Henry Kuttner - The Book of Iod

I was conscious of a different note in the clamor of the bells. What was it? There were only two notes now — one of the bells had been silenced. Somehow the cold was not so oppressive. And — was a grayish radiance beginning to pervade the blackness?

Certainly the temblors were less violent, and as I strained to break away from my shadowy opponent I felt the racking shocks subside, grow gentler, die away altogether. The harsh clangor of the two bells stopped.

My opponent suddenly shuddered and stiffened. I rolled away, sprang up in the grayness, alert for a renewal of the attack. It did not come.

Very slowly, very gradually, the darkness lifted from San Xavier.

Grayness first, like a pearly, opalescent dawn; then yellowish fingers of sunlight, and finally the hot blaze of a summer afternoon! From the bell-tower I could see the street below, where men and women stared up unbelievingly at the blue sky. At my feet was the clapper from one of the bells.

Denton was swaying drunkenly, his white face splotched with blood, his clothing torn and smeared with dust. “That did it,” he whispered. “Only one combination of sounds could summon — the Thing. When I silenced one bell—”

He was silent, staring down. At our feet lay Todd, his clothing dishevelled, his face scratched and bleeding. As we watched, he got weakly to his feet, a look of monstrous horror growing in his eyes. Involuntarily I shrank back, my hands going up protectingly.

He flinched. “Ross,” he whispered through white lips. “My God, Ross — I — I couldn’t help it! I couldn’t help it, I tell you! Something kept telling me to put out your eyes — and Denton’s too — and then to gouge out my own! A voice — in my head—”

And abruptly I understood, remembering that horrible whisper within my brain while I struggled with poor Todd. That malignant horror — he whom the Book of Iod called Zushakon and whom the Mutsunes knew as Zu-che-quon — had sent his evil, potent command into our brains — commanding us to blind ourselves. And we had nearly obeyed that voiceless, dreadful command!

But all was well now. Or was it?

I had hoped to close the doors of my memory forever on the entire horrible affair, for it is best not to dwell too closely upon such things. And, despite the storm of adverse criticism and curiosity that was aroused by the smashing of the bells the next day, with the full permission of Father Bernard of the Mission. I had fully determined never to reveal the truth of the matter.

It was my hope that only three men — Denton, Todd, and myself — might hold the key to the horror, and that it would die with us. Yet something has occurred which forces me to break my silence and place before the world the facts of the case. Denton agrees with me that perhaps thus mystics and occultists, who have knowledge of such things, may be enabled to utilize their knowledge more effectually if what we fear ever comes to pass.

Two months after the affair at San Xavier an eclipse of the sun occurred. At that time I was at my home in Los Angeles, Denton was at the headquarters of the Historical Society in San Francisco, and Arthur Todd was occupying his apartment in Hollywood.

The eclipse began at 2:17 p.m., and within a few moments of the beginning of the obscuration I felt a strange sensation creeping over me. A dreadfully familiar itching manifested itself in my eys, and I began to rub them fiercely. Then, remembering, I jerked down my hands and thrust them hastily into my pockets. But the burning sensation persisted.

The telephone rang. Greateful for the distraction, I went to it hurriedly. It was Todd.

He gave me no chance to speak. “Ross! Ross — it’s back!” he cried into the transmitter. “Ever since the eclipse began I’ve been fighting. Its power was strongest over me, you know. It wants me to— help me, Ross! I can’t keep—” Then silence!

“Todd!” I cried. “Wait — hold on, just for a few moments! I’ll be there!”

No answer. I hesitated, then hung up and raced out to my car. It was a normal twenty-minute drive to Todd’s apartment, but I covered it in seven, with my lights glowing through the gloom of the eclipse and mad thoughts crawling horribly in my brain. A motorcycle officer overtook me at my destination, but a few hurried words brought him into the apartment house at my side. Todd’s door was locked. After a few fruitless shouts, we burst it open. The electric lights were blazing.

What cosmic abominations may be summoned to dreadful life by age-old spells — and sounds — is a question I dare not contemplate, for I have a horrible feeling that when the lost bells of San Xavier were rung, an unearthly and terrible chain of consequences was set in motion; and I believe, too, that the summoning of those evil bells was more effective than we then realized.

Ancient evils when roused to life may not easily return to their brooding sleep, and I have a curious horror of what may happen at the next eclipse of the sun. Somehow the words of the hellish Book of Iod keep recurring to me — “Yet can He be called to earth’s surface before His time,” “He bringeth darkness,” “All life, all sound, all movement passeth away at His coming” — and, worst of all, that horribly significant phrase, “He cometh sometimes within the eclipse.”

Just what had happened in Todd’s apartment I do not know. The telephone received was dangling from the wall, and a gun was lying beside my friend’s prostrate form. But it was not the scarlet stain on the left breast of his dressing-gown that riveted my horror-blasted stare — it was the hollow, empty eye-sockets that glared up sightlessly from the contorted face — that, and the crimson-stained thumbs of Arthur Todd!

There is an obvious but insignificant similarity between this tale and Lovecraft’s “The Terrible Old Man” This time the sorcerer cannot save himself, but the crook unwittingly summons a terrible doom on himself.

The story is thickly clustered with Kuttner Mythos props such as the setting in the ill-rumored village of Monk’s Hollow, the use of the Chhaya Ritual, the blasphemous Elder Key, Mysteries of the Worm, and the Book of Kamak. What is surprising is the absence of the premier Kuttner grimoire, the Book of Iod. This is all the stranger since the monstrous entity who appears in the story is Iod itself! It is as if Kuttner had only now come to view Iod as an entity, and that when he did, he substituted this identification for the previous one. Otherwise we might expect him to mention the Book of Iod as the chief source of information about the entity Iod. Now there is a Great Old One named lod, but no Book of Iod. Thus there is no real warrant for supposing that earlier references to the Book had anything to do with an Old One of the same name.

Other occult accoutrements mentioned in this story include La Tres Sainte Trinosophie, actually a treatise on alchemy attributed to the long-lived Comte de Saint Germain, and “the monstrous Ishakshar”, the carven artifact in Arthur Mac hen’s “The Novel of the Black Seal.”

One more thing: One can hardly read this story without imagining it illustrated, as for some lost issue of Creepy, by Steve Ditko. It cries out for Ditko! It actually reads like a script intended for his realization. And who else could do it justice?

First publication: Strange Stories, June 1939.

Alvin Doyle came into the Wizard’s House with a flat, snub-nosed automatic in his pocket and murder in his heart.

Luck favored him in that he had been able to trace down his cousin, Will Benson, before the executors of old Andreas Benson’s estate had found the trail. Now fortune was still on his side. Benson’s cabin was in a little canyon two miles from the village of Monk’s Hollow, and the superstitions of the villagers would not allow them to go near there by night.