Gary Mayers - The House of the Worm

So Leshti fell down weeping, and Loth would have thrown himself upon his sword; but Snid only sat dejectedly upon a stone, biting his nails and considering how things were not going at all as he had planned.

Now it no longer made any difference to Snid why the name and painted eyes of Anubis (and not sinful Nyar-lathotep, who has no eyes) were effaced by the vengeful priests, for his reputation was at stake. Nor was he ever one to leave perfectly valuable sapphires lying in a desert. But Snid was having uncomfortable suspicions about what a certain thing that had left Golthoth desolate may have been; and had he not his reputation to think of, he might almost have slipped quietly back to the watch-fires before anyone there even realized that Snid had been away. Then avarice got the better of him. Never telling the younger thieves what he feared, he made instead some likely reference to wind and sand and Time: for the Desert, as he said to Leshti and Loth, was always jealous of his secrets, and there were four thousand years to be considered. Then those notable thieves took heart, and lighted the copper lanthorns they had, knowing that no one who spies strange red lights out in the desert at night is likely to investigate, and unpacked their spades and mattocks. And there beneath the stars, under Snid’s shrewd direction, they set about their heroic project, the unearthing of the high pyramid tomb which the desert was inhospitably concealing.

They worked very quickly in the starlight, driven by sheer avarice. Still Leshti and Loth were not happy as they dug; though when the oddly moist clay began to assume an unhealthy shade that was not reassuring, they said it was only the red beams of their lanthorns, and dug stoutly on. The cleverly muffled spades made less noise than their breathing, they heard the jackals draw near with terrible smiles, and heard them whine nervously as they slunk away with their shadows and tails between their legs. But Snid would only scoff at omens. And when the thieves had dug down to the depth of a grave, they uncovered three small diorite cubes bearing an exceedingly peculiar inscription on five of the six polished faces of each, and the sign of the five-pointed star. These Snid eyed perplexedly for several minutes, then cast from him in revulsion, muttering something about their being of little market value. Still he would not admit that it might be as he feared, for his reputation was at stake. But much later even Snid could not hide his unease, for they all loathed the way that viscid, quivering mud clung to their spades and crept and bubbled noisomely, and the horrible way it ate holes in their boots.

Now when evening comes the dark wanderers sing the old songs no longer, and light incense only to conceal a certain terrible odour which has haunted their wagons since the morning, long ago, when they fled from Cuppar-Nombo. They have since tried to explain that odour away in view of what they now know to have happened, but of the way the ground beneath the painted wagons behaves at evening they never speak. Once a man admonished them to return to the worship of the old gods who sleep, and to offer sacrifice to Anubis lest the World swallow them as well; but they slew him with a curious rite and buried him beneath one of the wagons where the ground acted strangely. It is many years since the burgesses of Ulthar have heard any rumour of the dark wanderers.

This is what the dark people found on that morning they came down between the crumbling lesser tombs, to the place where they looked to find the high tomb of their hearts’ desire: a lonely crouching shape that snarled and laughed and scrabbled in the dust, whom they recognized as Snid by the little lines of greed about the eyes. But there was very little human in those eyes now, and even less in the ghoulish aspect of the face. And observing then the spades and mattocks where they had been laid, and the three dead zebras, they guessed what Snid had planned, and searched his pockets to learn whether he had found the treasurer of the old kings. But there were only some white finger-bones, a number of teeth, and a portion of somebody’s femur. They wondered at the freshness of those pitiful osseous relics, and at the hideous way Snid leered at them and laughed and called them by name. No recognizable traces of Leshti or Loth were ever found.

Yet despite these queer portents the dark people would have begun an excavation of their own. Only after they saw how the earlier digging had not been filled in, as they had supposed, but had closed up in a horrible smile, did they drop their implements and hurry judiciously away.

There are things in the shop of Getech that they bring in by the back door and do not display openly. On that counter loll many curious gods of wood and jade and gold, having benign smiles; and there are chests of camphor wood; and that very crystal once spoken of in connection with a name grown mythical, exorbitantly priced for showing things no crystal ought to show; and the beautiful iridescent silks of that which some name the spider and some the worm, and some say neither of these. The selection of their spices is unmatched even in song. In a locked room near the back are kept the several poisons that shop has for sale, and certain exotic powders they will not sell you elsewhere, save perhaps the Moon, and whose use is punished strangely.

One dreams sometimes of how the stars light the squat cottages where the green hill of Nithey-Vash falls away. The thatches of those cottages go all silver with the starlight, and the lamps they light within turn the lozenge panes one by one into jewels, they are more beautiful than the silent houses whose windows overlook the edge of the World. On this night Wesh saw them from his own window, and conceived a longing: Wesh longed in his soul to see what the Night was like in those pleasant little streets between the cottages… The watchmen opened their dark lanterns and did not smile when Wesh walked past the gate the watchmen watch.

And perhaps the streets conspired against him as he walked, for too quickly the star-lit cottages were hidden behind high walls of ugly brick, and the paths twisted and would not go in any of the proper directions. The bleak warehouses on either side of him confined the Night to a narrow channel overhead — even the stars were changed — and Wesh despaired of ever finding the little cottages. But turning a corner he spied a dim light far off in the dark before him, and hurried on.

That shop bearing Getech’s mark on its iron lintel is very lean and high, and set between two tottering old houses with no lamps in their windows, that wear an evil look. But there was little comfort in certain menacing shapes in the shop-window either. Only one twinkling eye of a quaint little jade god recalled the stars Wesh had seen from his own window… A bell rang when Wesh opened the door. He had already examined three wonderful dusty tomes bound all in copper (whose pages were closely writ in bestial characters he was unable to decipher), and nodded as he passed the amethyst cups, and was picking up from the counter an ivory daemon, when someone behind him uttered a cough. And the proprietor peered up into the face of Wesh with watery little eyes and made him eagerly welcome.

Only those sinful eyes and the top of a nasty bald head showed above those black wrappings many sizes too large for him; but seeing them made Wesh remember an appointment he did not have, and turn to go. Then that gnomish being plucked at his sleeve and smiled.* There was really no reason to be nervous, the proprietor only wished to see that Wesh’s curiosity was wholly satisfied. Would he not examine the wares of that shop more closely? But when Wesh would have inquired after the price of the quaint little jade god he had seen in the window, the proprietor only hurried him through the dim aisles to a dark little room near the back, which he unlocked, and urged Wesh through the door.