Henry Kuttner - The Book of Iod

We went staggering across the room. “Earthquake!” Denton gasped, and we headed for the door. We didn’t race for the stairs, but remained just beneath the lintel of the doorway. During an earthquake it’s the safest place in any building, on account of the nature and strength of its construction.

But there were no more shocks. Denton moved back into the room and hurried to the window.

“Look,” he said breathlessly, beckoning. “They’re hanging the bells.”

We followed him to the window. From it we could see the Mission San Xavier two blocks away, and in the arches in the bell tower figures were toiling over the three bells.

“They say when the bells were cast the Indians threw the body of a living girl into the boiling metal,” Denton said, apropos of nothing.

“I know it,” Todd answered snappishly. “And the shamans enchanted the bell with their magic. Don’t be a fool!”

“Why shouldn’t some peculiar vibration — like the sound of a bell — create certain unusual conditions?” Denton asked hotly, and I thought I detected a note of fear in his voice. “We don’t know all there is to know about life, Todd. It may take strange forms — or even—”

Clang-g-g!

The booming, ominous note of a bell rang out. It was strangely deep, thrilling through my ear-drums and sending its eerie vibration along my nerves. Denton caught his breath in a gasp.

Clang-g-g!

A deeper note — throbbing, sending a curious pain through my head. Somehow urgent, summoning!

Clang-g-g — clang-g-g … thundering, fantastic music, such as might issue from the throat of a god, or from the heart-strings of the dark angel Israfel…

Was it growing darker? Was a shadow creeping over San Xavier? Was the Pacific darkening from sparkling blue to leaden gray, to cold blackness?

Clang-g-g!

Then I felt it — a premonitory tremble of the floor beneath my feet. The window rattled in its casing. I felt the room sway sickeningly, tilt and drop while the horizon see-sawed slowly, madly, back and forth. I heard a crashing from below, and a picture dropped from the wall to smash against the floor.

Denton, Todd and I were swaying and tottering drunkenly toward the door. Somehow I felt that the building wouldn’t stand much more. It seemed to be growing darker. The room was filled with a hazy, tenebrous gloom. Someone screamed shrilly. Glass smashed and shattered. I saw a spurt of dust spray out from the wall, and a bit of plaster dropped away.

And suddenly I went blind!

At my side Denton cried out abruptly, and I felt a hand grip my arm. “That you, Ross?” I heard Todd ask in his calm voice, precise as ever. “Is it dark?”

“That’s it,” Denton said from somewhere in the blackness. “I’m not blind, then! Where are you? Where’s the door?”

A violent lurch of the building broke Todd’s clutch on my arm and I was flung against the wall. “Over here,” I shouted above the crashing and roaring. “Follow my voice.”

In a moment I felt someone fumbling against my shoulder. It was Denton, and soon Todd joined him.

“God! What’s happening?” I jerked out.

“Those damned bells,” Denton shouted in my ear. “The Book of Iod was right. He bringeth darkness — within the day—”

“You’re mad!” Todd cried sharply. But punctuating his words came the furious, ear-splitting dinning of the bells, clanging madly through the blackness. “Why do they keep ringing them?” Denton asked, and answered his own question, “The earthquake’s doing it — the quake’s ringing the bells!”

Clang-g-g! Clang-g-g!

Something struck my cheek, and putting up my hand I felt the warm stickiness of blood. Plaster smashed somewhere. Still the earthquake shocks kept up. Denton shouted something which I did not catch.

“What?” Todd and I cried simultaneously.

“Bells — we’ve got to stop them! They’re causing this darkness — perhaps the earthquake, too. It’s vibration — can’t you feel it? Something in the vibration of those bells is blanketing the sun’s light-waves. For light’s a vibration, you know. If we can stop them—”

“It would be a fool’s errand,” Todd cried. “You’re talking nonsense—”

“Then stay here. I can find my way — will you come, Ross?”

For a second I did not answer. All the monstrous references gleaned from our study of the lost bells were flooding back into my mind: the ancient god Zu-che-quon whom the Mutsunes were supposed to have the power of summoning “by certain deep-toned sounds” — “He cometh sometimes within the eclipse,” “All life passeth away at His coming,” “Yet can He be called to earth’s surface before His time—”

“I’m with you, Denton,” I said.

“Then, damn it, so am I!” Todd snapped. “I’ll see the end of this. If there is anything—”

He did not finish, but I felt hands groping for mine. “I’ll lead,” Denton told us. “Take it easy, now.”

I wondered how Denton could find his way in that enveloping shroud of jet blackness. Then I remembered his uncanny memory and sense of direction. No hominh pigeon could make a straighter way to its destination than he.

It was a mad Odyssey through a black hell of shrieking ruin! Flying objects screamed past us, unseen walls and chimneys toppled and smashed nearby. Frightened, hysterical men and women blundered into us in the dark and went shouting away, vainly searching for escape from this stygian death-trap.

And it was cold — cold! A frigid and icy chill pervaded the air, and my fingers and ears were already numbed and aching. The icy air sent knife-edged pains slashing through my throat and lungs as I breathed. I heard Denton and Todd wheezing and gasping curses as they stumbled along beside me.

How Denton ever found his way through that chaotic maelstrom I shall never understand.

“Here!” Denton shouted. “The Mission!”

Somehow we mounted the steps. How the Mission managed to stand through the grinding shocks I do not know. What probably saved it was the curious regularity of the temblors — the quakes were more of a rhythmic, slow swaying of the earth than the usual abrupt, wrenching shocks.

From nearby came a low chanting, incongruous in the madness around us.

Gloria Patri Filio Spiritui Sancto…

The Franciscans were praying. But what availed their prayers while in the tower the bells were sending out their blasphemous summons? Luckily we had often visited the Mission, and Denton knew his way to the tower.

On that incredible climb up the stairs to the bell tower I shall not dwell, although every moment we were in danger of being dashed down to instant death. But at last we won to the loft, where the bells were shrieking their thunder through the blackness almost in our ears. Denton released my hand and shouted something I could not distinguish. There was an agony of pain in my head, and my flesh ached with the cold. I felt an over-powering impulse to sink down into black oblivion and leave this hellish chaos. My eyes were hot, burning, aching…

For a moment I thought I had lifted my hands unconsciously to rub my eyes. Then I felt two arms constrict about my neck and vicious thumbs dug cruelly into my eye-sockets. I shrieked with the blinding agony of it.

Clang-g-g — clang-g-g!

I battled desperately in the darkness, battling not only my unknown assailant, but fighting back a mad, perverse impulse to allow him to gouge out my eyes! Within my brain a voice seemed to whisper: “Why do you need eyes? Blackness is better — light brings pain! Blackness is best… .”

But I fought, fiercely, silently, rolling across the swaying floor of the bell-tower, sashing against the walls, tearing those grinding thumbs away from my eyes only to feel them come fumbling back. And still within my brain that horrible, urgent whisper grew stronger: “You need no eyes! Eternal blackness is best…”