Henry Kuttner - The Book of Iod

Above the man a dim glow began to wax: a pale, lambent radiance that Doyle watched apprehensively for a few moments before realizing its significance. He recognized it finally as he began to make out vaguely disquieting formations in the brightness. And without warning a black coil dropped down purposefully—questing for him!

Doyle felt a cold shock of dreadful fear. Would this dream never end? The strange paralysis held him again. He tried to cry out, but no sound came from his stiff lips; and just before the worm-like tip of the tentacle touched him, he remembered his former escape and made a frantic effort to break his intangible bonds. And again the black abyss widened at his feet; again came the wrenching jar as he plummeted down—and again the dark veil was withdrawn to disclose a fantastic, alien scene.

All about him was a tangled forest of luxuriant vegetation. The bark of the trees, as well as the leaves, the thick masses of vines, even the grass underfoot was an angry brilliant crimson. Nor was that the worst. The things were alive!

The vines writhed and swung on the trees, and the trees themselves swayed restlessly, their branches twisting in the hot, stagnant air. Even the long, fleshy grass at Doyle’s feet made nauseating little worm motions.

There was no sun—merely an empty blue sky, incongruously peaceful above the writhing horrors. Doyle saw a crimson, snakelike vine as thick as his arm dart out toward him, and he made again that desperate effort to move. At the same moment he saw the nucleus of a familiar glow pulsing through the air above him. Then the blackness overwhelmed him briefly, and it passed to reveal still another world.

He was in a vast, towering amphitheater, vaguely reminiscent of the Coliseum, but far larger. Tiers of seats rose into the distance, and filling the rows was a surging multitude. There was a square of space separating him from the first row of seats, and on this space four creatures stood facing him.

They were monsters, inhuman and terrible. Set atop fat, puffy, dark-skinned bags were shapeless globes, dead black, save for peculiar whitish markings which followed no particular pattern. From a gaping hole in each globe dangled a string of pale, ribbonlike appendages, and just above this orifice was a pale, glossy disk, with an intensely black center.

The bodies, Doyle saw, were clothed in some black substance, so that only their general anthropoid contour was revealed. He caught a glimpse of unfamiliar appendages protruding through the clothing, but their various purposes were obscure.

One long proboscis resembled the miniature trunk of an elephant, and it hung from where the navel should have been. Another short, dangling flap had an ovoid swelling on it. The worst revelation of all, however, occurred when one of the things lifted up an arm, and from the gaping cavity that was revealed a pinkish tongue lolled forth lazily.

About Doyle a murmuring grew and swelled into a roar. The throngs in the distant seats were cavorting, dancing. The four nearby were waving their repulsive appendages and coming closer.

Above Doyle a spot of light appeared, grew larger. As he watched it began to glow with that strange bright flame he had come to dread. The four nearby scurried ignominiously to a safe distance. But this time Doyle was ready. His flesh crawling at the sight of the horror materializing within the light, he tensed—it was not such an effort this time, somehow—and again he was plummeting into blackness.

From the colorless void he emerged into the glaring blaze of a vast field of frozen white, with not an object visible in its limitless expanse, and a black, starless sky overhead. Abysmal cold seared Doyle to the bone, the utter chill of airless space. He did not wait for the coming of the pursuer to make the effort of his will that sent him into yet another world.

Then he was standing on a black, gelatinous substance that heaved restlessly underfoot, as though it were the hide of some cyclopean monster. The ebony, heaving skin seemed to stretch for miles around. Presently the warning light was fused in the air above Doyle. Shuddering, he fled through the shielding darkness.

Next was a field of hard, frozen brown earth, with a phenomenally beautiful night sky overhead, studded with unfamiliar constellations, with a great comet blazing in its white glory among the stars. And from that world Doyle fled to a strange place where he stood on a surface of ice or glass. Looking down he could see, far below, vague and indistinct figures that were apparently frozen or buried there, colossal shapes that seemed entirely inhuman, as far as he could make out through the cloudy crystalline substance.

The next vision was by far the worst. From the swift plunge into blackness Doyle emerged to find about him a great city, towering upward to a black sky in which blazed two angry scarlet moons, whose flight he could almost follow with his eyes. It was a colossal and shocking city of scalene black towers and fortresses which seemed to follow some abnormal and anomalous system of geometry. It was in its entirety an indescribable conglomeration of stone horrors, and its architectural insanity sent sharp pains darting through Doyle’s eyes as he tried to follow the impossible planes and angles.

Then Doyle caught a flashing glimpse of the amorphous, nightmare inhabitants that teemed loathsomely in that gigantic city, and a dreadful horror racked him. He flung himself desperately into the black gulf that once more awaited him.

He seemed to fall for endless eons through the limitless abyss. Then suddenly he found himself, gasping and sweating, in his roadster, while the shadowy darkness before the dawn made silhouettes of nearby trees.

Trembling, Doyle groped for the dashboard compartment. His throat was dry, and he had a piercing headache. He needed a drink. His hand closed on the bottle. Then he paused.

An inexplicable light was shining down on him!

Doyle dropped back upon the cushions, his eyes dilated with unbelieving terror. And slowly, from empty air that pulsed with the straining of cosmic forces, a monstrous entity began to emerge. Gradually it swam into view from a blaze of blinding light, until Doyle saw hovering above him the star-spawn of an alien and forgotten dimension— Iod, the Hunter of Souls!

It was not a homogeneous entity, this unholy specter, but it partook hideously of incongruous elements. Strange mineral and crystal formations sent their fierce glow through squamous, semitransparent flesh, and the whole was bathed in a viscid, crawling light that pulsed monstrously about the horror. A thin slime dripped from membranous flesh to the car’s hood; and as this slime floated down, hideous, plant-like appendages writhed blindly in the air, making hungry little sucking noises.

It was a blazing, cosmic horror spawned by an outlaw universe, an abysmal, prehuman entity drawn out of fathomless antiquity by elder magic. A great faceted eye watched Doyle emotionlessly with the cold stare of the Midgard serpent, and the rope-like tentacle began to uncoil purposefully as the thing advanced.

Doyle made a tremendous effort to break the invisible bonds that had again fettered him. He strained and struggled till his temples throbbed with agony, but nothing happened, save that from a puckered orifice on the rugose lower surface of the creature there issued a shrill, high-pitched whistling. Then the tentacle swung up and its tip darted out like a snake for Doyle’s face. He felt a frigid touch on his forehead, and the iron agony of fathomless cold bit into his brain.

In an incandescent blaze of light the world flared up and was gone, and a ghastly suction began to drag inexorably at Doyle’s brain. The life was drained from him in one hideous tide of pain.