Henry Kuttner - The Book of Iod

Just what happened in Edmond’s apartment during the next few days will never be fully known. Ludwig visited his host daily at the hospital, and told him of his experiments, and Edmond noted what he could remember on slips of paper which he subsequently inserted between pages of his diary. One is inclined to believe that the anomalous mixture of drugs in the brazier continued to exert its influence on the minds of the two students, for certainly Ludwig’s experiments, as recorded by Edmond, seem like a continuation of the original hashish dream.

Ludwig had burned the pamphlet, as might be expected. And then, on the night following Edmond’s removal to the hospital, the other youth maintained, he had heard Scott speaking to him.

Edmond did not scoff, for he was vastly credulous. He listened intently while Ludwig declared that the occultist was still alive, although existing in another dimension of space. The Hydra had captured Scott, but the occultist had the power to communicate with Ludwig. It is necessary to keep constantly in mind the fact that neither of these two youths was quite normal after the mental agitation he had undergone.

So Ludwig added more and more every day to his tale, and Edmond listened. They spoke furtively, in whispers, and Edmond kept careful watch over his notes so that they would not fall into skeptical hands. The whole crux of the matter, Ludwig said, was the strange crystalline object which had formed in the brazier. It was this which kept open the path to Outside. One could pass through it if one wished, despite the fact that it was not as large as a man’s head, because the crystal created a “warp in space” — a term Edmond mentions several times, but entirely neglects to explain. The Hydra, however, could not return to earth unless the original conditions were duplicated.

Ludwig said he had heard Scott’s voice whispering thinly from the crystalline thing of insane planes and angles, and the occultist was in horrible agony and insistent that Ludwig rescue him. It would not be difficult, provided the student followed instructions implicitly. There were dangers, but he must have courage, and strive to undo the harm he had done. Only thus could Scott be freed from endless agony and return to earth.

So, Ludwig told Edmond, he went through the crystal — again this vague and extraordinary phrase! — taking those things Scott had said he would need. Chief among these was a razor-keen, bone-handled carving knife. There were other objects, some of them difficult to obtain, which Ludwig did not specify, or which if he did, Edmond did not mention in his notes.

According to Ludwig’s narative, he went through the crystal, and he found Scott. But not at first. There were nights of fumbling progress through fantastic and terrible visions of nightmare, guided always by the insistent whisper of Scott’s voice. There were gates to be passed, and strange dimensions to traverse. And so Ludwig moved through awful abysses of pulsing, fearful darkness; he went through a place of curious violet light that sent tinkling, evil trills of goblin laughter after him; he went through a Cyclopean deserted city of ebon stone which he shudderingly recognized as fabled Dis. In the end he found Scott.

He did what was necessary. When he came to the hospital the next day Edmond was shocked by the bloodless pallor of his friend, and the little crawling lights of madness that shone in his eyes. The pupils were unnaturally dilated, and Ludwig spoke that day in disjointed whispers which Edmond found hard to follow. The notes suffered. It is only clear that Ludwig declared he had freed Scott from the grip of the Hydra, and that over and over again the youth kept muttering something about the terrible gray slime that had smeared the blade of his carving-knife. He said his task was not yet ended.

Undoubtedly it was the drug-poisoned mind of Robert Ludwig speakking when he told how he had left Scott, or at least the living part of him, in a plane of space which was not inimical to human life, and which was not subject to entirely natural laws and processes. Scott wanted to return to earth. He could return now, Ludwig told Edmond, but the strange vitality that maintained life in what was left of Scott would dissipate immediately on earth. Only in certain planes and dimensions was it possible for Scott to exist at all, and the alien force that kept him alive was gradually departing now that he was no longer drawing sustenance from the Hydra. Ludwig said that quick action was necessary.

There was a certain spot Outside where Scott could achieve his desire. In that place thought was obscurely linked to energy and matter, because of an insane shrill piping (Ludwig said) that eternally filtered from beyond a veil of flickering colors. It was very near the Center, the Center of Chaos, where dwells Azathoth, the Lord of All Things. All that exists was created by the thoughts of Azathoth, and only in the Center of Ultimate Chaos could Scott find means to live again on earth in human form. There is an erasure in Edmond’s notes at this point, and it is only possible to make out the fragment: “…of thought made real.”

White-faced, hollow-cheeked, Ludwig said that he must complete his task. He must take Scott to the Center, although he confessed to a horrible fear that made him hesitate. There were dangers in the way, and pitfalls where one might easily be trapped. Worst of all, the veil shielding Azathoth was thin, and even the slightest glimpse of the Lord of All Things would mean utter and complete destruction to the beholder. Scott had spoken of that, Ludwig said, and had also mentioned the dreadful lure that would drag the young student’s eyes to the fatal spot unless he fought strongly against it.

Biting his lips nervously, Robert Ludwig left the hospital, and we assume met with foul play on his way to Edmnd’s apartment. For Edmond never saw his friend again on earth.

The police were still seaching for the missing head of Kenneth Scott. Edmond gathered that from the newspapers. He waited impatiently the next day for Ludwig to appear, and after several hours had passed without result, he telephoned his apartment and got no response. Eventually, worried and almost sick with anxiety, he spent a turbulent ten minutes with his doctor and another with the superintendent. Finally he achieved his purpose and went by taxu to his apartment, having overruled the objection of hospital officials.

Ludwig was gone. He had vanished without a trace. Edmond considered summoning the police, but speedily dismissed the thought. He paced about the apartment nervously, seldom turning his gaze from the crystalline object that still rested in the brazier.

His diary gives little clue to what happened that night. One can conjecture that he prepared another dose of the narcotic drug, or that the toxic effects of the fumes Edmond had inhaled several days before had finally worked such disintegration within his brain that he could no longer distinguish between the false and the real. An entry in the diary dated the following morning begins abruptly, “I’ve heard him. Just as Bob said, he spoke through the crystal thing. He’s desperate, and tells me that Bob failed. He didn’t get Scott to the Center, or S. could have materialized again on earth and rescued Bob. Something — I’m not sure what — caught Bob, God help him. May God help all of us… . Scott says I must begin where Bob left off and finish the job.”

There is a soul laid bare on the last pages of that record, and it is not a pleasant sight. Somehow the most frightful of the unearthly horrors the diary describes seem not quite as dreadful as the last conflict that took place in that apartment above Hollywood, when a man wrestled with his fear and realized his weakness. It is probably just as well that the pamphlet was destroyed, for such a brain-wrecking drug as was described in it must surely have originated in some hell as terrible as any which Edmond portrays. The last pages of the diary show a mind crumbling into ruin.