Gary Mayers - The House of the Worm

Thus ends the unhappy tale of Zhosph as recorded elsewhere, and told once by them of Zulan-Thek until the Night came with his retinue of shadows to feast in Zulan-Thek’s palaces and fanes, attended by Fear: that when the sextons who carried Zhosph’s bones returned to the hippogryph-guarded entrance on a matter of unfinished business, they found things not quite as they had left them. The faces of the hippogryphs seemed altered and strangely smug, and the vines misbehaved shockingly, deliberately tripping the frenzied rats as they fled madly from the catacombs, and strangling them in a manner the sextons did not like. But worse was the wailing in the depths that had frightened the rats. One man later averred that it moaned disturbingly of something evil that should have been dead but scratched subtly in back of the mind, changing things for a purpose and tittering within. And certainly they all heard that tearing scream in the dark, and saw afterwards the queer little being with large ears that scampered up the dark stairs and made a terrible sign at them before drying its curious wings and fluttering back toward Zulan-Thek against the cryptic stars, to bargain with the Night.

When at last the sextons had confered in bleak whispers and descended to that tiny room where they had left it, they found the skeleton of Zhosph the thaumaturge disturbed, the skull split like the rind of a pomegranate and the sorcerer’s brain quite gone. This was attributed to the activities of rats, until later. One other thing they found which was less easily explained: a shrivelled yellowish membrane much as a serpent might leave in moulding, or the chrysalis of certain rare moths, not entirely recognizable as the skin of Snurd turned inside-out. The sextons did not pause long to ponder the riddle.

The apprentice Lir is aged beyond even Wisdom’s ripeness, and the wonderful memories he once possessed Time has long since snatched away. But the bright sand that flows down to the azure Cerenerian Sea below long wharves of teak he remembers still: where the turbaned fishers sit and mend their nets and watch the day pass flaming into the West with the first pale stars that follow, and where Lir came often as a little boy, to play upon the white sand and hear the quaint speech of the mariners. Lir was apprenticed to that very Dlareb who used to sell carpets in Lhosk, and had duties more pressing than to watch the ships sailing for fabulous ports where the sea joins the sky, as Dlareb was wont to remind him with his knotted stick; but Lir was only a small boy and loved the rose-tinted sails.

Here it was that once pausing in his solitary games, Lir spied a brightness half covered by the white sea-sand, and found that famous silver ball with its three cunning glyphs. The ball was tarnished and very old, but even very ordinary things cast up by the sea are objects of wonder when one is a very little boy; and the thoughts of Lir as he examined his treasure were far off with the drowned, perilous halls of that evilly aquatic One, dead Kthulhut to whom the frightened sailors allude only with furtive glances and meaningful nods, or the hoards of splendid galleons pulled down by the muttering waves…. And then Dlareb came by with his knotted stick, from discovering the family of round golden spiders busily spinning in the rolled, blood-coloured rug from remote Sona-Nyl, which Lir had neglected to sweep away. Instantly Lir forgot his prize to dodge his master’s ill-aimed blows, and escaped back to Lhosk and the little shop of Dlareb, where he fell asleep hiding behind the rolled carpets, sorely perplexing the spiders.

And that rug-merchant only spat into the sea and muttered something under his breath very like a curse, and turned to hobble back to the high seawall and the city. But the lengthening shadows had long since allied themselves with Night ere ever he came home again or lit a little candle; and Lir rubbed the sleep from his eyes and peeped out from his hiding place to see what his master was about, whether he was drunk, and perhaps to allay a little fear. And there was Dlareb with the sea still dripping from him, clutching that silver ball; but with subtle alterations in his manner, and something obviously terrible about his eyes; and the light on his puffy face was more than any single candle could account for. Then Dlareb took a burned stick and traced the least of the three glyphs on the blood-coloured carpet of Sona-Nyl. Lir covered his head with the ends of rugs and stuffed their corners in his ears.

When several of Dlareb’s clients, those with unsettled accounts, fell ill with discomforts of the least pleasant description, there were those who said that certain dolls which the rug-merchant displayed in his shop-window strangely resembled these clients, who screamed of pains in precisely those places where bamboo splinters transfixed the dolls. Only the unimaginative remarked upon this odd coincidence, all others swore nervously and hurried away.

One morning the gulls flew perilously low above the broad towers and gambrel roofs of Lhosk, away from the fitful sea; people heard only a brief flurry of wings and the wind. But those who went to take out their boats were puzzled by his ominous migration of the gulls; and seeing also that peculiar aura around the Moon, they wondered. Some spoke of storms, but this explanation satisfied no one when they remembered the colour of the Moon before it passed, and the shocking expression it had presented to the watchers.

Only four boats sailed with their nets and their crews from the long wharves of teak when the sun had attained a comfortable altitude. The others lay untended on the beach, while their owners watched from high up along the great seawall, murmering snatches of half-remembered legends concerning the sleep of certain discreditable gods, or praying when the clouds began to assume a more definite shape. The sun climbed higher, and still they watched for the return of the boats. And when the sun began to fall all their little hopes went with it; the day passed with annoying speed behind the distant Tanarian hills, where in his jewelled palace at Celephais King Kuranes noted its shrunken appearance but did not inquire to the priests.

(Once out at sea the nets were cast and drawn back curiously slashed and gnawed; but the net of one boat was less easy to draw back, and men had scrambled frantically to cut it loose, and died horribly.)

Dreams were not pleasant that night, and the candles burned far into the small dark hours, and the morning did not bring the relief looked for. The shadow intruding into the fitful sea was a city beyond any doubt, and people were very grateful now for that white fog which had driven men mad for a glimpse of the clean sky, because it disclosed only shadows. In hushed taverns sailors whispered fearfully of what may be seen by moonlight in the queer waters six nights out of Bahama. Their listeners were not eager to leave, because of what had come out with the fog; squat rubbery things that were felt but seldom seen, wet things that came up Lhosk’s winding streets from the sea. Nothing human skulked in the crooked sea-ward alleys, dragging unmentionable burdens, for nothing human slides plump tentacles behind it in the dark. And men wisely refrained from following their foul, slimy trails where they might have led them between the tottering sheds in the fog.

During this period few would have cared to notice how the rug-merchant had altered the singular display in his shop-window: the customary dolls were not there at all, but only the crude waxen images of nothing human, with long silver pins thrust into each uncouth belly in an undeniable pattern: each pin the vertex of a pentagon, or perhaps the point of a five-pointed star, which is sometimes more meaningful. But their maker was observed to be in a state of great unease, and had even overlooked the beating of Lir for some new truancy. Only once had Dlareb glanced at the stars in the vicinity of Orion, then screamed and gone to hide that blasphemous silver ball lest its Owner should send for it; if its Owner should come personally he could not hope to escape. Then, mumbling pitifully to himself, he had molded those repellent little dolls. But even as he had worked the changes began, his body assumed that unhealthy flabbiness so loathsomely apparent later, and the other peculiarities that caused Lir to flee that little shop and never return.