Gary Mayers: The House of the Worm

There he turned free his zebra. Already the bleeding sun failed at his back, and then sinister Night would rush terribly up from that vale with strange intent, and Thish did not need to be told what hellish spawn might lurk in the dusk athirst for that which he could ill afford. He lighted a little oddly-painted clay lamp that did not belong to him, and sitting down on a broad, flat rock, with his back to the stone and his jewelled sword at his side, he drew his cloak up to his eyes and waited. But Thish did not have to wait long… For then with many a subtle flap and whisper the shadows sprang, amid a bitter cold of the star-spaces. An object with clammy feelers and wings splattered against his brow. Queer half-glimpsed shapes of nightmare clamoured just beyond his feeble light, he heard the brief, frenzied screams of his zebra out in the dark with the titter he hoped but did not really believe was the wind. Ther that shadowy horde had wriggled obscenely over the high ridge and into the World beyond, and Thish was left all alone to creep down the treacherous slope, bearing his lamp before him. The very stones oozed a horrible dew of fluid shadows, and were pitted everywhere with fiendish burrows, and the burrows were not always unoccupied. Thish stumbled more often than he must have liked, for the little lamp could not dispel the blackness, only its vile children, and once his hand slipped down into one of the burrows… Later he found those worn steps at the base of the tower, where something began to slither nastily behind him, snuffling in the dark and disturbing ancient bones. Thish was glaa he could not see what he suspected. He could only gibber a meaningless prayer to the talisman in his pocket, and froth and scramble madly up the dizzy stair on his hands and knees in the dark, while the little suspicious noises behind him got bigger and bigger, and something wet twisted the lamp from his nerveless fingers and swallowed it with bestial slobberings and panted on his neck until his bleeding hands found the brazen tower door and pulled it shut behind him. Something knocked on the door and chuckled ominously.

Crouching there in the dark with his sword and mumbling to himself, of a Dark Jewel of immeasurable worth kept by the Night in fabled Mhor, of amorphous Xiurhn, whose noxious soul it is, who sits in a high tower in the dark and talks with those Other Gods whose methods of punishment the thief had most reason to fear, but who cannot abide the talisman sacred to that goddess N’tse-Kaambl whose splendour hath shattered worlds, Thish in the dark of his own shattered mind never knew when that talisman left his fingers at the silent beck of the yellow-skulled priests…

And then Xiurhn came downstairs with his soul to answer that persistent knocking.

Opening into the narrow windowless alley behind the solemn Hall of Burgesses on the one side and the shop of Woth the baker on the other, in Ulthar that lies beyond the river Skai, is that hidden door whose existence is only suspected. It is said of this door that there squats behind it, on an altar of what the unimaginative think are merely human bones, that strange and dubious idol named in certain obscure references as the Keeper of Dreams. There it crouches in the dark behind that misleading door, patiently awaiting those who have always come seeking that which only that unlawful idol has to offer, and always afterwards it locks its fees away in a little painted box whose rumour disturbs the sleep of the gods. What those fees are the legends do not willingly say, hinting only that Snireth-Ko knew once; and the fate of Snireth-Ko remains a matter of grim speculation.

They still tell in Ulthar how once it was this same Snireth-Ko who prepared the incense burned at all hours in the left ear of the image Nasht to confound his perception, lest Nasht be angered perceiving that his worshippers are sinful; in his other ear they pray. And Snireth-Ko mulled the golden wine with an herb well loved by the temple cats, who yet touch it not, but accept gladly the proffered cream afterwards when the priests have lapped up the wine. But despite his profound knowledge of even these most sacred traditions of the mild gods of Earth, or perhaps because of them, in the end the mystery and the beauty of these traditions were lost to him, for his cleverness had discerned the nonexistence of the gods. And while Nasht with his brethren atop unknown Kadath guffawed at some wry jest and cared not for the affairs of men, Snireth-Ko turned away from his gods and went out into the lonely streets.

Whither his wanderings took him that night is uncertain, for only the graceful cats were there to see, and these would only sit and clean their whiskers unconcernedly, after the immemorial way of cats, that takes not into account the sad mutterings of disillusioned venders of incense kept from sleep by thoughts not good to have. Perhaps even Snireth-Ko knew not where his footsteps would bring him. Something felt him there in the cobbled lanes, mumbling sadly to himself of the faith he had lost; for then a muffled piping drew him out of the night to that dim, evil-smelling alley mentioned elsewhere, and through the secret doorway where all such go in time, which something closed and locked behind him.

On the brick cylinders of Kadatheron many curious things are written, in archaic letters few now can read. There is revealed the madness that hungers in starless gulfs, the reason its own abominable spawn must flee to hostile worlds of light, blaspheming those worlds with horrible mockeries of form and substance. It was dark in that wide chamber which by all sane laws should be Woth’s respectable shop and the winding street in which it lies; then a light was struck somewhere to fall upon the idol’s shocking face, and Snireth-Ko knew where he was. That pale idol squatting obscenely on the altar of piled bones was more like a salamander than a leech, and its eyes were improperly placed. But Snireth-Ko did not like what it had in lieu of a mouth, and perhaps he should not be judged harshly for that one tiny scream. He well knew what services that idol offers, but he had heard unpleasant surmises about the fee that deceitful proprietor demands of clients. For it is told in Ulthar and in Nir, and passed by devious means throughout the Six Kingdoms, that what the Keeper of Dreams vends from its high altar is nothing less prized than men’s desires. All desires are goods in that infamous shop that should be Woth’s, for in its farthest end is a window sorcerously opening on all the dreams that men may have. Whether the dreams are of poets or eaters of hasheesh makes no difference to that dubious idol. And when the idol’s services are not required, the window overlooks only an abyss full of stars.

The daemon stirred its fretted wings, peered obliquely at its client, and smiled; and Snireth-Ko saw that he had been mistaken about the stars. Without that fabulous window lay all the bright opulence of wonder and incredible mystery he had lost with his faith, all the weird beauty, waiting to receive him, with pulsing vortices of scented flame and myths veiled in purple. And Snireth-Ko was wafted through the shimmering pane to the crystal dreams beyond…

In what far clime he knew not, the dreamer trudged the viscous shore of some vast continent of weeds, wrenched from the murky depths of what nameless sea he did not like to think. Slimy things watched his passage with numerous glazed eyes; fantastic polyps menaced him with ropey tentacles and gnashed their frightful beaks and sank back into the churning water; still he trudged on through the green rottenness towards an unspoken goal. White mists shredded from distant spires and proud minarets glinting emerald in the sun; and Snireth-Ko walked crystal ways between tall columns of figured glass, and riven temple-domes and cyclopean ruins of brilliant green, to a wide court where an emerald demigod banded with queer runes sat and stared unseeing at the stars. The dreamer too sought the stars and guessed what messages their cryptic winkings might convey, and shuddered. And when he heard that shocking moan from the god’s weed-bearded lips, he leapt into darkness rather than hear what Name that image would pronounce.