Gary Mayers - The House of the Worm

Now when that unfortunate seller of myrrh was followed in the next two weeks by no fewer than ten of his neighbours, the cotters were understandably distressed; but there was something not wholly logical in their anmity towards the flabby clerk. Certainly Yohk was never seen, only a gathering of shadows and a scream cut off with horrible suggestion, and somebody was missing who had not been before. Indeed, when these regrettable happenings finally ceased, Yohk seemed to have vanished quite as completely as the others. No more was he spied passing silently along the Way of Tombs as he was wont, or peering evilly at honest cotters from his window. In secret temples men burned incense and thanked the inscrutable gods. But there were others who whispered that the clerk had only shut himself away from prying eyes, to work some new blasphemy whose like had not been seen for many years more than a hundred, not since that infamous old man raised up from Hell the House of the Worm. Indeed, these people pointed out, already had a winged devil descended from the Moon to light on the sorcerer’s doorstep. Nobody seemed to remember that it flew away when no one answered its knock.

Soon Yohk’s neighbours were complaining loudly of a frightful smell, and certain well-fed rats that had taken to skulking in the Street of Frogs by night and leering at pedestrians. At last the gaunt mayor and his five augurers, abetted in their plan by those vacant-faced priests who once found Yohk’s laughter disconcerting, and hoped to recover their souls the sorcerer took, came armed with scrolls and holy periapts and chanting of the goddess N’tse-Kaambl whose splendour hath shattered worlds. They marched straight up the hated Street of Frogs from the Square of the Thirteen Pomegranates, singing of N’tse-Kaambl, and the plump rats fled scurrying. Right to that dubious threshold of Yohk they came — where it became necessary to wait on the doorstep until the intricate black lock would be picked — and muttering each a zealous prayer to his particular god, they entered and shut the door behind them.

Before many minutes had passed they all rushed franticly out again to cringe in alleys and less likely places, and would not willingly tell what they had seen.

But they found only a room with tapestried hangings depicting old, slant-eyed faces and cryptic signs that clearly meant something unspeakable, and deep blue rugs sprinkled with myriad little jewels arranged in constellations no eye looks on in any gulf. Somewhere a languorous incense burned, and four curious globes of light floated serenely just below the high vaulted ceiling. On a table of graven ebony was spread a crumbling scroll; a silver pen was dropt to the stone flags as though from the writer’s forgetful hand; the writer sat slumped forward on the table, very still. It was the unorthodox clerk Yohk, who had lost much of his flabbiness. So they left quickly, showing no proper respect for the dead, and sealed up the temple with the clerk still seated there, for none would touch him when they saw the look in his dead eyes. They did not even take away the eleven peculiarly marked bodies they found in the cellar.

Opposite the grim onyx temple of Unattainable Desires, in the Street of the Pantheon in Hazuth-Kleg, sacred to the Moon, there stood long the low, terrible house of Skaa that figures oddly in myth. Skaa dwelt all alone in her terrible house and worshipped her carven idols, and chanted and lighted unwholesome candles and made the Voorish sign. But there are those who do not scruple to consult witches, and Thish was used to dealing with persons of doubtful character in his business, which was nothing less than robbery.

He had heard it whispered by certain jewel-merchants, before his knotted cords silenced them completely, that the gem of immeasurable worth is kept by the Night in fabled Mhor. He heard it first in Celephais, from a fat jeweller seeking to buy his own life with that peculiar knowledge, and Thish had not trusted his whimperings. But in Vornai he was less sure, and in Ulthar’s scorpion-guarded shops he wondered whether it might be true, and in the yak caravan on Kaar’s sunny plain he could doubt no longer; the ruby-merchants who come to Dylath-Leen he robbed not. The truth and other pertinent matters, he knew, might be read in the mouldering Pnakotic Manuscripts wherein is recorded all things it is better that men should not know, but he did not wish to pay the Guardian’s price to peruse that hateful tome. Less perilous would be to consult one who had already paid the Guardian’s price.

In that low house shadows dwelt, despite the Bickerings of a little oddly-painted clay lamp. Thish did not like the way those shadows behaved, and Skaa’s eyes that shone like the nethermost stars of some nameless gulf were less than reassuring. He entered by that disturbing door which stands open at all seasons between dusk and dawn, and did what was expected of clients, and in turn was told what he wished to know. For beyond the unknown East, mumbled Skaa, there must certainly lie that great, silent vale which is the Night, whence he sends forth his shades at evening to slay the bleeding sun, and whither flee all dreams when the sun returns at dawning. And in that shadow-guarded vale (if one may believe the queer sayings of them that mouth strange secrets to any who may hear) is the high, haunted tower of stone wherein the myth Xiurhn sits and mutters dreams to himself and watches over the gem of immeasurable worth. As no other in the World is this gem, for it was made by the craft of the Other Gods as supplication to the mindless daemon sultan Azathoth, and cut in a semblance of some droll blending of sloth and vampire bat whose pulpy, sinister head is slyly concealed behind its folded wings. It is better that mortals do not think of it, for the Other Gods are not as men (whose tiny souls are bound to them by silver threads), but find earthly focus in certain horrible links, and the noxious soul of Xiurhn haunts the Dark Jewel. It would not be pleasant to meet Xiurhn or his soul, and the Other Gods have shocking methods of punishment. Yet it is known that the yellow-skulled priests of Yuth possess a talisman they anoint in adoration of N’tse-Kaambl, that is useful in protecting those who would profane what belongs to the Other Gods. And Skaa told how one might come to Yuth and the talisman; and casting at the witch’s webbed feet his payment in opals, Thish hurried out into the winding cobbled streets beneath the stars.

When Skaa opened the little bag and found only pebbles, for Thish was a robber of note, she drew a pattern known to the skull-faced priests of Yuth and nailed it to the brow of her messenger, who made an obeisance and vanished in a rustle of leathery wings. She described then a sign in the dark with her forefinger above the worthless rocks to change them into opals, and gave no more thought to the thief.

In seven nights a stealthy shadow passed on stockinged feet through the third and most secret vault of that abhorred monastery where the priests of Yuth celebrate the mass of Yuth with curious torments and prayer. When the yellow-skulled priests found the strangled witch with the knotted cord still about her throat and the talisman gone from its proper place on the altar, they only laughed softly and returned to their curious tortures.

That even the East must end if one only travels far enough, all sane men know, despite what philosophers may say; but Thish on his journey watched the four seasons of Earth come in file down through the fields of man and the fields that know him not, come each and pass and come again. And queerer and queerer grew the lands as one rode further East. Beyond the last of Six Kingdoms Thish beheld the dark, mordant forests of trees whose knotted roots fasten like leeches to the mould and moan and bleach the earth, and in whose loathly shadows the inquisitive brown Zoogs caper and leer; and evil bogs whose pale, luminous blooms are foetid with swollen worms having astonishing faces. The deserts on the thither side of Gak are all strewn with the gnawed, untidy bones of absurd chimeras. Thish spent a week in crossing those deserts, and day by day prayed to his gods that the gnawers might remain comfortably hidden. Beyond the deserts is the city it is not well to enter, for the portcullis mimes teeth entirely too well to be canny. And upon a time Thish led his famished zebra across the barren, stony ridge which is the East’s farthest border, and peered down to see the Night lapping evilly below, a sluggish, viscid pool in fabled Mhor.