Gary Mayers - The House of the Worm

*Some wrinkles in the wrappings curled up at the ends.

This room was empty but for four jars and the long, lidded wooden box propped in a corner. To that suspicious box the proprietor hopped, and began to fumble the iron padlocks. And even before the first lock fell Wesh noticed something very peculiar about those jars: three of those bulging earthenware jars were making tiny noises, disturbingly like bats or the tapping of somebody’s fingernails; but the fourth jar was empty, and Wesh did not entertain his idle fancies about the proprietor and the suggestive emptiness of that jar for long. And when the second lock fell he asked what the sealed jars might contain; but the proprietor would only say, cryptically, “Better not ask,” and laugh at some private jest. Then the third lock fell, the lid opened noiselessly, and Wesh saw the golden mask which the occupant of the box was wearing. One gravely doubted whether either could be described gracefully. The proprietor snatched the mask from the mouldering face and held it so that Wesh might see more clearly, and thrust a finger at him through one of the narrow eyes. This article, the proprietor averred, was rumoured by some to have certain properties which might be of interest to philosophers, and had been invoked upon only four occasions since that evil One who made it gave it unto the World. He knew nothing of the first three owners, save that the third had died insane two centuries ago; the fourth had been a poet and flung the mask away in an alley in Celephais and sliced both his wrists. And always the mask returned to the Guardian that One had set over it, the Occupant of the Box. He would not tell how it came into his shop. But the properties which rumour attributes to the golden mask are nothing less than to reveal to men the shapes of their own souls.

The look in the proprietor’s watery little eyes was not pleasant as Wesh counted out the price into that eager palm, or left that shop with a parcel under his arm. He found his way back to the streets he knew without further incident. But once he heard a soft scuttling noise on the cobbles behind him, as something black with bandages on its wrists laughed and slipped down a storm drain.

But now a greyness was in the East, and dawn like a pale smoke rose to eclipse the stars. It was the hour when the watchmen put out their lamps and steal home in the shadows, and the things whose home is Night go secretly to hide by day in cupboards and unlighted places, and wholesomer persons rise to open their shops and go about their business. But there would be no morning for Wesh, who was already beginning to notice strange things about the streets he knew. He should have been in the neighbourhood of that temple wherein Nath-Horthath is glorified in Nithy-Vash, almost he heard Night muttering in the temple’s shadowy portico; but the patter of his footsteps seemed oddly misplaced. Now rows and rows of bleak warehouses peculiarly altered, the ways grew darker, and into those narrow aisles between not even the stars peeped. Wesh hurried on with his parcel, all the while mumbling to himself, “What if—?” and cursing because the alleys were pinching shut behind him. Such occurances, as Wesh well knew, are not wholly sane; but when he considered the only alternative to his own madness, he fervently hoped he was going mad. Bricks should not smell of leather and mould, bricks should never arrange themselves with such damnable suggestiveness, until they cannot be discerned from rows and rows of dusty books whose bestial characters Wesh now was very glad he could not read. An ivory daemon on the counter leered at him…

That same morning, four sealed jars from the shop of Getech came into the possession of a prominent merchant of Celephais who fancied himself a connoisseur of old wines and hoped by this purchase to add something diverting to his cellars. There was some unpleasantness when his servants effected an opening of one of the jars.

It should also be said of the shop of Getech, that in the left-hand window long sat, and perhaps is sitting still, a last uncollected masterpiece by none other than Yah-Vho. It is a little idol in jade, with two eyes; the crowning achievement of his early anthropomorphic period. In his modest studio in a by-way of Nithy-Vash, Yah-Vho lived and worked for years and years; and the lava-carvers of Ngranek knew of him, and wept.

Yah-Vho, who made many gods, worshipped only Yop, a little idol he had carved in his own image out of diorite. But Sthood was an idol altogether too horrible to be worshipped by men. His priesthood had been initiated solely to prevent men from offering prayers to Sthood, lest Sthood be wakened by their prayers, and perform a miracle. Sthood had performed only three miracles since he was carved out of sandstone, concerning which no records survive; but the last was to create men. But Zith was not adverse to extortion, and knew that it would be worth much to the priests of Sthood to keep silent the prayers of Zith.

So he put on soft slippers and pittered out under the stars, from shadow to shadow up the cobbled lane, till he came to the temple of Sthood; and entered to see that god dreaming like an onion, on the high sheer pedestal where no prayers reach, where Sthood had dreamed five million years before men came and built his temple around him, and where, if the prayers of men are heeded, he would dream five million more. And Zith quietly strangled the priest whose duty it was to see that none offered prayers to Sthood. Then uncoiling that slender rope with the hook on the end, he cast the hook neatly about the lumpy throat of Sthood, nimbly he leapt up the rope. And that bulbous idol reeled forward beneath the weight of the thief…

And things might have gone less badly for Zith had he been slower to spring away when that toppled idol crashed to the brazen flags, for then he would never have had to meet those whom the sartled echoes had summoned. They did with that unhappy thief that which is better not to tell; and afterwards shut themselves away all night with the strangled priest and some pieces of Sthood, to cast certain dreadful runes and recall their god’s soul from the abyss whither it had flown; and in the morning went to see Yah-Vho.

They found him sweeping clouds of powdered marbles and flecks of gems out of his modest studio. And what gods had sprung from the marbles and gems whose sparkling dust it was, who knoweth? He laid aside his broom, and they spread before him a roll of new parchment disturbingly shaped like Zith, whereon were traced the outrageous lineaments of the god which Yah-Vho was to carve.

And Yah-Vho explained to them how it was not fashionable in that part of the Dreamlands for an idol to look so like an onion as theirs; and the priests pointed again to their plan. Again Yah-Vho looked at the plan, and frowned; but said that eyes were just the thing, pointing out that he had instock just then a few suitable emeralds.* And they said that for Sthood to have eyes was unheard of, and muttered terrible things against emeralds. Then he asked what sort of stone, and they said sandstone. And Yah-Vho resumed his sweeping to show that the audience was over, because he could not adequately express his contempt for worshippers of an idol of that sort. And they named a certain figure, in opals.

*His imitations in paste defy detection; they are classic, the model offered to students of the art.

So Yah-Vho procured what was necessary. And on the following morning those three high priests returned, all in their figured robes, with tripods and charcoal braziers and wonderful resins. But the strangled priest who came in behind the subservient high priest wore no robe, and the body was ill-suited to its hideous soul. Yah-Vho was not happy about the knavish eyes he perceived were watching him through holes the ill-fitting soul had rubbed in the body; but the body’s eyes regarded him not at all, having already been hooked out to accomedate that terrible soul. But this was none of Yah-Vho’s affair. He mounted the step-ladder and began vigorously to chip away the stone that imprisoned Sthood; and the high priests chanted, “O Sthood, Sthood,” and burned their wonderful resins.