was. Frigid in a subtler, more penetrating way, than in the open air and this inside a house whose radiators were audibly whistling with the effort of keeping the frosty air at bay!
But there were other ways of keeping warm, and I accepted gratefully when my host offered a liberal glass of brandy after indicating a well-stuffed threadbare easy chair in front of the raging fire.
"You may know, Mr. Hanley, that it is my custom to shun the light of publicity. My expeditions have been carried out more to satisfy my own curiosity than to make my reputation among scholarly colleagues-which you may have already gathered from viewing my own priceless collection here at the house. And yet, despite my secrecy, that is not the principle reason for the obscurity of one particular venture about which I have now decided to speak to you. I assure you, Mr. Hanley, I bear no ill will to the press at large, but I have just never felt the need to speak of my affairs . . . until now. Yes, Mr. Hanley . . . what? Oh, yes, excuse me-J. J. At any rate, J.J., I will answer both questions presently: why it was kept secret and why I am silent no longer. As for the latter, the story simply must be told now, if it is ever to be told, since I am the last man alive who can tell it, and I fear I shall not be available for the task much longer. I feel my days are numbered and HE is coming for me just as surely as he came for the others. But I'm afraid I'm getting ahead of myself here."
And so he began his harrowing tale. And anyone who may be unfortunate enough to read these pages may have thought it odd that I felt the need to polish this account into an almost fictional form rather than merely as the brief notes one would expect to encounter had it been transcribed directly from the journalist's notepad I took the story down on (or rather, I should say that I began to take notes, but once I saw how erudite and detailed my host's account was going to be, I excused myself and ran out to my car to grab the pocket tape recorder I always carry in my glovebox-and for which I was grateful I had when it came time to transcribe this account). My reasons are twofold: first, I have decided to write it out formally here rather than seek to publish it as originally intended in the Bulletin, for, as you shall soon see, I knew almost immediately that I would never be able to report what the professor told me. At least, not unless it was as a sensationalistic account in one of the less-reputable tabloids, or under the guise of rank fiction in some horror anthology of some sort. As it was, I had to later make apologies to my editor for not turning in the story as planned, muttering something or other about it being too technical for the Bulletin readers at large, which seemed to satisfy him somewhat.
And secondly, I felt that I owed it to poor Professor Winslow to set his story down in writing and thus not let it die with him. Whether it will reach a wider audience or not, I'm not sure. But I write this as a testimony to a great man (or, at least, he would have been, had he shaken off some of his paranoia and reclusiveness). And yet, I sheepishly admit, there is yet a third reason I write this: in an effort to set my own mind at ease and shake off these terrible dreams I have been having of late. But whatever the reasons for writing this, at least I have allowed its frightening echo to resound one final time.
II. The Temple of the Winds
"I will tell you," began my host, "of an expedition which yielded the most spectacular discoveries of any in which I ever participated, and which I have nonetheless kept as quiet as I could about the details thereof. It was early in my career, the ink on my doctoral diploma scarcely dry, and I lacked both the institutional backing and the patience to go through the proper channels to obtain it. Besides, I knew that with official backing came control by those whose money came with strings attached. So I used a disproportionate amount of my family trust to hire a rather dubious group of men to accompany me on an expedition deep into the jungles of Cambodia. They were neither the typical crew of interested scholars nor of obedient, long-suffering native bearers. I was unwilling to wait out the shifting squalls of political unrest which plagued war-torn Cambodia, or as it was called at the time, Democratic Kampuchea, so, in order to afford protection from the rapacious Khmer Rouge butchers, I had been forced to hire a gang of mercenaries at least as skilled with guns as with tools and gear. And for all the precautions, we made it most of the way to our goal without incident. And the goal?
"While pursuing my graduate studies on the Continent, I had, contrary to the owlish advice of my research directors, 'wasted' quite a bit of time studying some of the earlier and long discredited writers on the subject of Asian and Pacific ruins. Dostmann's Remnants of Lost Empires, Colonel Churchward on Mu, Professor Copeland on the isle of Yhe in the Pacific, LePlongeon, that sort of thing. There were persistent hints, drawn seemingly from independent sources but nowhere corroborated by modern field research, suggesting the survival in inner Asia of the most outlandish cult. Have you heard the old joke about the missionary who went and preached to the Eskimos of the dangers of hell's fires-and they asked him how they could get there? Just so, the legends told of an anomalous jungle cult worshipping a god of snow and ice, concepts which one would have thought lacking from their language and world view!
"What made me take the whole business seriously, however, was the occurrence of the same themes in an indisputably ancient record, something called the Eltdown Shards. Ah, to tell you the truth, I'm surprised you've heard of them. They are, as I suppose you know, ancient metallic fragments of various sizes that form a fragmentary record inscribed in some proto-Semitic tongue. The scholarly mainstream dismisses them as an imposture, like the similarly named Piltdown man hoax, despite the fact that Carbon 14 dating has proven them to be blasphemously old. Far older than there should have been Homo Sapiens loping along on the planet. And that is why they are ignored. They give the lie to the rules of the conventional game, and those who are presently winning the game do not relish changing the rules. But, as I say, I was young in the field and had no reputation to worry about preserving, though I suppose I should have been more concerned about building one.
"Thus it was that I decided to look for the cult, or for its remains, for the Shards hinted of a temple where the god of snows and winds, whom some called Avaloth, and others called by another terrible name, had deposited its treasures. He held the keys of the treasuries of heaven, the legend said, and while comparative mythology would suggest this must denote the heavenly storehouses of the snow and even of the stars, often such myths were protective euphemisms for the fantastic treasuries of very real gold and gems the priests had extorted from their bullied flocks through many generations. It was this part of my theory which enabled me to interest my crew of paid adventurers, some of them local natives, others known to certain museum officials of my acquaintance as suppliers of certain exotic items both legal and illegal. I intimated to them the possible existence of a store of treasures should we locate the ruins. Leaving the precise arrangements somewhat vague, I simply hoped I could bring back enough relics to prove the truth of my reports, whatever plunder my associates might feel entitled to appropriate. Oh yes, I know how disreputable it all sounds. And, believe me, I am not defending it.
"Let me spare you the travelogue. You have guessed that we must have found the vine-clad set of ruins I sought, for Cambodia is rich in such ruins. Only these were not precisely ruins. At first I was not sure we had even found a man-made structure. What seized our attention was what first appeared to be a strange outcropping of naked rock amid the jungle, strange I call it, because it was white. What sun rays penetrated the green canopy glinted off the mass with surprising brilliance. Closer examination suggested the impossible, the absurd: it was ice. An ice-encrusted building of compact rounded stones, as a matter of fact. The whole structure was veiled with streamers of vaporous fog which unfurled eerily as the surrounding heat made some of the frost sublimate directly into restless steam. I think most of us imagined ourselves the victims of some lesser-known type of mirage. Were we so sick of the heat and the maddening humidity that our tired minds supplied the refreshing cold we coveted?
"Daring to touch the frigid surface with cold-blighted fingertips convinced us that what we were seeing, and feeling, was no dream or hallucination, unless simple hallucination had already given way to complete delusion. As we spread out and surrounded the edifice, things only got less explicable. Voices could be heard from within the deep-freeze. As might be imagined, the voices had the distressing sound of deep shuddering from the cold. But that shivering, teeth-chattering sound had a sort of fantastic and doleful cadence to it, and it repeated. We all looked at each other, as if seeking assurance that at least we were all sharing the same madness. And then one man of our party, more foolhardy than the rest, ventured into the opening, for the ice-shroud was not complete. There was a door, and one could see from it how a foot-thick layer of ice overlay the black stonework below it, as if it were an intentional and permanent structural design. What sort of beings might congregate within? I was ostensibly the leader of the expedition, however unorthodox a venture it was, so I shortly regathered my wits and hastened to catch up to the man who was making his way cautiously inside.
"There was actually a ceremony in progress. Here was all the evidence I required to know whether old legends spoke truly or not! Here before me were no ruins, no relics, no vestiges or fossils-but the rumored cult itself! In some small measure I felt as Schliemann must have felt when he discovered the ruins of ancient Troy! Indeed, we were all so dumbfounded, surrounded by impossible realities, that we were momentarily oblivious of the strange and fearful impression our advent must make on those assembled for the rites.
"The last thing I was thinking of before I beheld all eyes turning in the inner dusk in our direction, was how the scene resembled the biblical scene of the Day of Pentecost, when the house in which the apostles sat was suddenly filled with the sound, though none of the felt force, of a mighty wind. The interior of the rock igloo was echoing almost painfully with the raw, wild sounds of the screaming wind, though not a candle flame flickered unduly.
"The chanting stopped abruptly, changing to urgent exchanges in a language none of us, in all our studies or travels, had ever heard. The worshippers began a few tentative steps in our direction. I thought I glimpsed one seated figure, on a dais raised above the general level, somewhat removed from the congregation. He remained enthroned. But then my attention was seized by the sudden fusillade of gunfire without! My initial assumption was that my latent fears had been justified; that some trigger-happy thugs in our party had flown off the handle. Wheeling about, I rushed the few feet back to the portal and stuck my neck out. Retracting it like a frightened turtle, I realized what had happened. Despite our vigilance, we had been clandestinely followed by a Khmer Rouge patrol. Their savagery, I am sure you know, was unmatched even by the semi-legendary Tcho-tchos of neighboring Burma. Needless to say, a bloodbath ensued in which most of my men were lost as well as, I am happy to say, just about all of the Khmer Rouge. The wounded among them we summarily executed. Later, when I had the leisure to think of such things, on the long march back, I congratulated myself for having recruited seasoned veterans, not merely strong backs.
"You will think me hard-hearted, but among all the deaths the only ones that struck me as particularly tragic were those of the tribal cultists, for none of them survived. They were canny enough to remain within the recesses of the strange fane, huddling about the throne of their leader as soon as they heard the gunfire. None of them fell victim to the Khmer Rouge assault, and probably none would have in any case, as they had afterall remained unmolested by their countrymen thus far. No, I am sorry to say it was our own gunmen who, their bloodlust excited by the Khmer Rouge ambush and not yet abated, turned on the natives, reacting to the natural apprehension they had of us, in view of the circumstances. Nor can I deny that the treasures of the little temple, which had indeed proved quite literal and material, exerted their own attraction. My mercenaries proved more rapacious even than I had feared.
"As the handful of survivors quickly made the circuit of the profaned sanctuary, gathering their blasphemous loot, of which I resolved instantly that I wanted none, I examined the fallen forms of those whom my protests had proven impotent to save. I wanted to see if any spark of life or breath remained, and in the process I was startled to observe the physiognomy of the dead, for they seemed more Caucasian than Mongolian in racial type, their long noses betraying but the merest, recent admixture of local, native blood. Later I was able to remind myself that the phenomenon was not entirely unprecedented, as witness the problematical Ainu people of northern Japan and the extensive collection of mummified, red-haired Caucasian figured discovered in Western Xinkiang in 1993.
"My search for lingering life was rewarded in the single case of the hierophant of the cult. He lay before his bullet-splintered throne, his eyes fixed in a state of shock rapidly slipping into final extinction. I kneeled beside him in the widening pool of his own gore, my chest weighed by a burden of sorrow and guilt that could hardly have been greater had I myself pulled the trigger on the old man. He recoiled at my touch, mumbling some strange words that trailed off into a death rattle. It was as if he held a weapon he had previously lacked the opportunity to discharge-until now. And, having done so, he could let life go.
"I sat gazing at his recumbent form, my scientific curiosity taking over again momentarily, and traced in my mind the lines of his remarkable physiognomy. Then I remembered my camera! I retrieved it as fast as I could from my gear and returned to the old priest's side. My lens revealed a hideous transformation. In no more than a minute and a half the wizened form had utterly degenerated in the most loathsome manner. He had not, strictly speaking, yielded to the depredations of rapid decomposition, which itself would have been singular enough, God knows; rather, he seemed to be succumbing to the blackening leprosy of frostbite. And in the last moments before mere skeletal stumps remained, I could have sworn his feet, which I had not though to examine before, had something of the shape of broad hooves!
