Henry Kuttner - The Book of Iod

A dreadful metamorphosis was overtaking it. It seemed to be losing its outline, to sprawl down until it wriggled rather than crawled along the sand. Then I knew! In the space of seconds it was reversing the entire evolutionary upsurge of the human species! It squirmed there like a snake, losing its resemblance to anything human as I watched, sick and shuddering. It melted and shrank and shriveled until there was nothing left but a loathsome foul ichor that was spreading in a black puddle of odious black slime. I heard myself gasping hysterical, unintelligible prayers. And suddenly a piercing shock of cold went through me. High in the fog I heard a mewing, shrill call.

Hayward clutched at my arm, his eyes blazing. “It's come,” he whispered. “It’s the sacrifice— they’re breaking through! ”

I swung about, leaped for the open door of the cottage. The icy, unnatural chill was numbing my body, slowing my movements. “Come on,” I shouted to Hayward. “You fool, don’t stay out there! There has been one sacrifice already! Must there be others?”

He flung himself into the house and I slammed and locked the door.

Shrill, unearthly cries were coming from all directions now, as though the things were calling and answering one another. I thought I sensed a new note in the cries—a note of expectation, of triumph.

The window shade rolled up with a rattle and a snap, and the fog began to move past the pane, coiling and twisting fantastically. At a sudden gust the window shook in its casing. Hayward said under his breath, “Atmospheric disturbances—oh, my God! Poor Mason—watch the door, Gene!” His voice was strangled.

For a moment I saw nothing. Then the door bulged inward as though frightful pressure had been applied from without. A panel cracked with a rending sound, and I caught my breath. Then—it was gone.

The metal doorknob had a white rime of frost on it. “This— this isn’t real,” I said madly, although I was shuddering in the icy cold.

“Real enough. They’re breaking through—”

Then Hayward said something so strange that it brought me around sharply, staring at him. Gazing vacantly at me, like a man in a hypnagogic state, he muttered in a queer gutteral voice, “The fires burn on Nergu-K’nyan and the Watchers scan the night skies for the Enemies— ny’ghan tharanak grit —”

“Hayward!” I seized his shoulders, shook him. Life came back into his eyes.

“Blind spot,” he muttered. “I remembered something—now it’s gone—”

He flinched as a new outburst of the mewing cries came from above the house.

But a strange, an incredible surmise, had burst upon my brain. There was a way out, a key of deliverance from evil—Hayward had it and did not know it!

“Think,” I said breathlessly. “Think hard! What was it—that memory?”

“Does that matter now? This—” He saw the expression on my face, its meaning flashed across to him and he answered, not quickly, not slowly, but dreamily: “I seemed to be on a mountain peak, standing before the altar of Vorvadoss, with a great fire flaming up into the darkness. Around me there were priests in white robes—Watchers—”

“Hayward,” I cried. “Vorvadoss—look here!” I snatched up the half-page of the manuscript, read from it hastily. " The gods friendly to man were arrayed against the invaders —”

“I see what you mean!” Hayward cried. “We triumphed—then. But now—”

“Hayward!” I persisted desperately. “Your flash of memory just now! You were standing on a mountain while the Watchers scanned the night skies for the Enemies, you said. The Enemies must have been those creatures. Suppose the Watchers saw them?"

Suddenly the house shook under an impact that was not the work of the screaming wind. God! Would my efforts bear fruit too late? I heard an outburst of the shrill cries, and the door creaked and splintered. It was dreadfully cold. We were flung against the wall, and I staggered, almost losing my balance.

Again the house rocked under another battering-ram impact. My teeth were chattering, and I could hardly speak. A black dizziness was creeping up to overwhelm me, and my hands and feet had lost all feeling. Out of a whirling sea of darkness I saw Hayward’s white face.

“It’s a chance,” I gasped, fighting back the blackness. “Wouldn’t there—have been some way of summoning the gods, the friendly gods—if the Watchers saw the Enemies? You—you were high priest—in that former life. You’d know— how—to summon—”

The door crashed, broke. I heard wood being torn ruthlessly apart, but I dared not turn.

“Yes!” Hayward cried. “I remember—there was a word!”

I saw his frightened gaze shift past me to the horror that I knew was ripping at the broken door. I fumbled for his shoulders, managed to turn him away. “You must! Think, man—”

Abruptly a light flared in his eyes. He was reacting at last.

He flung up his arms and began a weird, sonorous chant. Strangely archaic-sounding words flowed from his tongue fluently, easily. But now I had no eyes for him—I was glaring at the horror that was squeezing itself through the splintered gap it had torn in the wall.

It was the thing Hayward had sketched, revealed in all its loathsome reality!

My dizziness, my half-fainting state, saved me from seeing the thing too clearly. As it was, a scream of utter horror ripped from my throat as I saw, through a spinning whirlpool of darkness, a squamous, glowing ball covered with squirming, snake-like tentacles—translucent ivory flesh, leprous and hideous—a great faceted eye that held the cold stare of the Midgard serpent. I seemed to be dropping, spinning, falling helplessly down toward a welter of writhing, glossy tentacles—and dimly I could hear Hayward still chanting.

“ la! Rhyn tharanak … Vorvadoss of Bel-Yarnak! The Troubler of the Sands! Thou Who waiteth in the Outer Dark, Kindler of the Flame… n’gha shuggy’haa …”

He pronounced a Word. A Word of Power, which my stunned ears could scarcely hear. Yet hear it I did. And I felt that beyond the borders of human consciousness and understanding, that Word was flashing and thundering, through the intergalactic spaces to the farthest abyss. And in primeval night and chaos Something heard, and rose up, and obeyed the summons.

For, with the suddenness of a thunderclap, blackness fell on the room, hiding from my sight the monstrous glowing thing that was plunging toward us. I heard a dreadful skirling cry—and then there was utter silence, in which I could not even hear the recurrent crashing of the surf. The abysmal cold sent sharp flashes of pain through me.

Then, out of the darkness, there rose up before us a Face. I saw it through a haze of silvery mist that clung about it like a veil. It was utterly inhuman, for the half-seen features were arranged in a pattern different to mankind, seeming to follow the strange pattern of some unfamiliar and alien geometry. Yet it did not frighten, it calmed.

Through the silver mist I made out strange hollows, fantastic curves and planes. Only the eyes were clear, unmistakable—black as the empty wastes between the stars, cold in their unearthly wisdom.

There were tiny dancing flames flickering in those eyes, and there were little flames, too, playing over the strange, inhuman countenance. And although not a shadow of emotion passed over those brooding, passionless eyes, I felt a wave of reassurance. Suddenly all fear left me. Beside me, unseen in the darkness, I heard Hayward whisper, “Vorvadoss! The Kindler of the Flame!”

Swiftly the darkness receded, the face faded to a shadowy dimness. I was looking, not at the familiar walls of the cottage, but at another world. I had gone down with Hayward into the profundities of the past.